10/6
I was always highly impressed with the Icepick project. It’s a neat concept, and if you don’t mind the whole world knowing that you went to the can at 3:30am, it’s even a little fun. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized more and more that it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever find a girlfriend/spouse that will allow such intrusions into our life.
Thus, in the name of compromise, I am going to keep my geek haus a little more low-key. I just want to have some neat stuff.
1. Free public wifi. I already have wifi in my domicile, which is all well and good. But being the generous sort, I’m all for sharing my access with the neighbors. I’m also a big fan of a.) having plenty of bandwidth, and b.) keeping my LAN secure. So the plan is to build a small Wintel box, one that doesn’t draw too much power (Atom chip?), with minimal RAM and hard drive space, that I’ll be turning into a router. Public access will be severely throttled, with some services (torrents) disabled, and a lot of sites (porn) blocked. There will be serious firewalling of the rest of the network.
2. Time-lapse webcam. This will be an external-facing camera, looking out the front window of the place. It will update on a regular basis, plus will take a picture at the exact same time every day, so I can do a cool time-lapse movie of the exterior comings-and-goings over the course of our time in the new place. (Subject to Kate’s approval.)
3. Data hidey hole. We won’t be using landlines — Kate and I are both cellular-only types. I’m going to go ahead and get an outlet plate, a decent-sized keychain drive from Micro Center, and spend a little time setting one of these up, just for the geeky factor. (Must remember to disconnect it and restore phone line before moving out.)
Any other suggestions?
Dan Bailey