Category Archives: Technology

Internet in Yandoit and around

Posted on by April 23, 2024
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I bit the bullet. I forsook Telstra 4G and bought Starlink. I forsook the Telstra mobile account and took a 12-month pre-paid plan with Boost, $230, which includes all AU calls and 160GB data. Boost is the ONLY Telstra reseller that uses the whole Telstra retail network for coverage. In most places, you don’t notice the difference between say Aldi (Telstra wholesale network) and Telstra/Boost. Try travelling to Birdsville! You get Telstra /Boost, not Aldi! (Of course, en route you will not get either).

I was lucky. At the time, Starlink was offering rural customers the hardware for $199. Now it is $599. Service is $139 per month, unlimited data and seriously high speed, e.g. 125Mbps down and 18.9Mbps up. Sometimes it’s faster.

Broadband?

Posted on by September 4, 2019
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I’m not here to advertise Telstra, but there are current mobile 4G offerings that in my opinion beat NBN satellite, depending, of course, on your current mobile phone coverage at home. If you have good mobile coverage at home, you should consider this. I am seriously considering abandoning my landline service with ADSL internet. Instead, I will use my mobile phone (iPhone) to provide a ’hotspot’ to a router configured as a wireless repeater. So when the ’Personal Hotspot’ on the phone is activated, it automatically connects to the router, which provides internet access to anything else connected to the router by wifi or ethernet cable, including computers and smart TVs.

To test the viability for your own location, using a mobile phone, I suggest you download the Ookla Speedtest App. If you have mobile data on your mobile plan, TURN OFF Wifi and check the performance you are getting from your mobile phone connection. Ookla will test whatever connection you are currently connected to: https://www.speedtest.net/

ADSL here, 5km from exchange:

Ping 26ms
Download 4.75 Mbps
Upload 0.86 Mbps

Telstra 4G mobile, same location:

Ping 43ms
Download 64.3Mbps
Upload 16.6Mbps

BUT, 4G performance is highly variable. Sometimes it can be slower than ADSL. Of course, 4G performance may deteriorate as more people take it up. I never said it was easy! Turn off your usual internet access and connect to a  hotspot from your friend’s mobile phone at your place and see how it goes.

Optus have some good plans too, but it depends on your coverage. If you have a strong Optus signal on your mobile, fine.

BTW, don’t hold your breath for 5G around here – it’s not gonna happen!

Broadband in Yandoit

Posted on by April 26, 2019
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I am doing some experimenting at present. I have 4G mobile data from both Telstra and Optus. I also have ADSL from Telstra. The only NBN option at my place in Mystic Drive is Satellite.

To understand NBN, you need to understand the technology that is available to you at your address. 4G is not ‘NBN’. 4G is on the mobile phone network. There are a couple of plans from Optus and Telstra that offer a good amount of data for a reasonable price. But one wonders how the quality of the service may change as the take-up of 4G for internet increases.

At present I am seriously thinking of abandoning my landline and ADSL, currently costing me $80/month, and just having the biggest mobile service with data (about 90GB) I can get. Households with lots of streaming teenagers should be careful – this may not be enough!

4G from both Telstra and Optus is highly variable in terms of speed, but is generally better than ADSL.

Current results (7pm April 26) on 4G:
Optus: PING 38mS, DOWNLOAD 12.05Mbps, UPLOAD 1.38 Mbps
Telstra: PING 36 mS, DOWNLOAD 34.58 Mbps, UPLOAD 13.38 Mbps

Telstra ADSL is typically about 4.5Mbps download and 0.8Mbps upload at my location, admittedly about 5km from the exchange.

NBN is now available in our area, but only satellite

Posted on by July 29, 2016
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Our area has been downgraded on the NBN rollout plan. We were to receive fixed wireless, but now we have been relegated to the Sky Muster satellite service. This technology is inferior to fixed wireless or FTTN, but is better than the old satellite services. Speeds will be comparable to ADSL2 which many of us now enjoy, BUT the latency will be longer. Longer latency negatively affects services that require many interactions with a server, such as online gaming, Voice over IP, Facetime, Skype, etc..

Any form of voice communication over the Sky Muster service will suffer a noticeable delay, making a natural conversation difficult. ‘Ping time’ (the time it takes for data to make a round trip from you to the server and back to you) is typically 600mS on Sky Muster. On ADSL2 the ping time can be 35mS or even less. So in terms of latency, Sky Muster is a downgrade from ADSL2, although the bulk download and upload speeds should be higher than ADSL.

Check NBN availability at your address here.

