Wundowie

After four years of lugging a 1.8m (well, 2.0m) dish around the country, I finally got around to buying a smaller set-up. The hardware is almost identical, the biggest difference is that the transmitter is now 2 Watt, instead of 1 Watt.

Whilst driving through Broken Hill, on the trip from Millmerran to Perth, I finally had a spare moment to drill some holes into the bull bar and line those up with holes in the mounting pole.

I hadn't yet attempted to use the mount, but Richard was keen to see my set-up, because all he'd seen to date was photos.

So, if it weren't for the lost cable, it would have taken less than 30 minutes to set-up, from start to finish.

That really means that we now have a truly mobile kit.

You cannot see the black electronics boxes, but I've left the red steel behind in Millmerran and changed over to water proof Pelican cases. Not sure how we'll go with the heat, but from a water/moisture perspective, this is all good.

Australian Camp Oven Festival

Every two years, the Australian Camp Oven Festival is held in Millmerran, Qld. In 2006, Fran was responsible for running the office and I offered to provide the festival with Internet connectivity during the week long event.

Arrival at the show grounds was at 6:00am and by 7:00am I was on my way home with a dish all tuned and ready to go. This was a true test of the mobile nature of our new dish and it worked to perfection.

The festival was a great success and many visitors from around the world came to look at and taste genuine Australian camp oven tucker.

I played a minor role as one of the folks sitting on a quad directing campers to their sites and reuniting long lost friends.

A good time was had by all.

Millmerran

Three setups, and by the end of June, four, all in the same town. First off at a Caravan Park for a bit followed by a previous location, and now for five months with an expected interruption at the end of June in a back yard.

Had some fun and games with IP addresses changing. VoIP stopped working - Onno's fault - uhm, actually, no, not Onno's fault, - uhm, equipment fault - uhm, no routing issue - uh, does it work now - woops?

Took delivery of four SkyEdge kits, one for me with a 2 Watt BUC, all with 1.2m dishes. We'll bolt three to roof-tops at clients, the fourth stays home and soon I'll be able to bolt it to my mount. It's expected to be joined at the end of June by a sister kit, which will give us three modems, three satellite Internet dishes and one TV receive dish, all in for an adventure in the bush. More when it gets confirmed.

Millmerran

Three setups, and by the end of June, four, all in the same town. First off at a Caravan Park for a bit followed by a previous location, and now for five months with an expected interruption at the end of June in a back yard.

Had some fun and games with IP addresses changing. VoIP stopped working - Onno's fault - uhm, actually, no, not Onno's fault, - uhm, equipment fault - uhm, no routing issue - uh, does it work now - woops?

Took delivery of four SkyEdge kits, one for me with a 2 Watt BUC, all with 1.2m dishes. We'll bolt three to roof-tops at clients, the fourth stays home and soon I'll be able to bolt it to my mount. It's expected to be joined at the end of June by a sister kit, which will give us three modems, three satellite Internet dishes and one TV receive dish, all in for an adventure in the bush. More when it gets confirmed.

Millmerran

Three setups, and by the end of June, four, all in the same town. First off at a Caravan Park for a bit followed by a previous location, and now for five months with an expected interruption at the end of June in a back yard.

Had some fun and games with IP addresses changing. VoIP stopped working - Onno's fault - uhm, actually, no, not Onno's fault, - uhm, equipment fault - uhm, no routing issue - uh, does it work now - woops?

Took delivery of four SkyEdge kits, one for me with a 2 Watt BUC, all with 1.2m dishes. We'll bolt three to roof-tops at clients, the fourth stays home and soon I'll be able to bolt it to my mount. It's expected to be joined at the end of June by a sister kit, which will give us three modems, three satellite Internet dishes and one TV receive dish, all in for an adventure in the bush. More when it gets confirmed.

Millmerran

Three setups, and by the end of June, four, all in the same town. First off at a Caravan Park for a bit followed by a previous location, and now for five months with an expected interruption at the end of June in a back yard.

Had some fun and games with IP addresses changing. VoIP stopped working - Onno's fault - uhm, actually, no, not Onno's fault, - uhm, equipment fault - uhm, no routing issue - uh, does it work now - woops?

Took delivery of four SkyEdge kits, one for me with a 2 Watt BUC, all with 1.2m dishes. We'll bolt three to roof-tops at clients, the fourth stays home and soon I'll be able to bolt it to my mount. It's expected to be joined at the end of June by a sister kit, which will give us three modems, three satellite Internet dishes and one TV receive dish, all in for an adventure in the bush. More when it gets confirmed.

Mount Pleasant

The modem arrived and the mount got built and the modem got plugged in and it didn't work.

The old modem got plugged in and it sort of worked, but the BOC sent me logs showing lots of reboots. So limping along we're waiting for the stuff to be sorted out and the paper work to be completed and all to be resolved and life to go back to "the day before the storm hit".

Meanwhile, Google Maps released a world-wide view of their BETA service and I started playing with the software. A whole lot of hacks had appeared, almost over night, that showed off many and varied ways that Google Maps could be used on your own web-site. With a little tweaking I came up with a quick and dirty hack.

About 48 hours after I made my first hacked up version, Google announced the Google Maps API which allows you to make official Google Maps on your site. I signed up, did the work made a nice little map and have spent the past four days banging my head against a wall trying to give it the same functionality as I already had, but using the official API. This involves me relearning JavaScript, learning XML and XSLT all meaningful subjects, just not really all that exciting when all you want to do is show a map, but you get that :)

VoIP is coming, a bigger transmitter should allow for a smaller dish, the World Solar Challenge, 2005 is nearing, there's a project with one of my colleagues in Alaska in the wind, I'm writing some nifty code to sit as a pipe between irmp3 and mpg321 to make the play list on our mp3 player no-longer repeat itself ad-nauseum and I've got cattle to feed, tractors to drive, dogs to pat and fish to treat with WheatBix meal. Frances is off picking olives after her long running transcription gig for the Australians at War Film (http://www.australiansatwarfilmarchive.gov.au/) Archive finally got completed.