Category: Geekdom

Anybody Actually Using Clearwire?

I got a fancy marketing piece in the mail yesterday for Clearwire, who is now offering Wireless internet access in Central Oregon. Their coverage of the area isn’t too bad, and better than BendBroadband’s. Clearwire, according to my sources, has a big ol’ antenna on top of Awbrey Butte so, in theory, anybody with line-of-sight on Awbrey Butte’s towers should be able to get internet access (that being said, their system thinks my house is out of their coverage area, despite the fact that I can see Awbrey Butte, but I am awfully close to Pilot Butte). From the bit of research I’ve done, it looks like there are some issues with the service:

  1. It’s not nearly as mobile as they’d like you to believe. The directional wireless modem they require you to use is pretty decent size so while it’s technically movable, it’s something you need a power outlet to actually be able to use. One nice thing about BendBroadband’s coverage is that they do allow you to use your own wireless equipment in your laptop so you can actually truly be mobile.
  2. They’ve been known to block VoIP services, and they can get away with it thanks to a very broad TOS Agreement. There have also been reports of TCP/IP ports used by BitTorrent and other file sharing applications and Web and FTP server getting blocked (BendBroadband, last I checked, also blocks Web/FTP servers on their home accounts — at least they used to).
  3. The prices aren’t clear on their Web site, so I have no idea how much it actually costs, though many reviews’ prices seem a bit expensive.

Sadly, for those folks who can’t get DSL or Cable, this might be an option for them (like my boss, who can only get DirecWay where they live. With a strong enough antenna they could probably get a signal, though I have no idea if it would work with Clearwire or not.

So has anybody actually used their service?

December 14, 2005

What A Waste Of Computer Resources

Now if somebody could get this to work on a small device so that didn’t require it to be hooked up to your PC, then this doorbell would replace mine in a heartbeat.

December 5, 2005

Atari 800 XE Laptop

Only a geek will truly appreciate how much of a pain in the butt this probably was, but the finished product — with it’s brushed aluminum and wood grain — is sweet.

December 5, 2005

Just Because Everybody and Their Dog Has Already Mentioned This Today And I Didn’t Want To Feel Left Out

Firefox 1.5 was released.

November 30, 2005

Easily Download Embedded Videos and Flash

Some of the multimedia stuff I plan on linking to ends up going down before I have a chance to post it (like and earlier example), so I’ll always do my best to get a copy of the file so I can post it locally if that happens. This Firefox extension makes it’s much easier to download those types of videos and flash files with a simple right click (instead of having to dig through the source code and manually digging it up).

November 27, 2005

Mt. Bachelor Uses RFID For Lift Tickets (Updated)

While RFID is stupid, there’s been so much money invested into it that it’s really too late to switch to better technology. And while adoption of the technology hasn’t been speedy by any means, Mt. Bachelor is apparently using it in their new lift tickets.

The company I work for is a lodging partner with Mt. Bachelor, so we are allowed to sell tickets to our guests. I went to their office today to pick up our first order of the season for this long weekend, and noticed the tickets look different than last year (and the few years prior). They’re smaller, and have just a single smaller bar code. I asked the sales rep there about the new tickets, as it just seemed that the small barcodes would be hard to scan at the base of each lift. He told me there is a small radio antenna inside each card that gets picked up at the base of the lifts. I asked him if it were RFID, and he said that that sounded right.

The tickets that Mt. Bachelor uses are produced by RTP which talks right on their tickets page about the tickets that use RFID. I can only assume that they are Passive RFID tags that can only be read by an external antenna, as the tickets are small and thin and flexible so there’s no way to have a power source in the ticket. That also means that people with these RFID-enabled tickets won’t be broadcasting a radio signal unless activated by an antenna, so skiers don’t have to worry about getting tracked around the mountain unless there are high-power antennas all over the mountain that I don’t know about.

I’ve also been told that the area where the hole is in the ticket cannot be enlarged or modified — I’m guessing because some of the RFID components are in that area around the hole.

If I didn’t have to sell these tickets to guests, I’d dismantle one and post it here (but if I get a used one, I’ll post it up). Anybody been skiing up there yet that has an old ticket that can verify this for me?

Update on 11/27/05: According to Mt. Bachelor (and thanks to Barney), the regular tickets are not RFID-enabled, but the Season Passes are. Makes sense, as the daily passes are a bit twinky while the season passes are a bit heavier-duty.

November 23, 2005

History’s Worst Software Bugs

The Y2K “bug” had nothing on these screw ups.

November 22, 2005

Slow Right-Click Fixer

If you get annoyed by how it sometimes takes forever for right-click menus to show up on certain items, this program is your solution (and I’m mostly bookmarking this here so I don’t lose the URL).

November 22, 2005

For That Geek On Your Christmas List

Nothing like an overclocked and modified NES to stick under your favorite geek’s tree.

November 20, 2005

Scoble Pulls Anti-Google Post

I’m horribly behind on my feed and e-mail reading, but I did find this whole mess a bit entertaining. Thanks to Jo-Anne for the tip.

November 15, 2005