Puteri’s World

I have not uploaded any new photo to my Flickr account in a long while. Today I checked to see what kind of pictures I have there. I remember why I opened that account. I wanted to embed a slide show about the time I spent in Vietnam and I thought Flickr had the best embed code for sharing a slide show.

I decided to upload more pictures today so I can build another slide show and post it on one of my blogs. The recent trip my family made to the longhouse to celebrate the Gawai festival should be an interesting slide show.

One of the latest things with Flickr is that you can now upload and share your videos on Flickr. I already have a YouTube and Google Video accounts, and I am not sure if I want to bother with uploading my videos to Flickr. It would not be such a big deal if I had a super high speed internet connection! But I don’t!

And oh, before I share the slide show of the longhouse trip, I need to upload a few more photos so it will be a nice slide show.

My earlier wifi booster caused the readers at my Iban language blog much amusement! They had never seen anything quite like it but as I gleefully pointed out to them that despite it’s ugly look it worked very well!

I subsequently found a cheap aluminium strainer and used that instead of the earlier version. The strength of the signal it picks up is about the same as the earlier version. It can go up another 2% which is quite negligible. But the best thing about the new version is that the signal strength remains at “very good” for most of the time.

This version certainly looks a lot better than the previous one!

I find that the current location, which is on the balcony outside my old bedroom, is where it picks up the strongest signal from the city’s free wifi service. I’ve tried the downstairs patio and the signal at best is only at 30% strength.

So I’ll leave my wifi booster where it is right now. I do, however, take my wifi adapter off when I am done surfing the web. I do not want the only wifi adapter that I have to be exposed to the elements!

I finally found a USB extender cable that works with my laptop. It’s 5 meters long and and a good thing I got one that is that long!

I paid RM 25 (about US$8) for the cable and didn’t feel like spending RM 27 for a metal strainer for the wok-fi! How come the strainer costs more than the cable?

Anyway, I started with a metal strainer (from my mother’s kitchen drawer) that was about 6 inches in diameter and which I lined with aluminium foil, and strapped onto the rails of the upstairs balcony at my parents house. It increased the signal strength by about 13% to about 36%, which I thought was quite good.

Today, I scrounged around the house to see if there was something I could use that was wider than 6 inches in diameter. I found the cover of an old table fan, and it was about a foot in diameter. I attached it to a piece of wood, wrapped it in aluminium foil, strapped it onto a metal rod and strapped that rod to the rails of the upstairs balcony facing the closest wi-fi hot spot in the area.

Ta da! The signal strength has increased to 60% and it hovers between three and four bars! And the wi-fi is is not from a neighbour! I was able to connect to the free wi-fi service from the city! Woohoo!

This is how the contraption looks like! Ya, ya, I used the aluminium foil from the previous pot lid. I should put a new one around it, and who knows the signal received will be much stronger, eh!

Who knew the metal cover of an old table fan could double as a wi-fi signal booster!

When I saw that headline on the online version of the UK Telegraph, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Oh no, I hope I don’t have that disorder!”

When I read the story further the description of the person who had the disorder did not fit me.  Phew! According to the story, sufferers spend “unhealthy amounts of time playing online games, viewing pornography or emailing” and they even forget to sleep! Games? Porn? Emailing? Nah, not me! Blogging is my thing! Reading the news is my thing!

But I could spend a lot less time in front of my computer though.  I should spend more time exercising and getting myself in better shape!

Doug sent me a link to show me how to build a “wok-fi”. What do you think?

The metal strainer used for the “wok-fi” is easy enough to find.  The only problem is the USB extender cable.  My laptop does not give out enough power/current to go through even a 1.5 meter cable.  Like I mentioned in my previous post, the message I got was “Device Unknown”.

I did some research and found out that there is such a thing as a USB repeater cable.  This cable will boost the energy running through the regular USB extender cable.  I doubt I will be able to find the repeater cable in any of the computer shops in town.  But who knows, eh.  I will check out some of the computer shops in town and see if I can find a USB repeater cable.

For now, I am using my brother’s new laptop and it does a far better job of picking up the city’s free wi-fi signal.  Hence the more frequent updates on my blogs!  :wink: 

This was what my youngest brother rigged up for me to help boost the wi-fi signal reception! It seemed to work for a while, and the next day, alas, the wi-fi signal was as weak as ever!

A pot lid wrapped in aluminum foil and my wi-fi adapter sitting on that lid. The power from the laptop was too weak for a USB cable extender. Otherwise that pot lid would have been hung from a high window and I am sure the wi-fi signal received would have been stronger!

The signal received seemed quite impressive at first. Too bad it did not stay that way! Today I had to borrow my oldest brother’s laptop which seemed to do a far better job at picking the wi-fi signal with his built-in antennae, er, what exactly is that thing called? Modem?

I sure do miss my DSL connection back home in California!

I have been having some success at picking up some wi-fi signal on my laptop from my old bedroom in my parents’ house. The problem is that the signal is so weak that it comes in and out and it can be very frustrating when you are trying to read something online or post a blog entry! I have given up using the slow-as-snail dial up connection.

Today I bought a USB extender hoping to use it to hang my external wi-fi adapter from a window. Since the signal that that adapter picks up is so weak, hanging it a little higher on a window might help with boosting the signal a bit. So I have been told!

And that was not the only thing I have been told. I was told to hang my adapter in the middle of an aluminum foil wrapped metal strainer or even in the middle of a pie tin! Unfortunately I have not been able to test if indeed the method works because the extender that I bought received a “windows does not recognize the USB device” message! What the heck?

I took the USB extender back to the shop from which I bought it and exchanged it for another one. I thought maybe the one I bought earlier was defective. The replacement also received the same kind of response from Windows.

So I am stuck. My internet connection is still iffy … big time frustration! Tomorrow I’ll go back to the shop and bring my wi-fi adapter with me so the technician at the shop can test and see if he can find a USB cable that will work with the wi-fi adapter.

It’s been a while since I have been faced with such lousy internet connection. Not since my early days of the internet using a slow modem, slow dial-up and slow computer processor!