NC10 Wireless N
Posted by Rob Holmes in Hardware on September 9, 2009
Hi, sorry for the slow posting, but here is a cool little mod I did the other day with my best mate Shakey!
I have a NC10 netbook with a Wireless G PCI-E card, I recently got a WRT300N and so ordered a Intel 5300 wireless N card and extra antenna. So this is a few pictures of fitting. I forgot to take some screenshots of inSSIDer before I changed the card, and after as I still playing with the settings.
This is the Intel 5300 I got from ebay for £10, from hong kong. Took 15-16days I think but its here!
Getting the back off wasn’t to hard. This guide was great!
This is the old WiFi card, with the 2 antennas placed around the screen. You remove the antennas and unscrew the card. Its flips up and you pull it out, really easy!
This is the new Wifi card in place and the new antenna placed around the HDD, I had to move it nearer to the HDD after this picture as there was a screw hole under it.
The results were.. not great. The signal is better, but not anywhere close to N, I was looking for range more than speed but got neither. XP reports 54mbps and inSSIDer reports it been 18mbps from the 300N, even tho its set to G=6mbps and N=108mbps (To test it) so I don’t think its reading right. I will have to run my own tests, but for now it is better than the old card but not worth the money. It may be the router tho. The router is a WRT300N V2 so no DD WRT at the moment (And there hasn’t been for a while) and so settings are a bit restricted. Still was a fun project to try and meant a cool look in to the NC10.
Desktop Sept 09
Posted by Rob Holmes in OS on September 2, 2009
Hey, sorry its been a bit, been a bit busy. Anyway I have installed Windows 7 RTM now and got my desktop set backup. I have also install rainmeter, a HUD program you see at the bottom of the desktop. I haven’t done a lot of modification on it yet, but may do in the future.
I will have a nice big update in a week or so, I have a WRT300N on way (Hopefully today) and a Intel 5300 Wifi N PCI-E Mini card for my laptop and a extra antenna. I will do a guide on how I fit the card and what differences there are in range and speeds. Till next time! (Might have a little TF2 video as well soon)
UK Internet Rant
Posted by Rob Holmes in Personal on August 17, 2009
You wouldn’t be reading this if it wasn’t for UK internet. Not because it allow me to post this on the internet, but because it throttled my TF2 so that someone can watch reruns of EastEnders on iplayer! Why should internet video rate higher than PC games, BUY A TV! Or better yet, a RECORDER! I know this because I have 70ms in game ping, but there are lags every 10 seconds, but I have just come out of game, loaded up youtube and listened to Prodigy – Shadow in 780p HD without it buffering once! How do ISP decide that QoS should rate internet video higher that internet games? Is it that a lot more people watch internet TV? Or is it because they think that people pay to watch TV online? If it wasn’t for gamers we would still be on 54kbps! We would have 2mb RAM PC’s and 800×600 screens.
Mind you, I should blame people watching youtube or iplayer. I should blame the TWATS at pipex, or is it tiscali? O no, my mistake its Talk Talk. Yes I (Or my parents) signed up for pipex 8mb (Up to 
) broadband about 1 /12 years ago. In that time, The company providing us has changed 3 hands! No letter or email has been sent to tell us, only the wonders for the 30kbps internet told me that. Now talk talk owns:
- AOL
- Tiscali (Which has: Pipex, HomeChoice)
- Pipex (Which Has: Nildram, Freedom2surf and Bulldog)
- Tele2
- One.Tel
And many more! You can see the mess they are in, and add to this that Carphone warehouse owns Talk Talk although I think they have been or will be listed as separate soon.
They are TOO big, competition was the idea behind BT giving access to the phone lines, but the phone lines are so shocking no body got any good speeds. So buy up all the company’s and no body can move company, so no body complains! The only slightly good internet in the UK is if your lucky enough to be in a area with LLU or Virgin cable, then you have loads of choice! (Well, not with virgin cable, but cable in general).
Anyway, that is my grip with the UK internet, the only QoS should be to slow P2P (Which I use and hate when its slow, but its last on my QoS list) and http and VOIP top. The rest should be left, they are all the same. VOIP needs to be high so that UK customers start moving to IP phones and VOIP and get off the old Telecom system we have.
Thank you, and good night. Off to watch EastEnders in HD while downloading from a P2P network and.. and! Watching youtube! While some poor sod on TF2 gets lag…
This was best out of 3:
Now that is bad, and that's without throttling...
Desktop Update
Posted by Rob Holmes in OS on August 15, 2009
Not much of a post, but I thought I would show you my new desktop wallpaper. I’m still on 7232 build but have 7600 and a CD key (Genuine for once) to go on once I get my server domain working.
Got the wallpaper from here
More soon!
New TF2 engine update include armour and crossbow!
Posted by Rob Holmes in Games on August 10, 2009
No, I’m lying. Its just a bug on TF2 I found today when I was spending my monthly 5 mins on TF2 (ROFL, not)
For now that is all, I will have to come up with something else to update this blog its getting slow. Will be reinstalling soon so there is something. Also looking to get rainmeter and try some themes out, not on gaming rig, but test rig. Till then enjoy this!
BTW this was posted on Minefield (Firefox is for IT noobs, get the latest!)
Firefox 3.7 Mockups – My new theme!
