A bad day. No, not the song (or songs).

I can almost “proclaim” that it has been raining for almost 48 hours straight. Nice and cool weather. Everyone should be cool and glad. But alas, as they say one bad thing in the morning can ruin your day. I certainly had that.

A SMRT Bus Driver decided to skip the bus stop I alight this morning even when I’ve pressed the bell ages in advance. On a normal day, I would have been pissed for a few minutes and then let the matter pass. BUT, why does it have to happen on a rainy morning?

I had to get drenched by the raining walking to the bus stop, miss my bus, and feel foul for the whole morning. I even contemplated the idea of lodging a complaint to SMRT, but the magnanimous me decided to let it go.

This software looks interesting. It might actually be something I would even agree on buying. I hope someone over at Dotsis crack it soon though.

Singtel IPTV technician came over and installed the necessary hardware needed for the trial today. Finally, something for me to fully utilise that 10 Mbps bandwidth I have. For those of you who want to try out this service, you could use that link to do so. The trial should last until next year March and you’d have to return the hardware to them yourself.

As the name implies, the television is streamed through the internet. There are apparently many different setup scenarios, of which none requires any messy wiring. It’s possible to use a splitter to split a telephone line into one for ADSL modem and the other for the IPTV.

In my case, it was done using my router. I was told that the Speedtouch router would not be fast enough for IPTV. Apparently, not only does its wireless connection not live up to its speed, its ethernet connection does not fare any better, or so I was told. It’s ironic that I have to switch back to the 2Wire router.

An ethernet cable was connected to an Aztech HomePlug AV thing that supposedly can transfer data through my power grid at 200 Mbps. Wow, it’s the first time I’m seeing a network through power line!

An ethernet cable is connected from the router to the equipment then to the powerline…

Then from the powerline to the tv…

Speaking of this, it enables more option when setting up a network via Ethernet, 802.11 Wireless network and the upcoming powerline network.

More on IPTV in a post tomorrow perhaps.

Anyway, here’s some titbit for those who do not know: Have you ever wondered why your internet connection never seem to be able to live up to those supposed advertised speed? For example, were you expecting download speeds near 56k KBps on your dialup connection?

Well, here’s the deal: the speed quoted in advertisements are based on the unit Bits per second while what you were expecting Bytes per second. They are not the same! 8 bits = 1 byte. Do your math. Your connection speed would seem more relevant to you now.

P.S.: Pictures were taken with N80.

Tags: Mobile Phones