Every day, I have 30 minutes of time to waste on a train, going from Haarlem to Amsterdam or vice versa, a 15-minute trip. Sometimes, I open up a laptop to write a few more lines of code or play some gridwars or whatever. Most of the times, I’ll also have a look at the wireless networks around. It always surprises me how many there are these days.

So the past few days I’ve been lugging a MacBook Pro around, and I’ve noticed it’s very good at sniffing out wireless beacons. My TiBook will usually only show only one or two networks where the macbook will pick up on 6 or 7.

I’ve described two dots. Now let’s connect them.

I figured it was time to run KisMAC on the macbook while on the train from Amsterdam to Haarlem. I’ve actually done this before when I was still using a PowerBook G3 with a PCMCIA wifi card, but didn’t really pick up on anything. I think I found about 5 networks that day. This time was a little different.

Some stats:
Between Amsterdam Central Station and Haarlem, there are at least 110 wireless networks, reachable from inside a moving train. Of those, 33 are on channel 1, and 38 are on channel 11. 17 are on channel 6, 8 are on channel 13, 7 on channel 7, 6 on channel 3 and one on channel 8. The other channels don’t see any action. 17 networks use WPA encryption. 37 use WEP. The remainder is unencrypted. 30 seem to be set to their defaults.

This was with an active scan, as KisMAC does not yet support passive scanning on intel macs. That means hidden networks do not show. I think I might repeat this experiment later with a non-pro MacBook. It has even better wifi reception thanks to its entirely non-metal case.

Scan results as a Netstumbler text file.

Update:

Tried it on a MacBook non-pro too. As I thought, it does slightly better: it comes up with 286 networks. Contrast that to my TiBook which picks up on a whopping 15 networks.

Ok, so just to address the two things that I thought would annoy me about the MacBook:

• The keyboard: not that bad. The flat keys feel a bit strange at first and the vertical return key seems to be a bit thinner, but overall it’s ok.
• The screen: not as bad as some PC versions of glossy screens, but still crap. I work with a lot of terminals which happen to have a dark background, and that makes the gloss show up badly even in fairly dim lighting. I can see myself move around, and anyone who might happen to be behind me. When the screen is mostly bright that disappears for a large part, but stuff like ceiling lighting will still show up. Not a good idea for an office environment with the fluorescent lights that go with it.

Picture to illustrate the screen problem:

Also note how the remote handily sticks to the screen bezel.

The rest is pretty nice. I absolutely adore the magnetic features: the MagSafe connector obviously and the new, entirely brilliant magnetic latch. No more buttons to press to open the laptop, yet it stays shut well-enough to make you think the the little hook that popped out before is still there. The speakers sound fairly ok considering their size, and overall it’s been pretty speedy.

And don’t worry, I’m still against this Intel thing. That will take time.

Having not attended last year’s highly successful (or so I heard) BarCamp Amsterdam, I felt I had to make up. By being late every day. But anyway. It was an interesting experience.

I intended to code somewhat on a DNS based remote Growl Notification Thingo I’m working on. In practise, that never actually happened. Between running around with my camera and talking to other people, there was just no time.

I did meet some interesting people, among which were Matt Biddulph and Deb Bassett. They both brought Canon 350Ds, which I also happen to own, so we had this little unphotoclub thing going on. Matt instantly handed over his newly acquired (same morning, in fact) Canon EF-S 10-22 lens when I, at that point a total stranger, asked for it. That’s the kind of trustingness that I like in people. I think at this point I’ve used his new lens more than he has. (Sorry about that.) Deb has a sixth sense for cameras. She is able to tell if any camera in a fifty meter radius is pointed at her and will break out a big smile (barely contained, here). We tried to see what would happen if we overloaded it by pointing 5 cameras at her, but she’s pretty resistant to that. I gave them my lensbaby to try. There was ‘oooh’-ing.

I also had a quick go at iRex’s e-ink device, the iLiad, handily brought by Edwin Mons. At first I thought the device was just an empty fake one, as seen with cellphones and PDAs in stores because the display looked like it was just printed plastic. But then it changed. This is what it looks like. Look at the screen, it’s beautiful. If it weren’t glossy, it could have been actual paper. (iRex: hint, hint.)

Anyway, of course the usual suspects were there, as were lots of other
interesting people. The list is at the BarCampAmsterdamII wiki and above-mentioned Matt has one too, so I’m not going to duplicate those.

I think everything went rather well. Some initial trouble with the WiFi on friday night after a thinko on my side causing everyone on the second Base Station I added not to be able to get DHCP going. Got an epiphany after the second Mac user complained and fixed it. No more complaints after that, except for Gijs Kruitbosch, who was reinstalling his laptop and was having trouble even getting Ethernet going, most probably due to something Ubuntu did wrong. Oh well.

So I had a good time at least, hope we’ll do this again soonish.

Or so far, at least. Apple has replaced their übercool iBook line of notebooks with something they call MacBook. As with any new product, a few good things have happened. For one, they’re finally widescreen. About time, too. They get audio in and dvi out, and will support screen spanning without an open firmware hack. Also the MagSafe thing is definitely good, I’ve also snagged my leg behind the power cord before, and they finally get Gigabit Ethernet. Nice as all that is, the list of disappointments weighs slightly heavier.

