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.

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!!

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!

3D Cinema

I saw Martin Scorcese's Hugo in 3D in the cinema last night. Everytime I go to the cinema in the last while I'm dissapointed by the small screens, often lack of surround sound, and appalling shutter speeds. The 3D was good, and the movie was not too gimmicky about it, but did use it. BUT! I could not help thinking: yeah that ball looks great coming out of the screen, but why am I seeing eight of them when it moves? It really seems like they're slapping 21st century technology onto 1970s tech, and I guess that's what they are doing, but really they need to update these projectors properly if they want the cinema industry to survive. I think a lot of people have large flat screens and possibly 5.1 surround at home these days. Surely they should increase the framerate and screen size by updating old tech or moving over to digital projectors? And for the love of jaysis turn on the feckin surround sound if you've got the equipment!

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!

700GB of data gone :-(

The hard drive in my Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive (hmnhd) has died with the loss of 700GB of data. This is extra annoying as i was in the middle of collecting data from all of my machines into the one place (the dead drive) with the idea that i'd then make a backup of that. Suffice is to say i'm gutted. This is the first hard drive that has completely gone on me with catastrophic data loss. FML.

New World Order -OK Maybe?

i'm beginning to think the unthinkable. that maybe we need a single world government to regain control of the world economy. individual state governments have lost/are losing control like they used to have before the globalisation of businesses. raising and lowering interest rates at a national level have a much subtler affect than they used to. multinationals (stockholders) are basically unanswerable forces that cannot be controlled by single nations alone (lets disregard BPs seeming demise due to the US), which makes it near impossible to implement measures to inhibit the boom and bust cycles. this is clearly just applying an old solution to a new problem, but what else is happening? at least there are nasty groups out there that are considering this option as opposed to??? mind you i have absolutely no idea what i'm talking about.

tl;dr i have no idea what i'm talking about ;-)

*(tl;dr == too long, didn't read)

US Drones "Hacked" By Iraqi Insuregents

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/17/skygrabber-american-drones-hacked

Pretty amazing what the US military counts as "hacking". OK I think a lot of people know that what the media calls hacking is actually "cracking" -circumventing security systems. The US military it would seem have another view entirely. A method one could use to "hack" the military drones is to tune in a digital set top box to the unencrypted omni-directional signal that the drones blast out when in use. It's as much hacking as watching ITV Digital on Freeview. Anyone else a little shocked? The mind boggles! This reminds me of the case against that autistic guy who "hacked" into the pentagon looking for evidence of UFO cover ups. He was able to browse around their open, unsecured network shares (filled with sensitive documents) with zero technical knowledge. They've been trying to have him imprisoned for "breaking into the system", obviously the lawyers are having a field day.

My Big PC Box

problems problems, have had my new box a couple o months now, but ain't had chance t fix it. prob is: hangs after logging into windows (server 2008rc2 & win7, both 64-bit). used to hang with definite graphics card probs -screen set to a random primary colour but could remote login to reboot, solved by taking the side off the case for extra ventilation -so that was a heat problem. now it will lock up (-system freeze but screen locked to last position and error for remote login) on every first boot up, but usually ok on second -like it has to "warm up" or something.

system is:
amd phenom II X4 965 Black Edition -great!
nvidia gtx260 graphics -good, but not as impressive as i'd hoped 1920x1080
4 gig ddr3 ram matched to cpu
2X 1 TB 7200rpm HDs with 128MB cache (raid 0)
kind of a shit mb i've decided, but nvidia chipset based. it has damn on-board graphics which i did not want, i disabled that wank in the bios, but temp still comes up when using temp monitors, and is always running at critical for some reason??????? -BULLSHIT! anyhow, i digress...

ok so, i've bought a new 12cm system fan, that makes 2 plus a small side panel one, installing that and closing side panel oughtta create some good airflow -fingers crossed.

next prob is that i'm using nvraid (raid 0, my first raid! fucking awesome performance already with windows server -100MB/s++ file copy). problem is installing linux dual boot on this fucker, tried hyper-v but it fucks up performance to a noticeable degree -shit stalling when i adjust audio volume -even when not running another OS! -bullshit). so a massive task is going to ensue tryin t get grub to boot all these OSes off a wanky soft raid. adding to this problem is that i've seen some excellent benchmarks for using jfs filesystem with nvraid (-almost as good as hardware raid -1% off!!), it's not a standard supported fs like ext2/3/4/reiserfs/etc so of course i've gotta have that too. ext vs jfs 200% faster! holy fuck! and yes i am aware of the slowness of jfs in deleting files, but everything else is pretty top notch -go ibm!

this shit takes up way too much of my time, i spend most of my life installing OSes and worrying about storage performance. it took me a full week to install eeebuntu on my asus eee 901, just coz i was so paranoid about wearing out the shit SSDs that come with it and messing with a calculator tring to work out optimal positioning of partitions to align with write sectors and honing performance of linux to flush in optimal write block amounts. JEESUS! who gives a fuck ros! clearly i do.

so where do i fit in time to do the actual real work of writing software? i've got 3 laptops, the netbook, and now a full pc also, *all* with constant problems. would be easy if i wasn't such a complicating bastard insisting on such weird shit customized to each individual pc. -was thinkin of getting a macbook for ease of use so i could forget about these things, but i'd probly piss on that dream too considering:

--i refused to use itunes with my ipod -resulted in a long search a brief interlude fucking with linux on the ipod before settling on floola -excellent cross-platform program!

--every mobile phone i buy i must fuck with to death, even write javaME progs to get the shit i want outta it. [edit: current project is bluetooth PC remote control using Nokia E63 and Symbian S60 programming, see new blog=http://bluetooth-hid.blogspot.com/ ]

--generally too curious for my own good. would end up getting rid of the mac GUI or something retarded just coz i wanted "more control", -whatever that means, probly means the usual: more scope to fuck up the OS beyond repair ;-P

ok this post has gone on long enough, think i should probly be done here.

i need to blog :-(

right, it appears i'm one of these saddos that just can't keep their yappin fingers shut. random blurts on facebook don't seem t do it for me. i need t read over de faggotry i've been spurting, and shit seems t disappear into de murk on facebook without a proper history. why? i dunno why, maybe coz noone else will read over it, but either way i need the catharsis.

so, ros enters de world of actual, real-life blogging, something i've been enthusiastically condemning for years, -maybe i was over-compensating, who was to know i was just sitting in the closet. truth be told i've been moonlighting for years in one guise or another. bebo - b.log e.arly b.log o.ften, random forums all over de gaf, an inexorable torrent of mass emails, 4chan -where i've actually started using a moniker on possibily the most popular ANONYMOUS posting site, in fact i've a string of websites strewn about the internet trying t make some random point that occurred t me for a few instants, and was as quickly forgotten as the urls.

my arm hurts, will i ever be back here?