UPC (Ireland) upgrade [edit: FUCK UPC TECHNICOLOR]

They insisted on giving me a new modem. hopefully these Technicolor modems aren't a pile o shite n start crapping out on me like the dodgy Cisco they tried to peddle to me until i got it replaced with an older model...

...so far so good.

[EDIT: NOPE! they suck.]

Change local IP address range

They've changed the local IP range from 192.168.1.x to 192.168.0.x
This can now be changed back to the familiar 192.168.1.x range. There seemed to be an issue with it initially, and then after that it would come up with the error
"Error converting one or more entries: 
Make sure the Primary Network and Guest Networks do not overlap IP pools:"
I was able to change it by doing something strange.
First I moved the router's IP to 192.168.0.200 and starting address to 192.168.0.210, without googling the subject I was just guessing that that may not 'overlap'? Then after it rebooted itself I was then able to move the LAN to 192.168.1.1 etc. like I wanted in the first place.
Also, I would suggest temporarily changing the subnet mask on the router and your current PC from 255.255.255.0 to 255.255.0.0 to prevent headaches of not being able to access the router during the change over.

Device quirks

Certain things it will give the appearance of changing but they do not *actually* change. If this happens try making the change and then reboot the router yourself after each individual change (maybe even rebooting after each step if it involves a few changes in the router GUI). Not guaranteed to work for everything, some stuff is just plain broken on this unit.
I am convinced that the firmware has been remotely updated since I first got it on my own unit as the unit now reboots itself after certain changes where it did not before, and generally the router GUI seems a little smoother.

There is a mysterious device set up on 1st DHCP lease at 192.168.0.10, cannot get rid of this, seems to be something on the router itself. x.x.x.10 is where i traditionally put my main pc so that is annoying also.
[ EDIT#2: just did a quick check on (http://aruljohn.com/mac.pl) for the MAC 00:10:95:DE:AD:07 it's coming up as a "Thomson Inc." device. so this arsehole device *is* a Thomson. I had heard a rumour. Having worked in telecoms troubleshooting Thomson network devices I can tell you Thomson are absolute fucking garbage, cheapest, shittiest pieces of crap out there. RANT!! ]
[FIXED: Whatever this Thomson thing is it always moves with the starting DHCP IP address plus ten, so if you want 192.168.x.10 free, just move all DHCP addresses somewhere arbitrary like 192.168.x.200 or whatever and the Thomson device will be on 192.168.x.210]

Port forwarding

Port forwarding is weird. the boxes insist you put in port ranges like 60000-60100. but it does not open port ranges, only the lowest port on the range, so you have to create multiple entries for each individual port to actually create a range.
[EDIT: At this point, when I was initially setting up the router, I lost the rag here and wanted to throw the router out the window, as my ftps server needs a large range open to work and had taken a bit of work to get up and running in the first place. 
... This edit replaces quite a lot of CAPS SHOUTING AND SWEARING!!! I was pretty angry!]
[EDIT 18/03/2014: Was just setting up port forwarding for a program and lo and behold four months later you can now enter IP address ranges like you are supposed to. No reboot required, just need to hit save changes. I do not know if they update the version information but currently the status gives: Software Version STD6.01.27 ]
[EDIT 25/03/2014: In the last week I have had to restart and reset the modem a number of times. I was unable to restore my configuration backup after resetting modem -??? BUT! uPnP is now working, so no need to go opening ports for software that avails of uPnP. The Software Version number reported in the status has not changed, ..maybe this particular box, as opposed to in general, is a bit dodgy? ]

Get your own router

Obvious answer would be to fuck all this bollox and set it up in bridge mode and get my own router to do what I want. oh wait! NO YOU FUCKING CAN NOT BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE A GODDAMN BRIDGE MODE ON THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT MODEM.
[EDIT: Yeah yet more anger here! But here is a workaround:
Turn off WiFi.
Put you own nice, working, stable, store-bought router in the DMZ.
????
Profit. ]

WiFi is Rubbish

I have not experienced this yet as I live in a small flat, but apparently the WiFi is shit as well, drops out and pretty weak. It comes up as a pretty low signal anyhow at about -70dBm compared with the signal from my neighbours at -60dBm, and there is no external aerial on the thing.

