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Farlight (Updated 8/15)


Ten Key

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On 8/19/2016 at 6:37 PM, Ten Key said:

I was hoping to not have to open this particular hornet's nest. Complaining about it is so much easier. :cool:

Perhaps, but also quite unlikely to actually fix anything, unless you're complaining to your ISP. Who's still charging you for something you're not receiving. Unless you're getting your internet for free, in which case I guess you really can't complain, since then you are getting what you paid for.:wink:

On 8/19/2016 at 6:37 PM, Ten Key said:

I'm particularly interested in any formatting issues that might be cropping up--

No trouble at all, there. Looks good on PC and on mobile for me.

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Took a while, but I'm all caught up now. In a game whose primary focus is space exploration, I am amazed that you've not only written a sub-plot about potatoes, but managed to make it interesting. Genuinely curious what the deal is with those "lines" now.

Also, I desperately want a follow-up on the engineers' request for metric tons of FOOF. Maybe some chlorine trifluoride for good measure? (I spent way too much time on that blog last night - loved the "Sand Won't Save You This Time" article).

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On 8/24/2016 at 4:40 PM, Kieve said:

Took a while, but I'm all caught up now. In a game whose primary focus is space exploration, I am amazed that you've not only written a sub-plot about potatoes, but managed to make it interesting. Genuinely curious what the deal is with those "lines" now.

Also, I desperately want a follow-up on the engineers' request for metric tons of FOOF. Maybe some chlorine trifluoride for good measure? (I spent way too much time on that blog last night - loved the "Sand Won't Save You This Time" article).

Thanks Kieve. . .sometimes I'm amazed people are actually reading this. :)

 

And in other news. . .let it never be said that writing fan fiction is a complete waste of time. 

I was doing some reading on analog radio signals, specifically the "5x5" call you hear used in movies and such. . .

Quote

Five by five is the best of 25 possible subjective responses used to describe the quality of communications, specifically the signal-to-noise ratio.[1] As receiving stations move away from an analog radio transmitting site, the signal strength decreases gradually, causing the relative noise level to increase. The signal becomes increasingly difficult to understand until it can no longer be heard as anything other than static.[2]:38

Five-by-five is the best possible Readability and Signal Strength Report previously used by some radio services.

yes. . .yes. . .uh huh. . .I see. . .interesting. Wait, what's this bit at the bottom here?

Quote

This reporting system is not appropriate for rating digital signal quality. This is because digital signals have fairly consistent quality as the receiver moves away from the transmitter until reaching a threshold distance. At this threshold point, sometimes called the "digital cliff," the signal quality takes a severe drop and is lost.[2]:38 This difference in reception reduces attempts to ascertain subjective signal quality to simply asking, "Can you hear me now?" or similar. (The only possible response is "yes"; otherwise, there is just dead air.) This sudden signal drop was also one of the primary arguments of analog proponents against moving to digital systems. However, the "five bars" displayed on many cell phones does directly correlate to the signal strength rating.

Huh, that's interesting. . .I guess that makes sense. The receiver can either read the data packets or it can't, so. . .wait a minute.

On 8/17/2016 at 10:56 PM, Ten Key said:

On top of that, I've been having a ton of trouble with my internet over the last month. Something somewhere in the line is overheating, and our internet goes down like clockwork every morning and stays down. . .

*blinks*

dawning_640.jpeg

One hour and several panels of insulation later, I discovered that the poor cable modem was behind not one, but two splitters. Removing one of the splitters from the line solved the problem, and while the upstairs TV set no longer works, we now have internet 24/7. :D

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I have noticed that with radio reception, in poor signal areas it is better to have an analog set and just deal with crackle because a digital reciever is far more annoying when it simply stops and will not work at all. TV reception during a thunderstorm was another example, before digital TV you'd get some 'snow' on the screen if a strike happened between you and the transmitter, digital TV however seems to lose entire strings of video if there is so much as a tingle of electricity in the air you get black bars or frozen images.

Although tbh you really shouldn't be watching TV in a thunderstorm ... the storm is far better viewing than anything on TV! (with the possible exception of a documentary on extreme lightning storms ofc :P)

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5 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Praise the signal!

You can't stop the... oh, wait...

 

@Ten Key ok so it's late and my mind isn't quite registering...

A: There are cable splitters inside your walls? And you massuhcreed said walls to get to them?

#2: two splitters is bad...? Um, how'd hours figure this whole thing out exactly?

D: +1 for C&H. 

  • Moar, plz.
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On 8/31/2016 at 6:10 PM, Shania_L said:

Although tbh you really shouldn't be watching TV in a thunderstorm ... the storm is far better viewing than anything on TV! (with the possible exception of a documentary on extreme lightning storms ofc :P)

I grew up in Tampa, Florida, so thunderstorms are old hat. All three houses I lived in growing up were hit by lightning at least once, so the drill was turn off the A/C, unplug anything expensive and then wait for the artillery fire to stop. 

That might actually explain why I love books so much. :) 

On 8/31/2016 at 11:19 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

You can't stop the... oh, wait...

 

@Ten Key ok so it's late and my mind isn't quite registering...

A: There are cable splitters inside your walls? And you massuhcreed said walls to get to them?

#2: two splitters is bad...? Um, how'd hours figure this whole thing out exactly?

D: +1 for C&H. 

  • Moar, plz.

We have an unfinished basement, so there's insulation and tape but no drywall. That's where the line for the cable comes into the house.

Any time you split a signal you weaken it. Ideally, you have two coax cables coming into the house from the "street"-- one for the television(s) and a dedicated line for the modem. I've never actually seen this done though, so how it's supposed to work is you split the line once as it comes into the house, send one line from that to the modem, and then split the other as necessary for the TVs. 

The wiring in this house is horrible. We have always had trouble, and the people that lived here before us had satellite internet (!!!), so I figured one or more of the wires was lose or damaged on the inside somewhere in the walls. This is the first time the internet has been down long enough to get any real sense of a pattern behind it. 

But the television sets have never been affected. 

Being able to sync the loss of internet to periods of sunlight and heat made me think the problem wasn't inside the house after all, but rather was a fail safe somewhere in Comcast's system that shut things down once the temperature rose above a certain point. After all, the internet just stopped. Perfectly fine one moment, and then dead as a door nail the next. And assuming no clouds, it happened within a 15-20 minutes window every single day.

And then I read that blurb about the "digital cliff". It sounded similar. What if we still had signal, but it just got too weak for the modem to "see" it? If so, was there anything I could do to improve the signal? 

I knew about the splitter up by the modem. But we have two TVs, so surely there must be a second splitter somewhere? Following wires and pulling aside insulation led to another splitter, the one that the modem should have been attached to. Removing the splitter upstairs and attaching the modem directly to the wall outlet increased the signal strength to the modem enough to where the problem went away. 

Edited by Ten Key
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