Telstra and butts

First off, once again they are having trouble finding their own. I think they’d still have trouble even with laser topology mapping and GPS.

You may remember a customer being told that they didn’t have ADSL, despite being able to point to the flashy box in the corner and the 150kB/s downloads as evidence that they were no longer dependent on dialup? Well, in a far-too-typical demonstration of quality control systems in action, Telstra made it so. When the technician’s visit on Monday to install the ADSL that they already had working was cancelled, the existing service was cancelled along with it.

Now, three days of headbutting walls later, the service is back on line again, and they’ve re-spread the entrails necessary to get a static-IP-enabled login back (by hand, Telstra refused to fix it for them automagically)... and it doesn’t work.

Second off, at another customer, Telstra have blessed an ADSL line which features ≅50dB of attenuation.

Needless to say, the continuous disconnections are not impressing anybody. The whole ADSL installation has been a circus from go to woah. The telephone people’s techs claimed that they’d heard nothing up until last Friday, but the customer placed the wiring order several weeks ago before ordering the ADSL connection (which took well over three weeks to arrive due to localised DSLAM starvatiuon), and then clarified it again when sorting out VoIP tie-line modules. Then they installed it the next workday without a filter, resulting for some odd reason in an SNR of 0dB. And now this. The 8 x 1Mb/s connection has been clamped to 1¾ x ½Mb and is now stable with an SNR of 20-24dB so finally OpenVPN can do its thing.

Oh, yes, and the ISP appears to have sent out an extra DSL modem at no charge. «shrug»

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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