I Used Up All My Duct Tape

Praise and respect to all the Swiss army knifes on this planet. Today I used mine to cut a wooden board into small pieces (no, I do not own a hand saw).
Why did I do that?

Well, it was a necessary step towards re-building my usb-dish construction once again. I just didn't feel that a signal hovering around -90 was the best thing. Plus I had still doubts about the focal point.
I brought the whole thing back inside and re-did the whole mirror-pieces procedure again, but this time I fixed the top-bit of a paper-coffee-cup to it, basically as a ring-to-look-through in order to see the lamp's reflection in the mirror pieces. Doing this showed me that the focal point was a bit higher up and a little further out, so I had to construct something to make the arm longer. The focal point is now about 56 centimeters out, which matches my calculations about a dish like this.

So I brought home a wooden board from work (one of those I'm collecting to build a dog house) and used that to build a new base for my new receptor. I bought two cans of Puritan Beef Stew (on sale, 2 for 5), emptied one can (I'm gonna eat it later) and used it to make my new cantenna.

This is what it looks like.


Yesterday I also found another old chair outside, quite weather-worn but still sturdy. I thought it might come in handy to get the whole construction a bit higher up, so I used cable binders to attach my half-chair to it.


It looks a bit adventurous, but it's quite stable. We had rain and very windy weather all day today, and it didn't tip over.

Let's cut to the chase: Was it worth it? Did the signal strength improve?
Yes, it did.


A nice gain of about 10, as you can see the area north of -80 gets visited quite frequently. So, compared to just the usb-dongle outside by itself, which clocked in at less than -90, and considering that I have still trees and a building in the way, the result is quite ok, I think.
If anybody has any idea how to improve it even more, let me know.

I'm gonna eat that beef stew now.

I Want To Believe

For some reason I just couldn't believe that the focal point of the dish is not located where the receiver-thingy was mounted: on the end of the arm.
So I broke a tiny mirror and taped 8 pieces to the edge of the dish, then shone a light on it in a dark room, put my face to the end of the arm and tried to see the reflection of the lamp in every single piece of mirror. And would you believe it, I indeed saw the reflection of the lamp in every tiny single bit off mirror.
So I removed the usb-dongle from where it was and taped it to the end of the arm, using the plastic cover of the receiver-thingy as a base. To weather-proof it I put a clear freezer bag around it and taped it to the arm.
Still, so far I don't really see a lot improvement.

I have to think about it some more, and try more, but at the moment it's raining and very unpleasant outside, so I guess I'll do that tomorrow.

I also found out that my usb-dongle is so old, it doesn't even work with windows 7. (It turned out last night that a steady -85 connection is way better than a spiky -75 one, so I tried to hook up my new laptop. Well, I guess my old computer has the privilege of being online for now.)

As for using multiple usb cables, or shorter ones: I can't. Since I don't exactly live at the hub of civilization here, I have to work with what I got: 2 usb cables 3 meters each that get too long if I put them together, and a fucking old usb-dongle. Better than nothing though. Of course I could order things, but then I could also order and buy a brand new and stronger usb-dongle. But where's the challenge in that?

It only has to last until november, anyway. I actively and consciously choose to believe.

What Is He Doing Now? Contacting Aliens?

I had the afternoon off today, so I worked some more on that usb-dish. I found an old chair outside, half of it missing, on which I mounted the dish. I also removed the receptor-thingy, or whatever that is, from the arm on the dish (attaching the usb-dongle to it didn't get me any gain, so I figured the focal point must be somewhere else.
I searched for it using the old trial & error method: moving the usb-dongle around while keeping an eye on the signal strength.

But how do you fix something in place 33 centimeters above the arm in mid-air? You can't use any metal, and it has to be weather-proof.

Piece of cake: With bottles. I bought two bottles of water at the supermarket and drank them, then I just replaced one of the caps with my usb-dongle, cut 4 holes in the bottle's bottom, taped it with tape to prevent ripping, and attached it to the arm using cable binders.
I didn't need the bottom of the second bottle, so I cut it off, then I just stuck the bottomless bottle right on top of bottle #1, thereby shielding my precious electronic parts form wind and weather.
Then I aimed the whole thing roughly at where I think the signal is coming from, and it provides me with a steady -85. That is not great, but better than what I had before, and it is a pretty stable connection.


I did all that with my old laptop.

