Week of 10th November, 2014

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Monday, 10th November

New fortnight starts today. It's a mixed shift, all swaps from 6 a.m. starts. This is no problem for me - I'm not an early bird, so 6 o'clock in the morning ought not to be allowed.

And being swapped to 10 (as today) means checking short-form material all the way.

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Tuesday, 11th November

Armistice Day (Veteran's Day in America)

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the 11th hour, of the 11th Day, of the 11th Month,
And at the Going Down of the Sun,
And in the Morning,
We will remember them.

adapted from Laurence Binyon - For the Fallen

More of the same, plus observance of the two minutes silence at 11 a.m.

But before I left for work, Postie delivered a long, thin cardboard box. It's the BT HomeHub 5, which I'll need to commission the fibre broadband, when it's installed on Thursday. I can't expect Mr. Engineer to reconfigure the Draytek, so we'll bring the new connection up with the HH5. Whether the HH5 remains in service after Mr. Engineer leaves, is currently an open question.

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Wednesday, 12th November

So, just in case my present internal wiring doesn't meet with Mr Engineer's approval, I need to get that live RJ-45 installed in the stairwell, so that routing new broadband cabling will be easier. And while I'm at it, I'll test all the existing wiring to make sure it's GigE-clean. The cable is all Cat5 or better, I just don't know that all 4 pairs are correctly terminated - in fact, I know that at least one cable run is mis-terminated.

I borrowed a LAN cable tester from work yesterday, so that I can confirm correct wiring, and correct as necessary.

But first, I need to drill a hole in the wall from the stairwell into the study. I have the drill bit, and an electric drill, so this can't be too hard. Right?

Wrong! The masonry drill bit is only 100mm long, and the wall, plus the two skirting boards (Merkin: baseboards) is thicker than that. But how much thicker? Do I go and buy a 150mm drill? Or a 200mm? Just for safety, I'll go for a 200. Sarah has left her car here, asking me to fill it, at least partially. She's running on fumes, at present. So I'll use her car, put petrol in it, and then get the drill bit, from the local B&Q DIY superstore. And how did B&Q land that URL?

Petrol was easy, but B&Q had 150 or 400mm masonry drills in the 10mm diameter I need. No 200s. I got the 400, on the basis that it's better to have too long than not long enough.

And I needed that 400 - the wall (breeze block (maybe even 2 skins) and 2 skirting boards) came up about 250mm thick. But I have the hole, and I can poke the loose end of a Cat5 through it.

Then I tested all the older Cat5 runs. And all but one had problems, mostly with the pairs you don't need for 100Mbit. So correct those, and now I get green lights everywhere on the tester - except screens, of course. I use unscreened cable, so there will be no screen continuity. And then I terminated and tested the new "Study 2" cable run. And that's good, too.

The scaffolders are supposed to attend Mum's house this afternoon, to derig the scaffolding, after which our tame Polish builder will put up the new canopy over the back door, and finish painting the exposed woodwork. So that's good. Now I need to chase the builders for the dormer roof works... And the solar people, because they have to remove the panels first.

<pause>

And all the phone numbers for the solar people are out of service... ungood. But the local builders I contacted are still around, so I resolved a communications foul-up, and now await their estimate for all works - scaffolding, panel removal, new roof, panel re-instatement and scaffolding removal. They will probably sub-contract the solar work.

Later: ESA reports that the Philae lander, released by the Rosetta probe in orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, has successfully carried out a passive soft landing on the comet. Telemetry is being received. The Twittersphere, of course, erupted.

Unexpected video received from Philae

One poster claimed the above image is a still from "Unexpected video received from Philae". It is, of course, of "The Clangers". I wish I had the creativity to make that link. But I don't - which is, perhaps, a good thing.

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Thursday, 13th November

BT fibre broadband installation this morning (and maybe afternoon, too) So I'm likely to lose service early tomorrow, for some few hours.

On the Day: Well, the BT Openreach troops pitched up about 10:15. It turns out that ADSL-capable wiring and filters work perfectly well with BT fibre broadband, wich is FTTC, with a VDSL2 copper last few yards. Never mind "last mile", VDSL runs no more than some few hundred yards. But if you have reasonably modern wiring, specifically the BT NTE5 Linebox, which is the demarcation point between BT external plant and your internal wiring, and a suitable filter faceplate on that NTE5, you're good-to-go.

We, BT men and I, confirmed all working with the BT-supplied HomeHub 5, and they left with many comments on the lines of "Draytek is good kit, lots of businesses use it."

It is, indeed, good kit, but for some obscure reason, despite escalating the problem up to the highest tech support level I could reach, I could not get the Draytek 2860n+ to bring up a PPPoE connection to BT's upstream router. VDSL2 bitstream lock at 60-odd MBit/sec, yes. PPPoE, not so much. And that highest level is a for-pay one, but at least it's "no fix, no fee." I think I need to bespeak Draytek UK's customer support. Which isn't very good - they even require log-in to read their customer fora.

But until I expend a Round Tuit on that, I'm using the HH5 as a glorified VDSL2 modem. And it works quite well at that - I'm seeing in the near vicinity of 60Mbit/sec down and 20MBit/sec up on the new Infinity 2 connection, via the WAN2 GigE connection on the Draytek. And it's uncapped - completely. There may be a Fair Use cap if you're sucking 40 MBit or so 24/7, but I don't intend to get aywhere near that.

A bit later, I thought I'd struck a rock - Catch-Up TV (get-iplayer and the $ky+HD box) could not connect and download. I tried various experiments, in conjunction with BT's first-level customer service, and eventually it all started working - I have absolutely no idea why. But it is now working, so I won't try to mend it further.

Now I need to negotiate with Demon. They have a "loyalty" product for people who decide to migrate their connection away. This allows you to retain your hostname for as long as you pay the rquisite fee, which is some few UKP/month. And the worth of that few UKP has just reduced further - there's no newsfeed via Demon any more.So I need to hit up one of the free Usenet servers - probably Eternal September. People on the demon.ip.support.turnpike newsgroup have been commenting that it "Just Works".

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Friday, 14th November

Got a phone call from a solar installer, courtesy my local builder, and we have agreed that he will attend to inspect the job next Tuesday morning. So progress is being made - slow progress, but progress none-the-less.

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Saturday, 15th November

It would appear that the Philae soft landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko wasn't quite the success it seemd to be. Apparently, the lander bounced, twice, on touchdown, and ended up some distance away from where it was supposed to be. Proximate cause of this appears to be the failure of the 2 "harpoons" to fire, and anchor the lander. This was rather anticipated, hence the harpoons, since the surface gravity of the comet is about 5% of that of Earth. You could jump upwards at escape velocity there.

Philae apparently came to final rest canted on a rock, in the shade of a cliff, which means light input to the solar panels is insufficient for operation past the on-board battery life. As a result, Philae has gone into hibernation. It is hoped that, when the comet gets closer to perihelion, and insolation increases, that the lander will experience a positive power budget, and wake up again. Meanwhile, considerable science data has been returned, and there will be more, since Rosetta is in excellent health.

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Sunday, 16th November

So that's the weekend at work completed. I need to say no more than, "work was worked, all completed satis."

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