It’s magpie season, you see…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Magpie#Swooping

Thankfully after a couple of weeks of this, I’m wise to this little bastard’s agenda, and now that I know all of his best hideouts I can usually spot him coming from a mile off (rather than learning of his presence when he’s a foot from the back of my head).

I’ve started filming his assaults – playing chicken with a magpie is about as much adrenaline as I can get out here at the moment. Excuse the swearing and dodgy camera work – it’s hard to be composed when you’ve got a black and white hate missile aimed directly at your face.

For your amusement:

One of these girls is not like the others,
One of these girls just doesn’t belong…

Clever advertising? Or just doing the best you can with what you can afford?

The reference to Frankston makes me think that this is all a bit too coincidental…

n.b. I’m not in Moorabbin

Two cantennas / waveguide antennas / whatever you want to call them – the red one’s the one I’m using now (the other one belongs to a friend). ASUS WL-330b was a good idea, because it connects to the PC via CAT-5 (although it was stripped off in favour of a female SMA plug shortly after this photo was taken). I used to point this out of my bedroom window on the 19th floor in the middle of the city.

26 access points using Cain (in Windows):
I got 50 one night using Kismet, including some very interesting ones, but obviously that’s a fishing story until I find the screenshot

So be content with pictures for the moment. I doubt anyone still uses these notebooks anyway (I use mine to write). If you do, and if you’d really like any advice or a guide on how to install a MiniPCI wireless card into the Thinkpad 240, let me know and I’ll write up the details. Might save you a few of the hassles I had!

Looks sexy, and is very practical if you want to fool around with exotic antennas or free up the one precious USB port:

The Bow:

Making what’s supposed to be a composite bow at the moment. I was spurred into action after reading something similar at dejapong.com. Having spent the last couple of weeks staring straight past the great expanse of timber offcuts in the shed and the impressive array of old tools in the garage, thought it’d be a shame not to do something with it.

I found a hell of a piece of timber to use for the back of the bow – no idea what sort of wood it is (was left here by the last people to own the house), but it’s about 170cm long, 3cm thick and 8cm wide. I can stand it up against a table and against all probability it supports my entire weight, bending enough to convince me that it’s a formidable piece of tree.

Not quite as fortunate with the belly just yet – I spent about an hour hacking away at a stubborn piece of redgum, and have decided that I probably need something with a bit of compromise in it – this stuff’s tougher than steel.

Photos coming when I have something to show…

The Car:

Car’s in the trading post. Damn I’m gunna miss this thing, even if she is a noisy, temperamental, gas guzzling old bitch…

The Thinkpad:

In the interests of squeezing even more life out of this old Thinkpad 240, I’ve ordered an Intel Pro 2200 mini PCI card for it from E-Bay. Going to be a headache to run an antenna around inside, but I’ll figure it out – even if it means replacing the modem port with a connector for an external antenna. Would be shit hot with a way to plug straight into a waveguide antenna…

It runs Debian so well, it’s pretty much the only computer I use at the moment. Such a good size, just so sick of worrying about snapping this stupid USB WiFi dongle off it.

Expecting all manner of nightmares with 1802 post errors too…gotta play around with sub-vendor PCI-ID when I get it – and in all probability turn either the card or my notebook into an expensive but attractive paperweight. Lucky I’m so patient and careful eh?!