RupertG

I use one of these-http://www.asus.com/uk/Networking/RTN66U/ - which is primarily ahome cable broadband router but works very well off a USB dongle or a mobile phone. It supports multiple hotspot names, so you can give the kid access to his own WiFi network, and it can automatically shut off access at certain times. Also, it's very reliable and fast. I've been using wireless networks since before WiFi and have been through countless routers - thus is one of the best...

That Faraday shield should be as good at keeping LED/switch noise in as it is in keeping Test Match Special out - using a car radio with an external antenna is probably the best way to go. Many radios with MW/LW only use the external antenna connection for FM/DAB, but that's never true for a car radio - they all use some form of external antenna for all bands. Finding the source - and cure - for radio frequency interference can be a ticklish job. If I had a car radio inside the boat with an external antenna and there was an interference problem on MW/LW, I'd probably get a portable MW radio and move it around, inside and out, to see where the noise was strongest/weakest, turning appliances/lights off and on as appropriate. If there's no interference on the portable when it was next to the external antenna but still interference on the internal car radio, then it's getting in somewhere else - perhaps via the radio's power lines (although car radios are designed to reject that), because there's a bad connection on the antenna lead, or if there's something awry with the splitter. All depends how much time and fun you're prepared to have. Me, I like this sort of thing... and car radios can be surprisingly good receivers. I've used one for long-distance MW listening before now. Amazing what you can pick up after dark.

Has anyone got experience of using a CPAP machine on a canal boat? For those fortunate enough not to know, these are devices that provide pressurised air to people who are prone to stop breathing in their sleep, and are basically a fan, a hose, a facemask and a chirpy specialist who tells you off once a year for not keeping things clean enough. They require uninterrupted mains power - I think roughly as much as a laptop - for eight hours a night. Not an issue, I'd guess, on a residential marina mooring with mains power, but what does that mean if you're not on the grid? I can do the sums for power and time and batteries and charging and so on, but reality is always more interesting. R

There are some ridiculously cheap dual-band HTs now on eBay - new from China, £35 delivered. A friend reviewed one here and, yes, they're not built to Moto standards but they'll do a helluva lot more than your standard PMR446. Of course, to use them legally you'll need a ham radio licence. It would be bad to use them on other frequencies without type approval. Bad. R

An acquaintance is a mild-mannered accountant in a large city in the north-east of the UK. After marriage in his late 20s, he and his charming wife moved into a modest three-bedroom place in the modestly respectable part of town, as one would. Then the small software company he was CFO for grew over twenty years into an extremely large software company, and (personally and corporately) he found himself in charge of more money than he knew what to do with. I know. A burden, what? Anyway, he decided to do Something He'd Always Dreamed Of. He found an auction of 'cherished registrations' where (let's say) LEN 1E was up for sale, and his first name was Lenny. (It isn't, and the actual fit between plate and name is much better, but out of respect for a pal...) He decided to go for it, and ended up the winner for 30K. (It wasn't 30k, but it was something equally outrageous and just a chip off the top of his mountainous bank balance.) So he got some plates made up, and a few evenings later proudly showed them to the missus. "If you put those on your car and drive out in them," she said, "I'll leave you on the spot." He put them in the attic of his modest three-bedroom semi, where they (and he, and his charming wife) stay to this day.

Ok - thanks. I'll engineer a trip to the area one weekend soon and check things out. And also decide whether I'm serious enough to start the process of mooring hunting!

Google Latitude works just as well with Android phones which you can get new, with GPS, for £90. Or second-hand, something like a T-Mobile G1 seems to go for half that on eBay - that would work perfectly. With something like the 3 deal, that clocks in at around a quarter of the price of a year's subscription to the locator service. If you're feeling experimental, you could probably cobble together something that streams video from the phone's camera, so if the boat gets half-inched, you can tune in and watch the villains' reaction as the plod heave to. R

Spring is here, and a young man middle-aged fart's thoughts lightly turn to thoughts of decamping permanently to the cut. For various reasons, the area around Bletchley and Fenny Stratford would appeal mightily. I don't know the area particularly well, except that Bletchley as a town looks well down the grot scale, but have heard nice things of the GU around Fenny. What's that like for liveaboard? Trains to London (which, if I go freelance, would have to remain within reach for client meetings, etc) seem useful, but are residential moorings within aspiration? Roving bands of feral scrotes a problem? Decent pubs a pleasure? TIA, R

And you may gaze upon the Micro-USB and say: it's not that much smaller than the Mini-USB, but even so will it not be more fragile and have a shorter insertion life, and be more difficult to use, especially for the older punter? And the standards people will cough, and stare their shoes, and mumble:'could be, guv'. And you may say: So what's the point of that, then? Why not just standardise on the existing, common, proven Mini-USB? And they will say, if you push them: only way to get agreement was mandate something entirely new. That it was worse in every way for the consumer meant nothing compared to not letting the other guy getting a march on you. Sorry. Enjoy your new standard. And they will run away.

