Synapse

Downloaded and installed synapse this afternoon - new instant messenger client. Drool worthy graphics but currently only supports xmpp - however that's extensible so you can layer other protocols on top. Looks worth a try though an alpha release at the moment! - took me ages to find the site - even when I could remember the name of the application - hence this post!

Books and routers

Since I acquired a new router I've been unable to administer - or post to my wordpress book blog, the blog lives on my home machine and is set up to use the full address when administering and, I assume, the router doesn't like http traffic leaving and then returning to it. So while I try to work out how to solve this - I may try administering it from work, I'll post book related stuff on another blogspot location.

Flash! Bang!

Been off net (at least at home) for 36 hours due to the router dying - its death throes tripped the electricity circuits twice before it wouldn't come on again and I then identified the culprit. Trying a Lantech router from aria - a swift walk over yesterday's lunchtime. Currently having problems getting it to forward http requests to this machine - so my web server (link to the right of this) may be impossible to get to at the moment. Also it appears to stop working when I boot up a machine (the one that is directly connected to its inbuilt switch rather than via a hub). Will see whether I'm misconfiguring it or whether there's a fault.. At least I am now able to download all the spam that was waiting for me!

Fountains of Home

Slightly unexpectedly I'm working from home today. We had a new central heating boiler installed this week (Tuesday). Last night I turned on the (dual fuel) cooker for the first time since and was greeted with a fountain of water emerging from the gas jet! Workmen appearing to unscramble the pipes later today...

Boring tecchie stuff

Next week I'm going to installing Zimbra as a mail/calendar sharer for work, hopefully I'll get around to posting the results here. The web demos look good so we'll soon see how easy it is to manage! Any experiences that others have had - web searches seem to suggest pretty positive results. Manlug had a talk on Saturday about Meldware which seems to cover pretty similar ground but I was a little tied up on Saturday! Any Meldware experiences?

Only connect...

Looks like I'm back in business - not sure how it was fixed but it involved some combination of flashing the router with new firmware, saving the router state to disk first and then reloading the settings and finally running the connection wizard. Sorted, but I'm none the wiser and not sure what the prognosis is for that piece of hardware.
I had a spare router left by my brother-in-law when he emigrated but no lights came on when I applied power, so I assume it is even less of a working piece of hardware than this one!

connection problems!

My router died last night - while I'm trying to rustle up an appropriate liturgy for the internment, you're only likely to get any responses to emails to me if you use my gmail address...if you don't know it, comment on this post (in vague terms if you don't want to broadcast the request!!) and I'll get back to you!