My recent posts have been showing off the scenery we find around us in our new home. The downside of all those fantastic hills turned out to be a lack of line-of-sight for Airwire.ie service. So I’m going to use O2′s 3G internet service as I’m unwilling to pay €25 per month for line rental before I even start paying for ADSL service which is lacklustre at best. However, I need to be able to connect multiple machines and so we need a router. I’ve used a Solwise device before at my parents place. Previous experience has been excellent so combined with the price (~€50, ex. delivery) I decided it was the way to go. The main competition to this device is the Dovado UMR or 3GN at €130/€108 delivered. The 3GN wasn’t available when I was considering devices and I must admit I may have been swayed but it is almost twice the cost.

Hardware out of the way first, the Solwise 3G11nMRW is a rebadged 3R161N from Taiwanese company Amigo. This isn’t just a plain old router, there are some nifty features packed away here. A switch on the side of the router allows you to chose between Router, AP and WiFi AP which may prove useful depending on what and how you want to deploy (remember, they’re €50 a pop so they could make for handy APs). It does WDS which makes things interesting. As well as the wall plug you see in the picture above the package also include a DC adaptor (which you can swap with the plug and is 5~12V, 1.5A) so I’m thinking one of these in the car as well – I wonder if you could use solar power with one of these? (I’m too lazy to look it up at the moment) and it can be powered via Mini USB! So, it’s a flexible device. Finally, all the other ports you would now expect on a device like this; 2 LAN (one of which does WAN/LAN when you’re using your 3G for failover with a wired network connection) and 2 USB ports which can be used for your 3G dongle as well as storage, printer or a webcam (I haven’t looked at the supported webcams)

The software running on this is a BlackBox Linux distro. Unfortunately there isn’t SSH or telnet running on the device that might allow you in for a closer look around. I’m thinking that if there was you would have more than a few people interested in running something like OpenWRT on it. While the software on it is quite functional an open firmware would go along ways to making it easier to move device support along quickly. Which leads neatly into the main issue I had with this device when I first got it. Firmware. Before buying I checked that my Sierra Compass 888 was among the supported devices it was. But was no go when I unpacked the router. Not entirely unexpected as the router didn’t ship with the latest firmware. You have to request this rather than download it as apparently people have bricked devices by uploading the wrong firmware. Latest firmware, still no joy so email tech support. A week in and there was no update even though I was chasing for an update – Solwise were waiting for a response from Taiwan. This was really annoying so I decided to skip through the pleasant requests and just express my disgust (i.e. behave like a prick – frustrating and shameful):

This did get a response though (I hate when you have to be angry and rude to get something done) from a really, really helpful Louise who runs the @Solwise twitter account. The result was an exchange of tweets and emails culminating in an updated firmware, in about 24 hours, and you guessed it; sweet, sweet 3G powered Wifi internet access!

Since then the device has been a star performer – I had one case of it freezing. I decided to kill the system logging option I had switched on and since then it has been rock solid. I’ve no idea if the two are associated but it’s worth mentioning.

That’s about it for now, I may come back and revise this after a longer usage period. All that’s left is to wrap it up with – buy it if you want a good value 3G Wifi router and are in a position to make sure you have a supported device. For the Solwise folks, I’d say – work on the support because everything else you do is great (Solwise have some great, value-for-money products, turn orders around very quickly and the e-store works just fine)

It’s something that takes an awful, awful amount of work (we got a taste while organising IPSA at QUB in 1999) and for which I’m very grateful that the organisers undertake. I’m aware of Damien Mulley, Stephanie Francis, Darragh Doyle, Brian Greene, Anto (I’m not aware of all the organisers involved, so omissions are really unintentional – apologies, there’s no slight intended) so thanks to all of you.

It was a great week what with Ina organising the Galway Twestival again – another very tough task.