When I checked my new laptop, I noticed that the signal pattern had changed. Instead of a constant -90, which sucks, I suddenly saw a lot of spiking up to -75. Well, you can't watch youtube with that or even listen to online radio, but you can surf the net. And at every spike even faster than the connection of my old laptop. A bit unreliable, though. But since I can't connect the dish to my new laptop without moving my whole workspace (usb cable not long enough, 2 usb cables together cause signal-loss), I think I'm okay with that.


I guess it must be from the dish outside the door. We have some kind of nook here, walls on three sides and a balcony right above. I'm thinking the signal gets reflected by the walls or something, and then bounces back onto the backside of the dish, and from there right at my computer.

But then again it could all just be coincidence.

I don't know if this is the optimum, though. Probably not. Maybe I'll work on it some more.

Poker

Last night I played poker again with my boss and his friends. 20 dollar buy in, 10 buck re-buy. And what can I say, I won and went home 100 bucks richer than before. Yay.

Today at work I paid the price for it. Poker lasted until 3 in the morning or so, and I had to work all day today, inventory, counting stuff. Have you ever counted stuff with dead beer still in your system? Not a lot of fun.

Then again: One of the guys in fact had, you won't believe it, in his shed a totally unused spare satellite dish.
And he was so kind to give it to me - I borrowed it from him.

I tried to set it up after work today, but I think that fucking usb-dongle is just too old and weak. And really, satellite dishes like line of sight a lot.
But line of sight I can't provide.

I might try some more, but I don't have much hope.

By the way, praise to my microphone stand. It's so versatile. Last night when I came home and wanted to grab my towel after brushing my teeth I suddenly remembered the laundry, because my towel wasn't there.
Of course I couldn't throw it in the dryer in the middle of the night, so I transformed my mic stand into a great big T and hung my wet clothes (on hangers) on it.
Dry in the morning.

I like my stuff.

Cantenna

I've found this little program called Inssider 2.0 to monitor the strength of the wireless signal.
Here's what the connection has come down to:

As you can see it hovers around -90, which means: you can't have a stable connection. I know that at around -75 it is good enough to actually use it. So naturally I thought about options to gain those 15-20 dB.
I found out that you don't have to spend fuckloads of money to improve the sending or receiving power of your system. With a bit of knowledge and the right tools you can build your own antennas.
Well, I can't do anything to the source of my signal, because it is not mine. Therefore all I can do is try to enhance the receiving end by building my own new antenna. But how to connect it to my laptop?
Since I am no electronic specialist and don't own the right equipment, opening up my computer and fucking around with the built-in antenna simply is no option. Therefore I decided to get my hands on an USB external wireless dongle.

I figured if I can get a gain of 15 using the dongle, everything'd be just fine.

So I went to the store to buy one (I knew they had exactly one available), but in the end I didn't have to purchase it, because luckily one of my co-workers had one sitting around unused, and he gave it to me for free.
Yay! So went to the canned-food aisle and bought myself a can of ravioli (the only bad side of this little project, I had to eat them). Then I went home and tried out my new free USB device, an old Trendnet tew-624.

Thing is: I hooked it up to my computer and the thing didn't even pick up a signal. It is actually weaker than the antennas that are already built into my computers. Using the dongle as connecting device I had to walk outside to get the -90.
That sucked.

The whole project had instantly become useless, because even if I managed to get my 15 dB of gain, I would just end up where I was before.

But then again, I had already bought and eaten the fucking ravioli, so by god, I wouldn't not refrain from building my antenna!

So I sat down with my swiss army knife and assembled this device:


So this is a pretty directional home-made antenna. Using it I managed to get about -90 inside. So it actually worked! I thought about setting it up outside, but because of a number of reasons like cable-lenght, window-situation, outside-temperature, possibility of theft etc. I decided against it.

Instead I opted to try different antennas first, and also to enhance the performance of this thing.
I looked around in the apartment for things to use to collect microwaves, and in the bedroom I found a metal lampshade. Then I made this:


Unfortunately this device didn't work at all. So I took it apart and instead built this thing, an attempt to create a spherical reflector, some kind of two-dimensional parabolic dish, if you will (I wish I had an old satellite dish).


I used tin foil and string, but it was very hard to find the right spot for the usb stick. I couldn't find any means to create a stable construction, so that's why I abandoned this one and went to build this instead:


Well, I got a flicker out of that one, it would pop up every once in a while somewhere at -96 or something. I decided to combine it with my initial successful cantenna:


But this didn't do anything but bad to overall performance. So I disassembled everything and felt satisfied enough that I managed to build a working cantenna (and to waste a lot of aluminium foil and duct tape). No practical use in the end, but it was fun anyway.

