My Internet connection has been horrible the last few weeks and after the cable guy checked the external connection I went in for renting a “modem” from “the company.” With some people, the story ends there. With me (to my wife’s chagrin) that is not even the “Cliff’s Notes” of the story.
I have my modem running through the surge suppressor power bar that supports my computer and I even run the data cable throughit just in case. I unhooked the regular cable and put a short high quality between the wall jack and the modem and just used a long ethernet cable to reach the computer. Then I plugged into the jack that works for the TV (even though my regular jack is 8 inches from the “point of demarcation.” Cable issues are now ruled out.
When I do get online I decide to quantify my downtime. I set up a cron job on the web server here to call a php file which uses cURL to visit the server on my computer to see if it can be reached every five minutes. Successes and failures are recorded in a MySQL database. I can also check accesses in my local logs. Due to problems with CURLOPT_PORT I have to run http through port 80 which makes me nervous (I have since closed port 80 and just run http through a non-standard port).
I play around in my router and spend way too much time digging around inside http://192.168.0.1. Then I start playing around inside my Terayon TJ715x cable modem at http://192.168.100.1 and watching everything its doing. I do this enough that I add them into my hosts file so i can access them as “router” and “modem” respectively. I watched it continually jump back and forth between “Tuning” and “Ranging” which made me wonder if there was interference on the Internet Channel. Looking in on the modem diagnostics and modem log page (password: icu4at! ) weren’t much help either.
In the end I have taken my old modem which I received from Cox Cable two years ago and opened it up to see its innards (looking for some interesting legal hacks for it) and I am paying $3 per month to rent an identical used modem from Comcast.
Fun, fun, fun. Hopefully I can get back to more regular access at home. One friend at work has already told me I have been sounding a bit depressed due to the network problems.
Published on
May 30, 2006 in
Techie.
I read about the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (use bugmenot.com for a password, there is even a Firefox extension to make it easier) from LifeHacker a while ago and I have really enjoyed using it.
SVS lets me install software and then uninstall it easily. It installs them into virtual data layers so that when it comes time to uninstall then the entire layer is removed without any of the junk being left behind. You have to be careful because some stuff you may want will disappear as well. I installed Opera 9 Beta to try out some of the new features, but when I deactivated the layer containing Opera I lost the files I downloaded as well. Reactivating the layer brought them back so I copied them somewhere else and was able to keep them when the layer was removed again.
This will let you easily install multiple versions of a particular program and run them separately without interference. It lets you install programs that you rarely use and have them completely out of your way when you don’t want them around.
Altiris has a lot of community generated add-ons for this and other programs so there feels like there is a lot of life in it for the future.
It does require free registration to use the software, but it is not intrusive.
UPDATE: Scott Jones from Altiris replied in the comments (which don’t always show up in feedreaders) with some alternative locations to download SVS. You may also be interested in this selection of prepackaged virtualized layers.
In order to help you stay just a little “L33tR than Thou” around your friends, I recommend ASCII Mapping.
Sure, others can use roadmaps or satellite images, but you can check it out in ASCII.
The good news: Green or Amber on black.
The bad news: Rendered images not plain text.
Pat Robertson can leg press 2000 pounds.
First we find that God told him about hurricanes this year and now this.
UPDATE: The project has completed and the domain names were lost to spammers.
There is a new virtual online community, but you are not invited!
In fact, when I say “virtual” community I really mean it. This is a community that resides within about 50 computers at various institutes and is made up of artificial intelligences.
The New Ties (New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Evolutionary and Social Learning) project is building artificial personalities to populate a virtual world. The “agents” (yesss, Missster Annnnderrrrson) will be built with potentials for pain and satisfaction and they will live in a world with challenges. They will need to gather resources to survive, but they will exist in competing tribes. The programs will be able to reproduce with other agents of the opposite gender and create offspring with mixed “genetic” traits of their parents.
The program is still having the bugs worked out (I have not seen reports on insects staying in the system, but they may be), but it is almost ready to go live. It is interesting to watch how this has all been going together. It is built as a P2P system by people communicating using chat and other internet system just like so many open source systems are done. In fact, they even have the software available (Update: link removed, the software is no longer available) for others to test and work with. I have not seen the licensing on the code, but since it uses the Counter Strike rendering engine I doubt the full thing could be open source.
Here is some more useful information from a while back.
Here is the thought.
What if the experiment works out fantastically?
What if the “agents” become something almost sentient and begin to build beliefs that go beyond the physical structure around them.
What if they begin to question their existence and origins?
What if they develop religion and the ideas of Creationism within their own world? What about Intelligent Design?
What if they become in need of a savior? Would someone be sent to them?
When the world decides they are tired of your blog.
This makes me wonder if there is any nuclear grade baling wire.
Let’s hope they just use it for the Hazmat suits and not reactor core containment.
Reminds me of the “News Radio” episode set on the Titanic where Joe said that the hull of the ship was made completely out of Duct Tape and was therefore certified “unsinkable.” Even if it was sitting on the bottom of the ocean it would maintain its “unsinkable status.”
In the words of Jimmy James “I’m gonna need that for the resale value.”
I loved that show.
Your audience may not be able to see your microphone, but they will hear that extra bounce in your voice when you use the Classic Microphone.
It looks great, but I would still rather use a headset so I could move around have my hands free while jumping between computers.
I know, yet another complaint about iTunes by Bob. This is actually a complaint about web site people and iTunes.
If you have a podcast, do not just link to the iTunes listing for your podcast. This is no help except to people who have installed iTunes. This is worse than designing your web site specifically for Internet Explorer. I keep iTunes off of my computer because it is a waste of space and resources, but if I click on your phobos.apple.com link and don’t have iTunes then I am stuck.
Include an iTunes link, include a Yahoo podcasts linke, include any proprietary link you want, but please include a xml link so I canstick your podcast into my reader.
The do have an iTunes link for our church podcast. It took a while since I didn’t want to register for iTunes so I asked another employee at the church who was registered with iTunes to add in the link for us. In addition to this, we have added FeedBurner to make it easier for people to select from the different available services.
Right now I am working on a good descriptor link so newbies better understand how to use the podcast audio.
I track the podcasts I listen to in Bloglines and decided I might as well share my listing: The Podcasts Bob Listens to (aka. The Podcasts to which Bob Listens).
Sure there are a few not listed there that I listen to, but an considering dropping and therefore do not wish to advertise at this time.
I continue to have to add new subscriptions since I listen a lot. I have been listening back through the archives of all those feeds so as I catch up I need new ones to fill in.
NPR truly has the the strongest grasp of Podcasting and has content that I would never be able to listen to otherwise.
I listen to a lot of tech and web stuff (and most TWiT podcasts), I enjoy science, funny shows, informative stuff, and thinking things.