My last month can be summed up by the digitised voice in the old Mega Drive game, ESWAT.

In a moment of desperate bad luck, I fell in the street and broke my left arm. As ever, it wasn’t quite that simple…

I’d been invited down to the .net awards on the 18th November, held in London. A lot of my friends and industry piers were going and I took our contact James from the D&AD. I met up with Phil Sherry at his hotel, had a beer, met his boss Mikey, then proceeded to meet Colly, Dan Donald, AlunR et al at a pub close to the venue, which all happened without incident.

We went to the awards, hosted by Zeldman (shorter in real-life), had a few free beers, met fellow front-ender and VW camper van nut Ian Lloyd for the first time and a lot more lovely people. The actual awards were a bit of a non-surprise, to be brutal. End of the night, get our coats and head back to the hotels. At 11.30pm.

Mine and Phil’s hotels were in walking distance of the venue, so we set off to have a final beer at his hotel as Phil and Mikey were catch an 8.30am train back to the North East.

The drama happened as we were running to cross over a junction before the lights turned red. Stumble, fall, hand out… and I knew straight away I’d broken my arm. It really was as simple – and as stupid – as that.

Lying in the road, with people yelling to get up, I lay there with my arm over my chest well aware that it was broken, and insisting that I needed an ambulance. Long story short, I spent the night in St. Thomas Hospital, on morphine with a few x-rays to show off my talents. I came to at around 7am, and saw Phil still with me by the side of the bed. I thanked him, but told him to bugger off and catch his train.

It was a pretty bad break, as you can see. I must have fell with some force, as it’s broken in 3 places, and I acquired a massive cut and bump to my left cheek. The cheek is still numb now, and it took weeks to actually feel my teeth again. The staff wanted to operate on my arm, but couldn’t tell me when they’d do it. Maybe on the friday, maybe saturday. I wasn’t too pleased with this, as all my gear was in my (unused) hotel room and my train back was at 2.30pm, so I asked if I could head home, since I didn’t live in London and had no family close by to help me out.

So, arm broken and in a sling with a backslab, still under the influence of morphine, probably smelling of beer, with a bleeding cheek, blood-matted beard and wearing a snug fitting OrangeBus shirt Phil had fortunately given me much earlier in the night (my coat and shirt had to be cut off to get at the arm), I gingerly walked to my hotel and picked up my stuff.

I also finally made the call to my wife. Any man who’s got himself in trouble while away from home will know this feeling. However, I’d not been able to call her earlier as I’d managed to lose my phone somewhere between busting my arm and having the x-rays in hospital. The day before, while at Preston station waiting to catch the train down, my iPhone had crashed, and my wife said I could take hers, so I could still be contactable. On the train down, my iPhone started working, so I left hers in my bag at the hotel.

“Yeah, er, hi Idoia. I have a bit of an accident, and I’ve broken my arm…”

To be fair, she took it very, very well and was really concerned.

After chomping two Ibuprofens, I walked to the tube station and made the two changes to Euston. I had to hang around a bit in Euston, so forced a sandwich down, and when the train was ready to board, I asked a member of the train staff if I could sit in 1st class, as my arm was evidently broken.

I sat down and promptly fell asleep. When I woke, there were three rather cautious looking fellow passengers on my table, giving me the eye because I looked a right state! They did ask what happened and warmed considerably at my tales of stupidity.

Idoia met me at Preston station and we drove to Blackburn hospital. After waiting for about three hours there, I got a bed and was in for the night. The staff knew about the break, as the staff from St. Thomas in London had rang ahead and probably warned them “watch out for this idiot coming in with a broken arm!” I’d also been given a CD with the x-ray scans on, to hand over at the hospital.

