Bristol Wireless News

Over the past few days Matt and Lloyd have been working on the roof of the Chelsea Inn. The old equipment is gone, a new 3m steel pole has been mounted with an omni and directional link to Twinnell. All equipment was purchased/donated by the Chelsea – thanks Julian for this donation to the community.

So, the pub is back online! Other clients in the area which used to connect to ECC but cannot see Twinnell can now connect here, many new clients can also connect – Easton coverage is now restored and improved. Streaming of open-mic nights can resume; watch this space for announcement of a media server…

Roof install:

Router configuring:

MIT backs Brazil’s choice of Linux over Microsoft | CNET News.com
SAO PAULO, Brazil–MIT’s Media Lab has recommended Brazil install open-source software instead of proprietary software offered by Microsoft on thousands of computers that will be sold to the poor, according to a letter obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

“We advocate using high-quality free software as opposed to scaled-down versions of more costly proprietary software,” Walter Bender, director of the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a letter to the Brazilian government. “Free software is far better on the dimensions of cost, power and quality.”

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and several ministers may decide as early as this week whether free software or a simplified version of Microsoft’s Windows will be installed on computers for a new effort called PC Conectado, or the Connected PC.

The effort aims to sell up to 1 million computers, with costs partially subsidized by the government, to lower-middle-income Brazilians this year.

Read More …

Great link posted as the topic on the #clan channel today: The Limits of SpongeBob SquarePants by Robert X. Cringely. It’s subtitled “One Canadian’s Wireless Neighborhood Network Could Someday Serve Us All”, and describes a project with some remarkable parallels to the work that Bristol Wireless is doing.

This afternoon Matt and Lloyd braved the wind and rain working on the roof of Twinnell House, the main network node. The following improvements were made:

• Replaced ‘floppy’ aluminium pole with more rigid steel pole, reducing signal loss due to wind agitation;
• Removed redundant lightning arrestor on signal cable attached to omni-directional antenna;
• Replaced and re-weatherproofed exterior connections;
• Re-pointed directional antenna from Easton Community Centre to St. Werburghs Community Centre;
• Replaced questionable Linksys WRT-54g AP on omni-directional antenna;
• Swapped ‘dumb’ Netgear WGE-101 on directional uplink antenna for second ‘intelligent’ Linksys WRT-54g.

Initial indications are good; signal strength from the lab (connected to the omni just as any other client would) has doubled.

NewsForge | The first GNU/Linux encyclopedia – Linpedia launched
Ahmet Mulalic writes “Linpedia is the first Linux encyclopedia on the internet that is designed to be read and changed by anyone. It runs on the mediawiki software. The project was started on 24. Deceber 2004. and is located on http://www.linpedia.com domain (think of .com as community not commercial). Linpedia is currently working on 1200 articles. With your help we can make it grow bigger. We are also providing users the ability to start Linpedia on their own language. Linux community needs a web site, where users can find all the information they need about Linux. We are offering you something beautifull to work on. Join us, and help us make the world a better place.”

Today, Matt, Jim and Lloyd managed to get Greenhaven back online. A new Access Point was configured to remove the performance-sapping WDS links. The Access Point was installed by Jim and Lloyd shortly before Lloyd performed circus-worthy acrobatics on the roof to realign the antenna to point at Twinnell House.

Welcome to the first post in the Bristol Wireless News section in its new incarnation as a WordPress blog. So then, one might say that the news is that the news is new on the site…

Actually, what happened is that there used to be a phpBB bulletin board on this site, and, yes, it got hacked… taking down the wiki as well. So, after relocating the server from the Easton Community Centre (RIP) to a machine run by Psand, I managed to get the wiki restored to its pristine former glory but decided against reinstalling phpBB.

Instead, I wrote a php script to convert the content of the phpBB database to the MovableType export format, which WordPress was able to import. It did mean changing the way that the posts refer to one another (the initial entry was considered to be the post, and all subsequent replies have been imported as comments) but it seems to have done the job. What this means, though, is that any post before this one has been salvaged, and there may be some quirks as a result.

If anyone finds anything that has become munged in the conversion process, let me know, or mail the Bristol Wireless team.

Enjoy!

Christian