Eigenmatrix.org

Here’s the first batch of stuff that I’m giving away on Freeshare / Freecycle. I’ll post updates as and when things get claimed. Scored through items are taken

• Tekram DC-395U Ultra Wide SCSI Controller (PCI) - Works under Linux
• Tekram DC-390U2W Ultra2 Wide SCSI Controller (PCI) - Work under Linux
• Variety of SCSI cables for above items
• Trust Wireless Keyboard and Optical Mouse (PS2)
• 2x Actiontec USB Wireless Adapters 802.11b 11Mbit
• Yamaha DD6 4 pad drum machine
• USB Macintosh Keyboard (Blue and White - small style - maybe iMac ?)
• USB Macintosh Spanish Keyboard (Grey and White - full size)
• Zip Drive - External SCSI 100Mb Drive with 5 volt transformer
• Wireless Access Point - D-Link DWL-700AP and power supply
• Wireless Access Point - D-Link DWL-2000AP+ and power supply
• 21″ Ilyama CRT Screen
• Xerox Docuprint C20 A3 Inkjet Printer - (untested)
• 4x ADSL Broadband filters
• 4x Neoware Capio II thin clients - has WinCE and works with Windows Terminal Server
• 17″ Time CRT Monitor
• 15″ Tulip CRT Monitor
• Brother HL-1230 A4 Laser printer
• Epson Stylus Colour 850 and colour ink refill

Just leave a comment to make your claim. First come first served.

Decided to get the National Express train through to Edinburgh today; 1. to get a change of scenery and 2. to get a wee shot of the free wifi on offer. It’s really handy to be able to get wireless access for someone it my profession as you never know when you’ll need to SSH into some server and fix things.

On the whole the service is good. There’s a bit of packet loss but that’s hardly surprising really, especially when you go into a tunnel or a deep cutting.

I thought I’d also post some technical info on what I’ve found.

Setup is pretty easy as you only need to find the open wireless network called nxecwifi. IP Address is provided by DHCP so it’ll all done for you really.

The service seems to run through a captive portal set up so when you first check a webpage, the registration/login screen appears. Info required is basic; just name, address and email address. No credit card numbers or shoe size etc..

Once you’re registered, it’s all open for business. There doesn’t seem to be any IP port filtering as I was able to successfully use OpenVPN, SSH and Pidgin IM (connecting to Yahoo, GoogleTalk and MSN).

Some IP info now: Internal IP range  is 10.101.0.0/24 with a DNS server and default gateway of 10.101.0.1. The default search domain is nationalexpresswifi.train.
The machine used for the default route (10.101.0.1) seems to be running Linux and according to nmap has some open ports as so:

cammy@(none):~$ nmap -P0 10.101.0.1
Starting Nmap 4.76 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2009-05-20 14:34 BST
Interesting ports on ims.nationalexpresswifi.train (10.101.0.1):
Not shown: 998 filtered ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
22/tcp   open  ssh
3128/tcp open  squid-http

Interestingly (or maybe not) it’s MAC address comes up as Microsoft. It is running on an Xbox Linux distro me thinks ??

Need to get off train now but here’s a dump of a ping that I’ve been running since Glasgow.

— bbc.co.uk ping statistics —
1715 packets transmitted, 1410 received, +9 errors, 17% packet loss, time 1717350ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 187.434/422.562/7764.317/679.575 ms, pipe 8

17% is not too bad and average ping time is expected due to the mixed satellite/3G technology behind the uplink/downlink.

On the whole, I was able to write this on the train, and that’s what mattered.

BTW. Forgot to add that the externally presented IP comes from some VPN provider in  Sweden.

Got an interview with an exciting new Internet startup tomorrow for Sys Admin / Sys Architect role. They’ve got quite a radical concept that could prove to be pretty popular but I can’t go into to much depth just now.

Going through to sunny Edinburgh to meet with the big boss at 4pm. Hope he’s not an ‘end of level baddie’ that starts chucking fireballs at me like Dr Robotnik. (Alright, that was a bit random).

Getting it would mean commuting to Ediniburgh during the week but that’s no biggie. Trains are comfy and it’s only 40mins to Haymarket from Glasgow QS. Plenty of time for reading O’Reilly books.