A wrote last week about the home networking of my house and the addition of hard wired connections into the new garage conversion.  Well over the last couple of days we have been trying to get it working and finally we have managed it.

It has been causing tremendous problems as it would simply not work.  Everything seemed to going fine, the cables were laid and then plugs put on one end of all four cables that were going into the router and then face plates on the opposite end to provide a socket on the wall.  However when a patch lead was plugged in and then into a computer nothing.

So we tried just putting as plug on the end of the wire coming out of the wall were the face plate would go on and it worked.  Therefore it was clear that it was the face plate connection.  I am not an expert on this but the plugs going into the router where wired as type B (the norm).  The faceplates were also wired type B and then a B to B patch lead to the computer.  This provides a ’straight through’ connection but it wouldn’t work.  Therefore we did the face plates as type A crossing over the connection and then tried a straight through patch cable.  Still nothing!  Finally trying a cross over patch cable works, which makes sense as the connection is now crossed over twice.

Wierd but we at least have it working apart from the dining room port which we can only assume has a fault in the wire.

With the garage conversion in full swing I decided that it was time to do some home networking and get dedicated wired connections around the house.  There are several reasons for doing this, and with a little help from Matt it will be all fairly simple, if not hard work.

So you might be asking why I would want hard wired connections when I have a perfectly functioning wireless router that works a treat?  Good question.  The answer is two fold really.  The first reason, and the real reason why I am doing this is because I may well in the future invest in an AirPort Express Base Station from Apple so that I can stream my music from iTunes to a set of speakers in the new dining room which is part of the garage conversion.  I have found that streaming music (mp3) via a 54mbps router can be a little jumpy and therefore it is best to do it hard wired.  The second reason is that it is clearly better to have a wired connection as it is more reliable than wireless.

First job was to think about where the router would have to be placed so that I could get the wires around the house.  We quickly decided that we were not going to be tearing down walls and plasterboard and therefore we decided to go outside the house rather than inside.  So the router is going at the back of the TV in the lounge and the 4 wired ports in the router will be used to provide a wired connection to 4 rooms - the office (obviously), the new dining room and gym and finally Harry’s new nursery room.

So with the wires in place and tacked around the house it was time sort out the new garage conversion in terms of putting the boxes on the wall etc.  Those were screwed on and with there being no flooring or plasterboard there the wires were just tucked down the side of the floor boards.  Then we had to drill 4 holes.  Two behind the TV in the lounge to take the four wires out, 1 in Harry’s room and one through to the office.  Once they are all connected up with plugs and face plates its job done.  Here is a little video on the finished product.

This week saw the arrival of 3 new gadgets to my clutches.  A laptop (works really hence the ‘mostly’), my new iPod nano (after much deliberation as to which to buy) and an portable, external hard drive for carrying my documents and files around with me.  So how has mu experience of using these gadgets gone then?

Lets start with the laptop.  Although it shames me to say it I purchased a PC rather than a Mac.  The reasons were simple.  The laptop will be used to power the interactive whiteboard and work and the classes I teach all use Windows.  Therefore I could hardly demonstrate on a Mac and then let them use Windows.  Also price was a consideration.  I have to say though that I have regretted ever moment since the purchase.

Lets get this straight first of all, that if you want a laptop then the Toshiba Satellite Pro A300D is a good buy.  With an AMD Turion x 64 2GHz processor (Dual Core) and 3GB ram along with its 160GB hard disk the computer is great and provide ample computing power in order to do most tasks.  This is not were my fault lies.  As most laptops do these days, it came with Vista.  No problem there until you get to the fact that it was Vista Home Premium and you cannot marry Home Premium with a domain.  Therefore I would have to be wiped and rebuilt using Windows Vista Business (which can’t play DVDs and so on….).

The process seemed simple, you shut down, insert the Windows Vista Business DVD, reboot from the DVD drive and then let the disk do its job answering a few question here and there.  Then we booted and finished you download all the drivers from the Toshiba website, install them and hey presto you have a great spec laptop hooked up to the domain and away you go.  If only it was that simple.  Installing Vista Business was fine but the drivers afterwards, not so good.  I couldn’t get the display to work (in fact it is still not working properly - see below) and also the wireless card was not working and I just kept getting an error messages saying that the hardware was not present.  Armed with this failure I decided to plug in an Ethernet cable straight into the router (the LAN driver was fine) and then see if Vista could find the drivers itself.  It managed to find the Wireless Drivers but not the graphics card.  Therefore I went straight to the ATI website for the latest drivers.  I selected the one that it said on dabs.com were I bought the laptop, however although it displays correctly on the laptop I cannot get the external display to the projector to display in 16:9 aspect ratio or even letterbox mode.  I have had to settle with the projector cutting off the start menu!

Hassle from the word go are these PCs.  If it was an Apple you would literally just put the disc in and press go.  Petty we are not using Mac’s at work.  Talking Mac brings me onto Gadget number two for the week - the iPod.

In the end I decided to go for the iPod Nano 3rd generation (the square one).  They were going cheap on Apple’s refurbished stock store and therefore I picked up the 8GB model for less than £75.  Great value.  First impressions are good.  It is slim and small with excellent quality music and video playback.

Finally today my external hard disk arrive.  I went for a Seagate Freeagent portable drive with a 250GB capacity.  Again I have only had limited use so far but it is small and seems to connect to the laptop fine, which is what I intend to use it for.

