syncing thunderbird, N97 & google
by Jon on Feb.13, 2010, under Computer stuff
As I use thunderbird as my mail (and with lightening my calendar) on all my various machines, I use an IMAP server for storing the emails and google calendar to share calendars.
talk about headaches. How difficult can it be to share my calendars to ensure I can see what is supposed to be happening and when. It took a lot of messing about but I’ve finally managed it.
Thunderbird syncs with google – eventually (took 2 hours to get it to work and I still don’t know what fixed it).
N97 syncs with google and thus in turn with thunderbird.
Sorted – now at long last I’ve got consistent calendars across all my various platforms.
Now if only the junior cricket teams would release their fixtures then I could get my summer organised a bit.
cold :(
by Jon on Jan.11, 2010, under Uncategorized
Well after starting sizing all the Oak for a new DVD cabinet for the lounge, I decided it was time to change my thicknesser.
I no longer used the planer part of what was my Fox22-200 – I just couldn’t get on with it. So I decided to flog it and get a bigger thicknesser. I’m not going to both with a planer and intend using just hand planes for that job.
The fox was sold on via the ukworkshop forum – nice that as it’s where it came from – and a quick trip to fleabay saw a DW733 winging it’s way to me.
The DW733 arrived and so did the snow and very cold weather. Other than put it in the workshop I’ve not even ventured out there for the past week.
I do need to though. I need to get this Oak to size and get it indoors to aclimatise – the cabinet is going to be in the lounge which is one room we tend to keep reasonably warm. Making it in the 0deg workshop then moving it to 20deg is just asking for trouble.
In the meanwhile, I have a stool to make fo rin the bathroom so my lad can see in the mirror to brush his teeth – I reckon a nice chunk of mahogony should sort that tuit suite.
Vodafone Access Gateway.
by Jon on Dec.31, 2009, under Uncategorized
Well I finally got fed up with the intermittent mobile signal in my house. NOTE, I don’t blame vodafone for a lack of signal – why people think they should automatically get a mobile signal indoors is beyond me.
However, I do rely on my mobile so I went and got one of these gateway thingys.
I’ve been reading online about how they can take like 24hr + to set themselves up. Hmmm, within 10 minutes of me registering the box all the lights are lit – now to try a test call.
I will be digging a bit more into how this works though. From what I can gather it uses an IPSEC connection to vodafone – ie a VPN. Now from my experimens IPSEC is a bitch when behind NAT, so how have vodafone achieved this – I’ll have to find out.
ADDED:
So far I’m impressed. Very easy to set up – almost plug and go.
I now have a full 3G signal when sat on the couch – previously I was lucky if I got one bar of 2G signal and only then if I didn’t have the phone in my pocket.
I’ve made a test call – from the couch to swmbo in the kitchen. This previously would have been impossible. So I’ll class this box as well worth the £5 per month it is costing me.
OK, so it adds five quid to my monthly bill – bearing in mind that my mobile bill has reduced by £15 per month (now £30 where is was £45), and I’ve got more minutes and txt’s than I used to, I don’t begrudge spending another fiver.
Jewelry chest
by Jon on Dec.26, 2009, under Woodworking
After wondering for ages what to get swmbo for xmas I decided to actually make something. One thing she’s never had was a jewelry chest – and since she can never remember where she’s put her jewelry it might actually come in handy.
I had some cherry in the shop so decided to use that. Size wise I wanted this quite small – not tiny but not huge. I decided on a rough size of 200×120 (internal sizes). External sizes were going to depend a lot on how thick the wood ended up.
chose a couple of bits of wood to become the top.
Then i had a brainwave – rather than just thicknessing down to size I’d try to resaw the boards with the bandsaw. I’ve never had much luck with this. Wow, what a difference working with hardwood compared to pine. The bandsaw worked pretty well.
afterwards I was left with this lot:
Now what sort of joints to use to fix the sides, top and bottom together. I really fancied using dovetails, so out came the saw and marking stuff. Some practice on spare bits quickly showed that I don’t have the skills to attempt that many dovetails yet – I think I’d still be trying to fix them this time next year. Fortunately Philly on UKWorkshop came to my rescue by deciding to sell his littlerat. £100 later and I had a rat in the shop.
