I’ve done a few installs of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD lately… for some tests. Seems to work fine for the most part, although I haven’t really used it like I used the GNU/Linux “edition” 😉 Still, looks quite nicely run, so I’m setting up a Belgian (local) mirror on the PowerSource/Phyxia mirroring box. If nothing else, this will allow me to continue playing/testing this even if their main mirror (gnuab.org) goes offline. This happens a few times a day as far as I can tell, not really handy. I’ll have to see if I can get this to run permanently on a not-so-important box… 😀

Been looking around for toys -errm, hardware and possibilities to build the long-discussed wireless link between me and Michiel. I think I got it now, just need a little hardware and help from Fabian… 🙂

Currently, my plan is to put a Linksys WRT54GL in a waterproof box (which I assume I can easily find at Brico), and put this on top of the roof, right next to the Yagi antenna (so we don’t get any loss over the antenna cable, plus save some money). I will pump up the default 30 mW transmit power to 90 mW (which is what the chip is actually rated for, and close enough to the allowed 100 mW). Power will be supplied over the ethernet cable (so I’d need an injector and something to take it back out, the WRT’s don’t support PoE natively). The ethernet cable will then run down the building, go inside via an air hole for the garages; through 2 neighbours’ garages, back out at the back (that’s where our terrace is), then back into the house through the window of our serverroom, et voila.. Connectivity(tm). Or so I hope it will be…

Waterproof box: 5€ (?), WRT54GL: 75€, WAPPOE: 60€, UTP: No idea. Toys for the boys…

Update:  since I actually bought a new wireless router (Asus WL-HDD) to play with, we should be able to use our current WRT54G instead of buying a new WRT54GL. Good, cause LDLC doesn’t have them in stock anymore 🙁

One nifty ‘bug’ in Norton’s Personal Firewall… this tells you all about it 😉 Updated info shows this only works when your IRC client is writing logs to disk – it doesn’t actually work when only traveling over the network. Which is odd in itself. Anyhoo, putting this in a channel topic could surely screw a lot of people’s IRC connection.

Next up, you may want to check this screenshot out … and run a virusscan on your PC 😀