Now, if I had an old satellite dish, I could combine it with the cantenna and aim it directly at the source of the signal, that should get me another 10 dB, I think. Maybe I'll find one somewhere.

By the way, I'm writing this on my old laptop from the other building. They've started to build the roof on the building inbetween. Our apartment is now completely cut off.

The Shield / I Am A Monkey

The source of my internet connection here is located in a different building, between 30 and 50 meters away. Inbetween is an area half grass, half trees. Well, there was an area half grass, half trees until they cut down half of the tress and dug a great big hole in the ground. Until they filled that hole with a basement. Until they started building fucking walls.

The connection became better when they removed trees. The connection remained stable when they dug a hole, it was fine when they built the foundation and the basement, and it was quite alright when they started building the walls.

Then two days ago they added another half meter to the fucking walls, thereby finishing them, thereby COMPLETELY FUCKING UP my connection.

Question: How do you seriously fuck up a wireless connection?
Answer: Build a fucking building in the way.

And now I'm sitting here with an on-and-off-fucking-mess of a connection, unreliable, laggy, slow and overall bad.
Hello? This is my door to the world!

Word is they're gonna fix this somewhen next month. Blessed are those who are believers.

Then again, who knows what it's good for. Maybe I'll go out more now.

Sidenote:
Today I was lifting up a dresser (for delivery), when the unthinkable happened. My pants, which I purchased about six months ago in London of all places, ripped apart at the seam. The ass-seam. Completely straight down from belt to balls, CRAAACKCH!

Only six months old!
I will attempt to fix them.

Winter...

...is officially here. It's white. Snow in the trees, on the cars, on the ground, in the air.

Now I Have A Machine Gun

This morning I looked outside and everything was white. Yes, white. Snow.
It didn't stay, though. It was gone before noon.

Two days ago, while climbing on top and behind the giant coolers in the store (to retrieve merchandise that has been there probably for years), I ripped a hole in my pants.

Yesterday I forgot to deal with this hole in my pants.

Today I remembered. So I took my old green sewing set (curtesy of German army) and sat down to fix this. It was a pretty basic rip, about 3 centimeters long, then a 90 degree angle and another 3 centimeters.
Well, I'm no seamstress, but they taught me the basics in school (grade 3, I think). First I considered sewing a patch of other fabric behind it, for stability. But then I thought 'fuck that' and I just sewed it together, looping 'round and 'round and 'round, 'round the corner, and 'round and 'round til the end and then the whole thing again backwards. I did this on the inside of the pants, of course.
When I was done I looked at my work and what came to my mind immediately was the old saying:

Not beautíful, but rare.

It looks like a scar. Sewn up under gunfire or in some dark backroom by a disgraced surgeon. Too bad I didn't have whisky in the house. I would have liked to disinfect my needle in it.

Deja Vu: Civilization V is out. I like it. What you miss though is the sense of achievement after winning a game. No replay of your growing empire anymore. No graphics showing where your culture jumpstarted, your science rocketed, your points soared high. Just demographics, and the button: Back to Main Menu. Kind of dis-rewarding. Patch, please.

I think tomorrow maybe I'll buy myself a handsaw (one of those they literally call fox-tail in Germany: a tool with a long blade with sharp teeth along one edge that is used with one hand only). I have collected quite a few small wooden boards from work (they put them in packages to protect long bendable things like curtain rods from transport damage), and maybe I have enough to build something nice. A doghouse perhaps. I might have to liberate one or two two-by-fours from the construction site nearby, although I'd rather avoid that.

Oh, I think for some reason they have mentioned now at least three times who they'd like to be the supermarket Santa Claus this year: me. They want to make my beard white.
I also had a brief talk about religion today in the staff room. Talks about religion are always something one should not commit to. One should especially avoid saying things like:

"No, I'm not baptized. But I was at a baptism of a friend once. There was a guy in a costume who held a speech and then made everybody drink red wine out of the same cup and then he gave people crackers and then he put some water on my friends forehead. So what the fuck that's good for?"

The answer was: "You're evil."

Well, I guess coming to town this year is goold old Satan Claus. Ho-Ho-Ho!

Snow

Today it snowed for a while.

No big thing though, last year it snowed on october 8th already. But I thought I'd mention it.

