Isn't life grand!

["Mark Harrison" <Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx>]

The Mark and Mary Harrison "ukha" lifestyle is certainly coming
together!

After 6 months in the wilderness of only accessing the Internet
>from

- An ISDN connection to tiscali

- A Linux-based firewall sharing the connection

- A CAT5 network holding together my PC (in my study), Mary's PC
(in hers), the firewall (in hers) and the laptop (in our bedroom)

Not only that, but upstairs I'm listening to music on the DDAR,
and downstairs Mary's listening to something different on the
Tiger-supplier Rio DAR in her study.

There've been a few network problems over the last couple of
days, as a result of which the DARs weren't working, but getting the
Linux firewall working in place of WIN2k connection sharing (which was
causing the problems) has fixed that.

So, having been downstairs to reboot the DARs, I come back up to
the landing... I see through the door of my study that they have all
gone dark blue, indicating that they're all chatting to the server...
and as I sit down at my desk, the lights come on.



A fast internet connection, MP3 music on demand, and a bottle of
red wine... how much better does life get?



So, thanks to, in no particular order, to: Phil Harris (for
getting me to finally install the CAT5), James Hoye and Paul Wooton (for
actually installing it), Graham Howe (for sorting out the round-1
DDARs), Keith Doxey (for the KAT5 modules that pipe the rear channel
audio to the back of the room), Tim Morris (for persuading me that the
Meridian route was the path of righteousness), Ian Bird (for the beam
break stuff sitting in front of me waiting to be installed), Keiran
Broadfoot (for planting the seeds of a home automation paradigm that
reacted to me, rather than just to my key-presses!)

But mostly to:

- Mark McCall, for making me realise that there were people
apart from me interested in all this back in '98

- Mary Harrison, for not only putting up with this, but actively
helping on everything from pulling cables to installing device drivers
under Linux.



Provision of the bottle of red wine was all my own work ;-)



Regards,


Mark