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Re: Friday, June 7, 2002
Doc: thanks for creating the Zen-exact Wi-Fi survey. It helps to have a grandmaster blogger facilitating the concept of remote blogging. Six "yes" responses (so far) creates a core cruise incentive group that would secure one conference room (the Executive Board Room, which is the coolest meeting room on the ship) aboard Royal Caribbean's 'Explorer of the Seas.' Please email me at dunhamb@aol.com (with "Bahamas Blog" in the subject field) and I will start making a list of attendees and get information out to you, through my cruise consultant Charlie Funk at Just Cruisin Plus. (We've been working together on this Royal Caribbean wireless project since early 2000. He has arranged for all of the site surveys with RC staff.) We will have a web page up next week at www.justcruisinplus.com explaining the booking for the Blog cruise. Please note that this will be the first major Beta test of the Wi-Fi 802.11b wireless Internet services aboard the largest cruise ship in the world (there are sister ships of equal size that I have conducted site surveys for as well), but MTN is the same satellite provider for all of the cruise ships, so if it goes as well as Neil Bauman's Perl Whirl and MAC Mania Geek Cruises system tests, your connect speed will range from 60 kbps to 98 kbps over an 11 mbps WLAN connection. Because of the exisiting Ethernet back bone Royal Caribbean installed while constructing the Explorer, the access points will all be configured as root access points with their own cells of coverage, rather than repeaters frequency hopping all over the cruise ship. This will improve overall network quality of service. I intend to have all of the major conference facilities and public areas covered for this test. Because this is a system test, the reward for your participating is that I am organizing this as an open event (not a Woodstock). You still have to buy a cruise ticket with the incentive group to get into the network, but since blogging is not for profit, the event should be as well. (At least I learned something about the concept of open source from RMS and Eric Raymond at Linux Lunacy, although I think Glenn Fleishman convinced me on Mac Mania that Wi-Fi networks should be open access at conferences.) (I'm also creating an open access Wi-Fi campus at my public library this month. I'm on the Library Board of Trustees, so it was an easy vote of approval, but if anyone would like help setting up a wireless campus at their local library, please drop me an email. I volunteer for a number of small assignments.) Do bloggers appreciate good karma? It should also be noted that this is not a Geek Cruises event. My company MOUStech.NET, LLC provides the wireless services for Geek Cruises, and the Royal Caribbean project will be independent of Geek Cruises, although Neil is aware of my ongoing Royal Caribbean wireless projects, and has expressed interest for possible collaboration in 2003. Doc's post may lead some of you to conclude otherwise. If there are enough bookings for the Geek Cruise LINUX Lunacy, MOUStech.NET, LLC will be there providing the wireless services aboard the Holland America Maasdam, the first ship we tested the WLAN on for Geek Cruises last October on LINUX Lunacy (there was some lunacy, but we have a GPL, Geek PubCrawl Liability confidentiality agreement). Geek Cruises knows that at any time they can get involved, and the invitation is always open. (This virtual corporation paradigm is the best career choice I ever made.)
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