I’m in techie hell at the moment. This may descend into a bit of rant. Frankly I’m past caring…
I received an AirportExpress for my birthday but, and here’s one in the eye for all Apple fanatics, it’s ridiculously hard to setup. Yes I’m running Windows XP but it SAYS on the box that the AirportExpress supports XP so it bloody well should!
I DID manage to get music playing through it at one stage last night, but it timed out after about three minutes and I don’t think it was really connected properly; this is backed up by the flashing orange light on the unit that should turn green when connected. I’ve yet to see a green light on this thing, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a myth.
It doesn’t help that my networking knowledge is… slim.. and that I’m not using a Wireless Router but a USB adapter. Not that that should be a problem, my laptop happily connects to my home network, but getting the AirportExpress to do the same is an exercise in increasing futility.
The really infuriating thing is that it MUST be connected somehow as, using the Airport Admin Utility software, I can ‘see’ the Airport Express and change settings on it, and whilst the Wireless Adapter reports that it is connected TO the Airport Express, I’m missing a bit somewhere that lets WINDOWS know that the damn thing is connected.
I’ve given up for the moment, lest I through it, my computer, or myself through the window.
On top of that, remember the SQL Injection attacks I having on Scottish Blogs?, well they’ve recently quadrupled in frequency to about 200 a day. Again I feel like I’m out of my depth as I just can’t solve this. Yes I’ve tried your previous suggestions, but either I didn’t implement them properly, or I don’t understand the problem properly. I’ve Googled until my eyes bleed but have yet to find a simple set of instructions of how to STOP IT HAPPENING (I do NOT want to read another explanation of what an SQL Injection is thankeweverymuch).
And I know I’m being lazy with this problem, frankly I don’t CARE HOW they work, I want a list of things to try to STOP IT FROM HAPPENING. Plain english would be good.
There in lies the crux of my frustrations. There are screeds of information available on the interweb for both my current problems, yet they are all written with a lot of presumption and lack sufficient detail for me to feel confident in the solutions suggested. Every piece of information is either far too detailed, a glorified brain dump, or presumes that you are an expert in the topics at hand. I’m not looking for a “For Dummies” solution here, just something written in a language I understand, with detailed instructions, and with some structure to the information.
It’s not THAT hard to structure these types of ‘articles’ you know, a simple template would get you started. Like this:
- Heading
- Overview/Introduction
- Basic Concepts
- Detailed Concepts [optional]
- Pre-procedure steps [optional]
- Procedure, broken into steps
- Post-procedure steps/tests [optional]
- Additional Information or next section
Pretty straightforward if you ask me, as long as you make sure the procedure is obvious, and details what happens (with whatever interface you are using, screen, hardware etc).
A bad example can be lifted straight from the AirportExpress Setup Guide (remember, this is from a large corporation who pride themselves on design and usability…). Here are the instructions on how to connect the AirPort Express to an existing wireless network:
1. Open the AirPort Setup Assistant, located in Start > All Programs > AirPort.
(problem one, it’s just “Programs” not “All Programs” did no-one check this?)
2. Follow the onscreen instructions to connect your AirPort Express to your wireless network.
That’s it. That’s all you get. So you head ‘onscreen’ and you get asked which AirPort Base Station you want to connect to and… whaa??? Base Station? I’ve got Express… what’s a Base Station? Back to the Setup Guide… so and so and so forth. The ‘onscreen’ text isn’t too helpful either.
So, poo to you Apple. And poo to you people injecting nonsense into the Scottish Blogs database. I’ve got far more important things to do with my time than spend it fucking about fixing OTHER PEOPLE’S PROBLEMS!!!
Anyway, I’m technologically drained. This black box is getting switched off in a couple of hours and I’m opening a bottle of wine.
Rant over.