I still couldn’t do dovetails as I only had 8mm dovetail bits and no 8mm collet for the T11 router (an insert has since been ordered) so I decided to go with finger joints. I used a half inch straight bit to create the joints and decided on an even spread.
I made the fingers oversize so I could cut them flush. This was my first attempt at something with the littlerat so I was quite chuffed with the outcome. There were a few joints with gaps in, but I reckon that just makes it look a bit more like hand cut.
sides, top, bottom clamped and glued up
Now to sort the bits for the drawers. I ended up with measurements of 35mm for each draw which left me a 1mm gap between them.
After resawing and flattening I ended up with this little lot.
The drawers are simply held together by a couple of rabbets and glue. A 3mm groove was cut into the bottom with the table saw so I could fit in the plywood bottom. Once assembled I routed in a 5mm groove to take the runners.
Unfortunately I’ve lost the photo’s of the drawers being made.
It was then I noticed I’d forgotten something. How the heck was I going to align the drawer runners one the case. The runners were just strips of cheery. Ideally I would have routed in grooves in the case as well as the drawers but I hadn’t. So to say it was a bit fiddly to get the runners in the right place would be an understatement.
Eventually I managed it and with a few dabs of CA they were held in place.
A few bits of felt on the bottom of the drawers and the assembly was finished.
Everything was sanded down to 320Grit.
Finish wise I put 3 coats of danish oil and around half a dozen coats of black bison to give it a nice sheen.
I did try to make some little knobs for the drawers but that went horribly wrong. Time ran out before xmas so some kind of knob will be added later.
Table saw mods
by Jon on Dec.19, 2009, under workshop
There are a couple of things I want to change/improve on my TS200 table saw.
First 2 things on the list are:
I’ve got some 3mm Al from fleabay for the insert – just need to get around to cutting it to size. This is likely going to mean making some changes to the riving knife – I can see no way that it’ll fit through the hole once the insert is in place.
Extraction and guard is something I need to think more about. It’s not going to change until I get the new saw station built – that’s for sure. The guard will be removed (permanently) from the riving knife. It’ll be brought in on a pole type arrangement. My first thoughts were to have the pole drop down from the roof – that way it’ll never be in the way when cutting sheets. However, since the saw station will be moveable dropping from the roof simply ain’t practical.
xbmc
by Jon on Dec.16, 2009, under Computer stuff
Loaded xbmc onto the laptop this afternoon. Have to say I’m impressed. It had no problem playing any of my stuff.
Set the laptop to output through the HDMI port and whey hey displayed very nicely on the 42″ plasma in the lounge. With the addition of the Dell remote I’ve got a nice remote station for watching the vids 
.
I think I may show this off to swmbo and suggest on of the new ion based mini machines. Will have to workout a remote control for it though. If I could put in a password and drop back to the full desktop it could be useful.
littlerat
by Jon on Dec.10, 2009, under workshop
Well, my littlerat has arrived courtesy of philly.
Just in the process of mounting it onto the wall – pics to follow.
Added:
Had a couple of hours today to get it all mounted on the wall.
First thought was to mount the 24″x5″x2″ bit of wood directly onto the breeze blocks. But, I decided in the end to put a couple of battens up with some 1/2″ board on top then fasted the woodrat board to that. This seems to have worked well and everything is rock solid.
Now I just need time to have a play and check it all works correctly – can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t.
Table saw station.
by Jon on Dec.05, 2009, under workshop
The table saw I have (TS200) doesn’t quite fit correctly on my mobile station. The station was thrown together very quickly as a stop gap so it wasn’t really designed as such.
I’ve decided it’s time to do things correctly – or at least better.
Things I want/need from the station:
1. It must be mobile – ie on wheels.
2. The final height of the table saw bed should be the same as all the other benches – this would allow any bench to be used as an extension support or outfeed table.
3. There should be a draw underneath the table saw to collect the dust that tends to always get missed by the extraction system.
4. The side extension needs some support as well.
Now, under the dust draw I intend creating some shelving – just for putting odds and sods on, or perhaps various jigs.
