From the Desk of David

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The 25for25 project

If you believed the marketing departments for most consumer network vendors, you’d believe that Wifi7 is the messiah. It’s all very 5G, again. Whether I’m right or wrong will be proven in time, but I’ll start with the simple statement:

“Wires beat wireless anytime”

David Sheddan

Whether it be in a large detached home, a council semi detached, flat or apartment. If you can wire a network connected device you absolutely should.

I’ve already completed a 1gig(2.5gig) network in my apartment which is powered by a 1gig symmetric Hyperoptic link. When I built that network back in 2012 , 1 gig was a pipe dream, 5e seemed fast enough. The network has performed flawlessly (and continues to do so). All the TVs are powered by AppleTV, the office has wired network points and the wifi is good. And whilst there are several things I’m going to to do modernise it – thats for another story.

With this isn mind, one of the top “to do” items for our new house when we purchased in in 2019 was a modernised network. As with all such projects, it’s been 4 years, but that journey is now complete. The auricles in this series will go through the concept, through to design, installation and build, plus lessons learned. In the interim, I’ve been running on a Wifi5 – Orbi service, which has been excellent.

So what’s the vision:

I wanted to install a network that would work for me, today, tomorrow, indeed for the next 20-25 years. A wire once, and upgrade if you will. I’ve termed this 25for25, as in effect I want to be able to deliver up to 25Gbit connections anywhere in my house. So is that even possible, how did I do it and did I succeed.

I’ll go over that in the coming articles.

How do you improve on perfection? – iPad Air Gen 5

I’ve always found myself of that difficult generation who “thinks” they want an iPad but always end up moving to laptop or phone. In principle I love the idea of being able to carry a powerful sub laptop that can also act as a great media content device. In practice though, I really find fitting into the tablet ecosystem difficult. If it’s for something quick a modern iPhone screen is big enough to complete most of the basic and not so basic tasks that I need. When it’s for proper work, then it’s always going to need a proper OS and keyboard.

To that end, I’ve got an 2nd generation iPad Pro 12.9, but it’s done very little in the way of work. Sure it’s loaded with all my text books, my media – but it’s used fleetingly at best, to the point that I’m repurposing it as the “house iPad” (on that topic – Apple please hurry up and implement multi user support!).

I’ve recently picked up a new 2022 iPad Air, and I’ve got to say, I struggle to see why anyone would want more. In a 10.9 inch footprint, with TouchID, ability to add a Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil support, it’s already ticking a lot of boxes, but the addition of an M1 chip – and I mean, what more do you need? Impressed to say the least, it’s mind boggling to think of the power Apple devices are going to have down the pike. If I were Intel, I’d be worried – Arm all the way!

#iPad #Air #M1 #tablet

Atmos at Home

We bought our place in the countryside in 2019 – ahead of the crazy world changing year that was 2020. We’ve kept our apartment in the city as my partner works nearer Glasgow, and we love it’s location. I probably should have blogged a lot more about the journey, but here we are. One of the main challenges we massively underestimated about buying the new place, was the fact that not moving but adding it to our life meant we had to basically buy everything for a home again (not move it from our apartment), so it’s taken us a good couple years, but hte basics are covered and we can move to some luxury items – and that obviously includes tech!

I’d wanted to get a really top of the line AV setup throughout the home, all rooms have a minimum 43 inch QLED/LED screen (we went for Samsung). The living room has a 2019 Q90 65 QLED wall hung. I’m a huge QLED fan in the OLED/QLED debate – I don’t get why we’d go backwards and have to worry about direct sunlight and burn in. To my eyes the modern QLEDs are every bit as good and definitely have more features for the money. When buying the screen, I’d had my eye on the matching Samsung surround setup, but over time I’ve migrated to getting a Sonos setup – Arc + Sub + 2x SL rears. It’s all connected to a 2nd Generation Apple TV 4K, through an HDFury Arcada.

Atmos is a bear to get going though – I’ll explain why in future posts.

New beginnings again

I thought I’d lost count of the number of times that I’ve restarted this blog, but that’s a lie. I’ve held this domain and blog for 16 years, and in that time I’ve rebuilt it at least 3 times. Sometimes it’s good to hold onto the old to keep a track of the past, but then if you never look at it, and you’ve move past it is it not a waste.

This blog is fully my personal thoughts and opinions. Nothing expressed here is the viewpoint, relation or sanctioned by anyone or any company that I have worked or work for. I hope this to be a mix of technology, graphics, art, music and video.

Thanks for stopping by- I hope it gets way more interesting that this holding statement.