Well, the internet connection is staying stable, never dropping to below 10.5dB SNR on the router,
definitely looks like i've removed that little gremlin.
I'm currently in a state of abdominal overload (probably not as bad as it sounds!). I've lost quite a bit of weight over the last few months (about 3 stone) on Slimming World (a diet regime I can whole-heartedly recommend, by the way, it's not calorie counting like some other diet regimes, but a "eat as much of the right type of food as you want" diet), but the stomach area still needs a bit of toning (really fancy that washboard six-pack that all the fellas in the movies have...).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was watching the shopping channels about a fortnight ago,
and saw a section on the Ab Lounge XL Pro, a kind of "make sit-ups a lot easier" type device, the effectiveness of which was being extolled by various amazingly fit people ( the kind of people who sit around on sunny beaches all day and look good ). So, a quick google search later, and I found the cheapest option to be Mochea.com.
Another quick entry of the credit card details, and I was ready for my new lifestyle as the new Baywatch lifeguard that gets his pick of the lovely ladies..... (well, almost!).
It arrived about 3 days later, and I've been using it every night for the past 4 days. What an amazing bit of kit! You only need to do about 20 crunches and you really feel it. Anyway, i've got to the point where I'm doing about 150 crunches a night now, and frankly I'm feeling great.
BUT... my stomach muscles feel as though they're going through ten rounds with Ricky Hatton (good luck against Castillo in Los Angeles on 23rd June, Ricky!). Anyway, that's enough of my abdominal escapades....
Nothing much else has happened really. Couldn't get into second life last night, for some reason couldn't connect at all, just hung at the login page. I know that the main grid has had some
login and performance problems recently, but other people seemed to connect ok.. I must have just been unlucky. Managed to connect tonight okay, but wasn't on long.. too busy trying to get a stomach I can wash the towels on... ;-)
Oh well, catch up with you all later.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Post-telephony upgrade
Title sounds a little bit pretentious, but who cares?
Anyway, the big upgrade to the internal wiring of the house finished last night (as mentioned in the previous post). Out came the master socket and a new one to replace it, re-did the IDC connections (they needed looking at anyway, they were starting to corrode) and then replaced the extension socket in the study. As mentioned, I can't fault the things I bought from ADSL Nation, the quality is superb, plus, because they're all
pre-filtered, it means I can finally get rid of all the dangly ADSL microfilters (each socket has a phone AND an ADSL jack seperate).
After all this, the router is now showing a SNR (noise margin) of 10.7dB, rather than the previous 6.7dB, which equates to a hell of a lot less noise on the line. Also, it means that the invariable "reboot the router after a while" because of the line errors has gone away....
So, upshot is, I've now got a stable ~15 Meg ADSL2+ connection, for about £20 of upgrade kit (and a bit of my time, of course). At last I can meet my good friends on second life without worrying about disconnections.
Speaking of second life, my avatar's gone through a bit of a change recently, it's gone very vampire / gothic (sort of). Obviously, in real life, i'm a 6'4", blonde haired muscle-bound adonis with perfect vision, so I thought I'd down scale with my avatar and have him 5'9" with glasses, short hair with vampire shoes and white angel wings, absolutely nothing like me in real life (what do you mean, I'm lying?).
On a personal note, as I've mentioned before, I'm a long term member of English Heritage (which fits in nicely with my fortean interests, of course), so we tend to be scooting around the english countryside taking in all the castles / abbeys / historic monuments that this wonderful country has to offer. So, I took the kids to see Beeston Castle, which is about an hours drive from Manchester, or about 10 miles from Chester. What a wonderful heritage site, fantastic views from the inner bailey, and astonishing woodland encompassing the outer bailey and grounds. The castle was originally built around AD1225, but there was a hill fort and settlement there long before that. There was also a "medieval day" on, so the kids learnt how to hit each other (and me) with foam swords.. wonderful.. it means that now I get the same treatment from metal Thomas the Tank Engine's or hard plastic Dora the Explorers. Thanks a bunch, Sir Edward of Chester!
