The show must go on

The title is just a reference of Freddy Mercury and his song which I like very much. I just wanted to highlight that after a long time thinking about to write again this blog, finally I made the effort to recover the passwords and so on to give it again a try. Why starting in English? For me it is a kind of challenge to write in other language than my mother tongue, and secondly, as any writer, everyone wants to reach a wider audience. This does not mean some posts will be written in Spanish. So, please bare my faults in English :)

I hope everybody enjoys my blog, I will mix technology and personal stuff and I just want to share my experiences in my daily life with Linux :)

Right now, I am in the process of rebuilding my computer infrastructure at home which takes a little bit of time. As a preview, I will try to have a better management of my Internet connection to keep on providing a good service to the freelance bankhacker (www.bankhacker.com) without suffering the problems of bandwidth. This management is called in “computer language” traffic shaping which will let me to manage my upload bandwidth of my Internet connection letting bankhacker make use of the whole upload bandwidth when I am not at home, and make use of my download bandwidth to use VoIP applications or others, without having any breakdown of bad quality because of the use of the upload. Why is that? Because even when you are downloading anything, you need a channel in the upload stream to have a “conversation” with the server (what in computer language is call handshake).

For achieving this, I have got a new PC. I used to have a Pentium MMX for routing purposes, but lately the PC was getting stuck too many times. This “router” recently was converted also in my Wireless AP. With a cheap 802.11 g PCI wireless card, I could convert my router in an Wi-fi Access Point. I purchased a card with an Atheros chipset from SMC which could be around $ 25. Also for improving the coverage at my flat, I bought an indoor antenna with more gain. With around $15 more, I bought a 5 dB gain antenna which let me to be connected in my living ( I have a quite big flat :-) )

I want to encourage people of going to their nearest recycling center or try to get any second hand computer. In my small town I usually drop by the recycling center, and being honest, it has been really, really fruitful . I got not only Pentium II computers but also I was so lucky that I found an AMD XP 1800 and AMD 1800, even with DDR memory! Sometimes I am amazed of what people could throw away as trash! For me, it has a good chance to getting different old PC hardware and compose my new desktop PCs and home Linux servers. I have also change my parent’s router old 486 with ISA cards with another Pentium II router which probably will work better and get less stuck that the old 486. Also this will allow me to get rid of the Pentium III they used substituted with the AMD 1800 and use the Pentium III as one my servers. Also the AMD XP will be acting as my desktop computer and my old AMD K6 III will also be acting as another server (probably for my backups). So, since this procedures will take me some time and probably will make to discover new things, I will try to share my experiences with the readers.

Finally, please send me your comments whatever they are about, about my bad English, any mistake that I have committed or whatever…