When Technology Goes Wrong... and then Right

Kablooey!

That's the imagined sound that my Belkin ADSL router made on Tuesday, while the missus and I were at our respective jobs. In one way, I was glad though.

I had bought myself a Wireless Network Device add-on for my XBox 360 (the official one, not a third-party make). However, when I plugged it in, it showed a red light and that was about it. Last Monday, I decided to phone XBox Support and see if there's anything I was doing wrong. Unfortunately I wasn't - thanks to the helpful advice from the support guy, we found that it was my poor old Belkin, that I had had since 2003 when I was still in England. I shouldn't be surprised really, routers have grown a little since then.

So I was uhming and ahing as to what to do, when the Belkin made my mind up for me, by fizzling out rather unceremoniously in the middle of the day - something we found when Linda tried to wirelessly access teh interwebs through her laptop.

I reconnected the Speedtouch that actually came with my Tele2 internet account, and quickly realised that, although it doesn't have WiFi, it's actually a damned good little router. So I went to On/Off and bought a Netgear wireless access point, hooked that up and everything seems to be back to normal. The XBox's wireless device definitely liked it a lot more. I switched on, put the right password in, and we were connected almost immediately. Some of my online chums started sending messages almost immediately, along the lines of "bloody 'ell Boz, we thought you'd sold your box!", as I haven't been online since moving.

We had the SLAY Radio Gathering last weekend, where listeners of SLAY Radio come to Gothenburg for a general get-together. This was the fourth year running (always on the first weekend in August) and it's just as enjoyable. Personally speaking, it's good for me to be able to put faces to some of the listeners that I transmit a show for. It's good for the listeners to meet each other, too, so that they know who they're chatting to on IRC. The Gatherings will be going on for as long as they're popular, so there's definitely one next year!