I’ve been looking around lately for some tools to find open wifi to leach. With the trouble I’ve had the last couple days I’ve been putting my “ol’ reliable” connection to good use today and researching how to find free wireless hotspots more easily.

Here’s a couple of my favorites that seem to be the best of the bunch. There are plenty of others but these are the most complete and have the most polished interfaces that I’ve found. Both of these have also clients available to download so you can search for a connection when not already online plus a finder on their websites. Many websites offer free hotspot databases but very few seem to offer downloadable versions to have on your own computer in some meaningful and easy to use package.

jiwire

This site has a downloadable client that hold a database with a bunch of user submitted open wireless. Jiwire is sortable by free and pay networks and seemingly is all businesses that offer open WIFI hotspots from what I see. So it should be something that’s quite legal in most if not all areas. You can search online too but the offline database is the winner here for me.

Wigle

This one looks the coolest! Wigle is also questionably legal to put into use and this correlation probably shouldn’t be a surprise as it lists 4.5 million networks to leach all over the world–mostly in the US though. Trying together war driving with a GPS unit give an amazingly complete map of all sorts of WIFI connections with GPS coordinates. If the network can be detected it’ll show up on the maps. Of course this is becoming increasingly illegal to capitalize but lets just blindly turn an eye to that and be extra inconspicuous in our vans! There’s a downloadable client too!

Wigle has two online browsers, one for higher tech browsers and one that’s more widely compatible. The fancy one is quite slick and is like using Google Maps!
Between these two you should have quite the collection of readily available data to get you online.

This last weekend I joined some family members and had a garage sale and I’m glad I did. A couple years ago I started selling stuff to bridge gaps in the budget and probably nine months back now I started selling furniture and less necessary possessions to make either moving into a cheaper apartment or my van easier–and that ever needed cash was of course nice too.

Late Sunday remnants.

Basically all I had to sell over the weekend was junk. The stuff that’s not worth enough to list on craigslist and wasn’t wanted by friends. As such, my expectations were quite low on what I’d be getting from this. A hundred? Maybe a bit more? I was wondering if I’d even earn enough to reach the hypothetical break even point for the effort. Money was spent on a permit, signs and such.But those three days of sales plus two beforehand to prepare and Monday morning to clean up did pay off. I made about $300 dollars profit from the weekend! But it’s odd to think now that I have no material resources in which to sell for some quick cash. No more electronics or grown up toys, no more furniture, no nothing that could raise easy money without hurting myself in the long term. Like I’d be a fool to sell the tools I use to make money. Cash now, sure, but what about tomorrow, next week or next year?

“You got any old tools?”

My two favorite questions of the weekend were both from guys. Lots of inquiries about old tools and those that I had sold out quickly. The other was “do you have any collectable stuff, men’s collectables? Like beer signs and manly stuff like that?”

About half the money made this weekend came from selling my old laptop as it sold for $150. I bought it in 2000 and made almost $20,000 with it that year. That’s almost $10 of profit for each dollar spent. Since 9/11 the money making has not been nearly as good, but still, the purchase price was already long since paid off. A computer in my hands is a money making tool. I wasn’t expecting to sell this here but when she saw some random computer junk asked, “do you have any Mac stuff?” She just happened to want a cheap laptop and veering into that masculine tool seeking turf.

The happy new owner

A couple days ago I jumped into a debate on a discussion forum about homeless people having laptops and how some couldn’t believe they’d have them. I really didn’t participate much in the discussion other than to say that many homeless people have jobs but lack sufficient income for home and that their laptops might just be part of that income generation. Then as a turnaround, I asked if they’d expect a homeless carpenter or mechanic not to have some basic tools.It’s been a couple of days with no responses so I suspect I “won” the thread. Computers can be luxury entertainment devices or they can make money. Last year I made $800 doing a writing project with that $150 PowerBook I sold. My current Powerbook was waiting for the funds to repair it. And with that bottom of the rung laptop I made the repair money and a bunch more too.

Of the video tapes I’m getting rid of I’m finding things that I recorded a decade or more ago and thinking, “oh, I should play this while I’m cleaning today…this was a fun movie.” Then I pop it in and hear this muddled sound and fuzzy, blurred picture and think, “what the hell were we thinking back then. The quality of the recording is unwatchable crap!”

My expectation of picture quality has changed radically. I haven’t been much of a television watcher since the 1980s, but still enjoyed movies and certain programming. But gosh, I can’t believe how easy we have it in the digital age! Pictures are razor sharp, the audio doesn’t require acute attention to decipher what is being said. This video tape was the audio/visual equivalent of eating overly hydrated tapioca. All mush, no substance.

The pre-recorded ones aren’t so bad. I might even watch one of those later tonight. But the ones I taped off cable are amazingly useless today. Out of curiosity I might have to pop in one of the tapes my brother gave me. It’s third generation dub recorded originally from an off the air broadcast of a BBC program. It’ll be curious to see if I can even make out an accent or the bad teeth.