WiFi Linux on a shoestring

Posted on May 9, 2007 by blogmywiki

xubuntu xfceCAUTION: this is a geeky Linuxy post that’s really just here because I’ll forget how I did this in about a week and I might want to do this again some time…

Ages ago I put Xubuntu – a cut-down version of Linux – on an ancient Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop. The other day I found an old Cisco Aironet 350 wireless PCMCIA card lying around and it occurred to me that if I could get it working then this old laptop could be a bit more useful – if only for web-browsing in the tree house without worrying about the kids damaging my PowerBook.

The XFCE graphical environment I installed has very few bells and whistles – there’s certainly no GUI to tweak WiFi settings, so I plugged the Cisco card in the top PCMCIA slot and went to the command line and tried iwconfig to see what was wirelessly going on inside, if anything; it looked a bit like this, suggesting some WiFi action was possible on the eth1 interface:

interface:myname@tecra8000:~$ iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

irda0 no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:” ”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.417 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:76:FC:04
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=0/65535
Retry limit:16 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=90/100 Signal level=-50 dBm Noise level=-98 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:14 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:4253 Missed beacon:0

So then I edited the interfaces file like this:

sudo pico /etc/network/interfaces

to make the primary network interfaces section read like this, including the name of my wireless router and its WEP key:

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
wireless-key abcdef123456
wireless-essid MyRouterSSID

And then I restarted networking like this:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Then to get the machine to start the graphical environment as soon as I log in at the command line, I added these lines to /home/myname/.bash_profile:

if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" -o "$(tty)" = "/dev/vc/1" ] ; then
startx
fi

Brilliant!

Posted in computers, hardware, Linux, operating systems, thrift, Ubuntu, WiFi, XFCE, Xubuntu | 1 Comment

My name is Jon Ronson, I live in Wisconsin, I work in the lumbermill there

Posted on May 7, 2007 by blogmywiki

guardian columnists Our friend Georgina and I both love to hate Jon Ronson. His Guardian column makes us both scream and yet we always read it, week in week out. That and Charlie Brooker’s TV review are the only things I always read.

This week Jon has Googled himself and discovered that some bloggers have said horrible things about him. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Jon in my blog, so obviously I have to put that right, right now…

Posted in internet, media, newspapers | 1 Comment

Ashes to Ashes

Posted on April 11, 2007 by blogmywiki

Life on Mars finished last night.

Every week it begins with Sam Tyler explaining that he was in a car crash, and woke up in 1973. “Am I mad, in a coma or have I travelled back in time?” And every week I say to the TV: “You’re in a coma.”

And I think the final episode still bears this out, although it was slightly vague. He decided he preferred the 1970s life in his head to the humdrum reality of the present day.

Personally I’d have ended it with him jumping off the building, leaving out the bit where he makes friends again with the 1970s colleagues he betrayed. He runs, he jumps, roll credits.

Posted in TV | 8 Comments

28 days later

Posted on April 6, 2007 by blogmywiki

28 days laterThis is the car driven by the woman who pulled into the parent and child space I was about to park in. She drove in at a sharp angle at quite high speed. Couldn’t see any children in her car. I had a very clingy 1 year-old in mine and I could have done with the space. I didn’t say anything of course. Just gave her, and her female companion, a Paddington Bear Hard Stare.

It was probably selfish of me to want that space. Probably selfish of me to have 3 children. I should slay them now to improve our family’s carbon footprint.

As you can tell, I’m in a good mood. I blame watching 28 Days Later back over two nights. Two nights ruined. Two nights alone staring into the abyss wondering if I could kill one of my children if they became infected with a zombie rage virus.

Okay, it’s only a film.

Incidentally, why does Danny Boyle always have to have insanely stupid things in his films that no-one mentions? In Shallow Grave I never understood why they just didn’t hide the money and call the police, turn the body in. And why did the coppers never notice all the holes in the ceiling? The holes! Look up, Sherlock!

In 28 Days Later, to be fair, they do say driving through the Rotherhithe Tunnel is an insanely stupid thing to do – but they still do it, driving over cars, bodies, rubble – and who’d'a’thunk it? They get a flat tyre! Also, assuming there is normal life going on beyond the shores of this infected isle, why can they not hear any European radio stations on Long Wave? I can hear several here in London. Why spend hours making beautifully perfect huge letters spelling ‘HELLO’ when ‘SOS’ would have done? Why… why… why?

I know. It’s only a film.

Posted in cinema, family life | 3 Comments

Great Un-taken Photographs – No.4

Posted on March 29, 2007 by blogmywiki

This morning in Manor Lane, Lewisham. White van emblazoned with the ‘Geographers A-Z Map Company’ logo. Driver parked at angle on side of road, utterly lost, consulting huge A-Z road atlas.

Posted in photography | Leave a comment