[EDIT: Update on WiFi. It sometimes just stops completely. As in that part of the modem just ceases to function and will not come back, ethernet is fine during these episodes however. Box has to be power cycled to get going again. There is no WiFi interference, any other WiFi connection runs perfectly (tried other router, ad-hoc laptop to laptop). Also, I noticed movies were buffering while streaming across the WiFi to my laptop, so I ran iperf for 5 minutes to check the speed. Maximum speeds were good, but the WiFi completely drops out quite often. In the 5 minute test the WiFi completely cut out over 30 times. I have switched over and tried many different combinations of machines and it's simply the Technicolor/Thomson cutting out constantly. From reading forums and speaking to others it seems to be the general consensus that the WiFi is incredibly unstable.]

Micro$oft no longer supports Windows Gadgets

So apparently Microsoft no longer supports windows gadgets AKA windows sidebar AKA desktop gadgets. But why? The reasons stated are that they present the possibility of posing a security threat. (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ie/windows/gadgets) Upon further reading of the security threat posed (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-GB/security/advisory/2719662) they basically describe the same threat that installing ANY PIECE OF SOFTWARE WHATSOEVER poses. Microsoft have an extremely bad track record of fucking over software developers who learn and use their frameworks, for example in database access programming you used to have OLE, they completely changed and revamped this into ADO with a huge apology and a promise that they wouldn't change it again, pretty much straight away they changed this to ADO.NET with a re-apology and a re-promise that it wouldn't happen again. So that was annoying. Personally I wouldn't bother with any of that win8 shit til at least win10 when ya can be sure to get a bit of longevity out of your efforts. Rant off.

Want to know what dd is doing?

From another terminal type kill -USR1 $pid, where pid=`pidof dd`. This causes dd to spit out data speeds and amounts transferred so far. you might wrap it up in something like:  
pid=`pidof dd` 
while [[ -d /proc/$pid ]]; 
do kill -USR1 $pid && sleep 5; 
done
Apparently pidof is deprecated or something?? If you only have one dd process running on your machine you might try pkill -USR1 -n -x dd the problem here being that you will keep asking for the pid of dd, and might get new ones. The -n is for the newest process, -o for the oldest, and leave it out completely to send to all running dd processes, like this:

pkill -USR1 -x dd 
enjoy.

High Impedence Burnt Out My Soundcard?

So one channel on my laptop's soundcard has gotten faded volume levels with no bass.
I recently got a pair of KRK Rokit 8s but they are hardly the problem if functioning correctly no?
I also did start using my AKG K601 headphones a little which have a high impedence @ 120 Ohms. Could this be the amplifier killer?

Bricked my Galaxy Note (Soft Brick Phew!)

Very intense day today as I luckily only soft bricked my GT-N7000. Got stuck in bootloop after an unsuccessful rom upgrade when returning to nandroid backup. And no i didn't use stupid stock ICS kernel. Reflashed stock rom with Odin and it decided to fail :-O, redid it and felt very lucky when it worked! back to stock JB 4.1.2 not going to flash for a whiles now.

Cool workstation

Adding one of these to my wishlist:

Anyone want to buy me one of these?  ;-)
http://www.mwelab.com/index.php/en/products

Web Spider

Grab a website with all links. First get GNU's wget if you don't have it installed already.
I used this to grab a copy of my router's GUI:

wget --http-user="" --http-password="1234" --recursive --convert-links -e robots=off 192.168.1.1

Obviously replace usr/pwd and URL where necessary. This grabs all pages and links that 192.168.1.1 leads to. For websites with external links it is highly advisable to set the recursion level to something sane or you risk downloading the entire Internet ;-) using the option --level=NUMBER where 'number' is the depth of the links you wish to follow. Be careful with -e robots=off as this tells wget to be a bad bad spider and go against website's wishes and trawl through pages and files they probably shouldn't be in. Do not forget --convert-links if you wish to browse your freshly grabbed site offline as this converts links to relative links.

Taking Apart a Microsoft Wireless Keyboard 800

I got some beer or cider under a couple of keys on this keyboard. seems like a lot of screws to open it, i count 13, seems excessive. I googled, as opening these things can get tricky, but couldn't find any guides, hence this post, so i'll let ya know if ya need to take em all out.

too many :-/ and they are all very slightly different lengths, so don't mix em up.

