I finally broke down and bought something off Thinkgeek: the Wi-Fi Detecting Watch.

[EDIT] Wait, I lied, I also have a “got root?” sweatshirt.

Funny thing: it’s listed as $9.99, but shipping and handling kicked it up to $27-something for DHL next-day.

Anyway. The watch itself, as a watch, is pretty slick. I had a Casio that I picked up during MCT that didn’t do half the shit this watch does. World time, date with year! woot!, 15-lap stopwatch with memory, 3 countdown timers, 3 daily alarms, 5 single-date alarms, and normal time is displayed below everything but the memory. The thing is more high-speed than the watches I’ve seen around without the damn wireless detector.

Which brings us to the damn wireless detector.

You push a button on the front panel, and it gives you a little LCD animation for about five seconds, then tells you… not much of anything. It basically just tells you whether or not there’s a network out there and what the signal strength is — on a scale of 1 to 8, whoever the fuck came up with that. No encryption status (not that it matters much nowadays), and, sitting on the other side of a wall from my wireless router, it gives me a “4″ for signal strength (though there are other networks in the area… does it just pick one?).

Oh, yeah, and it’s got a decent backlight. (Yeah, I’ve had watches that had no light whatsoever. WTF.)

The manual also mentions “Do not operate push buttons below the surface of the water while swimming or diving”, though the back is stamped “WATER RESISTANT 100M”.

All in all: it’s a slightly useful toy, and a useful watch. Maybe, if you’re sitting at a coffee place you’ve never been to before, you can check real quick if they have wireless. I found one at work, where I wouldn’t have expected one if I didn’t know there was one; I did use the watch to triangulate it to a certain office. Also, the light won’t turn on when you’re scanning, so no checking for 802.11 in the dark.

[EDIT] I forgot to mention there was a glitch with PayPal when I bought the thing. PayPal registered it, but ThinkGeek didn’t, so I had to email TG. They were quick to respond, and I got my watch only a day late. (I’ve dealt with PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification before, and I can attest to how much of a pain in the ass it is.)

So, being in the military, I get one of these nifty little dealies. I never bothered to look into them, but I saw a USB reader for $25 when they shipped us out for training, so I figured, what the hell.

I haven’t bothered to get really into smartcard hacking (yet?), but I have got it locking and unlocking my screen (and other assorted fun things when my friends plug their cards in).

Source - requires Chipcard::PCSC

I installed a new tagboard. Since I didn’t feel like doing the work myself all over again, it’s from here, and it works pretty well so far. I figured it’d help you guys who’re paying more attention to the laptop page out a bit more, if nothing else. We’ll see how it goes.

Speaking of which, yes, I know I’m still lagging on things. I got an email from a gentleman who said he patched the RTL8187B driver for the 2.6.24 kernel, so I sent it to another gent who tried it out, and got back a report of a kernel panic. D’oh! (The next post will have a link to the source.) The best way to reach me right now is probably one of the contact links in the sidebar.

I really am trying to get the ball rolling again, and I know that page is getting pretty cluttered. I was honestly just throwing some source and docs out there, I didn’t intend to become the maintainer of anything besides the Linux-Laptops site, but since I’m headed towards the top of Google for the RTL8187B, I might as well do what I can. :-)

I’ll keep you posted.

PS - Would the sir who sent me his 2.6.24 patch please email me again? I still have the patch, but lost your email, and you forgot to add your changes and contact info in credits. ;-)