Stepping out for a bit

It seems likely that we’ll be house-sitting for a while, come early March. It’s quite a house, too, on Sugarloaf Point, just north of Newcastle.

Nearest civilisation is Seal Rocks, a small town on the beach, with a dirt road from the highway. Second-nearest civilisation is Forster. This is all in the Great Lakes area of NSW and registered as a National Estate.

Now... internet connection? Dialling is going to be a PITA, if it comes to that. Two-way satt requires an 18-month contract, so may not be as appropriate as I’d hoped.

I’m wondering if you know that area at all & can speak to me of wireless & other “advanced” access methods? I’m presuming that boring stuff like ADSL will be waaay out of range...

Comments

Anonymous said…

This is one of my favourite surfing locations. I go there for three reasons:

- Great breaks
- No internet access
- No mobile access

I recommend leaving your laptop at home. It's a great place to do something else for change.

09 January, 2007 08:33

Leon RJ Brooks said…

For a weekend, yes. Excellent, in fact.

For months? That’s quite a different matter.

Thanks for the recommendation, though.

09 January, 2007 09:44

Anonymous said…

For months? Well, that's enough time to setup your own wireless relay network up to Foster for ADSL.

At least you'll get dial up. Perhaps order a second line and do some old fashioned EQL. ;)

I'll be surfing there in April. If you're there I'll pop in and say hello. I can even download some web pages and bring them for you on DVD ;)

10 January, 2007 11:36

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.

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...

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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