OK, so far I've had to take *every* screw out including the 2 tiny ones in the battery bay, pretty annoying. but guess what? IT STILL WONT OPEN. Yes there is yet another screw hidden behind the health warning sticker. it came out easily enough though.

It comes apart with a small amount of prying into top and bottom halves. the bottom half contains all the electronics, and the top half all the mechanical parts of the keys. The mechanical keys were getting stuck so i soaked the upper half in warm soapy water then rinsed off with some more warm water. and left to dry. the bottom half seemed OK, there was some residue in what looked like a little run off area in the design which i wiped off with a warm soapy towel. by all means use something like a pure alcohol cleaner if ya have it.

I'll let update this if anything goes wrong after it dries and I put it back together.

Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ V2 (RND4000)

Just bought one of these for €200. It's a compromise on price performance. I wanted 1 gigabit read/write, but would have to shell out a lot more to approach these figures. The unit looks good. As you may have read in other reviews the drive bays are way too accessible and easy to take out. The drive comes bundled with power cables and a CAT5 cable. Why is this gigabit ethernet unit not bundled with at least a CAT5e cable? Just installed a 3TB drive in the unit. Powered it up and was pleased to see it was updating it's own firmware automatically. Had to quickly install Radar Utility as the NAS was giving me 10 minutes until assumedly it would do a default configure on the drive/system. The choices were set up XRAID2 or some regular RAID system. I'll be buying my disks one at a time so I'm going to try out their XRAID sytem I've been reading about. Dissappointed to note there is no FTPS option, only vanilla unsecure FTP sever available. [Explicit FTPS available, be careful not to use plain FTP by accident if you wish your password to be secure.] Speedtests to come... folder -quick write test coming in at a lowly 25MB/s to write to NAS thru SMB, 4GB folder of videos files. -rough read test comin in at 40MB/s, same folder of file. caching may have occurred. -write 1GB file 39/MB/s -read 1GB file 42MB/s looks like caching again maybe. Tried folder write again, now writing at ~40MB/s, definitely caching occurring. Copying large 11GB file to NAS 32MB/s. Something strange occurring. Tried connecting direct using only CAT6 and staic IPs and began copying 11GB file. was getting less than through my shitty UPC router. Came in around 30MB/s, definitely less than though router anyhow. ================================================= OK, several days just passed there. got locked out of web control for NAS kept saying "Device is Offline", reinstalled OS, did factory reset, finally was sayin corrupt root. after much searching found that my Seagate drive ST3000DM001 had firmware CC4C. In the readynas hardware compatability list it was recommended to upgrade to CC4H. -and fuck seagate for being so awkward in the update, but that's another story, just make sure you have a bog standard pc hanging around if ya wanna upgrade seagate firmware, with an intel chip, working optical drive, no raid array, and on my annoying set up i basically had to unplug everything to disconnect the PCs own hard drives, or else the upgrade utility would mercilessly try and upgrade every HD it came across. i had to do this about 3 times in the end, was getting pretty pissed off. finally got firmware -> CC4H. still getting "Device is Offline" AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! next factory restore -> err: partitioning failed / corrupt root hooked the drive back up to PC (3rd time disassembling PC :-/) tried deleting any partitions on HD -> nothing found motherboard cannot read 3TB drives, created new empty partition windows prompts for MBR or GPT, do some interesting reading and go for GPT (Guid Partitioning Table). Discover some interesting shit about these new >2TB drives, they're all secretly aligning on 4k bytes instead of 512. can cause double write if misaligned blocks! does this explain my slow write speed in initial testing? put HD back in NAS, left to test drive overnight -> err: could not mount root RAID d / corrupt root factory reset -> err: partitioning failed OS reinstall -> auto does factory reset >> test disks >> installs FW >> installs X-RAID!! >> creates volume!! >> does normal boot :-) did a quick test there with 11GB file, writing at 40MB/s thru router no problems. reading at 42MB/s. top speed of the routers switch was measured at 50MB/s with iperf. May have to invest in switch if i can justify the expense, will need to do some more testing direct thru cable and when i get more HDs installed in the NAS. Pretty bumpy ride so far, i bought the NAS so i wouldn't have the bumpy ride and expense of building my own NAS. The joys of IT eh? It's always a learning experience.