Copper fixed lines will continue to be available at addresses served by the Sky Muster service (recognising the unsuitability of Sky Muster for voice communications), however products such as ADSL internet will eventually be decommissioned and you will be forced to use Sky Muster or the expensive 3G/4G mobile network for internet access.

The Sky Muster service is also affected by bad weather and may drop out on some days, so it is not reliable for emergency purposes.

Response from NBN Co to my enquiry regarding the degrading of our service:

  • “Once an area as been made available for the Sky Muster Satellite scheme it will not be receiving another type of infrastructure. The nbn Sky Muster satellite service is dedicated to providing broadband connectivity to regional and remote Australia.”

As far as internet connectivity is concerned, you might as well be living in the middle of the Simpson Desert.

Interestingly, the major players (Telstra, Optus) are not yet offering Sky Muster internet plans. Sky Muster plans are currently only being offered by a motley list of minor ISP’s that you have never heard of: here they are.

In summary, our area will now receive a second-rate NBN service, and I suggest you all complain to our local member, Catherine King (contact form here).

 

How secure are your internet passwords?

Posted on by May 1, 2016
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I came across this site that gives an estimate of how long it might take a hacker to guess your passwords using a ‘brute-force’ (dictionary) attack. While the actual time estimates are probably unreliable, it will give you an idea of the relative strength of your passwords. You will get an idea of the effect of including upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Type your proposed password into the form to obtain the estimate.

I have checked the source code of this site and I am satisfied that the calculation is done in your browser using JavaScript code from Google Analytics: your password is NOT uploaded to any server, so you are not at risk by using this site (provided that the computer you are using is not already compromised).

http://random-ize.com/how-long-to-hack-pass/

The Computer That Took Man To The Moon

Posted on by December 6, 2015
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“…the Apollo Guidance Computer, which weighed 70 pounds, had only 36K of RAM and 2K of ROM. But it was able to guide 27 men to the moon’s orbit and bring them back safely. It consisted of two parts: a small keyboard for the astronauts inside the command and lunar modules, and a separate, slightly larger logic unit.”

Read the article in Nuts and Volts magazine…

Free loan computers

Posted on by May 26, 2016
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I have a couple of desktop computers here (box only, no monitor), which I will make available for free extended loan. So if your computer dies, or gets infected with something disgusting, you can have one of these until you get it fixed or replaced. They are not quite state-of-the-art, but more than adequate for net-surfing, email, word processing (with Libre-Office), etc.. Use your own monitor, keyboard and mouse if you can, otherwise I might be able to supply.

Free mapping software: GIS

Posted on by January 20, 2014
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GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems. This is the type of software used by Emergency Victoria, the Powercor outage map, Victoria Land Channel, and Google Maps. This article introduces Quantum GIS, a free GIS application for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android.

64mystic

Quantum GIS software used to map 64 Mystic Drive. Fences, buildings, dams, etc, have been marked on separate layers. The base maps are from Land Channel and Google Maps.

What can I do with it?

You can:

  • Import existing maps, for example, property boundaries from Land Channel
  • Plot the location of particular features of your property.
  • Measure distances without having to march around with a tape measure.
  • Measure the area of an irregularly shaped paddock.
  • Superimpose a contour map.
  • Create layers for, for example, fences, water, buildings, geology, cropping.

The learning curve is a bit steep for the new user, but there is plenty of help available online, as with most open-source software. Here is an excellent Training Manual.

GIS software is a growing field of Information Technology and such skills are in demand. It has a multitude of applications in farming, forestry, mining, geography, epidemiology, conservation, defence and the social sciences.

Click here to download Quantum GIS.

qgisaustralia

Screenshot of Quantum GIS running on Linux

Picasa – easy photo software

Posted on by August 7, 2012
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For Windows users, Google Picasa is the best and easiest to use photo software ever written, and it is free. It organises your photos; it can adjust exposure and colour, straighten a skewed horizon, crop and resize. It can even do retouching and apply special effects. If you do manage to make a mistake with it, you can always ‘Undo’ at the touch of a button – the original files are always preserved. Only a professional photographer would require more. Most people don’t need anything as complicated as Adobe PhotoShop and find it confusing.

Google Picasa is available as a free download here: http://picasa.google.com/. It is a small download (14.6MB) and installs in a couple of minutes.

Picasa is also available for the Mac, but Mac users already have iPhoto, which is very similar.

