Nuf brown nosin'.
Man, I would definitely be willing to turn my $60 router into a $600 one! I always have liked to tinker and fiddle with little projects, but somewhere along the line, we get priorities, or lose them, and time is consumed. And I can admit that I don't spend much time on what I really kind of consider rest and relaxation. Just fooling around the house, doing whatever I come across. Working on my 4-wheeler used to be almost as much fun as riding it. Not break-down repair, you know, maintenance and such. Or even some mods. Minor mods though. It's a rack model, and I won't soup it too much.
Anyway, router. Looking into this project, I immediately noticed the most important thing of all.
It's totally free.
Bonus. Free is good. Free somehow feels natural. The secret of turning a cheapo router into a configurational monster is embedding Linux in it. No problem there. Especially since they tell me exactly how in this write-up. It's the doing of a project as much or maybe more than a completed project. To wax philosophical, it is the journey as much or maybe more so than reaching our destination from which we derive so much pleasure.
Oh yeah, router.
OK, acquire a router, and then make good use of the powerful open source DD-WRT firmware. I'll have to hunt down the right version for my router. Really the most important step to the whole shebang, installing the right version. Or maybe Not installing the Wrong version. Probably half an hour or an hour there, then configure it to supercharged settings and enjoy.
This is a project I very most likely will do very soon. I've been intending to dig into my router for a while, but where's all the time? I have the pdf. on my router in my files, just haven't gotten to it.
You know. I'll have to go to to my router's admin page. There'll be a 'firmware upgrade' selection in the menu. Then I choose 'select file' and find my DD-WRT firmware. Then upload and wait.Sweet.
After a successful install, I'll have a new............ wait a second, I'm not telling that.
The SuperRouter this process creates has many super powers.
I am inspired.
By looking into these DIY projects, I stumbled across one that didn't register immediately. My dad passed away two years ago this past Tuesday, 11/19/11. I inherited his old non-functional laptop and it's been under my bed since. I am pretty confident that I can now recover the data on the drive, and then I do believe I will repurpose it. Okay, this might not seem like a very news worthy project on my part, but I must tell you that I am actually excited about doing this. It will be an adventure because no one in my family knows what's on the drive, but that is just for the knowing. It doesn't really matter what's on it. After I attempt to find out, I can go several ways with the real project. I could turn it into a print server. I have a good little write-up on how to set that up, and it's very simple. No monitor required. If the LCD turns out to be one of the good parts, I have an article on how to make it a free-standing (or wall-mounted) unit. It would be small, but it would make a good security monitor. And then there's the drive. Not much to it to make it a 2.5" external drive. So there's that on project two. And as to why? I love it. I really like to create things. I love to fix things, if they are fixable.
And that brings me to my third project.
I have much, much stuff of the electronic variety saved up for decades now, and I am going to fix a work room to do these projects in. If you knew me a few years back, you would be surprised to learn I was excited about simple (not easy) things and excited to be learning all these new thngs.
No comments:
Post a Comment