Ubuntu 10 (Lucid Lynx) Linux Post-Install Set Up Tips

***just found this post in my drafts folder on blogger, a little out of date at this point as i wrote it at least 1.5 years ago***

1) don't use 64-bit unless you have more than 3.5 GB of RAM installed. more trouble than it's
worth.

2) to change minimize, maximize, close window buttons from left side to right side of top of window:

run gconf-editor and go to /apps/metacity/general/button_layout
change from "close,minimize:" to "menu:minimize,maximize,close"

3) get the win key working:

run gconf-editor and go to /apps/metacity/global_keybindings

change any of these values to "Super_L" to have the win key open that application

e.g. run_command_terminal = Super_L to have the win key open a new terminal window

or panel_main_menu = Super_L to have a similar function to windows by opening the gnome application menu

4) This is general firefox on linux tweak. To set the backspace key to go back a page in history, open a new tab, type "about:config" in the address bar, dismiss the warning and type "backspace" into the filter bar. double click the browser.backspace_action entry and set the value to "0" (zero). As far as I remember "2" is to scroll one screen up in the current page.
This makes sense when used in conjunction with the space bar to scroll down one screen in a page.

Chinese Hackers

I opened up an FTP server recently on my home PC. Being security conscious I used implicit FTPS and daily logging. Day one of opening the port I have an attempted log on from an IP address originating in China 61.160.207.123. No other unknown logins/attempts. Harro harro! What you want china? I wonder if this is part of the global attack on all foreign networks in progress by china. I could be anyone network with my IP address really. If this coming from any other country or there were attempts from any other IPs I wouldn't be so suspicious. Later on I will be covering my walls with tin foil for sures!!

Free DynDns (Sort Of)

So I wanted to access my home network from outside. My ISP doesn't hand out static IPs and DynDns doesn't work on my router / also i don't want to pay for it anyhow.

Solution:

All I really want is my IP address. This can be displayed from sites like whatismyip.com very easily. We'll do it like they do and store the result somewhere on the web. There are plenty of free webhosts that support PHP. I set up a tiny website to set and get the IP address of my home gateway.

The website basically contains 2 webpages and 1 file. One webpage is called by my home server every hour, this page collects the IP address from the calling home server and writes it to a file on the webserver.

set.php :=


#get caller's ip address, we will have to pwd protect access to this file yes? $ip_address = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; 
$file = fopen("ipfile", "w+"); 
if( $file==false) 
{ 
   echo("error opening file\n");
   exit(); 
} 
fwrite($file, $ip_address); 
fclose($file); 
?>

The powershell script to call it was a bit of a pain to write as powershell is very fussy when it comes to authentication and signing scripts. Probably should have just used wget for windows, but I wanted to try something new.

PowershellScript.ps1 := 

$client = New-Object System.Net.WebClient; 

$client.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential("usernamehere","passwordhere"); 

$client.DownloadData('http://mywebsite.domain.com/set.php'); 

I just used basic http authentication. Don't want anyone becoming curious as to what the IP address is for if they stumble accross it, and more importantly I don't want them running my set.php page and overwriting my IP with their own!

For getting the IP address I use the get.php page :=


$file = fopen("ipfile", "r"); 
if( $file==false) 
{ 
   echo("error opening file\n");
   exit(); 
} 
$filetext = fgets($file, 100);
fclose($file);

then in the body display IP address:


(Very difficult to put all this php code into blogger blogpost, stuff keeps disappearing!)
I give up trying to write code here now.
Gonna set up my server for incoming connections now. Just wanna access my music and videos from my android.

Regedit Under Windows x64

So apparently under 64bit windows there's a "hidden" 32bit registry. This explains how programs were autostarting on me without me knowing exactly how. The relevent path under regedit64 is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Well fuckiddy-doo, someone could a told me eh? Well actually they did http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305097 Don't go editing those keys with the 64bit version of regedit though! Use %systemroot%\syswow64\regedit and note that any 64bit copy of regedit must be closed or that just opens another 64bit copy.

I'm back with UPC!

O joy of joys! In the last 10.5 months I've had to suffer with a data connection ranging from 40k thru my nokia phone with bad drivers, to ADSL on a 2Mb connection that at best connected at 1800kbps and was completely intermittant.
But finally I'm back with UPC!!! check it:

Prepare urself UPC, acceptable usage policies are about to be fully tested!