What else is new? Civilization V is out. It's very different from IV, and you have to play at least on Prince, the three difficulty levels below that are totally useless. A lot of fun though, time goes by quickly, and once you've finally made yourself free from all your old Civ IV habits and worked yourself into the new game mechanics it is even more fun.

Also out: Gothic 4, or as they call it: Arcania. I won't bother with it, though. From what I read about it, it probably and very likely sucks.

Airing: Dexter, season 5. I've seen the first couple of episodes, okay entertainment so far. Things seem to go as expected: Dexter a suspect (kind of), kids off to grandparents... I noticed that he doesn't kill as many people anymore, though. There seem to be less dead people altogether, somehow. Compare season 1, I think he kills off three guys in the first 2 episodes alone. Plus 2 dead women, one dead cop, one dead cop's wife.
Ah well. I like this show.

I have to go.

And If He... Alters It?

The internet was down all yesterday evening well into today. What about my routines, connection? What about my chess moves (made 1, then zip), my emails (who t f cares, most of it spam), my news (more of the same)?

I was bored a bit, understandably so, which lead me to do something I don't do very often: I turned on the tv and after zapping full circle once I recognized a movie: The Blind Side.
Why not, I thought, I've been a Sandra Bullock fan for a long time. I remember about 9 or 10 years ago a good friend (bigger fan) had lots posters of her on his wall, one of them showing Sandra Bullock wearing a very short skirt, photographed from the front, and she was leaning towards the camera a lot. Looking at that poster I often imagined myself standing somewhere behind her.
However, so I watched The Blind Side yesterday for the second time (I have seen it before), and I think Sandra Bullock totally deserved the Oscar for her performance. This movie has now officially entered my personal list of movies that always make me cry. Other list entries are: Die Hard, no, just kidding. In fact, right now I can think only of one single movie, and that is Zärtliche Cousinen. No, I'm kidding again. It's Forrest Gump. It's always time for tears when he see his Jenny again (reflecting pool...). In The Blind Side: Whenever she tries to hide her emotions.

Well, today I finally finished dealing with the turkey leftovers: I made two pots of broth, turned one of them into lentil soup, froze the other one. I picked out all the meat from the bones, too. Now I have a medium sized pot of turkey meat in my fridge, and a pot of soup. I think this will last me until sunday.

Work related news: None. Boxes, boxes, everywhere. Christmas is coming. Better hide.

Donkey

Oh my god, I am so full.
I just came back from my second Thanksgiving dinner: delicious juicy turkey, mashed turnip, mashed potato, the most amazing salad with avocado and other exotic stuff in it, gravy, cauliflower broiled and covered with cheese... and then, as if that weren't enough, a dessert of three different pies: coconut cream (pure poetry), pumkin pie (a dream) and apple pie (like heaven).
I won't have to eat for days.

Then again, our fridge is filled with all kinds of leftovers from our own Thanksgiving dinner: more than half a turkey, potatoes, salad and whatnot. It's gonna be a pretty one-sided diet.

Some people, and I find that very interesting, don't even cook their turkey-filling inside their turkey. They just cook it by itself in a fucking pot, but still call it filling. Weird.

Thanksgiving.
Bigger than Christmas.

Crazy.

Maybe I Should Find Out About Edible Mushrooms Around Here

So my wife's still out of town, this is week #6. After turning to frozen pizza for a while I have now decided to go back to real cooking. It just tastes better. Today, for example, I made a great big mashed potato-sauerkraut-pork-pea-mix-with-cheese-on-top-casserole. It's enough for today, tomorrow and wednesday.
If I had a camera, I would post a picture. But my wife took it.
Also I found that 1 person needs more money than 2 persons. Technically I should be fine with about 65 bucks per week, without struggling (this being half of what I spend for my wife and me averagely). But it's harder than I thought to keep to that limit, even though I hardly buy anything, no fancy stuff, just the basic food I eat.
However, this week my wife's gonna come home, and I am gonna cook us a turkey. Whee!

By the way, I've been working the whole weekend. Hopefully it'll get less busy now for a while. I've been planning to make some music or spend time doing similar creativity-based activities, but it hasn't happened yet: too tired, too bored, no inspiration...
My computer games are all boring lately, too. And the books I read mostly suck, too. I read too much of the same crap, I guess, always terrorists and lonesome heroes and assassins and spies; Bob Lee Swaggers and Jack Reachers (though these two are definitely worth a look).
I feel a need for some real literature rising up inside me. Something the caliber of "Jude the Obscure" maybe. Something that has a few more layers than one.