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Thursday, May 23, 2002
Media Highway Ramps
May 23, 2002
I'm upgrading my network, adding more equipment, planning to play around with digital media in order to ease back into the work force. I want to get to know the current state of digital media in the home by getting my hands dirty. Or, in the case of running wires under my house, getting my entire body dirty.
I still have a few details to sort out, mostly making the phone and video hub wiring pretty. But my new wiring is installed and working. With the wired and wireless infrastructure in place, I'm ready to get more serious with software and hardware for handling digital video streams. But there's a potential holdup on this "ease back into work" plan.
A guy I've worked with on and off since 1991 is in serious discussions with venture capitalists. He's got an interesting idea, and would like me to take a key position in a new venture. Damn. I think I'm catching that startup fever again.
Media Superhighway in the Crawl Space
May 19, 2002
It starts innocently enough. An RF cable runs under a rug and behind a table to bring video to another room. And then the DirecTV/Tivo wants two satellite feeds and a phone line. And the lap top needs a long phone extension. But now I've got CAT5 going on. Something had to be done.
The most logical way to route low voltage cables in my house is through the crawl space. This allows easy access to the base of the walls, and offers plenty of room for mounting cables. But the crawl space is not my favorite place to be.
"Crawl" is perhaps a generous word. I think of crawling as a hands and knees sort of thing. Below my house, were talking about hands, knees, belly, chest, hips, whatever. It's a full contact sport played on a field of hard dirt, fine dust, and entirely too many pieces of gravel.
Since I don't want to spend a lot of time redoing work in the crawl space, I spent time learning about the modern state of low voltage home wiring. There' a whole market for "structured wiring" in houses. And it's not an esoteric concept that you would find in Gates' or Ellison's abodes. This stuff is in your friendly neighborhood Home Depot. The most complete source I've seen on the web is hometech.
I've been working with the QuickPort line from Leviton, allowing me to custom configure faceplates for phone, network and video. I'm using a 110 punchdown block for phones. If the stuff is cheap and easy, why not use the same grade equipment as the phone company?
I will have network ports in several rooms (and the patio) which all run to my office, where the bulk of the networking equipment will live. I have two network drops to the A/V equipment in my living room. All video servers should be networked ...
The video portion is done, and it is good. From any television in the house, I can get to my Tivo or DVD player, or whatever else I add to the video system. And the remote controls work too.
I'm finishing up the CAT5 work in the crawl space tomorrow. I've had the weekend to recover, but I'm still sore in all sorts of funny places. I hope the patron saint of CAT5 guides my staple gun, because I'm not at all interested in "do-overs".
Internetworking in Campbell
April 30, 2002
I hosed my travel plans. I wanted to travel to New Orleans on Wednesday, so that's the date that stuck in my mind. But the ticket said Tuesday. Even if Wednesday's plane has empty seats, I'm up against powerful computer algorithms bent on extracting the maximum value from last minute travellers.
My detour to Spokane caused me to miss the first half of JazzFest. (Note on air travel: if you have an irritable, migraine-y expression on your face, be prepared for lots of "random" checks of your person and property.) My mistake with the New Orleans departure blows most of the rest of it.
Instead, I'll stay in Campbell and be internet boy. My chimney is sporting a new antenna, connecting me to a wireless service about a mile away. I now have 300 kbps connectivity, and must say it is very, very good.
Next steps, in no particular order, are ...
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install SMC router/firewall/wireless-access-point, giving me wired and wireless LANs for my own little cul-de-sac hanging off the internet
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install wireless NIC in laptop, and web surf from the back yard
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obtain 10/100 port for my PVR (not exactly an authorized mod.)
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set up software development environment (a Windows environment, I'm sad to say)
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set up server(s), and put cool stuff on them
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buy me a real, live IP address on the world wide web
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