Just got a Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000 !!

Just received this by courier! Fantastic, it's huge!

Right hand side is level with a UK / IRL size electricity plug.

Seemingly Impossible Broadband Connection.

the great mcmonkeys1 is now working tech support for an ISP. i came accross a customer with an interesting ADSL modem. this customer's telephone line is really shit, he's in dire need of an engineer to fix his cabling to the house. the fault is pretty bad, there is alien current / voltage on this line. on top of that his line is only rated to take 4Mbit due to the length of the wire and the resistance this incurs. in addition his connection has been stable and up for over 7 days.
here is some imagery nobody outside the company is supposed to see. it means nothing to you, but this picture is like magic to me, the modem should not be doing this! noise levels are almost as loud as the actual broadband signal, the attainables are a measure of the max instantaneous possible speed possible on this line, the modem simply should not be able to connect higher than this! but it is synced at the full speed possible on the line setting (it's currently on 5Mbit).

it hangs up there like a floating city for weeks on end. i check on it now and then just to amaze myself.

btw i was speaking with the customer a number of times, the modem is a Billion Bipac 7800N, am considering buying one if my next gaf does not have UPC and i have to rely on shitty ADSL for internet.
it's pricey mind you http://www.dabs.ie/products/billion-bipac-7800n---wireless-router---dsl---802-11b-g-n---desktop-7RYB.html?utm_source=ie+email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email240412&utm_content=e800

Viewsonic VG2436wm-LED

My awesome new Viewsonic VG2436wm-LED monitor (pics pending). Another fantastic gift to myself ;-) Thanks Ros! No problem, anytime Ros.

24" 1080p, colours look vibrant, contrast ratio is high. Viewing angles are no great shakes, but no worse than other monitors. The most stand-out feature is pivot support (rotation) so that monitor can go into portrait mode. This is great for reading long articles, and should be fantastic for writing long functions when I get around to programming again. I have only tested this function on my laptop so far with Intel drivers, works great! Simply put mouse pointer on screen you desire to be rotated and then use the CTRL+ALT+arrow-direction keyboard shortcuts to rotate to desired screen orientation, very quick and easy to apply. The height can be adjusted to quite an exteme to allow for easier rotation, it makes the unit a little prone to shaking about slight vibration though, and may need a sturdy desk/worktop surface.

All in all, a nice little number, and the cheapest 24" monitor with pivot adjustment support built in and decent screen specs.

[UPDATE]
New monitor in action:

OCZ Agility 3 60GB

Santa's been! Actually I bought this one myself. I have a Lenovo R400 Thinkpad, it takes about 4/5mins to boot up and hard drive always seems to be thrashing. Seemed to be getting 40-60 MB/sec moving large files off the hard drive which is pretty shit. Bought myself an OCZ Agility 3 60GB and fuck me it's fast! Seem to be getting impossible speeds. It has SATA 150 interface (i.e. 150MB/sec theoretical upper speed limit) but testing with numerous softwares are getting figures of 200MB/sec and over???

It's booting and shutting down breathtakingly fast, i'm actually stunned as to how fast it is, PLUS the drive is designed for SATA 600 interface! I have SATA 300 in my main PC, i will run some tests on that machine at a later date, but stunning results so far! SSDs really do live up to the hype!

[UPDATE]
In retrospect, clearly the Lenovo spec sheet was wrong. Laptop must have SATA300 interface. Getting contiguous large file reads of 250MB/s during testing, but have recorded burst rates of ~298MB/s by monitoring actual system performance using HDTune Pro. Impressive stuff! Alas now, in the inevitable race ever upwards, I am noticing the limiting factor of my laptop's CPU power, and my once proud RAID disk system is beginning to feel a little challenged, regular defragging is now needed and the once seemingly quick boot times seem to take an age as I restart my laptop several times for fun as it does one single boot..

Dennis Ritchie is dead. Long live UNIX and C!

Sad news and no fanfare for the passing of this s/w giant =(

Father Of C And UNIX, Dennis Ritchie, Passes Away At Age 70

Meteor mobile broadband.

hooked my laptop up to my phone with a usb cable. so i now have internet at home, wahey!
here are my stats from speedtest.net, bathe in their glory ;-)



Hot shit no? My emails are blazing down in mere minutes!