Sell punter new genny. Genny gets nicked. Punter claims on insurance. Sell punter another new genny. What trick are they missing again? R

That has the look of a well-made DIY device, and could very conceivably be made for well under fifty quid - depending, as always, on what you have around you can reuse and how clever you are. Definitely a project worth doing when I finally get a boat and enough time to wield a soldering iron for fun...

At the behest of my then-girlfriend, I spent a long weekend in Bruges. Which I loathed instantly, instinctively and intensely (subsequently discovering that it was largely fake explained this reaction somewhat). There were only two aspects of it which cheered me up - one, that there was a chocolate shop near a bridge over a canal, and at that precise place there was a strong, pervasive and persistent smell of poo; and two, I discovered Bruges' Only Graffiti in a backstreet. It was in English, and said: "Postie, postie, don't be slow. Take a gram and go, go, go." I like graffiti, when it's witty, pretty, awesome, well-placed and in keeping with the surroundings. As I like the squalid excess of big towns, this is often the case...

Lessee... 250 (that's the deposits so far, right? x 3,500 is £875k per annum revenue. If they fill the lot, it's £1.1 million. Which sounds a lot, but they say they've spent £3.2 million on it already, staff cost around 3x salary, it's a big site in an expensive area and they're aiming for posh. So it may be pricey, but I don't think it's unreasonable. Whether it'll work or not will be interesting to see - and easy, just by looking at occupancy rates. Too many empty places, and I'll bet you can cut a deal.

Depends on the model, but your calculation is right - it'll be 300W maximum, which'll be an amp and a bit at 240v. Maplin do a couple of mains in-line power meters for six or seven quid, which may be helpful. I've spent some time plugging PCs into power meters, and it's very rare that I've been able to get them up to anything like their rated maximum.

Laser. I had to ditch my last laser about five years ago, because it didn't have drivers for the software I was using. Since then, I've had a motley collection of inkjets - which clog and cost a bomb to feed. At the beginning of the year, I bought another dirt-cheap Samsung laser (cost around £50) and it just sits there until I say "Print, slave!" when it prints. The downside is that the toner cartridges do cost around the same as the printer; the upside is that I don't expect to buy another for a year or so. For the lack of hassle, it's worth every penny. If I was printing every day or so. instead of every week or so, perhaps inkjets would be less rebellious. Likewise, if I needed colour I'd look again at the economics (although I doubt they'd change much). And I do have plenty of printers at the office, although I don't use those very much these days either. But. Given there's nothing more blood-curdlingly nasty than a really critical printout which refuses out to print, I don't think I'd go back to the squirty for all the tea in Waitrose. (And what they say: avoid Lexmark. I was given one of their wireless Scan-O-Print-O-Fax boxes, and it was one of the very few I've had where I didn't spend a fortune on ink. It never worked long enough to exhaust a cartridge. The range and variety of weird problems it had was truly world-class, and the enormous great chunk of binary ugliness that had to be installed on my PC to 'make it work' was enough to make a Komodo Dragon vomit.) R

I've noticed a few boats moored on the towpath side of the canal, between Caledonian Road and Battlebridge Basin. Is that entirely a good idea? I wouldn't call this part of town a hive of scum and villainy, but it can get a bit boisterous... R

Having done a fair share of retrieving data from dead disks over the years, I've found one of the most useful gadgets to keep to hand is a hard disk to USB converter. There are a few around, costing between twenty and forty quid - here's one from Maplin IDE to USB converter - and the better ones come with all the bits and pieces to connect to a lot of different sorts of drive. They're good for two things: if your operating system gets messed up, you can whip out the hard disk and plug it straight into another (working!) PC, whereupon it appears like any other USB device and you can get files off. The other is to reuse old hard disks; when I get a new computer, I generally throw away the old one but keep the disks, copying working files and valuable data onto the new computer. The old disk then becomes a back-up to be kept somewhere safe. (Label it, though. Nothing quite as disheartening than a huge pile of old hardware to work through when you're in a hurry). It won't fix everything and you won't need it every day, but it's one of those things that works so well when you need it it's worth its weight in gold. Or beer. R

Amen. And even if you do find yourself (as I have been very lucky to do) in a place which prides itself on looking after its people, economics means that this is a luxury that perhaps it can't afford to continue. Loyalty is for people, not organisations. As for sabbaticals... parts of my mob do have a sabbatical policy, and parts do not. Being someone who's clung onto my desk like a limpet in a Lizard rockpool, I took advantage of a pub-based environment to ask someone senior why our bit was in the do-not camp. The trouble with sabbaticals, she said, was that people don't come back. Which means, I guess, that heading off to the wide blue yonder is worth doing with or without the illusory safety net of the sabbatical - the end result will be the same. Or so I keep telling myself...

You don't have a geeky friend with a fondness for pranks, do you? The Annoy-A-Tron