Homeplug or Powerline? - 31/10/09
With my PC being used for editing this, that, or the other and my laptop used for the internet I thought it was about time I hooked up the PC to the world wide web. I didn't fancy getting a WiFi USB device as I didn't want the signal to drop out - not that it does on my laptop mind you. The speed of ethernet did interest me, but as I'm in a rented house I didn't fancy drilling holes through the floors. Next best thing? Homeplug / Powerline. I'd heard good things about it as I knew people on the 85Mb/s adapters and they said the could stream video. Going one step higher would take me to 200Mb/s. These are classed as AV devices, suitable for streaming high resolution video. I was about to buy a 200Mb/s adapter of some brand or other when I stumbled across the Belkin 1Gb/s homeplugs. Ordered two of them which set me back £92.91 - they were from Scan.

Unpacked and sitting on the kitchen table I couldn't wait to plug them in. The setup seemed simple, plug one in, press the button on top for encryption for a couple of seconds. plug the second device in and press the top button. They light showed that they had successfully paired. Immediately I went to my main PC and tried to view the thumbnails. To my shock performing said action looked as though explorer had crashed. I then opened Media Player and loaded a video for it to sit for ages and then after a stuttered attempt it crashed. I downloaded the 'Network Meter' gadget for Windows 7 and it showed 1.6Mb/s; no where near what I was supposed to get. Now I know that I'm not ever going to get 1000Mb/s, but I would have liked to get 100Mb/s. 1.6Mb/s isn't worth bothering. Disappointed I browsed the net at work - probably should have been working, but it was a Friday. I found that Belkin had already put out a firmware update, but this was not really looking like it would fix my issue - it was to fix stability problems. I decided to re-run the hole sync process and plug the homeplugs in the same room just to see if it's because I'm off the ring main. I couldn't even get access to the internet when I used it this way. Frustrated I returned back to my PC and decided to run the update on both adapaters.

Updating has given me 8Mb/s maximum. This is 1MB/s, which is acceptable. Way off what I wanted, but still, better than it was. I've been transferring photos from my external USB drive to my NAS and though the throughput is up and down I am getting 6Mb/s average. Still need to try them again on the same ring.

Would I recommend them? Well, they look great, but perform poorly. At this moment I wouldn't recommend them to anyone until Belkin (or Gigle, as it's their chipset) sort things out. Problem now is that I bought a pair for my brother! Doh!

UPDATE - Have done some 'lab' tests and have found that it's my Belkin N1 router which is causing the slow down, or at least some of it. My older Belkin 125G+ router managed to get around 11MB/s which is great for me; it allows me to view the thumbnails and associated images without any problems. Plug in the new router and the speed starts the same, but dips to 3MB/s. I'm sure a firmware update to the router will sort it, but it's a little irritating that two Belkin products don't work efficiently together out of the box. I rate Belkin stuff. It's relatively cheap, yet performs well. However, this sort of incompatibility, or instability together is very annoying.

Controlled (non)Fires - 03/10/09
Today was quite an interesting day. I'd wanted to go out for a walk, but Jonathan suggested something slightly different, but would still have us going out in the Peak District. We'd (he) been invited to attend a controlled moorland fire to test how the Fire Service responded and dealt with the issue. It was a test of coordinating the resources across two Fire Services; in this case Staffordshire (the host) and Derbyshire. It also included the support and coordination of the FOG (Fire Operations Group) which is a advisory panel made up of 6 Fire Services, Pennine Helicopters, Severn Trent Water, Chatsworth, The National Trust, The National Park Ranger Service (Peak District), United Utilities and The Moorland Gamekeepers Association.

Late night and early morning means tired Matt, and that's what I was. A cool autumn morning was a perfect day to test out my coLAB Belay Jacket from Alpkit.com. I knew there was a spot of rain due in the afternoon, but I hadn't expected the wind. Looking on Metcheck showed a brisk wind of 25-30mph. Unfortunately the high winds meant that we were not going to see the spectacle we'd hoped for. Setting a fire in these sorts of winds would be catastrophic as the fire would rapidly become out of control.

Our plans were not cuppard all together as there would be simulated fires instead with the use of smoke machines. Not quote what I'd hoped for, but better than nothing. The pyromaniac in me would have to stay dormant for a little while longer!

My role, different than the other observers, was merely to take photographs of the event. The other observers in the group were university lecturers and the like, with their PhD followers. During the course of the day each one of the PhD students asked whether I was too working towards a PhD. I'm sure their question was answered as soon as I opened my gob. I brought two lenses, the wide-zoom (18-70mm, f3.5-4.5) and tele-photo (70-200mm, f2.8). I wanted to get some could blurred out backgrounds with a shallow depth of field and so stuck with the 70-200mm. Of course this meant that I had to be a fair distance back from the subject matter. Fine if I'm shooting a fire, but not so good if it's people close to me. Therefore, my only option was to run ahead and snap them walking towards me. Not an easy feat when the ground I'm trying to run through is actually knee to waist height, 15 year old heather, interspersed with boggy sphagnum moss.