Under the hood of yandoit.net

Posted on by August 1, 2012
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(for the geekishly inclined!)

yandoit.net uses the shared hosting service justhost.com, which is one of a number of large hosting companies owned by Endurance International Group Inc. based in Boston, Massachusetts. Hosting costs only a few dollars a month.

yandoit.net is built on WordPress 3.4.1 using the Weaver ii theme. WordPress and the Weaver ii theme are free software.

yandoit.net also uses ‘plugins’ for extra functionality. Plugins are extra bits of code, mostly written by enthusiasts in the WordPress community, that add extra features to the basic WordPress platform. yandoit.net uses the following plugins:

  • All-in-One Calendar (the calendar page)
  • Authors Widget (lists posts by author)
  • Browser Blocker (detects old versions of IE. I had to hack it a bit to make it work)
  • Cimy User Extra Fields (collects info when you sign up)
  • Configure SMTP (handles email responses)
  • Dashboard: Pending Review (for moderation of posts)
  • Fast Secure Contact Form (to contact me)
  • Peter’s Collaboration E-mails (more email functions)
  • Post From Site (this is the plugin that provides the Add Post link and form – I had to hack this one too).
  • Slimbox2 with Slideshow (the fancy display of posts containing photos)
  • Theme My Login (login and sign-up screen)
  • User Role Editor (what you can and can’t do)
  • Weaver II Theme Extras (save and restore theme settings)
  • WP Approve User
  • WP Image Size Limit

If you want to play around with WordPress yourself, create a free account on wordpress.com. It is an excellent place to host your own personal blog. You won’t be able to add any plugins, however. If you want to learn more about WordPress than is possible at wordpress.com, or about web development in general, there are plenty of options. Many companies offer free web hosting (do a search). Or you can install a web server on your own computer.

  • 000webshost.com: One of many free hosting services. I don’t know anything about them, but they seem to offer all you need.
  • XAMPP: easy-setup free web server for Windows, Mac or Linux.
  • WordPress: free download.

yandoit.net redeveloped on ‘WordPress’

Posted on by October 12, 2013
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yandoit.net has been redeveloped on the ’WordPress’ platform. I have done this because the old platform ’WebsiteBaker’ has proved difficult to maintain and is not well supported. WordPress is the dominant platform used by many bloggers. It is well supported and still being actively developed. A popular local example of a WordPress site is Geoff Park’s excellent Natural Newstead.

Some features, such as home pages and subscriptions, were broken on the old platform. The move to WordPress should solve these issues. The new platform should prove easier for subscribers to contribute material to yandoit.net.

Linux, the other operating system

Posted on by July 26, 2012
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Windows and Mac are familiar to all, but there is another: Linux. It is completely free, open source software. Linux used to be ‘just for geeks’, but today’s Linux looks and feels much like Windows.

Linux is very stable and reliable, which is why it is so popular for web servers. Yandoit.net is hosted on a Linux server, somewhere in the US.

Various companies and communities create and package their own variety of Linux.  These are called ‘distributions’. Most are free to download. The most popular distribution, and the one I use, is Ubuntu. You can download it here and burn it to a CD, which you can then install, or try it out by running it directly from the CD.

Ubuntu includes all the basic software you need, including the OpenOffice suite (word processing, spreadsheet and presentations), Firefox web browser, email/calendar application, graphics, media player, CD/DVD burner and games. There is also a huge online repository of extra software to choose from, all free.

Linux facts…

Linus

Linus Torvalds

There are no Linux viruses so you don’t need anti-virus software.

Depending on which survey you read, around 70% of the world’s web servers run Linux.

Of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, 91% run Linux[1]. The fastest supercomputer in the world, IBM’s Sequoia, runs Linux.

Linux is built and maintained by a community of enthusiasts. Its core was written by Linus Torvalds, commencing in 1991. Since then it has developed from a rather plain and technical system mainly of interest to programmers, to a fully-fledged desktop system: a worthy rival to Windows and Mac OSX.

PC repairers (myself included) often use Linux (installed on a USB stick or CD) to kick-start a borked Windows machine and recover its files.

You can try out Linux (without installing it or making any changes to your computer) by running it from a CD or USB stick.

Screenshot of Ubuntu (click to enlarge)

References

1. TOP500.org. “Operating system Family share for 06/2010 | TOP500 Supercomputing Sites”. Top500.org. http://www.top500.org/stats/list/35/osfam. Retrieved 2010-06-01.

Some famous computer quotes

Posted on by July 29, 2012
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“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” Attributed to Pablo Picasso.

“Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.” Doug Larson.

“Spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time.” Bill Gates, World Economic Forum, 2004.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” Popular Mechanics, 1949.

“Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet’s continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, 1995. (3Com was a manufacturer that specialised in network products, recently taken over by Hewlett Packard).

Interviewer: “Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?”
Bill Gates: “No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system.” from Programmers at Work (Lammers, S, 1986)