My home LAN is not very complex: a DSL modem, a wireless router / printserver, and an inkjet printer. But even on a simple network the connections between the devices can create a real mess!

I bought a desktop computer last week. I’ve been a laptop-only guy for a few years now. But my dev team needed a test server to beat on, and I needed a backup solution / file server for my home network, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.

In the spirit of MAKE, I thought I’d share a little project I did over the weekend: making a box for wrangling the connections in my home LAN.

A large number of people on the internets are craving the new Mac Mini - the $500 “headless mac”, unveiled at Macworld two days ago - trying to figure out what the business implications are and the role the Mini might play as a home (or car!) based entertainment platform.

The general consensus is that the Mac Mini is the camel’s nose under the tent, a way for apple to rapidly gain entry into the mass market computing space.

One application for a small computer like the Mini is to use it as a personal server (PS). The need for such a device is driven by the increasing size and importance of the digital data that consumers are archiving and sharing, and the trend towards laptop-only, wireless households (which lack the option of using the family desktop PC as a de-facto file server).