Monday, November 25, 2002

Experimentation with the Wi-Fi card continues, and I have several amazing discoveries to report.  First, and most interesting, I brought my laptop into my bedroom, inserted the wireless card, and fired it up.  When I looked at NetStumbler, it reported two networks found!  Ten seconds later I was surfing on a high-speed connection courtesy of a neighbor.  No idea who it is, and little chance of finding out: there are a couple hundred apartments in sight from my bedroom window.  Theoretically, I suppose I could buy one more wireless card, put it into my old laptop, and have an instant WLAN in my apartment... for free.  Scary.  I think I'll keep my DSL for the time being, but numerous possibilities are running through my head. My other discovery was that a few settings on my firewall (I use Tiny Personal Firewall 2.0) were causing network malfunctions.  Specifically, when executing an "ipconfig /renew", it would time out when contacting a DHCP server.  Now, it works fine... thanks to my friendly sysadmin at the office.  Thanks Bob!   2:52:42 PM    comment []

I went to see two music performances this weekend, both at Roxy.  This would be the third time that I have been to this venue in the last month (having seen Sasha there a few weeks ago), and I must admit that I like the space.  Perhaps it is Steve Dash's legendary Phazon sound system; it really does sound good in there. Thursday brought the Direct Drive drum and bass party to Roxy.  As per normal, the card had twenty-odd performers, but I wanted to hear Grooverider.  I had wanted to hear him live for years now, having heard of his fearsome reputation, and this would be my chance.  I had listened to Dillinger's remix of nis new single, and it's awesome. Grooverider started around 2am, following Fabio, his BBC Radio One partner.  The crowd was in full swing and energetic all around.  I admire the intensity of the drum and bass party people, they make house and trance fans look lethargic in comparison, but I digress... He cranked the volume up and threw down a wagonload of dark, trippy tracks.  It was darker than I expected (what was I thinking?) but really good.  It was a great soundtrack to get inside your head and "have it out with yourself", which I proceeded to do.  I didn't stay for the whole set, but left a confirmed Grooverider fan. Last night found me back at Roxy to hear Marc Almond as Soft Cell.  My friend's brother was in town, and he really wanted to go, so I went along.  It was a fun show, but 80's synth rock at full blast was a lot to take!  I didn't know most of their music, but plenty of people knew every single word of every song- it was a crowd of fanatics.  The encores held the classics "Tainted Love" and "Sex Toy", and the crowd went home smiling.   1:34:10 PM    comment []