(This is for private use, but since no traffic here, will be public. Here follows ideas and leads. To be updated and, once everything works, written up and posted for future reference.)

Laptop wireless broken: Broadcom 4311 (rev2?), supported by b43. HP dv9000(ea?—from memory).

Problem

Did work, and then didn’t. Possible cause is upgrade to another kernel (2.6.25 from 2.6.24). linuxwireless implies this is significant by recommending two different firmware versions.

Starting Vista, which might have played with firmware (although I don’t recall this being a problem in the past—in fact I’m sure it’s not).

Symptoms

Finds many networks, all with positive signal strength, but refuses to connect to ours. Pops up password dialogue, NetworkManager thinks about it with one green light coming on in the icon, but eventually just pops up dialogue again.

Attempting to create a new network didn’t appear to do anything. Will echo dmesg when next in front of thing.

Poss. avenues

Hook up to ethernet and let the thing download any updates. Maybe this is a known bug? Aside: during last update blitz, NetworkManager failed to update itself. IIRC due to site being unavailable. Significant?

Wait—was I using ndis? Find out!

Try loading up the earlier kernel. Will probably have to load up the older firmware—still available on memory stick.

Reinstall b43. Does it autoupdate? Not sure if anything has changed here.

LWL recommended wl_apsta_mimo.o. Is mine MIMO? Alternative (OTOH) is _micro.o. Significant?

Trawl web for previous experience.

Ndiswrapper. Ugh. Rather IPoAC (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149)

Done already

Updated firmware with b43-fwcutter v 011, as specified in linuxwireless. Before the upgrade, dmesg|grep b43 returned a message like “old firmware, support for this ends July 08, download latest from [linuxwireless url]”. So updated to one recommended by linuxwireless for 2.6.25: fw versions 4.80.53.0 -> 4.150.10.5. No change in symptoms (appeared to detect more WAPoints, but probably doesn’t mean anything).

Router restart (but another wireless laptop (ubuntu) works fine, so it’s not that).

Notes

When it all works and I want to risk breaking it again, get the LEDs and killswitch working: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43/faq

Once all this is done, are we going to try Ubuntu HH, with its newfound support for b43? Check into this for potential issues.

Turns out there’s another trade I should be thinking of hijacking—my own. My increasingly mathematical PhD has long surpassed what a Computer Science degree prepared me for. Last week was spent with elementary combinatoric and probabilistic exercises, the two cornerstones of my current work and, by laughable coincidence, also the areas I loathed the most in maths.

Update on various skills: electronics has been put off, and in any road Harrowitz has been returned in favour of a simpler book. Friend Dave, like me, possesses boxes of components and a latent desire to make LEDs light up, so perhaps we can tinker in future.

German’s becoming conversational, although I get lost in long sentences. Next area of work: tenses beyond present, präteritum and past perfect; and how to conjoin sentences without full stops.

Also, I built some shelves with two degrees of freedom. The garage needs a set of heavy-duty free-standing shelves for a load of boxes, to get them off the floor. Rather than spend a load on flat-pack, I spent a slightly smaller chunk on wood and hardware. Now, any idiot could make sloping shelves, but the design I came up with moves smoothly from upright to about 40 degrees side-to-side (each way), and about 70 front-to-back, while keeping the shelves perfectly horizontal. I figure I’ll market it to short people, who can get something from the top shelf by just pulling it down.

Some time ago, I was recommended an electronics book called The Art of Electronics, by Harrowitz and Hill. Even more recently, while I was complaining about the £50 cost of it, a friend suggested that I use that great big building called the Edward Boyle Library. Imagine my surprise when I walked in, and saw books that you could take away with you, for free!

So this is the thousand-plus-page book I’m struggling through now. I’ve gotten through the difficult opening section with a vague understanding of linear circuits and impedance, entirely in the abstract. Chapter 2 is entitled “transistors”, and at first glance seems much more hands-on. I’d better get a wiggle on, because jobs are already piling up for my non-existent electronics engineer/electrician skills. Added to projects page: clapper light-switch for bedroom; 2 timed-extinguish light-switches for bathrooms; changing bedroom light fitting; setting recessed lighting in the upstairs rooms; checking an outdoor light; and wiring up the garage for—what else?—light.

And good day to you, sir or madam, and thank you for taking the time to visit my site. The stilted tone of language is a throw-forward to when this site has content, a personality, and a reason for coming that isn’t exclusively pertinent to your obedient author. Eventually, my new and humble shop-front will be dripping with style. Steampunk style. That is the aesthetic du jour, and the Victorian Gentry tone is, in a manner of speaking, the default voice. I’m not yet good enough at anything to risk a more earthy such one.

And that is the heart of the purpose of this journal! I am a young academic who finds himself useless at anything not directly involving paper. Only recently have I become handy with a drill. Electrical wiring I leave to others (although Edison electric light bulbs are, mercifully, within my limited ability). So here I document my stand against the world of physical things, with breadboard and transistor; cutting board and scalpel; drill and dremel-tool. Inspired by the giants of construction and art and style, a very limited number of whom I link to on the sidebar, I throw off the shackles of limp uselessness and seek to become a man of substance and visceral physicality: a kind of man called a Maker.

A new year has just come by (which, considering the amount of time this has been happening, shouldn’t be a surprise by now). If, in a year’s time, I have built something useful and complex, and something useless and pretty, I will be happy with my progress.

My best wishes to you, dear reader, in your own New Year. May it be as fruitful and as exciting as you wish to make it.

Your obedient servant,

Mr Andrew Jericho-Platt