• The name. iBook versus MacBook. iBook definitely wins. (Of course this also goes for PowerBook versus MacBook Pro, but I suppose not wanting Power in the name for non-PowerPC machines makes some sense).
• The keyboard. Since the beginning of time, Mac keyboards (actually, all keyboards I’ve ever touched save a rubber one) have been slightly hollow. The MacBook does away with all that. I predict lots of typos for future MacBook-owners.
• The colour. Now, this doesn’t hold true for the white one of course but the black makes it look like a generic PC laptop. The white colour was the single most differentiating feature of the iBooks (until PC laptop manufactureres started making iBookalikes, anyway). And indeed: when the white colour is replaced, iBooks no longer look like iBooks. They look just like any other laptop, just done right (i.e., without two million lights and buttons and stickers and whatever).
• The processor. I still don’t like this Intel deal.
• The screen. Biggest letdown for me. Glossy screens are just unacceptable. If I wanted to buy a mirror, I’d visit IKEA. Not the Apple store. This is another reason the black one looks like a generic PC laptop: all those things come with piece-of-shit glossy screens, too. They’re unworkable as soon as you’re in any kind of light, at any angle that isn’t a dead-on 90º. Of course the good thing is you can tell immediately after opening your laptop that you forgot to do your hair in the morning.

So far, I’m not even so much as considering buying one until that final point gets fixed. No glossy screens for me, please, thankyouverymuch.

But still I managed to secure cyberhq.eu. Now I only have to wait for three SunRise applications to time out that PriceWaterhouseCoopers fucked up somehow, saying they don’t have the documents even though I sent them on time.

On a happier note, I finally found the artist I had been trying to find for a while now, who has some snazzy cool covers of such songs as Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. His name is Paul Anka, and he has been sitting right under my nose for half a year now, in the shape of Gilmore Girl Lorelai’s cool new dog. iTunes Link.

So Sun has been doing this ‘Try-and-Buy’ thing with their new T1-based Sun Fire T2000 server. Which means that you get to try for two months, a machine with up to an 8-core UltraSPARC T1, 16G of RAM and 2 73GB harddrives, for free.

A dead frog could have known I’d go out and get one.

I figured I wouldn’t max it out– I’d get the 8GB version with 8 cores. First application was denied, but the second went through amazingly quickly. I’ve heard about people having to wait weeks. It took about two days for the application to be accepted, and three more for delivery. I was definitely impressed at the speed of that.

So anyway, it came:

Pretty, isn’t it? I think it rivals Apple’s Xserve. The inside is clean as a clean thing, too. No picture of that, unfortunately, but again it rivals Apple’s Xserve.

Of course I had to try it out as soon as I had the chance. It came very well-wrapped. The unwrapping process took about 10 minutes, I think. Great care was given to even the simplest of parts. For instance, the two power cords (the thing has redundant powersupplies) came in two separate boxes, packed together in another box, shipped separately from the server itself.

Then the time came to plug it in. That’s where the trouble started: the machine doesn’t do any video-output at all. I know it’s not really necessary for a server box to have the latest and greatest in video acceleration hardware, but a most servers come with a MACH64 of some kind onboard so you can at least get up a text console without hassle. Not the Sun– it requires that you have a computer available with a serial connection. That’s all fine with me, I have such stuff anyway. But the serial connection for this uses an RJ-45 connector instead of the standard DB-9 one. And the only adapter I had for that didn’t seem to be the right one. Luckily I was able to fabricate my own:

Tip to Sun: for just that extra bit of customer satisfaction, send along this sort of adapter.

Once I had that going, setting up was a breeze. Solaris 10 came preinstalled, so all I had to do was answer some questions about the setup through the insanely slow serial connection (maybe I should have set up the network management before booting…) and it was up and running. Loudly, I might add. It makes more noise than a redundant array of vaccuum cleaners.

I’ll be running some benches on it, notably in serving anyMeta pages and doing database serving. Maybe I’ll try to get Linux going on it. It’ll also be interesting to see what the 2.5″ 10K rpm drives can do, speed-wise.

Even with just a pianist and (excellent, I might add) violinist accompanying her, she rocked.

Seats Smack-dab in the middle on row 6. Very nice. (Well actually smack-dab in the middle was an aisle of stairs, but the seat next to that? Mine.)

Also apparently neither pepsi stage nor heather’s management mind people bringing their large cameras, at least not to seated events, so I capitalised on that and took some proper pictures.

Went to amsterdam, got great noodles, missed the train, ate noodles, got to brussels, got to hotel, found cool small bar in dark alley, went to bed, woke up ridiculously early, went to ULB campus, saw RMS, had WiFi, stopped having WiFi, met some friends, had surprisingly nice tuna sandwich, saw more talks, had lots and lots of dinner with mozilla people, went to as many bars as possible in one night, went back to hotel, got up at 8, got up again at 9:15, went to see andy talk, left for lots and lots of lunch, had awesome cake, almost missed train home, got back home.

Nicely condensed, I’d say.

Let’s add cyberhq.sg to the mix, too. All I’m after now is the .aq version, which might prove difficult to get.

Actually I’m also after cyberhq.int. Anyone out there who can make that happen?

I am now the proud owner of cyberhq.hk. More internationality to come.

Oh and Akismet rocks.