Public wireless in Perth CBD?

Bind your card to channel 4, ESSID of ENABLEnet, no encryption, then go & sit across the plaza from the city-side entrance to the Alexander State Library, with your laptop.

Run DHCP on your wireless interface (e.g. dhclient eth1).

The nearest power socket is in the nook on the south-ish side of PICA, which is about 3m outside wireless range for this hp/Compaq nx9040 (I think because of environment shape rather than actual distance), so a fully-charged battery is a great place to start.

Fire up a web browser, click on OK, the world is now yours. I can ssh (so of course scp) including to weird ports, which allows me to upload photos to my webserver (at about 2MB/s) without any setup.

I was able (once) to briefly connect from on the other side of the train tracks (near the Blood Bank) but this is not reliable.

Was able to chat with friends in the USA & Thailand. Can’t complain about the price.

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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