torsdag 21. oktober 2010

In the church tower


When I grew up, and particularly when I went to college, there was this myth that IT people were boring, because they only sit by a screen and a keyboard and punch some cryptic lines of code in and nothing comes out of it. Happily, this myth is slowly being debunked - along with the myth that computer people are impatient and just want things fast. In real life, we're the ones who know that things take time. Things, such as climing to the top of the church tower to mount long range WiFi equipment. (Photos feature my coworker Kadir)


It's a win-win project: The church gets to use our WiFi connection to broadcast their service live to the municipal retirement homes every sunday, while we get a nearly free link to locations that are not likely to get fibered any time soon.


Of course, there's a catch. Now that the state church gets to do their broadcast to our municipal IP network, other religious communities are likely to ask for the same access. Since the equipment to do this has been donated, it is in the grey area of where the responsibility really lies. Personally, I believe it is a municipal responsibility, since we allowed access to the state church in the first place. That said, the broadcasts have not yet started, we're merely done with the infrastructure. A local company will be doing the rest.


While we've been up there, we decided to put up our own little webcam. While it has been there for a few weeks on our internal network. Today, I made another trip to fine tune the camera and put RJ45-modules on the last two network cables. It's becoming routine to climb those ladders now. I don't even break a sweat anymore. And the official image is now finally accessible online. It updates only once a minute. There's another internal point of access for us IT people for the live feed, of course.



The view is over Myklebustvatnet - an area under royal protection from development. There is currently a dispute about this area, as a few metres at the edge of it is wanted for development of a new road.

The remaining issue for the IT department, however, is that the lamp in the tower reflects in the window at night. I'll prepare for another trip to put in some shades around the camera.

Link to the church: http://www.heroy-kyrkje.no
Facebook group against the road construction: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=100745706633737
Facebook group for the road construction: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=114432445234767