Saturday comes with a visit from the orthapedic doctors, who confirm that I’ve really buggered that arm up and warn of paralysis or lack of feeling in the arm as two possible side effects of surgery. After having nil by mouth since 2pm on Friday, it turns out they’re not operating. The day was passed with snoozes and some movie watching and online chatter thanks to my iPad and 3 mifi, which were still in my bag from London. Without these, I think I would have gone mad in hospital. Nil by mouth that night, hope they operate on sunday. Sunday comes, with a visit from the anaesthetist. This is good, means I’m having surgery.

I remember passing out at 11.30am in the operating theatre, and awaking as I came back to my bed around 2.30pm, in pain and groggy. I had massive pins and needles for the next few days, and basically a lot of pain from the metal work.

So what did they do?

As you can see from the x-ray, they’ve plated the radius with six screws, and pushed a wire through the middle of the ulna bone, and basically threaded the broken bits of bone onto it. According to someone who knows how this is done, it’s not a delicate manouvre, and it’s a good job I was out like a light for it. It would also explain the marks I have on my upper arm that look like it’s been in a vice. The doctor pointed out that the wire is left long, so that they can pull it out again…

I went home the next day, with a bag full of drugs and an appointment to come back in two weeks. When I went back, they took the bandages off, the orthopaedic doctor took a look at the arm and fresh x-rays and was very pleased with what he’d seen. No need for a cast or more bandages, leave it uncovered, and start moving it around.

How are you doing, Jake?

Well, I was back in work two days after surgery, although due to the Tramadol wasn’t of too much use. The arm was never in plaster-cast, only bandaged after surgery, and I’m sure has healed a lot quicker due to the metal holding everything tightly in place. A month after the break, and it does hurt a little. I can touch the arm on the break points with no real harsh pain, but the scar is still quite sensitive, feeling like someone’s put a car battery jump start on at my wrist and forearm. Mobility’s pretty good, although I can feel a bit of muscle wastage already, and stretching feels funny. Pretty sure I bust my little finger as well, to be honest, as that’s hurt like mad since. I can also feel the tip of the metal wire if I lean on my left elbow, which smarts! Importantly though, I can type, hold and drink a glass of wine, and playing video games seems to be just fine!

“So what have we learned from all this?”, the anaethetist asked me after consulting me on Sunday morning.

“Walk, don’t run” was my reply.

How did you get those x-rays?!

While waiting to see the doc, I asked the nurse if there was a CD (the one I’d brought up from London) in the files, and could I take a copy as I had my laptop with me, hence the high quality pics!

We went to see the Blackpool illuminations this evening, and I thought it’d be perfect for a stumble, as I’ve not done one in a while. Windy, sporadic rain, but I collected 1,122 SSIDs!

I introduced a friend of mine to war-driving and stumbling tonight, and we went for a quick spin with the Asus so he could see what it was all about. Sold!

Here’s the drive;

View Larger Map

After getting Kismet set up on the EEE it was time to go for a walk. With the GPS stuck to the lid of the closed EEE, I shoved it in the push-chair and set off. Totalled around 650 networks on a stroll through the centre of Gijón and along El Muro.

View Larger Map

As you may have well deduced, I’m a mac boy.

I know of the command line, and I’m not scared of it, as such, but I was getting a bit miffed with instructions for getting Kismet running under Linux Mint/Ubuntu.

Essentially, every guide told you how to install Kismet, told you to edit your .conf file and then quite simply “type kismet to start”… as you can imagine, with no immeadiate correct results, I got quite irritated quite quickly!

I did get everything working, including GPS co-ordinates from gpsd and did a quick scan from the patio here in Spain, picking up about 8 networks without moving.

So, I thought about writing a how to guide for other linux noobs who have the same problems. Thing is, it *is* dead simple to get Kismet running, there’s just not much help for you for when things go wrong!

Anyway, running Linux Mint 5 on my Asus EEE, here’s what I did.

Install kismet and gpsd via Synaptic.

