I was so wrong - and thank you!

Firstly, as of today my blog passed the 1000 views mark. Thank you to everyone who's viewed my blog, especially those who have visited it and came back for more!

Now, I was so wrong when I said I wasn't excited about Pandaria.  I actually started playing it last night, and it is so much fun!  I've only really just got into it, but I've hanging out in Honeydew Village, and I am seriously loving the pet battles! Win!

A week or so back I decided to get a new, proper broadband cable to replace the thin, almost invisible telephone extension that we connect our router to upstairs.

I ran a speed test of the old cable (at www.speedtest.net), and found that I got download speed of 5.7 Mbps per second.  Not bad.

Then, I disconnected the old cable, plugged in the newer, better, and shorter (length is important when it comes to cabling, and the shorter the better) RJ11 high speed broadband cable, and tested again.

8.2 Mbps!

Yes, that's right.  A whole 2.3 Mbps faster.  Something like a 44% speed increase.

Anyhow, I was happy.  But, I would have to take up laminate flooring, and glue the new cable carefully along sides of bannisters and the like, so I decided to plug the old cable back in for the time being.

I got 8.2 Mbps again.

So, we're sticking with the old cable.  If anyone would like a 10m RJ11 high speed broadband cable for going from your microfilter to your router, do drop me a line and I'll get it out to you.  Obviously some love for the blog in return would be cool!

If you really want to know, here's the stats in full:

	15m basic cable, 060912 @ 0753	10m RJ11 high speed broadband cable, 060912 @ 0757	15m basic cable, 060912 @ 0801
DOWNSTREAM
DATA RATE (KBPS)	5717	8191	8191
NOISE MARGIN	15	7	7
OUTPUT POWER (dBm)	123	122	123
ATTENUATION (Db)	45	45	45
UPSTREAM
DATA RATE (KBPS)	1021	1021	1021
NOISE MARGIN	11	11	10
OUTPUT POWER (dBm)	189	168	167
ATTENUATION (Db)	23	23	23
Speed test from www.speedtest.net
ping	22ms	26ms	23ms
Download speed	5.06Mbps	7.22Mbps	7.12Mbps
Upload speed	0.84 Mbps	0.82 Mbps	0.83 Mbps

Two hours to Mists of Pandaria!

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In just under two hours, the launch event for the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, is going to kick off.  And in about three and a half hours, the new expansion will be officially open.

I should be really excited, but I'm not - I guess my WoW playing is at a low ebb at the moment.

Not that the expansion won't be cool and I'm sure I'll get it, but I'm feeling a little under the weather at the moment - my body doesn't particularly agree with anything vaguely approaching cold weather, currently I've been off colour today plus my hands and feet are aching like hell due to skin happily cracking apart.  I've been using some skin cream but most of it seems to have vanished (probably put somewhere safe during the summer!) so I'll have to go buy some more.

I've just installed Google Drive to backup some of my key documents.  You get 5Gb free online storage, and one of the things that is always forgotten about is how fallible hard drives are.  Hard drives are a technology dating back decades, with moving parts, a need for an absolutely clean environment, and are liable to failure due to temperature extremes, sudden movement, or simply worn out - and when we say worn out, opinions vary but potentially even a year old hard drive could be on its way out (although we all hope it'll last many more years than that!).  At work the system makes multiple backups of files on the network so we never really worry about losing a file, but at home I have (as I'm sure everyone has) memories dating back years.

So, I'm making backups of my key documents, some of my writing, some pictures that I really don't want to lose.  Apart from Google Drive, Google+ also provides storage for pictures so the pictures are going up there.  I would recommend to anyone that you do look at backing up those files that really matter to you - from time to time I've been involved in recovering files from damaged hard drives and it's always family photos that people haven't got copies of that they would really miss.  In the "olden days" all the photos were kept in nice chunky photo albums but with the digital age it's amazing how many things you might only keep on your mobile phone or home computer.

If you missed my last post, I've now got my entry for the Guild Community Video Contest up here.  I'd really appreciate some views, likes of the video, even subscribes to my YouTube channel if possible if you have a YouTube or Google account.

So - time to get ready to become a panda!