A couple hours after posting Raspi 4, I looked on Amazon and saw that the B+ was cheaper than the B revision 2, so it's what I'll be buying instead. I'm unsure what I'll do with the extra USB ports, but I guess it'll allow me to expand it's storage ability (though the point of it is a small-file FTP server due to the 10/100 ethernet port).
One of my friends read earlier that the Raspberry Pi 2 will be coming out sometime soon which will have a quad-core 900MHz ARM and 1GB of ram and still be $35 USD. I'll need more info on it, but I'm quite sure the ethernet's still 10/100, assuming the USB controller still controls it.
Reading this article, it seems like it's on sale today, but only for the UK (or maybe just England?), since I didn't get any hits for it in the Newark Element 14 store.
Nonetheless, I'll probably end up getting one to use as the ultimate low-energy, low-heat solution for when I want to write. I'll also be able to listen to music and watch videos as well, provided I put it on an external drive. I'm decently confident that it'll be able to handle a lot more than the B (revision 1) that I have, so using a real web browser shouldn't pose any problem either. It'll be nice to be able to leave on all the time, since it probably won't consume all that much power, if at all any different from its predecessors.
I'll also be receiving my best friend's Raspi to tinker around with, since I'd rather not awkwardly tinker with mine along with the fact that he's not using it for anything (I think it underwhelmed him more than I). It'll help me figure out a use for my Raspi once I get the B+.
One possibility is to make my Raspi a ad-removing wifi access point, but as I think about it, it would make things a bit awkward as far as placement and such - I'll still keep it in mind however.
Another possibility is to make it a personal NTP server, where it updates its own time from the NTP server I use (ntpX.jst.mfeed.ad.jp - replacing X with 1, 2, and/or 3) then acts as a server to give the time for any of my machines (except for Triela and Sae-chan, considering their mobility), but considering the nature of NTP servers (and the NTP client service), it's not entirely necessary.
I was also thinking an MP3 player for my car (considering I'd depreciate the iPod, I could probably convert to OGG), but display and controls are only part of the complications of doing this.
I'll have to poke around more to see if there's something else that I can add to the list of possibilities, but off the top of my head, those are the only three at the moment.
Late yesterday (31 January) I remembered about using DD-WRT (it was within a conversation with a friend when conversing about using the Raspi as an access point) to make a partial wireless bridge by having the router connect to the AP directly (client bridge) instead of using two routers to make a full wireless bridge. I looked up the Tenda routers I was using and it wasn't within the router database, tough luck for me I thought.
The router I had bought toward the end of 2012 (I think?), for when I was seriously considering on getting my own internet line, had been mounted in my bedroom and sitting there ever since (I had set it up some, but I hadn't a clue where I kept the passes for it and such), which is the router I checked next - which came up.
After about 3.5 hours of reading, double-checking, and setting up, I was ready to begin the installation process, which was quite quick and easy compared to what the DD-WRT wiki had made it to be.
I then began setting it up as a client bridge, which was fairly easy, but besides misunderstanding the instructions a bit (along with not thinking about the instructions), I couldn't get it to connect. I even tinkered with the settings a lot, trying different things that might be the problem, according to the troubleshooting, but still nothing.
After finding a blog with instructions in a different order, I still couldn't get it to work, and so I began tweaking things again. I started over with the blog instructions, but also changed the settings that they had labelled as "optional", and still didn't work. I then (for whatever reason) decided to change the encryption type from WPA/WPA2 mixed mode to just WPA2 and change the type to AES, and when I went to check the status, the AP showed up!
The entire process (excluding research/etc) took 3 hours - most of it belonging to trying to set up the client bridge.
The immediate reasoning for doing this is to reduce the number of wireless connections from my bedroom (though it's only reduced by one whenever Mei-chan's on), to allow me to stay on the same subnet (192.168.0.x) instead of having a separate one (192.168.1.x) to transfer files from Taiga to Mei-chan, and allow a quicker run of the Cat6 when I need to do large transfers from Melty or the NAS. What this does for me in the future is to rid of the Tenda wireless bridge whenever I make the wired network for the second floor.
Anyway, once I had fixed the settings on Mei-chan and Taiga and verified that both were able to access the internet, I shut Mei-chan down and removed the PCIe wifi card to give to Lie-chan. The PCIe wifi card that Lie-chan had went to the Dell (as much as I wanted to put it into the Intel, I didn't feel like messing around with windows drivers); the PCI wifi card that the Dell had went into Ziggy.
I realised sometime ago that I could move the Raspi to my bedroom, but right now, I don't have a good place for it along with the fact that I had just taken out an expansion card from Mei-chan and I don't feel like putting one in (I'd like to have some rear USB ports free if I need it for whatever reason). The other reason is that I had also made a 30cm cable for the, so making another one so quick doesn't appeal to me that much either. I might do it at some point though, but we'll see.
Random afterthought: I was half-tempted to use the Linux label, since DD-WRT technically uses the Linux kernel, but since it's not an actual distribution, I decided against it.
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