I guess we’re coming from the notion of previous tablet computers that were really just variants on laptops and the inspiration of e-reader devices like the Kindle and so on. The e-readers have changed the usage landscape and we’ve seen the functional capabilities of netbook devices so the natural progression is how the compact processing power of the netbook can combine with the convenient form-factor of the e-reader that is ‘just-so’ functionally. We’re not looking for a complete computing device replacement but we probably do want a bit more than an e-reader offers. So this is what I came up with for my ideal device: I want a 10 inch touch screen – I know this makes it less portable but when I think of what I would want to display I can’t see a smaller screen doing the job. I want to be able to view technical manuals on this so that I can have the feel of flipping through a reference manual while I’m working on something. I also want to be able to ‘scribble’ notes though I say scribble quite loosely – I really don’t want a stylus. Why bother? Dragon Dictation on the iPhone has shown that we have the technology in the right form factor for dictation. I want to be able to think aloud while I read and get that noted down in a meaningful way. Of course you’re probably going to want a secondary input method when dictation doesn’t quite work or doesn’t suit what you’re trying to record and this is where I think the predictive texting soft keyboard you see on the iPhone and similar devices would suit. Except I don’t want it docked to the bottom of the screen, let me bring it up over the screen area where I want the note. In a way I guess that replicates pencilled in notes in the margin of schoolbooks. Page turning/flipping has to be easy – again we already have the tech there to detect motion so how about letting me easily flip a page with a gesture and flip many with a more vigourous gesture? Maybe this pushes a little too far – I’m not convinced it does.

Of course, all this comes at a price and I don’t think the above is going to be in the bargain section for quite awhile. Still, it’s nice to think about a device you could use and for which the tech is mainstream enough.

DSC_2272

Originally uploaded by JamesGallagher (ciotog)

I don’t know why I really like this photo (not a technically good photo) , I just do.

Consideration of Minutes
Reports of Committee Meetings
Consideration of Reports of Officials
Consideration of Reports of Mayor
Business Prescribed by Statute
Notice of Motions
Conferences
Questions
Correspondence
Any Other Business

Anything prior to the first occurrence of one of these section headings will be treated as preamble i.e. a clump of text that I’m not sure what to do with yet. So far it seems to be ad-hoc and may contain information about things like presentations to the councillors.

I’m looking to split out proposals by the delimiters ‘proposed’ and ‘seconded’ (i.e. the sentences with these words form the beginning and the end). That’s the next task for the time being. Trying to relate these to a motion reference will then be a fun task. Here’s an example:

Cllr. T. Costello proposed that:

“A Special Meeting be held in two weeks time i.e. 26th January to discuss Lead Contamination in the Public Watersupply.”

This was seconded by Cllr. Brolcháin N.Ó.

I’ve opted to use Perl for this, while I’m not proficient in Perl it’s certainly made things a lot easier. Easy string handling and accessible use of regular expressions are key here I think.

Since I’m not too bright, I’d really appreciate any thoughts people have on this – it may be a fools errand but I see no point keeping it to myself and easily giving up.

The bike has gotten a lot of attention. At work, one of my colleagues snapped this photo of it to show to someone else

I’ve also been stopped along the road for a chat about the bike with the reaction always being positive and enthusiastic. What is interesting is that the road-racer cyclists I encounter ask ‘why?’ with their main concern being the weight and maneuverability. Surprisingly neither is an issue for me – the combination is not actually as heavy as one would expect given almost all of it is aluminium. While it took a little time to get used to, I don’t notice that it’s any more difficult to handle than the Raleigh Metro hybrid that I used before. Take off when I have a backpack and/or shopping in the sidebags is slower but once you get some momentum you actually don’t notice that you’re carrying extra weight. That said, I went for a 7 speed which is a change from the 21 speed hybrid but actually suits the pace you end up cycling and allows for a convenient chain guard. Commuting cyclists are overwhelmingly positive about it particularly when you note how comfortable sitting upright is and how great it is being able to easily carry my day backpack (laptop, change of clothes, notepads, gadgets and toiletries) in one sidebag and a bag or two of groceries in the other. This is exactly what I wanted and the joy of being able to pop into town and grab groceries or what not without worrying how I’ll get them home is awesome. My back also thanks me for it as I no longer suffer pins and needles in my shoulder! One last photo is one from today that will also be going into the office newsletter promoting the Cycle To Work scheme which I’m glad to report now has a few more people taking it up!