Work

Blogging / Business / Design / Entrepreneurship / Hardware / Technology / Web Design / Work — 1 Comment
6
Feb 09

Cheap Vinyl Cutting

Running multiple businesses and being friends with similar people we all know how expensive it is to have any sort of signs made. We’re very much do-it-yourself kind of people, so we bought a vinyl cutter.

First off, this thing was cheap. We shopped around and found a cutter from US Cutters on eBay (don’t buy from their website). After negotiating my own shipping the end price door to door was around $505. Not too shabby for a 36″ vinyl cutting monster.

The cutter itself is about 50″ long and it comes with a stand. Along with the tiny little cutting blades there is a pen plotting attachment that you can use to draw with.

We’ve cut a few things already, mostly stuff for Rob’s farm as you will see in the pictures.

Applying vinyl is pretty straight forward as long as you think things through in advance. It’s really sticky and once it’s on whatever surface you are using it’s not really coming off without being destroyed.

Anyway, with the amount we spent it’ll save us a fortune in sign making costs. Since cutting a few yards of vinyl ourselves will cost about $4/yard and having a shop do it would cost 10 times that.

3rd on Whyte / Entrepreneurship / WiFi — No Comments
9
Aug 08

Free WiFi in the Edmonton Journal

An article was published in today’s Journal about the Free WiFi project I started.

An Old Strathcona cafe owner hopes to blanket the area and eventually much of the city with what’s apparently Edmonton’s first free wireless Internet network created by a private group.

Eric Warnke of Free WiFi says the group has set up at least seven locations since June from which people can access the Internet with laptops, cellphones, new iPods and other equipment…

Read the whole thing

Business / Entrepreneurship / Technology / Websites / WiFi / Work — 4 Comments
7
Jun 08

Free Edmonton Wireless

As part of my mesh network interests I’ve started up WirelessEdmonton.ca. This will serve as the main website and splash page for my free wifi initiative.

I am starting with Whyte Avenue, where my Internet Cafe is located. I have 20 Open-Mesh routers that need deploying. I will be going to different businesses along the avenue where I feel the network needs a boost and asking them if they will help out.

If a business hosts a repeater they will get a mention on the website. If they host a gateway they will get a specific ad on the front page indicating they are helping out.

In order to generate money I’ve put a simple 160×600 skyscraper ad on the right hand side of the splash page. For $75 a month an advertiser will get equal rotation on the front page. These are just rough numbers to start. As traffic and advertisers grow I’ll make adjustments. Right now the most important thing is to get people to carry my routers.

My buddy Mack was visiting with me the other day and we were doing some crazy brain storming into the future of a free network like this. We both think it has amazing potential and I can’t wait to see this thing explode.

3rd on Whyte / Interesting / Technology / WiFi / Work — 22 Comments
7
Jun 08

New Open-Mesh Routers

A few days ago my shipment of Open-Mesh routers arrived! They’re super small and really cool.

Here are a bunch of pictures of me opening them.

The setup was really simple, just like the Meraki routers. Basically you need to plug in on of the repeaters to an internet and power connection for 5 minutes so it updates and then the WLAN lights will start flashing, this means it’s ready to rock. Then you just log in to Open-Mesh.com and add the router’s MAC or IP address to the network and BOOM, it’s broadcasting.

To expand the network you just add more routers and place them around. A repeater doesn’t have an internet cable connection, it just picks up the closest wireless signal from the same network and rebroadcasts it. A gateway has an internet connection and therefore a stronger signal.

Right now I have one router sitting in the window at my cafe. I’ll make another post soon to explain why :D

Programming / Web Design / Work — 1 Comment
25
May 08

PHP Gallery Directory Image Reader

I wrote a neat little script to simply read a directory, search for thumbnails, then print a list with links to the larger images. I look for the thumbnails so it doesn’t get images that don’t have small versions.

There are limitations, for example if you put a PDF with ‘.thumb’ in the directory it will try to link it as an image. This is ok for me because I’m controlling what goes in the directories. I suppose I could add a check for it later if I need to.

<?php

/* This little snippet takes the directory and looks for any files with ‘.thumb’. Then it takes out the ‘.thumb’ to link to the big image. Then it makes a nice little list. */

$dir = ‘gallery/gallery2/’; /* Point to the right gallery directory */

echo “<ul>”;

if ($handle = opendir($dir)) {

while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) { /* Loop over directory */

if (strpos($file, ‘.thumb’)) { /* Look for the .thumb */

$filebig = str_replace(‘.thumb’,”,$file); /* Remove .thumb for our big files */

echo “<li><a href=\”$dir$filebig\” rel=\”lightbox[1]\”><img src=\”$dir$file\” border=\”0\”/></a></li>\n”; /* Make the list with both file names */

}

}

closedir($handle); /* Finish */

}

echo “</ul>”

?>

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