Most of you can skip this quite safely, and I apologise for cluttering up your friends lists with it, but I’m hoping the IT bods in the audience can help me…

Well, despite my best efforts, it looks like my all in one network box just isn’t up to the job, even on a small house network like this – the port forwarding is shonky, and it falls over under anything that remotely resembles load.

So, boys and girls, I need product recommendations for the following:

An ADSL modem.
A router with built in firewall, DHCP and NAT.
A wireless hub.

If you can recommened me a different all in one box to the one I’m using (A Netgear DG824M), that you’ve used in anything resembling a serious manner, than that’s good too. My requirements aren’t vast, you understand – I wanted to hang a low-traffic server and network of a couple of personal PCs off the back of it, and be able to copy up to say, half a gig of data at a time from one machine to another without the whole thing grinding to a halt – I don’t even need the data to move fast, just to not kill the whole network. That’s all.

Suggestions for the nerd on a budget?

The other week, as part of that three questions meme, Andrew asked why I don’t write more comics. You can see the answer I gave him here, but it’s something I want to think on a bit more here, because I really haven’t written anything since last November, and other than that, I haven’t really written much at all in the last couple of years.

Introspective burblings

Except that, no, I really don’t. I think I broke the machine.

I’m going to be in Edinburgh from the 28th of May to the 1st of June – I’ve got wedding stuff to do on the Friday evening (the early part, at least, but I should be able to, ooh, go to the pub, or something radical like that) later on, and likewise on the Saturday, but the Sunday and Monday are more or less my own. Anything interesting going on?

(I may well need to sort out a couple of nights crashspace, since I think I only have a hotel for the Friday and Saturday nights, but I can sort that, or another hotel out later.)

Well, there was bmovie on Friday. That was good. I woke up in pain, which means I don’t need to feel guilty about missing the gym.

Then there was coffee on Saturday, or rather, a pitcher of “Woo-woo”. I am never ordering that again, no matter how many people want it. I’m used to barmen looking at me with expressions ranging from confusion to mild amusement, but not to having them laugh scornfully at me when I order drinks. I don’t think I like it. And after coffee, there was Colchester, to see The Last Dance and Bella Morte, who were both cracking, so thanks to marysiak for persuading me to go, and pixylatedpixie to driving us there and back, and providing us with somewhere to sleep before heading home at a more civilised hour of the morning.

Have resolved that I really must get around to seeing Devilish Presley live, too. Probably at one of their Shoreditch gigs over the summer, unless they play somewhere a bit more central. I have prejudices about the end of town, you see…

Shortly, I am off to the parental home for Sunday dinner. Unless I fall asleep first.

I stroll through battersea park at least once every couple of weeks, regardless of the season – I like to watch the Thames slip by for a bit. But it’s around this time of year that I start to get really smug about working so near the place. I’m sitting here in my favourite spot beneath the pagoda by the river – a gift to London from a Japanese buddhist sect in 1985 to commemorate Hiroshima – enjoying the sunshine, and watching the people passing by. Sometime in the last few weeks a place that rents out recumbent bikes has opened up in the park, and they look like the sort of thing I’ll have to try another time. I didn’t try the boating lake last year, either, and I quite fancy that, too.

For now, though I’m just going to indulge in my favourite bit of this time of year, and read my book in the sun.

You all know how it works by now: anyone that fancies it can leave a comment here asking me three questions, which I will answer. If you fancy it, you’re at liberty to bung the same deal in your own journal, although I think everyone else already has…

I suspect that only Thea Gilmore fans reading this are at the other end of the country, but you never know (hell, I can offer a comfortable couch, if anyone fancies a trip down South). She’s playing in London June the 10th. Anyone fancy going?

I wear two pieces of jewellery – a fairly heavy plain steel band on the middle finger of my left hand, and a much smaller silver knotwork design on the little finger of my right hand. I take them off to go to the gym, and that’s it. I wouldn’t do that, but I can’t lift weights comfortably while wearing the steel one. The rings themselves aren’t terribly important to me – I bought them both myself and neither is outrageously pricey, but the wearing each of them is important, in different ways. I tend to fiddle with the steel one quite a lot, and am often seen looking mildly paniced when I drop the damn thing in a pub. The silver one, I more or less leave alone, as it’s a bit harder to remove.

I was wearing them both when I got up this morning.

Somewhere between getting out of bed, and getting on the bus, the silver one has vanished.

I feel undressed.

It feels like it should be Sunday. But it isn’t. And I’m already at the “I’ve got nothing to do but watch DVDs” stage of my weekend. So, I have two and a half days to fill with, y’know, stuff.

Anyone got any suggestions?