VoIP (by alaric)

Well, while I still don't know where my CD-ROM drive is, at least I now have Asterisk working.

Since I work from home, we have two phone lines, work and home. What I hope to set up is to have the phone lines from BT terminate in "FXO ports" on a little box, which then has an Ethernet interface it uses to connect to my Asterisk server with SIP. The Asterisk server will then answer incoming calls, as well as being able to route outgoing calls to BT.

Also, the Asterisk server will be connected to from SIP and IAX telephones on my LAN, and software telephones on our desktop and laptop machines - even when the laptops AREN'T on the LAN, but out on the Internet.

Given this, Asterisk can then function as a PBX. It'll be possible to call extensions from each other by dialling the extension number, or to dial out via the work or home line by prefixing the number with a 9 or an 8. Also, when I dial friends of mine with known VoIP addresses, the system will notice that their number is listed in a local database or any of a number of global ENUM databases, and route the call over VoIP for free.

When people dial in on the home line, all the connected extensions will ring, and the first to answer gets the call. The same will happen for work calls, except that I'll send a different caller ID string so the phones will show what line the call is from, and if I don't answer in four rings it'll go to voicemail. Similarly with incoming VoIP calls.

The voicemail won't be one of those horrible systems where I have to ring in to get my voicemail, either.The server will record the message to the file, and email it to me.

Since I hate my mobile phone's voicemail system, I'll reconfigure it to route calls to my work number when I don't answer, so all my voicemails will end up in one place.

NetBSD upgrade (by alaric)

Bah!

I've upgraded my main home server from NetBSD 1.6.1 (ancient) to 3.0 (current), for two reasons.

1. There was a bug in the VIA Rhine network driver, causing it to drop packets and/or stop working (drop ALL packets until brought down and back up again) under load
2. I need to install Asterisk, and 1.6.1 wasn't up to it - Asterisk requires a native pthreads implementation.

So I bravely reinstalled. NetBSD's upgrade process is a bit ropey, so I had to hack around a bit to get it all up and running.

But now I've lost my CD-ROM drive!

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I need to restore coolness to my life (by alaric)

Once upon a time, I worked for Internet Vision. I started as a programmer, then towards the end of my time there, I was their chief technical architect also looked after the internal library (which I found incredibly satisfying). The technical architect thing meant I was involved in nearly every project, working on the design of the software and troubleshooting problems that the developers hit as they coded.

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Poorly baby! (by alaric)

Poor Jean - she's had a snuffly nose for a few days, and has been generally unhappy about it and hard to get to sleep at night. She's been spending lots of nights in with us.

However, today, while I was away in Bournemouth, she started projectile vomiting, so Sarah took her in to the doctor, who said she had some kind of virus. She has to go in again tomorrow to see how she's doing, and in the meantime is on high dosages of Calpol.

I will probably postpone my visit to London tomorrow, because it's been pretty hard on Sarah looking after a very grumpy baby on her own 🙁

Nominet Lunch (by alaric)

Today, I attended a Nominet Members Lunch.

Nominet are the organisation in charge of the .uk domain name hierarchy. My company is a member of Nominet, giving us voting rights, and a "tag holder", meaning we can create .uk domain names and are charged "cost price" by Nominet for running the root .uk name servers and administrative procedures.

It was brilliant - my company are a very small member, yet I sat and chatted with the Chief Executive about issues facing Nominet. There are not many systems about where a "little guy" who wants to discuss how something is run can have lunch with the Chief Executive and other staff (in this case, Nominet's IT and Marketing/Communications directors) and chat about it.

Yet I worry that, in theory, the 3,000 odd Nominet members could all sign up for the Lunches, drink free wine, eat free food, and discuss football. It's one of those wonderful things that works beautifully because nobody's thought to try and spam it yet...

I went, not because I have a particular political axe to grind, but because one of the points that came up at the EGM is that a lot of the members aren't getting involved in Nominet governance; and so I felt I, as somebody who will never make much money from .uk domain name registrations so whose views on it are purely from a making-the-Internet-cool perspective, should set a good example to others by making my voice heard. Plus, I like getting into a good debate. We discussed EPP, IPv6, Nominet's voting rights, expanding the scope of Nominet to bid for ENUM and .eu, and other issues.