I’m new at blogging, at least on a proper blog site.  I’ve written quite a few articles and made posts so hey ho, lets go.

I’ve started a website selling routers online, Draytek’s to start with, because I think they are excellent and the company is pretty good too.   I’ve started this blog because I want talk about broadband, routers and probably some other ramblings. Truth is I would like to sell some more of them as well.  I will permit myself to digress should I come up with anything I particularly want to ramble on about and to keep this more interesting, otherwise it might get too dry.  I hope people will contribute and expand on things, I don’t mind being corrected should I get something wrong.

I like plain English a lot so whilst there may be some Jargon, I will use “which means” where I think it’s needed.  I want people to understand the technology even if they are not techy themselves.  I even hope I might attract a few technophobes.  I will try and keep my posts to bite sized chunks.

A bit about me and the first digression

Not strictly necessary this section I guess but I think it’s good to know a bit about who is rabbiting on.  You can always skip this bit if you want.

So, me, Stuart Chalmers; I’m old enough.  Working life; I spent 20 years in IT working mostly on large systems running on Unix (which is an operating system much like Linux but has been around much longer, Windows is another operating system as an example for those that have never heard of Unix or Linux) which I mostly enjoyed and was able to obsess over especially in the early years.  A lot of the time I spent working on databases but did a lot of programming and analysis as well. I probably sat more on the technical end of things but this is not a CV so moving on …

I ran a telecoms business for 7 years but to be honest it’s not something that I could really get excited about and I’m not really a very good salesman.  I like the truth and I’m not sure how well that relates to positive spin but never mind.  I’ve done bits and bobs in between.

For fun I like to play drums, in a band which I have done all my adult life and half of my teenage years.  I flew gliders for 13 years and instructed other people on how to fly them, that was fun.  I like to try some action stuff now and then like skydiving, paragliding etc, cycling is good etc etc.  I casually like bonkers Japanese stuff such as their adverts, their bands and Wasabi!

The serious stuff

I’m going to start off with some basics.  In this case it will be about what broadband is currently available and I will sneakily slip in which Draytek routers are suitable for which and point to www.iwantrouters.com.  That doesn’t mean you have to use Draytek routers of course, there are myriad of routers out there to choose from.  I’m going talk about how to find out about what’s available to you and explain a few things so that even if you are not techy I hope you will be able to understand what things mean and then hopefully the choices will be less confusing.

Ok, that’s enough for post number one, the next post is “Broadband – I still don’t get it”.

BTW if you didn’t know already, today is Talk like a Pirate day – www.talklikeapirate.com, arrrrrgghhh, my second digression.