Finally, something that the kids can't break

I attached the surround speakers in the home theatre this morning. Amazingly, I found all four speaker cables in the first attempt! It's really scary sawing nasty big holes in my nice new walls. Now all I need is a Blu-ray that will make use of the 7.1 channels.

The hybrid

My dad's class at school has been creating and racing HPVs and Hybrids for the past eight years or so. Pictured is their latest monster! It's powered by a 72cc petrol engine and an electric motor, and sports a fully adjustable suspension system. It will be competing in the 24 hour race at Maryborough this weekend.

Networked? Yes. Yes it did.

It's been ages between posts, but it's so hard to find the time! There's so much to share; but there's nothing as interesting and rare as a computer networking success story!

As mentioned previously, we are currently unable to access ADSL at our new home, so the only affordable option for Internet access is wireless broadband. The modem (Huawei E5832) we chose has a built-in wireless router, but there are no Ethernet ports.

My network consists of a desktop PC, laptop and a plethora of video game consoles (two that require a hard connection, and three that are wireless). The desktop PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 are connected by cable to a Asus wireless router, as a physical connection is required to reliably stream content from the PC to the consoles.

The devices connected to the Asus router could not gain Internet access because there is no way of physically connecting the modem to the Asus router.

The chumps (and chumpettes) at whirlpool.net.au directed me to a free third-party firmware upgrade for the Asus router, called DD-WRT. This has unlocked a tonne of features supported by the Broadcom chipset, but blocked by the Asus' default firmware. Now the Asus wireless router runs in Client Bridge mode, with a wireless connection to the Huawei modem.

The consoles can access the Internet! But before you get too excited, I haven't tested the physical connection between the PC and the consoles. I can't imagine any problems there though (unless I give it any amount of thought).