Computerjargon.com

From the beginning I have been obsessed with putting my life online. I believe though, that I have found the Mecca for uber-life-connectivity: Twitter. I didn’t get Twitter for a long time. I tried it a few months ago and couldn’t figure out why I would want to use it. After the Vegas trip, though, I realized that Twitter allows me to write a “small blog” from anywhere using my cellphone. That means where ever I am, and whatever I’m doing, can be documented.

To top Twitter though is Jaiku , an aggregator of all my various online-going-ons. It will organize my online “stuff” by date, truly tracking everything I do.

So if you’re twittering, you can find me at http://www.twitter.com/brokenindu . For everything, all at once, and overflowing, check out my Jaiku feed at: http://breakdown.jaiku.com/.

A few weeks ago I signed up to receive a free FON wifi router. FON’s concept is simple, build a community of users willing to share their bandwidth through an open Wifi connection. The only problem is it requires purchasing a $30 wifi router from FON. Well, that was until they ran a promotion to hand out a few thousand free routers. I filled out a form and didn’t expect much. FON literally asked me for only my name and address.

To my surprise I received a little package this week. Sure enough, I had been sent a little FON wifi router. The router itself is nothing too impressive. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of my hand and has three LED status lights on it. All I needed to do was to plug it in to my existing wired network.

The router uses the OpenWRT firmware originally created to run on Linksys hardware. I thought this was pretty ingenious of FON. By utilizing existing software they are able to provide some pretty slick functionality. The router has a public and private side. The private side can be used for a secure internet connection like any other wifi router. The public side, though, is a proxy into the FON community.

When I first set up the router I was redirected to FON’s website to configure the router to work with the community. I had to choose what type of node I wanted to be. My choices were either 1. be free and then be granted access to other community routers or 2. charge people $3 to connect to my router. Being in a suburb and right next to a Caribou with free internet connectivity I can’t imagine making much money off of it. I choose to be a free node.

So, if you’re ever cruising the streets of Crystal looking for free wifi, check out my drive way. It’s got the best there is to offer…in a driveway.

http://www.thingsmyboyfriendsays.com/ – A website dedicated to the great wisdom men say daily.

Green Day gets the whole online music thing. They are selling pre-labeled CD-Rs with their album art so fans can download the songs from iTunes and burn to a disc, much like buying it in the stores .

Mozilla’s latest version of Firefox takes the cake when it comes to features. I converted over to Firefox about four months ago. I was impressed with it’s speed and reliablity. Not to mention the growing number of virii targeting Internet Explorer had me hiding behind the couch with tin foil over my head.

The PR1.0 version of Firefox implements a new feature called Live Bookmarks. If a site has an RSS feed Firefox notes it at the bottom right corner of the browser window. The RSS feed can be bookmarked and the headlines from the site will show in the browser bookmark list. A very handy little feature for those of us that browse the Internet at break-neck speeds. RSS is a very handy little standard which cuts through all the glitter of the Internet to deliver information quickly and precisely.

Well, the new DSL speed increase happened this morning sometime between my shower and getting to work. I can’t really tell much of a difference from work though. My line should handle 1.5mbit down /1mbit up but I’m getting somewhere around 970kbit down / 400kbit up. Still a two-fold increase from my line before. I’m just at a loss as to what to download first.

UPDATE: Last night I was able to max out both my download and upload pipe. All is well in the Motylinski compound.

Well, it’s been a good, newsworthy day in my life. Let me touch on the two highlights:

1. It’s announced that Steve Buscemi will be joining the cast of The Sopranos for the fifth season.

2. Qwest announces a free speed bump on DSL from 640k service to 1.5M service, effectively doubling the download speed free of charge. VISI informed me that I would have to wait until February for the new service.

Something has got to be wrong with my DSL. I can’t even telnet into my Linux box without a good 5 to 10 second lag. My latency is horrid going into my box. But coming out of my network is lightening fast. So why is my upstream so screwed up? Hmm. Time to investigate some cool Linux programs to help troubleshoot the problem.

I’m about to head out for the weekend again. I finish up Christmas at my grandparent’s house this weekend. Then I can finally close the book on Christmas 2000 and start planning for Jason 2000 in March.
For those that care my windshield gets fixed Tuesday morning at 8 am. I found a place right on Hennipen when I can drop off the car and pick it up on the walk home.

Okay, I have a retraction. I actually had one smartass out there download Mozilla and test the site with it. The site broke. Go figure. So I changed the one value needed to be Internet Explorer compliant. Now IE users can post comments. Sorry for the error. I’ve got to start writing code while NOT under the influence.

For the longest time people have been telling me that Computer Jargon is broken. Well, I finally figured out the root of all the problems. Readers are using Internet Explorer. That’s the problem. It’s not me, it’s you guys. Now go get a real browser over at Mozilla.org.