Matisyahu's Blog

I went into Wellington to pick up a U7 Pro Max and UXG Max then ordered a Cloud Key from GoWifi which will hopefully arrive in the next couple of days. I’ve got it all setup using the UniFi cloud instance (3 day trial) but once I receive the Cloud Key then I’ll cancel the 30 day trial and use the locally hosted version. In the short period of time I’ve been testing it (I’ve updated the firmware on both devices) the performance in terms of connection strength, latency and download speed is an improvement over the previous setup (Multi-Link Operation (MLO) is available for early access but I haven’t enabled it as I’d sooner wait for it to be released as an official stable feature as to avoid connectivity issues). What I’ll be doing with the old setup is give it to mum and set it up at her home so that she is able to get decent speeds and coverage because at the moment there is just one router provided by Spark which is average at best (it is a free modem/router so I’m not surprised).

I was tossing up either getting a WiFi 6 or WiFi 7 but decided to go WiFi 7 just to ensure I’m future proofed along with the fact that I may as well go ‘all in’ rather than compromising then later coming back months later and regretting the decision. I know in the next few years I’ll end up gradually updating my MacBook Air and Mac Studio which will mean that they will support WiFi 7 – looking forward to seeing Apple eventually make their own Bluetooth and WiFi chip which will hopefully result in greater power efficiency and standards adoption due to being able to ‘control the whole widget’. The way I’ve set it up, I have two networks, I have one network for the 2.4GHz frequency and a second network for the 5GHz and 6GHz due to preferring to use 5GHz and 6GHz due to no one using it where I live (but a tonne of people using 2.4GHz which causes poor experience due to all the interference (and houses where I live are pretty close together). If I group all three frequencies into a single network for some reason my devices default to 2.4GHz no matter how lousy the signal is so splitting the two ensures that it, at worst, defaults to 5GHz which is always rock solid.

I had a chat with mum regarding getting a new computer for her – the one at the moment is an Intel i3 NUC I bought over 10 years ago when dad was still alive and Windows 10 support is ending soon so I’m looking at getting an ASUS NUC but they won’t become available until August this year but it is a pretty good deal and mum is happy with Windows so I’ll get one of those, put 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, a new keyboard, mouse and screen then call it a day. Regarding the old computer, I’m tempted to set it up as a server running Linux on it then hook up my external hard disk to it so then I can share music, movies etc. to my various devices on the network.

I had a good walk around today so I’m going to have a bit of a rest. What I think I’m going to do going forward is go for a walk on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday then on Friday and Saturday I have a rest since I finish working on those days at 10pm then go for a walk on Sunday so then I have at least a couple of days of rest while keeping up a good routine. Oh, and on a good side my shoes have finally dried after putting them in front of the dehumidifier to dry them out.