Posted by Rob Holmes in Software on July 29, 2009
In the last few days Mozilla have been playing with Photoshop and come up with 2 mockups for what Firefox 3.7 and Firefox 4 might look like! 1 theme developer was very quick of the mark and has made a 3.7 theme for the current version 3.5. So I thought I would try it out, and after and bit of tweaker I got this:
This is my slightly different take on it, I don’t think you need to see the tools menu all the time, so its hidden. I may also yet change the font colour on the tabs, as its too light.
Here is the ‘menu’ bar shown by pressing Alt, I have placed my bookmarks and the bookmarks button and tools button on this tool-bar, nice. 
I will post some pictures of the tab colour when I have a bit more of a play!
EDIT: This is all I could do, but its a bit better, I had a play with shadow and colours but a simple blod on the tabs helped most.
Code: (Replace the stylish code)
.tab-text {
color: black !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
text-shadow: white 1px 1px 1px !important; }#sidebar-title {
background: url(chrome://global/skin/tabactive2.png) !important;
color: black !important;
text-shadow: white 1px 1px 1px !important;
font-weight: bold !important;}.tabs-newtab-button {
margin-top: 5px !important;
-moz-border-radius-topleft: 3px !important;
-moz-border-radius-topright: 3px !important;
background: url(chrome://global/skin/tabinactive2.png) !important;
border-top: 1px solid !important;
-moz-border-top-colors: rgba(255, 255, 255, .50) !important;}.tabs-newtab-button:hover {
background: url(chrome://global/skin/tabhover2.png) !important;}.tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox > .scrollbutton-up, .tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox > .scrollbutton-down{
border: 0 !important;
background: transparent !important;
height: 21px !important;}#viewGroup .viewButtonLabel, #BrowserPreferences .paneButtonLabel{
color: black !important;
}
#reload-button,#reload-button:hover {
margin-left: -8px !important;}
.tabbrowser-tabs tab {
-moz-border-radius-topleft: 4px !important;
-moz-border-radius-topright: 4px !important;
-moz-border-left-colors: #959595 !important;
-moz-border-top-colors: #959595 !important;
-moz-border-right-colors: #959595 !important;
}#identity-box, .searchbar-engine-button {
-moz-border-radius-topleft: 3px !important;
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 3px !important;
}#urlbar, .searchbar-textbox {
-moz-border-radius-topleft: 3px !important;
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 3px !important;
-moz-border-radius-topright: 3px !important;
-moz-border-radius-bottomright: 3px !important;
}#main-window #PersonalToolbar {
padding-top: 0px !important;
padding-bottom: 0px !important;
}
Garden Update – Sneak Peak
Posted by Rob Holmes in Personal on July 25, 2009
Ok, I havn’t been updating my blog so much, I just never fined the time..
Anyway, I thought for the 2 people that read I would show you 2 pics of our garden, as its pretty much done.
Here is a great bridge my dad made is a little help form me. Not bad! I have put one of our coal trucks on the rails which run round it.
And here is a view from my window.
I will post more pics, but that will do you for now. We are now on to laying the track.
Thanks!
COD4 MW2 £55 or Pre-Order at 29.99 inc P+P!
Posted by Rob Holmes in Games on July 17, 2009
Now I had to post this, COD4 was a great game and I loved it, but due friends not playing it online, I have not been playing it much, so when I saw COD4 MW2, i thought, umm maybe. Then I got an email from PLay.com with it for 29.99, I thought, maybe I should. Then I saw this, that is MAD! £55, I thought fuck it, £30 for a game that people will be buying at £55 at release! I only live once lets get it!
So order it now here from play.com or Amazon.com
As a side note, I have been playing freelancer again, which is pretty old but found a very cool mod that was released July 9th which you can drive battleships, gun boats, you have more systems and trade routes, better graphics, loads. Check it out here, more on it soon!
Garden Update – Part III
Posted by Rob Holmes in Personal on July 8, 2009
So now we are filling the hole back in, we have a bit better update than ‘Wow that’s a big hole init?’ and more of ‘This is what we have done, and its not just digging a hole!’ So we have built the inner wall for the track round, steps to get over the track and on to the path, and connected the circle line to the new section.
This shows the steps and the ‘tunnel’ where the 2 tracks lines will go under. It will be decking on top and the brick that is there will be smaller but will box this end in to look like 2 exits.
Another view with the 2 points, there will be 2 more Y’s at the far end, to split off on to the track though the heathers.
This image shows the wall where the track runs along, we have left a gap between these 2 rocks so we can put a bridge in, like my lovely paint drawing
O BTW that stone that hangs over the track will be made small, as it is currently to low, we will just take a bit off the bottom.
The other side with the wall awaiting the track.
This shows the new sidings that are now straight, I hope to get 3 tracks along there, but that is in the future.
So, for now, that’s it!
My Desktop July
Posted by Rob Holmes in OS on July 3, 2009
Well I just reinstalled again after waiting for ages! I wanted to get away from the RC and get on a new RTM branch build and see some performance increases. So after looking at windows7center i got the 7232 build, there are some newer but are not orginal ISO’s and some have activation issues. The 7232 was ment to have desktop performance benifits with games not changing, so lets see!
So after installing and setting up steam and skype I got round to my wallpaper, now I have glass effects on firefox and so I like to see the wallpaper behind it, and when firefox is full screen your wallpaper must show something. Must are just plain colours round the edge (eg top) and the object in the middle, which means the glass effect shows black, with no detail. I did find this abit ago, but only just found it today at the big enough resilution.
This is my firefox with ‘All Glass Mod‘ addon which is in development sage.
The wallpaper can be found here
Now just got to tweak the OS, which I may, i say MAY do a video on, might… Or might not.
Comments