Month: November 2003

Open Source meets the Open Ocean

Open Source meets the Open Ocean. Even the lobster fishermen get it…

Seafaring the Smart Way. The mariner’s life has always been fraught with danger, especially in the treacherous North Atlantic. This will never change, but ‘smart buoys’ — which contain information about sea conditions — can buy a sailor valuable time. Michelle Delio reports from Portland, Maine. [Wired News]

Now, if only we could drop a couple of those buoys in Lake Lewisville, we’d be all set.

SSID woes

My new laptop has an Intel Centrino processor so wireless is built-in. It was working fine at the office. And, I could connect to several of my neighbors’ networks ; ) but I couldn’t connect to my own. This evening I finally realized I was falling victim to the broadcast SSID “feature” in Microsoft’s Wireless Zero Configuration functionality. It turns out if you aren’t broadcasting your SSID but another network is, XP will always connect to the network broadcasting the SSID no matter what you try. Here’s the FAQ item on D-Link’s site. As soon as I turned SSID broadcasting on, I was a-okay. My WEP encryption key will keep my front yard from turning into a cybercafe.

Great sailing at Lewisville today

Great sailing today. The wind was way up on Lake Lewisville. Lots of other sailboats out. Dad decided to bring one of his dogs, Sassy, along for her inaugural sail. She was pretty excited. About ten minutes after we got the sails up, she decided she’d go for a swim. She had been acting like she was going to jump in despite our reprimands. She finally couldn’t take anymore. She took a leap right off the stern. We immediately executed the dog overboard procedure. My son stood lookout while I eased the main sheet and fell off the wind. We then came back through all points of sail, tacked and headed back towards Sassy who was frantically trying to chase us down. Unfortunately, we blew right by her. We had to come about again. I came alongside with her to starboard but we were really screaming. I let the main luff while Dad hung over the starboard rails to snag his dog. We still had too much speed. If Sass had been wearing water skis she would have easily been up and probably could have slalomed. After a good keel hauling, Dad and I managed to pull her in. She thanked us by shaking water all over the place. Our slip neighbor, Randy, was coming towards us. With our jib flying, our main luffing, and Dad and I hanging over the side by our toenails, he probably wondered what in the hell was going on. “Dog overboard,” we explained. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. The three of us kicked back and enjoyed the sun and wind while Sassy barked and howled from her confines in the cabin below.