Schinckel.net

Well, I’ve signed up for ADSL access with Optimum Internet, and it’s due to be connected on the 29th August. The connection seems to be there already when I plug my modem in, but I can’t get it to actually connect properly. I’m not sure if that is because I don’t have all of the settings correct, which I think I have set up, or if it just hasn’t been activated properly yet. 15Gb/month for $32.50, on a 256k plan. Unless I’m mistaken, 256k means 256 kilobits per second, which roughly equates to 32 kilobytes per second. That would indicate around 32 sec/meg, or 1.875 Megabytes/sec. Assuming this (best case scenario), that means it would take around 133 hours to download 15Gb. That’s about 5.5 days. So, maxed out, it should take me about 1 week to reach my quota.

Just for posterity:

Test run on 22/08/2006 @ 10:34 PM Mirror: Optus Test type: Dialup Your connection speed: kbps: 38.99 KB/s: 4.87 Mbps: 0.04

Courtesty of Oz Broadband Speed Test.

Well, the title sums it up. There doesn’t seem to be a way to store a list of items in a Microsoft Access database. For instance, I have an item that may belong on several categories, but I can’t just have a LIST datatype, and have a list stored in here. Instead, I’ll have to have yet another table that has relationships, which further complicates the database. And makes creating a form for entering data more difficult.

I have an application where I need to have categories, and each category can have a parent category. However, I can’t do this in Access using one table, as tables cannot have entries that refer to items in themselves. So, I’ll need to have a Category table, and also a Category Parents table, which has the relationships in it. Bah.

I’ve upgraded my SpeedTouch modem from the Home version, to the Pro version. To get better web access tools, I then upgraded it to the 510 firmware. However, I then had to set my PC’s IP address back to one in the 10.0.0.X range, as the modem had decided not to get an IP address from the DHCP server on my network. Hopefully that has been fixed now… I’m not sure that I’ll keep the upgrade in place. Whilst it allows for easer NA(P)T translations, it doesn’t seem to have some other features. I’m not sure if I’ll need them or not, but it seems to me that NA(P)T is more likely to be changed than connection type (PPP, PPTP, other). As I start using other applications, and run servers on my LAN, I’ll likely want to set up some port forwards.

It’s really cool that people are still working on the Firmware upgrades for the NSLU2, and I went to upgrade the firmware today to try to get MySQL working properly. The file is 6.5 MB, and my download keeps failing at 3 MB. And I can’t resume, as I can’t find the actual address - they’ve done a pretty good job of making that hard to find. Annoying…

I’m about to connect to ADSL, and bought a Smart Modem Home second hand, and rather cheap. I upgraded it to a Pro, which was amazingly simple, and then upgraded the firmware. Since my LAN uses 192.168.x.x addresses, rather than 10.0.0.x addresses, I also configured it to use one of these (actually, it gets one from my DHCP server running on the NSLU2). At some stage, it dropped off the network. I could no longer ping it on any address - basically it seemed to have chosen a random new IP address, and I couldn’t find this out. So, I tried a hard reset. This is where you hold down the reset button using a pen or paperclip, and then power cycle the modem. No change. Finally, I found these instructions, on Ozcableguy:

Open a Command Prompt Window (Start > Run > Command) Type the following (It is case sensitive):- ARP -s 10.0.0.138 01-90-D0-80-01-FF Switch the Pro off and back on. In the Command Window, type the following:- ping 10.0.0.138 -t If all went well, you should start to see replies after 30 secs to 1 min. If not, try it again. Finally, it is imperative to clear the entry we added in the Command Window, so type the following ARP -d 10.0.0.138

There was also one that didn’t work, with the last hex value being 01 instead of FF. I never saw any response to the pings, but the modem kept resetting itself when I was doing this. Eventually, after about two minutes, I tired of waiting, and switched the modem off, stopped the ping and removed the arp entry. After restarting the modem, I was able to connect to it again, and now it’s back to being a nice member of my network. Or was - I may have just screwed it up again, and will need to repeat the process… These are the steps I went through the second time, and the results I got: $ arp -s 192.168.1.138 01-90-D0-80-01-FF This sets the IP address of the device to 192.168.1.138. From the arp help, it seems that the second value is the ethernet MAC address, but this seems to be a ‘master’ address, and must be typed as above. Then power cycle the modem. When it boots up, type the following into the shell: $ ping 192.168.1.138 -t I left it for a couple of resets, then Ctrl-C’d the ping, and cycled the power on the modem. When it came back up, it had reset to it’s factory settings. Since, for a Pro modem (which mine thinks it is now) it looks for any available DHCP server, and I had the DHCP server set to allocate the address 192.168.1.138 for this MAC address, it got reallocated the correct address. All the settings are defaults again, but that’s cool, as I haven’t set anything up yet anyway.

Why do Spam emails have so many spelling errors? Is it because Spammers can’t spell, or are they deliberately trying to beat Spam filters by introducing minor spelling errors: I suspect it is the former.

I’ve noticed a certain pattern in Spam Comments to this blog recently - and it’s all since I disabled my rudimentary javascript Spam filter. Basically, the comment has a line or two echoed from the post, or another comment in the page, and then one or two simple additions to this phrase, such as “Good!” At first glance, they are all sane comments, except that they don’t really add anything. And, they all point at pages that have a list of links, none of which have any relevance to the post from which they were linked to, and I assume would generate Advertising revenue for some scumbag. The other thing which is a trigger they are Spam comments is that the email addresses are all @yahoo.com, and the IP addresses are all from a small subnet. And the comments are appearing in bursts, and, I’ll be honest here, I’m not getting too many comments any more. Looks like it’s time to re-implement the javascript filter in addition to Blogsome’s (rather useless, apparently) CAPTCHA.

When playing World of Warcraft, we use a program called TeamSpeak to communicate, rather than trying to type madly like idiots. It works pretty well, and most users have a push-to-talk key setup, so that you only transmit when this key is pressed. This is all well and good, but sometimes users have the Alt key as their PTT key. But WoW uses the Tab key as Select Nearest (or next) Enemy. So, if our rogue, and Main Assist, _Heropsycho _is running towards a target, and talking, there is a fairly high chance he’ll Alt-Tab out of WoW, and have to wait for the system to catch up before rejoining the fight. And, it turns out that Hero is our main damage dealer, so being without him is rather bad. Enter this idea. Remove the mapping for the Win key, so this can be the PTT key. Save the following into a text file, with the extension .reg:

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
    "Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,00,00,5B,E0,00,00,5C,E0,00,00,00,00

Double-click this file, and restart. You can them map Win as your PTT key, and pressing it will no longer open the Start Menu. I mean, when was the last time you used this key to get to the Start Menu anyway? Or, you can get the file from http://files.schinckel.net/disable_both_windows_keys.reg.