Plus I love getting out of the home as you so nicely describe in your post about wifi and cabin fever. That’s me alright if I don’t get out.

Also, I’d love to be able to work and jot posts into my Moleskine but really I’m more creative writing on the keyword so laptop it is for me. I wonder how good those Neo’s are? I’m tempted to give them a try one day. Have you ever used one yourself?

Love to travel with an iPhone too but right now I don’t have one (whaaaat!). Yep, I must be the only human on this planet who doesn’t have one of those ueber cool with a capital C gadgets. Hmmm… time to start saving I guess.

By not begin forced to find wifi all the time, I can pretty much work anywhere.

I’ve lost count! But it is a lot for sure…

Hey, that’s why it is good to make friends with all kinds of folks out here. I have not taken the time to learn too much about website coding and blog hacking – so we can help each other!

(Have a look on the back of your wireless modem – there may be a master reset switch that will reset everything, including the password!)

I might know how to code a website, hack a blog and do lots of other technical things with my various online real estate, but when you talk of servers and VPN and all that I’m totally and utterly lost. Heck, I can’t even hack my wireless modem to hook up my new laptop since some guy at the computer shop did that installation years ago and now I don’t have the password, tsk, tsk.

Glad to help out. Hey, if I could figure it out, anyone could, trust me am I the master geek or the master Googler, that’s the question!

I have the problem of power failures all the time where we live – the grid is very old and unreliable. So everything electronic of any value is plugged into a UPS for battery backup.

Now, the server won’t run for very long even on a big battery, but it can be set to shut down when the battery reaches a certain level. So if the power is only out for 10 minutes, no problem. Otherwise, it does a controlled shutdown.

I’m tempted to build a new server using really low power components like the newer Intel Atom processors. My current one is my old game PC and it uses a lot of juice!

Hee hee I can always find a reason to build a new computer

No worries – my pleasure! Don’t worry, I thought they would work for that too… I’ve found it easier (with my kids) to adjust to their schedule, adjust mine, and go out if I need to – just like you do.

Hamachi needs the PC on to work of course but there are ways to set the computer to “wake on LAN” i.e. the machine is in a very low power standby mode, and when the network card receives the right signal, it will start up – then you can log into Hamachi.

There are many ways you can set up a wake on LAN to work from outside your network anywhere in the world (from using a special router, to using special software). In any case, you need a way of finding out your IP address because most people don’t have a static IP. So a free service called DynDNS will let you do that.

It isn’t too hard to set this up but it would take a while to explain it here!

I’ve been too lazy to do it myself so I just leave my server on all the time not very green I know…

I was meant to ask you, that Hamachi program you use as a VPN, does that require your home computer to be switched on to access it? I’ve looked into other programs, paid ones in the past but they all need the computer to be on in stand by mode or whatever which to me makes no sense. I’d like to access my home maching while away without leaving it turned on if that makes sense.

This was a great post by George, and lots of great comments from everyone who stopped in.

I can see that the headphones might not work with your birdies, as they don’t work with my children either! They work well for me in other settings, to remove conversations when I don’t want to hear them.

(Most of the clientele at our local cafe tends to talk about the price of bananas and so forth, which doesn’t help me at all…)

I use a program called AMS Audio Masking System at work (on Windows) and another one called Noisy at home (on Mac) to generate pink noise and sort of make things fade into the background a bit.

They are both free, too.

The visual stimulus of the cafe doesn’t bother me though!

For me it is the other way round. I thrive on being out there with my laptop nestled on my lap while working at a local coffee shop or even the beach. It works for me.

But I suspect it is because I’m away from the “screams” of my birds, which right now drives me crazy. They are all on heat and after being stuck indoors for two months to raise young cockatiel babies I’m ready to escape for however little time I get.

Unlike a radio or TV I can’t turn off their sound and before you say it Brett, yes I’ve tried noise cancelling headphones but they don’t do it for me. So escape it is.

Great post, thanks George and thanks to all the new people who stopped by.

Monika