I was contemplating putting drawers under where the extension is. But I think I’ve come up with a better use for that space – a drum sander . Now, I can’t afford to buy a 24″ drum sander, but I might be able to fabricate one. There’s nothing really complicated about a drum sander. It’s just a drum (to which is attached sand paper) with a pulley on one end. The pulley is connected to a motor. A flat board is used as the bed, it has a piano hinge at the back end and an adjuster at the front edge.
Now how hard can that be ?
I’ve a sneaky suspicion it might be a lot more difficult than I first imagined.
My drum sander will be based on this.
One thing I can’t see at the moment is how to make the actual drum itself. I can see a ‘fairly’ easy way to make the wooden bit (which the sand paper fixes to) but how to fit the wooden part to a shaft – nothing springs to mind at the moment. Hmmmm, thinking about it, does the shaft need to be round ? Fitting a square shaft would be quite easy – but then you’ve got the problem of fitting the pulley on the end.
I suppose one way would be to use a solid 1″ square Aluminium shaft, find someone with a lathe and turn the ends to the correct diameter. A bearing at one end would take care of that and a keyway in the other should take care of mounting the pulley.
Now the only question is would I really use a drum sander – that’s something I’m not sure about.
Materials:
The actual station will be made of a mixture of stuff.
I need to sit down and get an idea of what sort of amounts of wood I’ll need for the framework. Board wise will just be MDF. Currently I’ve hardly any spare MDF in the shop so I’ll probably buy in a few boards. The majority will be 12mm I think. The MDF isn’t going to be needed as for structural bits as the strength will be provided by the actual framework. I’d imagine that a single 8×4 board will be enough.
N97.
by Jon on Nov.27, 2009, under Uncategorized
After having an Nokia N97 for the past 2 weeks I’ve been waiting for the new firmware v2.0 to get released back to Nokia by Vodafone.
Checks on NSU and well at long last it’s there.
Everything is backed up, fingers crossed now
802.11n
by Jon on Nov.21, 2009, under Computer stuff
I’ve finally bought a draft-n router (dlink 615).
After debating for ages on whether to update my wireless network, I came across the router on Fleabay. Cost was all of a tenner so I thought Why not, let’s see what this ‘n’ lark is like.
If I was going to change over completely then I’d be getting dual mode access points. SWMBO’s work machine needs b/g, the WII needs b/g, so the best idea would be to dedicate 5GHz to ‘n’.
As I’m only experimenting the ‘n’ is also on 2.4GHz – nothing to do with the price, honest .
Recently I changed my laptop over to Ubuntu – why is another story. It’s been a big learning curve for me – I’m not really used to gui based configs. There are some bits I like and yet more that I don’t – being a gentoo type person at heart having everything gui’ised don’t really cut it. However, one of the advantages of Linux is that I can always drop back to the command line should I need to.
So, how’s the ‘n’ working. Well, I can see it and log onto the network via it.
The throughput is certainly better than when I was connected at ‘g’ but and this is a big but, I’m not convinced that I’m connecting at ‘n’. My ‘n’ router is only connected to the network via a powerline adapter so it only has about 3MB of bandwidth available to it – which it can fill at 54Mb/s without any great problem.
So what’s the big deal – take a look at this output of iwconfig:
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:”dlink”
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
That’s at odds with the gui which is reporting 48Mb/s.
iwlist wlan0 bitrate:
wlan0 unknown bit-rate information.
Current Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
hmmm – that’s a tad suspicious me thinks.
So what does iwlist think of the ‘dlink’:
ESSID:”dlink”
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
18 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
hang on a second there. Shouldn’t there be something above 54 ?? the dlink is actually turned to ‘n’ only so why the limit ?
A quick search online and we find this problem is something to do with the way the iwlagn driver has been configured for ubuntu.
With Gentoo I never had this problem – adding bits into the kernel was really pretty straight forward, you just rebuilt the thing.
I suppose I’ll go back to running my own vanilla kernel patched with the various drivers that I’ll need. For a desktop/laptop this becomes a right pita to manage though.
There is something called backports for Ubuntu which I’m going to try out – whether anyone will have compiled in the right bit of the driver I’ve no idea.
If this actually works then the access point will move onto the GE vlan rather than the low bandwidth powerline vlan.
Then it’ll just be a case of pursuading swmbo that I need to upgrade things yet again .
Speaking of upgrades, I suppose it’s time I bought another GE switch – but decent ones are still a tad pricey.
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