TW Blog :: Tom Wright's Web Voyages of Discovery

It is precisely in knowing its limits that Philosophy exists Immanuel Kant

Sergio Surfs the China Qiantang Dragon Tidal Bore

Most excellent news! My good buddy and bore riding compatriot, Serginho Laus (aka Sergio), has realised his dream of surfing the mighty Qiantang Dragon tidal bore. Last week he and fellow Brazilian Pacelli spent the new moon syzygy scouting and surfing the Qiantang bore over an area agreed with the Chinese government. While no records were broken, some good clean sections and peaks reaching 10 feet were found - in between the occasional ferocious Asian squalls.

Check out some of the photos of Sergio and Jorge surfing the Dragon.

The trip was principally a relationship building exercise with the Chinese government, to strengthen a bond Serginho has been forging for several years. With the intent of returning for the equinox festival in September to deliver a display of tidal bore surfing to the hundreds of thousands of people that flock to Hangzhou every year to revere the tumultous power of the Dragon at full force.

I have considerable respect and admiration for Serginho. He is a great ambassador for the sport of tidal bore surfing and no one has pioneered this unique sport more than he over the last 10 years. Having spent many years learning every aspect of the Pororoca and showing a true passion for the spirit of the tidal bore Sergio has taken gradual and delicate steps towards realising his achievement in China. It is for this very reason tidal bore pioneering should stay the realm of the tidal bore specialist and not be absorbed into and saturated by the all-consuming materialism of the surfing industry's Search.

I hope that Team Gerlach showed the same respect AND the Chinese government doesn't get greedy!

Keep up to date with Sergio's adventures at the brazilian website Waves.

Posted on Monday, Aug 11, 2008 at 11:01:45.

BT Home Hub 2 and Airport Express Configuration?

Relates to Hardware

Simple objective to integrate an Airport Express station into my home network to allow us to broadcast audio to speakers in different parts of the house and then control the playlists using the new Remote feature on the iPod Touch. At the same time I was hoping to extend the network range by upgrading to the 802.11n wireless draft recommendation. My current network had a BT Home Hub router hard wired to a HomePlug to allow the range to reach my office in the farthest reaches of our large brick barn conversion.

Convince BT support to send me a new BT Home Hub 2 without paying the £50 upgrade fee - after all they had just sold me into a new 18 month contract the previous month void of the upgrade router with N capabilities!
Setup Home Hub 2 and assign static IP addresses to the platforms and virtual machines on my network.
Test the new extended range with my 802.11n-enabled iMac and notebook.
Get no improvement in signal whatsoever!
Test file transfer speeds within range of the new router between iBook and Acer - marginal speed improvements. Disappointed with BT's claims and new product… Oh well onto integrating the Express base station.
Follow instructions to configure AE (airport express) using the AirPort Express Utility on the supplied software from Apple.
Once configured AE is no longer recognized on the network so forced to perform the AE reset.
Try ethernet hard-wiring the AE to the Home Hub and configuration works. But once move the AE to wireless it again disappears.
Trawl web to discover similar issues installing AE with the Home Hub version 1.
Finally discover a successful installation using WDS.
Try to emulate this method for the Home Hub 2 only to discover there is no option for enabling a wireless repeater in the Home Hub 2 configuration software.
Finally hit a brick wall, and that is where the Home Hub 2 is going for the time being as I resort to rolling back to the Home Hub version 1.
Follow instructions for WDS setup and everything works fine.
Assign static IP address to avoid conflicts that regularly occur when with the Hub tries to assign IP addresses dynamically.
DONE :)

Conclusion to this convoluted process is that it would appear with the lack of option for Repeater configuration with the Home Hub 2 there is no physical possibility for installing the Airport Express in a network powered by the BT Home Hub 2. So why have BT removed this configuration option anyway? I suppose their argument would be that with twice the range (up to 70m indoors) the new routers with 802.11n wireless do not need a repeater facility any more. Well maybe I just got a bricked hub from the outset but there is no way the new Hub was displaying that kind of improvement in range. Anyway I got a result in the end and have a happier household.

Nothing impresses guests more than flashing out the iPod touch to change the music playing on several speakers around the house! But I certainly won't be jumping through hopes to use the BT Home Hub 2 again and wouldn't recommend the additional investment that BT insist on charging long-standing customers for the development that went into constructing this brick!

Posted on Monday, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:14:49.

5 Years Old - Quinquennial Anniversary!

Relates to Blogging

While completing the Survey 2008 I noticed that this weblog has now surpassed the five year mark and in fact the wooden anniversary on July 1st slipped by without a mention. So here are a few quick words to toast our Quinquennial celebration - five years of blogging.

Input to this weblog has not been as enthusiastic and regular since the Winter of 2005. As I entered 2006 my priorities moved to new horizons and the future family that I am now lucky enough to share my life with. I was also feeling despondent with the attitude of the web community and blogging fraternity in general (a view recently shared in part by new media guru Justin Calacanis). In 2006 hand-rolled blogging software was becoming a thing of the past with the rapid advancement of numerous publishing systems and the volume of web-centric blogs increased as their quality decreased. There was rarely enough time in the day to both dissect the important information and share my own thoughts and knowledge.

While I cannot guarantee I will ever return to the volume of postings I once offered I would like to think I can keep this weblog alive and generate enough interest from a few valuable entries that will keep you coming back for more.

So with five years under my belt it is onwards and upwards. Who knows what the future will hold but I know it will never cease to be exciting..!

Posted on Wednesday, Jul 30, 2008 at 09:35:27.

The Survey 2008

Relates to Blogging

Have you taken the survey for people who make websites yet?

Posted on Wednesday, Jul 30, 2008 at 09:19:29.

Everything's Gone Virtual!

Relates to Operating Systems and UNIX

Firstly apologies to anyone who has felt the urge to follow my blog with such a sporadic posting of entries over the last 18 months. Becoming a dad has compelled me to reassign my priorities and blogging time has really been under the kosh.

Anyway, time is of the essence so I must not ramble. Virtualization is the name of the game currently and I have been hard at work and play test driving a broad array of Linux platforms on both a Windows Vista host and a Tiger host. Since last posting my excitement at discovering VMWare Player back in May I have upgraded to Fusion and Workstation and started building virtual operating systems from scratch using ISO boot disks. I have one goal in mind and that is to create my development nirvana - a perfect setup of multiple displays and desktops that will allow me to meet my objectives in the quickest possible time using the minimum number of actual platforms.

I will come back to this in the coming weeks and discuss what desktops and operating systems I have gone for. Watch this space…

Posted on Thursday, Jul 24, 2008 at 18:43:10.