Michael Wheeler

Fibre connectors – Craig Rodway

When configured correctly in a network QOS can be a wonderful thing. The ability to prioritize network traffic by it’s importance is crucial in most places that use VoIP systems to ensure that normal network traffic doesn’t kill off telephone calls. QOS can be both difficult to configure and simple depending on what systems you use and is being used in industry around the world.

With VoIP moving to home users now problems occur with keeping calls going when other home users are download or the like. Newer modems support QOS but still suffer from a simple flaw which impacts the usefulness of it. These modems can only control QOS for outgoing packets (uploads) and not incoming, becuase the QOS needs to be done on the ISP switches/routers. This flaw means that if someone packet floods your connection, QOS won’t be able to help your VoIP system.

There isn’t really a simple fix to this, however it would be nice if ISPs had a configuration page or the like to allow you to make simple QOS rules. Some people will want QOS on VoIP IPs/ports and others will want it on other services.

Who’s The Dick Writing Comments On My Blog – Laughing Squid

I thought I’d give wordpress a go now since I have a much more stable server to run it on. So far I’m liking the new interface (I know alot of people that previously used wordpress didn’t like it, however I like it compared to the old).

With a bit of tinkering it was pretty simple. A few plugins didn’t play nice, and mod rewrite was a little harder to do on lighttpd than apache, but with the help of another blog I was on my way to a happy start to wordpress.

I’ve used the wordpress blogger import and it has done a wonderful job so far :> Lets see how this goes (I’m still keeping a copy of my blogs in blogger just for history sake)

DEXTER (Season 2) – darlannex

I couldn’t let January be wasted with one useless post, so I may aswell make it two. A bit of a slow start but I’ve been busy. A few things have happened in the last 3 weeks, including me getting a new chair, finishing season 2 of Dexter, getting a second server, and accepting UNI. (Yeah I know that paragraph sucked balls in the grammar department, anyway, moving on)

I’ve accepted an offer to CQU – Rockhampton UNI for Information Systems, but I’m doing is externally, so I can work at the same time. Although I’ve accepted I haven’t selected my course yet, because I can’t seem to work out this damn site. I’m going to give them a call tomorrow.

A friend of mine from work has gotten me to watch Dexter season one and season two, and boy it’s good. I started to feel sorry for Dexter, and really like the story line. It gets so intense at parts and it’s a great show. I really enjoyed it.

The other two lesser points is that I have a second server http://treee.internaluse.net/ and I have a new chair for my desk (which I have put the arm rests on backwards, and CBA fixing it).

Basically that’s all that’s exciting in my life this month, and the rest has been work.

Video Chat with – TheSkorm

iChat was one of those programs I just never thought I would like, and never gave it ago. The main problem was that no one used AIM, Jabber or dotMac (now mobile me). While Skyping Peppery thought he would try to out iChat, since we were both using OS X. Once you open the ports, iChat is a fairly sexy IM client.

Screen sharing is amazing to use, and you can switch between your screen and the host easily. The only problem I find with it is that there is no copy and paste.

Webcam chat is fairly good, however it does rape the CPU. The effects worked pretty good for me, but Peppery just had problems everywhere when it came to the backdrops.

In general iChat is amazing to use and fun. However the limited support for clients and the dual buddy list kinda of ruins it. I just need more jabber friends I guess. I once spent over 3 months without MSN which was really nice.

Happy new year.