I am going to get around to chronicling our trips to the many heritage sites we've visited, such as Stonehenge and the astonishing Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, along side a new website that I'm developing which will cover fortean subjects as well. This should go live in a few weeks or so, and will be StrangeHub.co.uk.
Anyway, the big upgrade to the internal wiring of the house finished last night (as mentioned in the previous post). Out came the master socket and a new one to replace it, re-did the IDC connections (they needed looking at anyway, they were starting to corrode) and then replaced the extension socket in the study. As mentioned, I can't fault the things I bought from ADSL Nation, the quality is superb, plus, because they're all
pre-filtered, it means I can finally get rid of all the dangly ADSL microfilters (each socket has a phone AND an ADSL jack seperate).
After all this, the router is now showing a SNR (noise margin) of 10.7dB, rather than the previous 6.7dB, which equates to a hell of a lot less noise on the line. Also, it means that the invariable "reboot the router after a while" because of the line errors has gone away....
So, upshot is, I've now got a stable ~15 Meg ADSL2+ connection, for about £20 of upgrade kit (and a bit of my time, of course). At last I can meet my good friends on second life without worrying about disconnections.
Speaking of second life, my avatar's gone through a bit of a change recently, it's gone very vampire / gothic (sort of). Obviously, in real life, i'm a 6'4", blonde haired muscle-bound adonis with perfect vision, so I thought I'd down scale with my avatar and have him 5'9" with glasses, short hair with vampire shoes and white angel wings, absolutely nothing like me in real life (what do you mean, I'm lying?).
On a personal note, as I've mentioned before, I'm a long term member of English Heritage (which fits in nicely with my fortean interests, of course), so we tend to be scooting around the english countryside taking in all the castles / abbeys / historic monuments that this wonderful country has to offer. So, I took the kids to see Beeston Castle, which is about an hours drive from Manchester, or about 10 miles from Chester. What a wonderful heritage site, fantastic views from the inner bailey, and astonishing woodland encompassing the outer bailey and grounds. The castle was originally built around AD1225, but there was a hill fort and settlement there long before that. There was also a "medieval day" on, so the kids learnt how to hit each other (and me) with foam swords.. wonderful.. it means that now I get the same treatment from metal Thomas the Tank Engine's or hard plastic Dora the Explorers. Thanks a bunch, Sir Edward of Chester!
I am going to get around to chronicling our trips to the many heritage sites we've visited, such as Stonehenge and the astonishing Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, along side a new website that I'm developing which will cover fortean subjects as well. This should go live in a few weeks or so, and will be StrangeHub.co.uk.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
DNS and Telephones....
A bit of a problem occurred with my internet setup this weekend. Basically, effective connection speed was very intermittent on my netgear router, even though sync speed was still it's usual 15M+. There's many different reasons for this, but after looking at the advanced router stats, it was obvious that I had a tremendous amount of noise on the line, CRC errors were about 80% of the total packet traffic and SNR had gone from approx 7.5dB to about 6.5dB (1dB of noise is quite a bit of
noise to an ADSL2+ connection!).
Noise on the line, again has many reasons, and can seriously affect ADSL2+, since it's sync'ing at much higher speeds typically than ADSL.
Testing the router directly in the BT test socket behind the master faceplate, it shot up to 10.1dB! A massive improvement, now with only about 0.5% CRC errors (which is good for a phone line).
So, looks like i've got a re-wiring job coming up. I've ordered a pre-filtered faceplate for both the master socket and the extension socket from ADSL Nation. These are pretty much the best you can get, and they remove the need for a "dangly" microfilter. I'll keep you informed.
Two posts ago, I mentioned I'd moved to using OpenDNS for my DNS resolution service, well, I've been experimenting tonight with dnsmasq, a local DNS cache which I'd heard good things about. Well, they're all true! Fantastic functionality. Basically, sudo apt-get install dnsmasq, configure /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf, /etc/dnsmasq.conf and the obligatory /etc/resolv.conf and you've got a local DNS cache! Now, instead of subsequent calls to OpenDNS taking about 35-40 msec, it now gets it in about 1 msec. Fantastic. If anyone's interested in doing this, then have a gander at http://www.ubuntugeek.com/local-dns-cache-for-faster-browsing-on-ubuntu-machine.html.
noise to an ADSL2+ connection!).
