Irreverence is Justified

I’d been having problems with my wireless router for quite some time, like about a year, and I really needed to get a new one. The old router was really quite old, probably about 5 years, and it just needed physically rebooted at least once a day, sometimes up to three times, to get the wireless function to work again, which was quite annoying. I have quite a number of devices throughout the house that use it, so the constant complaints about it from family members was getting to be a right pain.

After much deliberation, I decided to buy a Netgear WNDR3300, which is capable of 802.11n. Not only that, but it also dual band, which seemed cool, although ultimately wasn’t really going to bring me anything extra. What it did do, though, was make it clear to me which of my devices (PC, Xbox etc) was capable of the ‘n’ band, as it basically runs as two separate wireless routers with different names, so when I connected a device to the wireless router, older devices could only connect to the ‘g’ band while the newer ones preferred the ‘n’ band. So this was useful just so that I could see which devices supported ‘n’.

What a bad decision that was.

The problems were made very obvious by the fact that it was dual band – the faster band, the ‘n’ one, worked perfectly. I only have about 2 devices capable of connecting to the ‘n’ band, one being my main desktop, and they all connected no problem to it, and stayed connected to it.

However, the devices which couldn’t connect to the ‘n’ band, which accounted for almost everything else, had the problems. They could all connect to the ‘g’ band fine, but they then disconnected from it within a few minutes, and although they reconnected themselves again within a couple of minutes, then disconnected again. And so on. I know the problem was with the wireless router because I had six separate devices all having the same problem, and it was a wide range of devices, too (multiple PCs, Xbox, PS3, Nokia N97).

So back to the shop it went, and PC World were good enough to just believe me that it needed returned, they didn’t even ask what was wrong with it. Maybe they had seen many coming back before.

Another couple of days research then made me consider a different device. While the Netgear one had been £110, I discovered one by a company called Edimax, model BR-6574n, which was only £50 but supported ‘n’ band. It doesn’t have two bands, but as I say, that wasn’t really bringing me anything; we don’t run video feeds over our connection much, if ever.

So I got this Edimax device and all I can say is that it is one of the best IT purchases ever. It was fairly simple to set up, the instructions did not quite match the questions that the installer ultimately asked, but I guessed at what to do and it was a breeze from then on. It’s been running for many weeks and I’ve only had to restart it once, and even then I’m not sure that it was at fault, because I reckon it might have been the cable modem behind it. It even allows me to set static DHCP leases based on MAC addresses, which is something that no other wireless router has allowed me to do before. I find this handy for reasons that I’ll not bore you with; 99.9% of you won’t need this feature so don’t worry about it.

The bottom line therefore is that if you’re looking for a new wireless router for a broadband connection, then I thoroughly recommend the Edimax BR-6574n.

If you’re used to using Windows, a Mac is a bit of a jump. If you know your way around linux or unix, it’s not quite so big a jump, but it’s still a jump.

I say this only as advice if anyone is considering getting a Mac and has been a Windows user up to now. Expect a learning curve. Basic things that you’re probably used to won’t work. Like copy and paste. Or your keyboard having such things as a delete key. Or your mouse having a right mouse button that reliably works.

To that end, I am planning on getting a bigger keyboard for the Mac, still a Mac keyboard since they come with that other key (hold on… aye, the cmd key) but one with a delete key, and maybe a page up and page down key would be nice. And I’ll switch to a normal mouse, because I’ve had it already with this Mac mouse and it’s tiny scroll wheel that makes my finger feel like the skin is being dragged under the plastic. It’s awful. But the Mac experience in general is going well to the point that I now sit at my Windows machine and wonder why I can no longer copy and paste and discover it’s because I’m using the Mac keyboard shortcuts.

I fully admit to being a keyboard shortcut junky, and I also know I’ve learnt about 0.3% of the keyboard shortcuts for the Mac, whereas I probably know about 70% of all the Windows ones (feels like I know 100%, but there are bound to be plenty I don’t know). Once I get a handle on them, I’ll be a lot more comfortable with it. That said, I’m actually quite comfortable with the Mac already and I’ve only had it for, erm, a week? I honestly can’t recall when I got it, last week was weird and I never knew what day it was. It would have been either Tuesday or Wednesday. Wednesday, that was it, I think. Anyway, less than a week, and I’m getting there.

Trying to get my external audio equipment to work reliably with it has been a struggle though. On Sunday, it just wasn’t working at all and a reboot solved the problems, so I don’t know what was going on there but it is in some way reassuring to know that rebooting does fix things sometimes on a Mac. The audio setup includes an Alesis io|2, a Boss DR-880, a Pod X3 Live, a Fender strat, a Yamaha bass (man I need to replace it), an Ovation, a Yamaha Clavinova and a Shure SM58. I have managed to get it all working together, with relatively little pain, aside from MIDI. That took some effort. But I did get there, I can now get Logic to play the piano. It even creates sheet music as I play something, it’s totally awesome.

So all in all, it’s been some week and I’ve learnt a lot. Still a long way to go, but I’m definitely getting somewhere.

I just spent 20 minutes attempting to figure out how to install an SSH Server on Mac OS X (10.6.2). Turns out it was pretty much a waste of time, because it was already installed, it just needed turned on. I figure I will make a note of this in case anyone else tries to do it and also struggles. Maybe it’s only me that didn’t realise this at first.

Go to System Preferences, Sharing, then check the “Remote Login” box. Job done.

On this new iMac I have, I wanted to be able to download images from my Canon EOS 400D. Canon’s web site allows you to install updates, but not the actual software. Thankfully, someone found the easy way to get it installed from the update software on Canon’s website.

For well over a year now, I’ve been considering getting an iMac because I’ve been recording music on my Windows laptop and I’ve always known that Macs are apparently better for this kind of thing.

So I finally decided to make the jump and I’ve now got a 24″ iMac sitting on my music bench. Indeed, I’m using it to type this right now.

So the main thing I’m trying to do is to get music recorded. However, it’s fair to say that just understanding how this damn thing works is going to be a bit of a learning curve.

For a start, there are a number of small things that I’m still not sure about, 48 hours after getting it. For example, the keyboard doesn’t have a delete, page up or page down key. I think there are keyboard shortcuts for these, but I can’t quite remember them. Delete is function-backspace, although whether that works in all applications, I don’t know. It certainly seems to be working right now. And I used to swing between tabs in Firefox using CRTL-Page Up and Down, but I have yet to find out how to do that. I will find out, I just ain’t yet.

By far the hardest thing is working out how to get my audio devices to play through Logic Express 9. I went for it rather than Logic Studio mainly because the stuff that doesn’t come in Express 9 didn’t actually mean anything to me, and I know I can upgrade and only have to pay £10 more overall if I decide to do that. It took a day and a half just to get my guitar to play through Logic and my Pod X3 Live. Again, I got there in the end, but it was a heck of a lot of reading to get there.

Overall though, I do have to be honest and say that this iMac does have to be one of the most attractive things I’ve ever seen. That’s not the reason I bought it, but it certainly is a good additional bonus :)

Jo, who is now nearly 3, has had a pea sized lump behind her ear for the past week. It’s not reduced at all, which we thought it might if she had just bumped it. But considering the problem she had back in July 2008 when she had an infection of her salivary gland and it caused her to get an abcess in her submandibular gland, I’m now wondering whether she has something similar, since the lump appears to be exactly where the posterior auricular glands are, based on an image from Wikipedia.

So I’ll be off to the GP on Wednesday to see what they have to say. The wife is panicking about it being lymphoma, which of course it could be, but I’m attempting to not jump to worryingly bad conclusions just yet.