Cardboard Wifi antenna"s.

Dec 06

Wifi is bloody everywhere.

These days you cant stick your laptop out of the door without at least stumbling over one or more SSID signals indicating that multiple wireless routers are up and running in your vicinity. Wonderful wireless routers blast their unsecured unprotected signals at your wifi-card, propagating not only their default SSID name like "linksys" or "belkin"  but also an ip, a chance to hitch a free wifi ride. Thus proving the glorious stupidity of their owners who graciously grant us a wifi mesh to use virtually anywhere.

But there is also the other part of the story. A frustrating story of NOT getting a wifi signal through. Forget broadcasting your signal to far of DHCP-requesting wardrivers. Sometimes you can have a problem in getting your wifi signal to go where it is supposed to go, let alone go beyond.  You come to the point that you think your house must be built by the secret service because no matter how hard you try , its just impossible to get the wifi signal where you want it. Wether its the concrete wall ,the steel in the floor , or the microwave in the kitchen , something is messing up your wifi signal. Why ?

One of the reasons is that most wireless routers/ acces points (and wifi cards) have what we call an 'omnidirectional' antenna. An antenna that sends and receives the wifi signal in all directions and spreads its transmitting power over a 360 degree radius. Now If your router was mounted dead center in the middle of your house that would be ideal. But we all know its not. A setup like that would require you to re-organize all of your furniture and would make your family members do the 24 hour limbo underneath the network cable running to the darn thing.

antennaWhat we need is : An antenna ! Now I can hear you moan in agony. You're a computer geek, not an electro-nerd. You have no idea how to build your own antenna or where until this post blissfully unaware that you could even swap out antenna's on your wifi equipment. But don't worry ! We are gonna go Jodie-Foster-in-Contact-Deflector-Dish style .. With nothing more then a peace of paper.  
The trick is "aiming" your wireless signal TOWARDS the areas where you need it, and possibly away from the neighboring apartment (where you know that your neighbor is using your wifi to surf Russian-goat-porn sites) So , either you BUY a directional Can-tenna like the one in the pic above .. OR you deflect the rays from your own wifi router. You can do this by using two some of these great parabolic antenna's made from nothing more then .. Cardboard.

You can do this in a very simple way like this.

Or go more elaborate like this.

antenna

or keep it a little simple like this.

antenna

THIS great site will show you how to make them and will give you a graphical representation of what your little cardboard deflector will do to the outgoing signal.

diagram

The great part is most setups  come with great diagrams that you can print ant cut out so its easy as pie ! You don't need to read all the math part, best is that you use a program like NETSTUMBLER and measure what you little setup does for you. The good news is that you cant really damage your wireless router , there is no soldering or anything involved, just deflecting the signal.

So have fun, get your scissors and enjoy !

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How Digg destroys the Blogosphere.

Dec 04

About a year ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Sebastian Prooth. An accidental Skype search dropped me in the middle of a conversation between him and mr David Gray. An accidental encounter that would have farfetched repercussions for my personal website and pod-casting adventures.

You can talk to anyone.

articleThe one thing I immediately liked about Sebastian , was the fact that he had Go-Getting attitude that could only be described as being very "american". At first I was a bit taken aback by this strange mentality difference between the skeptical timid Belgian and the "No rules Barred " super ambitious American. I have followed Sebastians adventures on the internet , seen his accomplishments and stood in awe at the way he managed to get in touch with the most amazing people. Where I stood star-struck behind the sidelines, Seb was sending emails or even chatting on Skype with people that I still consider to be "Giants" in cyberspace today. Those who where heroes to me ( Like for example Patrick Norton or Leo Laporte) Sebastian approached in a candid and charming matter. One thing I quickly learned from Sebastian is that people are just people , and you can talk to all of your heroes. One just needed balls


You can do anything you want to do.

If Sebastian is one thing : it is talented. As a pod-caster he has a great voice, he knows how to write and has the balls to step up to just about any challenge and give it a try. Wether its writing, producing audio or video, or even directing a little movie : Seb will give it a crack and claim the trade. For a Belgian like me it was weird to hear somebody call himself a producer, writer, blogger, director and pod-caster over the period of a few months. This go-getter attitude did not only get him quite a few great interviews on his website , he even got an article printed in a national  computer magazine. We Belgians don't claim a trade that  quickly, Even I don't call myself a pod-caster .. but thats just me. The way Americans go after the "American dream" is fascinating to watch when you are not an American.

You can't beat being popular.

