Book Post: WiFi Toys

My Forgotten Hobby from the Fading Tech Frontier

In 2004, the internet was a different world. Social media was in its infancy, smartphones didn't exist, and the web was still very much a digital frontier. It was in this context that I stumbled upon Mike Outmesguine's "Wi-Fi Toys". In 2004 was a teenager with more curiosity than sense, thumbing through a book that would unknowingly pop into my memory as I relearned a lot of networking basics.

"Wi-Fi Toys" was like a cookbook for tech mischief, filled with projects and was a gateway to a world of possibility.
My pride and joy, and magnum opus of this time in my life was a war driving rig cobbled together from a basic laptop which was little more than a word processor with a WiFi card slot. I'd modified a wireless card with some coax cable and solder, a DIY hack that made me feel like a proper nerd and a skill I regrettably let lapse until last year. This setup became my trusty sidekick, mapping WiFi networks in my hometown long before I understood the privacy implications. This setup came in handy a few years later when my family disconnected the internet when I went off to college.

The irony? While I was unknowingly engaging in actual network exploration, I thought I was hot stuff for accessing IRC via telnet on school computers. I wince thinking back on my misplaced pride, then again, I was barely 16 and found something no one else around me was doing, and considered it like a game.
The book delved into antenna theory, which like soldering, I wish I remembered more of now that I've gotten into HAM radio. The DIY antenna projects, Pringles can designs, cantennas, biquad builds were more than just fun tinkering. They provided real-world lessons in signal propagation and gain, offering a ground-level understanding of wireless networking's physical layer whether I realized it or not.

Today, the only projects from the book that might still hold water are the antenna designs and possibly the solar WiFi repeater concept. But even these are largely outclassed by off-the-shelf products for most applications. The DIY solar repeater, while an interesting project, would be a security nightmare in today's landscape. You might argue it could be useful for a farm in an area with no cell service, but even that's a stretch given solutions like Starlink. One project I vividly remember was the car-to-car video conferencing setup. By today's standards, it was about as elegant as a brick phone, but back then? The idea of video calling between moving vehicles blew my mind. It was peak "because we can" energy, the kind of wonderfully impractical experiment that defined that era of tech tinkering.

But here's the kicker, and my biggest regret. After high school, I put all of this aside. This passion, this knack for hands-on tech exploration, got shelved as I pursued other directions. It wasn't until years after college that I rediscovered my love for tinkering with technology. Looking back, I can't help but wonder: what if I'd recognized this passion for what it was? Where might I be now if I'd nurtured that spark instead of letting it smolder?

Don't get me wrong, the experience wasn't wasted. That ground-level understanding of how networks function? It's been invaluable in my cybersecurity career which I didn’t even plan on getting into until 2019, even as the technical details have evolved and I had to learn more than just the absolute basics. "Wi-Fi Toys" taught me to think creatively about technology, to understand systems by building and occasionally breaking them.

I keep this book on my shelf now, a sort of personal time capsule. It reminds me of an era when the internet still felt like uncharted territory, before it became the highly regulated, security-conscious space we have today.

For anyone just starting in tech or cybersecurity, the projects in "Wi-Fi Toys" might seem quaint or even ancient. But the underlying lesson? That's timeless. Get your hands dirty. Dive deep into systems. That kind of hands-on understanding is crucial, even if the tools and challenges have changed. Like most things, the only constant is change. What's cutting-edge today will be obsolete tomorrow. The real skill isn't in mastering any particular technology, but in cultivating that curiosity and adaptability that helps you keep pace with that constant change.

My past with "Wi-Fi Toys" taught me something crucial: it's never too late to rekindle an old passion. Sure, we can't turn back the clock to those Wild West days of the early internet. But that spirit of curiosity, that drive to take things apart and see how they tick? That's something we can and should carry forward.

So my advice, borne from experience: recognize your passions. Nurture them. And if you've let one lie dormant, don't be afraid to dust it off and see where it leads. It's never too late to make up for lost time.