Lisa Katayama

Photo and original diagram of the world's first ethernet cable

Behind an ordinary door in a nondescript room hosting several printers and copiers at PARC is the world's first Ethernet cable. In 1973, Bob Metcalfe sent an internal memo to his colleagues at Xerox proposing a local system of interacting workstations, files, and printers. The devices would all be linked by one coaxial cable, he said, and would run within a local area network. He called the system an Ether Network, or Ethernet. By 1976, there were over 100 devices linked into Metcalfe's local network, and it was even used to test out the world's first laser printer, which was being developed concurrently in another research facility within Xerox. Metcalfe and his assistant David Boggs published their findings in the Association for Computing Machinery later that year. The rest is history.

Below is a composite sketch of several diagrams Metcalfe drew and included in his original memo.

Joel Johnson

New HDMI 1.4 standard offers just five confusing options

BusinessWire press release:

Consumers will have a choice of the following HDMI cables:

• Standard HDMI Cable - supports data rates up to 1080i/60;
• High Speed HDMI Cable - supports data rates beyond 1080p, including Deep Color and all 3D formats of the new 1.4 specification;
• Standard HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
• High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
• Automotive HDMI Cable - allows the connection of external HDMI-enabled devices to an in-vehicle HDMI device.

Joel Johnson

Howto make low-inductance speaker cables

DIY Audio Projects writes a DIY speaker cable project::

The cables use multiple stands of 16 AWG wire that is twisted together in alternating directions. The alternating cable geometry minimizes inductance. The multiple 16 AWG wires combine to create a cable with an equivalent cable gauge of 10, so resistance is also low. The result is a fine looking cable that delivers the performance of commercial cables at a fraction of the cost.

Rob Beschizza

International Sockets

Spot the mistakes!

Power Plugs and Sockets all over the World [Eurocom via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

Computer lock-up using the Monoprice Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter

Not a big deal, but throwing this out there for anyone else who may be experiencing it: About once every dozen times or so, plugging in the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter from Monoprice causes my unibody MacBook Pro to hard lock. I can only fix it by power cycling the laptop.

For $10 I'm not going to complain, especially when it may well be a problem with the computer—and no one else on the Monoprice customer reviews page seems to mention it—but if it has happened to you, take comfort: you are not alone.

Steven Leckart

A Beginner's Field Guide To Pole-Watching

An estimated 160 million utility poles in the U.S. shore up with the millions of miles of crisscrossing cables that power our homes, phones and more. They're hard to miss, yet until recently, I'll admit I was mostly a utility pole dilettante. How often do most people really deconstruct the random wires, boxes, transformers, and industrial bric-a-brac hanging off them? Maybe you do. But if not, here's an introductory guide to pole ogling* after the jump...

[image via flickr]

*I did not mean that to sound vaguely sexual, but now that we're talking, yeah yeah, ha HA.

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Lisa Katayama

Sex with the cable guy: does it really happen?

Jordan, a gorgeously cute, freckled blonde, was looking to have her phone line installed so off we go to do what we do best, satisfy the customer. After looking at the disastrous mess of cable and wires at her place it was obvious to me, we didn't have the right equipment to do the job. Jordan, however, had a different job on her mind and I definitely had the right tool to take care of that. Watch me plug my cable into Jordan, and box and jackhammer that tight socket at T1 speeds.

Sex with the cable guy--it's a fantasy that has become a regular sexual obsession in our society, especially among bored housewives and other stay-at-homes. There's just something about blue collar man in uniform coming over in the middle of the day when the kids are at school and the husband is at work to satisfy all your entertainment needs--TV, Internet, daytime sex with a stranger. There are pornos with titles like Cable Guy Sex and Blue Collar Butthole (yes, the latter is gay porn) and Time Warner even produced a promotional calendar last year that featured 12 hot hunky cable guys with bulging muscles doing things like, cooking a delicious meal for you in their hard hat.

"It's the 21st century version of our grandmothers' sex with the milk man and our mothers' sex with the plumber fantasies," says Carol Queen, who runs the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco. She also points out that, with the increase in the number of female cable people, there could be a secret lesbian angle to the fantasy, too. Keep reading for more cable guy porn scenarios and to read about my ongoing quest to find out whether sex with the cable guy actually happens.

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Lisa Katayama

Submarine cable maps: 1901 v. 2009

This is what the world's submarine cable system looked like in 1901, according to the Eastern Telegraph Company.