P.S. sorry to Lisa Bettany for the title of this post, but it just seemed appropriate.  Visit her blog and you will see what I mean.

First of all let me get this straight.  I love Safari - great browser and I loath Internet Explorer with a passion.  But Firefox has that little bit extra, that makes it the browser of choice for me.  So why is it that Firefox is the browser that I choose to use all the time?  Here we explore the benefits of using Mozilla Firefox over any other browser.

There are the obvious advantages that are advertised all over the Firefox website such as the increased speed and security and the great built in browser search features that let you search sites you have already visited before.  But to be honest it is not these functions that excite me.  As a web designer I think that Firefox lends the greatest helping hand yet when it comes to coding a site.  Frankly I can remember how I coped without the Firefox addon called Firebug.

Firebug is quite simply amazing.  So what does it do?  Well it enables you to debug your code when creating a site that is otherwise very difficult.  It also enables you to check which pieces of the code are doing certain things and it also tells you which part of the style sheet is responsible for styling any area of the page.  It is a remarkable little plugin or addon for Firefox that makes my life a whole lot easier.  It integrates really well with the browser in that you can have it at the bottom of the screen as a bar or you can use it in its own window when viewing the code for sites.  Another great feature is that you can even edit the HTML code and CSS styling in the Firebug window and the changes are reflected in the web pages itself.  This is great for checking whether some code with work on not before committing to it for real.

Firebug is a truly magnificant piece of software running as an addon for Firefox 2 and 3 that is a must for all web developers and designers.  It saves you masses of time, and I recommend downloading it today.

A few months ago my mobile phone contact was coming to the end and therefore I decided to look around for some cheaper deals.  Also with mobile broadband growing and growing all the time I thought that I should give that ago to.  I found that Three were the best in terms of price and I thought that 5 months on I would reflect on the service I am getting.

When the Three company first came out a few years ago now there were the inevitable poor reviews of a second rate service and therefore I was wary at first about using them.  However it seems that recently they have improved the level of their coverage and I knew one or two friends that had mobile phones on the Three network.  Therefore I decided to take a look.  Wanting both a new phone contract and a start with mobile broadband I thought that I was in a better position and I was right.  Therefore I was set up with a £12 a month phone contract (100 mix and match) and a half price mobile broadband deal at £5 per month (1GB download limit).  This is excellent value for money at just £17 per month for the two contracts.

So five months on, what has been my experience of using Three?  Well I have to say that overall they have been excellent (touch wood!).  I have always managed to get a very strong signal with my mobile (Nokia 6288) and I have had a consistent 1MB broadband connection with the mobile surfing.  There has only been one occasion when the broadband was slow (around 70kbps).

So what are my top tips for buying mobile broadband?

• There is nothing wrong with Three mobile broadband and it provides excellent value for money (cheaper that their competitors)
• A 1GB limit is plenty as long as you are not going to be using your mobile broadband for watching BBC iPlayer our YouTube videos etc.
• You won’t use it as much as you thought you would, so don’t spend too much on it - a 1GB limit is fine
• Try signing up with a new contact as a new customer as there are significant savings to be made.

Yesterday Apple announced the new iPod Nano.  I don’t know about you but it only feels like two minutes since the last release of the Nano?  Anyway I just wanted to write this post for two reasons.  Firstly to give my first impressions, and secondly to get your advice.

So the new iPod Nano.  Looking at the photos and watching the Keynote speech from Steve Jobs on the Apple Website, it seems that they have gone back to a design that is more like the 2nd generation design - the longer and thinner look.  There are some added features but to be honest are they features that we really want?  HD video on an iPod?  I have to say that my first impressions are that I think the old iPod design is better, what do you think?

The thing is what to do.  I have an iPod 60gb of which I only ever seem to use around 20GB, unless I fill it with video for a holiday.  Therefore do I try and flog my iPod and buy a new nano?  Or should I flog my iPod and buy one of the older nano, in the style that I like better?  Decisions, decisions.  Your thoughts, as always are welcome.

RSS feeds are a great way to keep up to date with your favourite blogs and websites without having to visit the sites every day.  In Firefox you can subscribe to RSS feeds from your favourite sites without having to use additional software.  In this tutorial I will show you how to subscribe to an RSS feed in Firefox 3.

The first thing that you need to be aware of when using Firefox is knowing when a website has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.  In Firefox 3 this is simple.  In the main address bar at the top of the screen, to the right hand side in the address bar you will notice a small RSS icon.  Click this icon to view the pages feed.  Sometimes a site will have more than one type of feed (for example atom and RSS), so here you can choose which to use.

The feed for that page is displayed on the page, which in Firefox will be a list of page titles and a small excerpt of what each pages content is.  At the top of the screen you have the option to choose which program you want to use in order to subscribe to that feed.  Make sure that the selection box says “Live Bookmarks” and you can then press the subscribe button.  Firefox 3 will then ask you where you want to store the feed.  You can either store this in your bookmarks toolbar or in the bookmarks menu.  Select where it is to be stored and press OK.

Thats it.  Go to that feeds bookmark that you have just created and then you will see a list of all the articles or updates from that feed, which keeps you up to date when there has been a new article written.  Really easy and very very handy.