Edit the kismet.conf file straight away. It’s located in /etc/kismet/kismet.conf
$ sudo pico /etc/kismet/kismet.conf

You need to change the suiduser= to your user name, so mine is suiduser=jake

You most definately need to change the Source for the wifi hardware. Kismet will not run if this is wrong. There’s a list of drivers and names on the Kismet site http://www.kismetwireless.net/documentation.shtml – section 12 Capture Sources.
I’m using a Linksys WUSB54G v4 for scanning, as I plan to add an external antenna using mod. Here’s what I put in to the kismet.conf for the source…
source=rt2500,wlan1,linksys

I also set up another line for my internal Broadcom wifi adapter. I have a Dell mini pci-e fitted from when I installed Tiger on the EEE.
source=bcm43xx,wlan0,broadcom

I swap between the two by adding a # in front of the source I’m not using.

If your card is different, you need to find the right driver from the Kismet list (rt2500 or bcm43xx in my two examples) followed by which interface they will connect via (wlan1 and wlan0). The last bit of information in the source line, the ‘name’ must be present, and as far as I know it can be anything, but if it ain’t there, Kismet isn’t running. I just used the name of each card, in lowercase, linksys and broadcom.

Since I’m using a GPS, I changed that line that asks Do we have a GPS?
gps=true

And the last thing I changed is the output of the log files
logtemplate=/home/jake/Documents/Kismet_scans/%n-%d-%i.%l

If I remember rightly, that’s everything. Now we can fire up the GPS and wifi.

Start the GPS using
$ sudo gpsd -nND4 /dev/ttyUSB0
This gives us a streaming display of the GPS data, so I know it’s running! You can probably remove some of the options, but this worked for me, so I didn’t want to change anything!

Then fire up Kismet with
$ sudo kismet

This should spew out around 10-15 lines in the terminal, then clear everything in that terminal window, paint it black and throw up the wifi info about APs etc within the terminal.

Voila, we are now stumbling. Go and walk/skate/cycle/drive and see what you find. Don’t forget to up your results to wigle.net.

If you can tell me how to do something in this post better, please do, I’m very new to linux. I’ve written this to try and help people who’re like me. Computer literate, but not used to the OS.

wEEEdriving? Anyway, with Mac OS X on the Asus, Kismac was next. While I waited for the Dell mini pci-e card to arrive, I dug out the old D-Link DWL-G122 USB stick and the GlobalSat USB GPS and hooked it all up.

After remembering where all the relevant drivers were, Kismac worked fine, found my two SSIDs at home, and the GPS was getting a signal and put me roughly in the right place. I say roughly as the dot to show where you are covers about 70% of the UK on the default map!

The Asus is so light weight, and OS X gets roughly 2.5 hrs on the battery (this will drop with it powering USB devices, but certainly long enough to go for a cycle or walk with the EEE in a backpack. Gets a bit warm, but nothing too alarming. We’ll see how it fares on holiday in Spain!

Really enjoying my Asus EEE, and have tried a few linux distros (mostly Ubuntu based) but I’m a mac boy, and once I started reading about the Uphuck and JaS hacks, well… it’s was only a couple of gig away!

I’m sure Nathan will be relieved that I’m no longer asking n00b linux questions, ad the next step is to get Kismac and the GPS on the Asus EEE.

Asus EEE… apparently will run a hacked Mac OS X install… hmm!

This is too tempting. £200 for a pocket sized, lightweight, ultra-portable Mac laptop. I’ve just been to London this week, and it was a pain in the ass dragging the 15″ MacBook Pro around and trying to use it while waiting for trains etc.

This Asus will appeal to many Mac geeks… will let you know how it works for stumbling ;)

Trip to Santander, via the Alsa Supra, stops in Oviedo first, then onto Santander. Total trip time about 3 hours.

43.325178,-4.54834,8

Gijón is pretty much uncharted territory on wigle.net, so I brought my GPS, laptop and USB wifis with me this trip. Since I didn’t have a car to cruise round in, I set up my laptop up on my son’s walker and pushed him down to the beach for a stroll in the evening…

I was pretty amazed by the results, a helluva lot of APs, and a lot of the were unprotected or just WEP.

43.542296,-5.652165,14