This is what it looks like now. [Image via Telegeography]

Steven Leckart

How To: Amp up a Home Recording Studio w/Cabling

With the advent of laptops and cheap software like Logic and ProTools, building a decent "home" recording studio isn't as out of reach as it used to be. But there's more to it than buying crisper mics, better pedals or amplifiers that go up to 11. I recently dropped by a small recording space in Portland, OR -- the unofficial band capital of the West Coast -- for the lowdown on how to get the best, albeit relatively-subjective, bang for the buck by ditching generic audio cables. Hint: buying the most expensive patch cable available isn't the solution -- more after the jump.

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Joel Johnson

Gallery: An illustrated history of the transoceanic cable

Coaxial Cable, 8-Tube (exploded view), 1946

A fanned-out section of an 8-tube coaxial cable. One pair of these tubes was capable of transmitting 600 simultaneous phone conversations or one television program in one direction.

Lloyd Espenschied and Herman A. Affel, [ca. 1949]

Inventors of coaxial cable, Lloyd Espenschied (left) and Herman A. Affel, examine sections of coaxial cable. In 1936, AT&T put in service the first coaxial cable for television use in New York City.

Golden Gate Straits – Submarine Cable, 1909

Splicing the submarine cable that stretched across the Golden Gate Straits, San Francisco, California.

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Lisa Katayama

Can new underwater cables finally connect Africa?

Did you know that only 5% of people living in Africa have Internet access? Two big reasons: accessibility and affordability. Right now, the entire eastern coast of Africa only has satellite Internet, which means it's way too pricey and slow for most people. Last week, the BBC reported that three separate efforts are underway to lay submarine cables. The front runner in this effort is Seacom, a private company that has already dug 13,700km of cables into the sea beds from Egypt to South Africa to France. It's planning a big launch in July, and the big impetus is the World Cup, slated to take place in South Africa in 2010--Seacom will likely be the main deliverer of soccer goodness from Capetown to the rest of the globe.

But what does this really mean? When the Sat3 cable system was laid down under the sea on the western coast of the continent in 2001, the vast majority of the population were still disconnected because it was way too expensive. "The gatekeepers to the cable were government-run, monopoly telecom providers," says Ashwin Mathew, a phD student who studies infrastructure and submarine cables at Berkeley's School of Information. "It's not just about introducing cable; who owns and has access to it will be a determining factor to how useful it is." Other factors include structures of investments and negotiating access to the cables for countries that aren't on the coast.

Also note that the 5% who do have Internet access aren't exactly tab-surfing or scanning RSS feeds like we are. Connections are patchy, electric outages are frequent, and shoddy transportation often bars people from getting to the nearest Internet cafe. "Internet users really use the hell out of the existing low bandwidth connections," says Jenna Burrell, who is Mathew's professor and researches connectivity in Africa. She adds: "Cafe owners in Ghana who were paying ISPs were really pinched between the high cost of the network connection and the limited amount of money their customer base was able to pay for the service."

Aside from Seacom, the East African Marine Cable System (Eassy) and The East African Marine System (Teams) are also working on submarine cable systems in the region. Neither of these are private projects, though, which could mean they might meet the same fate as the west coast's Sat3.

Still, locals are excited about it. "Costs for telephony and internet could drop to a fifth of what they are now," Kui Kinyanjui, a reporter at Kenya's Business Daily, tells me over email. "East Africa is one of the last frontiers in the world that has not yet linked up to the global fiber optic network."

Steven Leckart

Tip For Aspiring Cable Vandals: Read The Newspaper

A $250,00 reward was posted for info leading to the capture of whoever clipped at least 500 strands of underground fiber-optic south of San Francisco last week.

From SF Chronicle (bold is my own):

Public safety crews that rely on 911 calls, hospitals trying to access medical records and people who wanted to make a landline or cell phone call, use an ATM or make a purchase with a credit card found services down...

Considering their importance to public safety and the economy, fiber-optic cables are not highly secured. The manholes are on public streets, and their covers generally are not that difficult to remove... The typical manhole cover, a 250- to 350-pound disc of cast iron, can be removed with the use of a J-hook, a steel pole with a hook at one end, or any similar tool.

Am I the only one who finds it odd when "news" of a crime serves as a helpful tip to less clever, would-be copycats? It's like writing a blog post and linking to this and then this.

[image via flickr]

Lisa Katayama

Hide ugly cables with beads

Ugly cables making your living room look bad? Maybe these orange-and-white beads suit your tastes better.

[Nathalie Costes via NotCot]