#“The Three Es - Execution, Execution and Execution”

#“Update on Mobile Broadband External Antenna”

Our house is surrounded by small hills so, despite being only 2km from the cop station base-station, even voice calls are a constant pain. SMS arrival time can be measured in hours depending on where we are in the house. There is a one-bar GPRS data signal sometimes using an E270 broadband dongle.

After the floods took out Eircom but not Vodafone and O2, I realised that I could get HSDPA on O2 by sticking the dongle on a bamboo cane and sticking the bamboo cane in a tree fern. This then connected to a Billion router in the shed which gave us Wifi in the house when DSL was down. But it’s hardly a permanent solution.

So I got a big-assed Poynting directional external antenna from Solwise in the UK. Since then I’ve done a few quick tests but nothing conclusive as most of the Eircom DSL outages don’t last too long. The big disappointment was that I couldn’t just stick the antenna in the attic, point at the cop station and be done. I could only get GPRS up there. The problem seems to be the loss caused by the coupler which straps to the dongle so that it can be connected to the antenna.

Today I did some more detailed testing and tried the antenna in a variety of locations in the garden and attic and doing full 360 rotation. I finally managed to get 3 bars of HSPA on Voadfone with the antenna mounted on the kids playhouse. For some reason the Blacknight ISP test wouldn’t load for me so I tried downloading Ubuntu from Heanet instead. I was thrilled to see a solid 300kB/s (2.4Mbs) download speed.

But everything I have read says we could do better with a non-coupler solution and perhaps the attic would become feasible. So I am ordering an unlocked Huawei E176 dongle which has an external antenna connector and also a pigtail from Solwise to connect it in. I’ll then permanently mount the antenna ready for the next Eircom outage.

One thing I realised doing all of this was that a Huawei MiFi device with antenna connection would be the ultimate disaster backup for us. Just connect it to the antenna whenever DSL goes down and have Wifi to the house without messing with mains power in the shed. Doesn’t look like they have one with such a connector yet. Pity.

#“Cloud computing storm - The blind leading the blind”

#“If Old Spice made ads for Apple…”

#“No No No. No-one can play Jim Rockford except James Garner”

#“You know you’re a geek when this man was your childhood hero”

via guardian.co.uk

Sir Clive Sinclair: "I don't use a computer at all" | Technology | The Observer

I still want a QL. Dunno why. But I do.

#“An oldie but a goodie - Venture Capitalist T-Shirts”

#“Think the iPad is amazing? The ePad is \u0091amazinger\u0092”

#“Twitter / JFK__1960: \u0093The key to the future is …”

#“Well if Padma likes Foursquare”