But the fascinating part of all this was watching Sebasting chase fortune and glory. Being the one man self-promoting marching band that he was , Sebastains accomplishments where quite frequently the only topics of Sebastians conversations. This would of course open up a lot of doors for him, and he never passed up an opportunity to inform us of his state of affairs. Wether it where the amount of hits on his blog, how much his "blog was worth", where and by who he got mentioned and so forth. The popularity of his accomplishments where paramount, the statistics his god. At some point I was so intimidated by this flow of numbers I started believing I was doing something fundamentally wrong with the knightwise.com website and the podcast. It made me reconsider the personal nature of the content I produced in favor of something that would appeal to "the masses"  I somehow started to believe that perhaps ONLY numbers mattered. Seb's quest for popularity quickly influenced not only his focus (writing / podcasting / directing ) , but also the content he produced stood in favor of all of this. He even moved from Blogging to Podcasting to Producing movies in rapid succession because somehow the short-term-popularity-return was not enough. Sebasting wanted to be popular : The sooner the better. When his first Skype article was sufficiently spectacular to be noticed by the Digg crowd : Sebs site got Dugg and in my eyes things went downhill after that.

How digg takes down the bloggers.

And perhaps Sebastian can be taken as sad example as a victim to the digg-effect : a quest for popularity. Through social bookmarking sites like DIGG bloggers look only for the holy grail of hits. Popularity is all that counts and to some extent I also believed this. But the truth is that the "DIGG EFFECT"  is bad news for bloggers. Look at it this way : We all have access to this incredible medium of the internet. Wether you are a blogger , pod-caster, vidcaster or amateur Porn Star , we all have the same chance of putting our own unique message out there.  But the quest for popularity effects many. It has them turn their unique content into something that might just be liked by the masses. Twisting peaces of unique personal content into something with a catchy title and a sensational content. Like junkies they crave the high ratings. Forget the uniqueness and talent they have and cross promote themselves into pulp-oblivion, desperately trying to get noticed. Ironically it is their uniqueness that got them noticed in the first place.

And where will it end  ? Will the quest for popularity turn all of them into internet paparazzi ?  Making every blogpost a screaming headline ? Have Bloggers spend more time driving their own propaganda machine then actually writing something worth reading ? I have seen one of my friends fall prey to the digg effect. A painful example was his latest Skype post where a misleading title lured visitors in  but where the content flirted with the edges of being downright wrong. All in favor of popularity ? A quick Google shows us that this brilliant blogger has fallen pray to this digg-effect. Posting EVERY article on digg and other services , desperately trying to get noticed. And burying his credibility in the process.  Using metatags in such multitude they almost outsize the post itself…  It is sad to see. Because this quest for popularity undermines his integrity, his talent, his uniqueness and turns this good friend into "just another blogger". Chasing the ball. Running after the quick-hit-fix in despite his own brilliant talent.

But in  the end I'm even mad at myself. For believing, for even a second, that hits mattered. That one should bend his content in order to be more popular. For thinking about turning my website into the next mc donnalds "bun" instead of the French croissant it is. For getting DUGG is takes no talent. A catchy title, ONE killer post : No problem whatsoever. It is staying true to ones initial talent that is the hard part. Even if that integrity means writing 20 posts that don't have mainstream appeal. Because we all have our unique talent. Its when we betray our integrity in favor of popularity that  Digg is bad for bloggers.

Epilogue :  Why this post  ?

I hear you ask : Why this post ? To flame my friend ? No , I like Sebastian very much. I hope this is a wake up call not only for him but for many bloggers. Content creators who are deleting the wonderful post about their walk in the park in favor of a writeup about an article they found featuring Britney's Breasts. For going for hits and sensationalism in favor of journalism or even art. For depriving the internet of their unique talent and personality in favor of yet another digg. 

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This week on the Geek.

Dec 04

First day of the week and allready a ton of stuff to do. Still rounding up the Knightcast episode 38 with quite a bit of post productionwork ahead. But it will all be worth it so stay tuned for the next episode.

GeekMeanwhile I thought I would share another weekly dose of Knightwise with you and point to you this weeks episode of The Global Geek Podcast. A technology podcast that I do together with my Australian friend Dave Gray about Web 2.0 developements, tech news and the pulse of the net as it exists today. Featuring cool reviews of applications, sites and services and the occasional interview. This week we have Jason Vahn over as a guest, giving us a business side angle at the stories we cover.

It turns out to be quite a hilarious episode, both at Daves and my expense. As I hammer down on him for falling of a chair and I get squashed for using Media player 10. So beam over to www.globalgeekpodcast.com and enjoy !!!

 

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A walk in the High Marshes.

Dec 01

Hmm 🙂 Friday ! Probably my favorite day in the week. Just one more day at work and of it is to weekendland. And in those weekends you will seldom find the Knights at home. Its true, we are downright gipsy when it comes to our saturday afternoons and sundays. If we see a chance to go out .. the door slams shut behind us and of we go to some exotic location in a 100 km radius ( sometimes a bit further , but hey , its weekend , right ? ) So today I am going to take you with us on one of those little outings. 

What do you get if you mash an outing to the high marshes in the Ardennes, together with a digital camera, Imovie, a podsafe track and Youtube ?  Right ! Time for a weekend videoclip 🙂 No long post today, we'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

 

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