Noise on the line, again has many reasons, and can seriously affect ADSL2+, since it's sync'ing at much higher speeds typically than ADSL.
Testing the router directly in the BT test socket behind the master faceplate, it shot up to 10.1dB! A massive improvement, now with only about 0.5% CRC errors (which is good for a phone line).
So, looks like i've got a re-wiring job coming up. I've ordered a pre-filtered faceplate for both the master socket and the extension socket from ADSL Nation. These are pretty much the best you can get, and they remove the need for a "dangly" microfilter. I'll keep you informed.
Two posts ago, I mentioned I'd moved to using OpenDNS for my DNS resolution service, well, I've been experimenting tonight with dnsmasq, a local DNS cache which I'd heard good things about. Well, they're all true! Fantastic functionality. Basically, sudo apt-get install dnsmasq, configure /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf, /etc/dnsmasq.conf and the obligatory /etc/resolv.conf and you've got a local DNS cache! Now, instead of subsequent calls to OpenDNS taking about 35-40 msec, it now gets it in about 1 msec. Fantastic. If anyone's interested in doing this, then have a gander at http://www.ubuntugeek.com/local-dns-cache-for-faster-browsing-on-ubuntu-machine.html.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Second Life (or lack thereof)
It's unbelievable how you mention a popular site / MMORPG (well, it's not technically a game....) like Second Life, how many responses you get saying people want to meet up online. Thanks to all who emailed, i'll see you in SL asap. The reason why I say ASAP is that a new version of the SL viewer was released today (1.15.0.2) (which i've been keen to see if it fixes any of the annoyances (mostly performance related which really seems to affect the linux viewer, I haven't tried it on Windows) that detract from an otherwise great experience), but the production grid is having login difficulties, hence no-one can access it. The beta grid is available, though, so anyone having serious SL withdrawal can at least get some kind of fix.
On a TV / film front (and I realise that I haven't blogged about telly for quite a while), I've recently got very much into the Catherine Tate show. While I realise that I jumped on the tate bandwagon a few months later than most people, I find the show utterly fantastic. Cleverly written and performed by one of the funniest comediennes I have seen since Victoria Wood came on the scene, it's just so utterly watchable (which is one of the best compliments you could give to a TV series of any kind). To anyone who cares to disagree (and I know she's got her fair share of critics), "How VERY dare you!". Absolute class.... "Dirty, Evil...."
On a TV / film front (and I realise that I haven't blogged about telly for quite a while), I've recently got very much into the Catherine Tate show. While I realise that I jumped on the tate bandwagon a few months later than most people, I find the show utterly fantastic. Cleverly written and performed by one of the funniest comediennes I have seen since Victoria Wood came on the scene, it's just so utterly watchable (which is one of the best compliments you could give to a TV series of any kind). To anyone who cares to disagree (and I know she's got her fair share of critics), "How VERY dare you!". Absolute class.... "Dirty, Evil...."
Friday, April 20, 2007
Going all technical...
I haven't posted for a while, various things have occurred, going to florida with the kids and staying in the wonderful Nickelodeon Hotel (the kids are big
Dora and Diego fans), just for starters, and coupled with the fact that i'm just lazy, means that my blog is getting very similar to my diaries from when I was a youngster, i.e. Jan 1st is about a page and a half long, detailing every step I took to school, which girls I fancied etc., but then quickly getting bored of writing diaries and the next entry is July 23rd "Auntie Freda's birthday".
However, I thought I'd just blog about the things that have happened recently. Firstly, and to my great delight, version 7.04 of Ubuntu Linux has been released. I've been using 6.10 for a while now, and loving every minute. 7.04, however, is a different class, so much quicker and easier to use.
Another thing I've switched over to, is using OpenDNS for my DNS resolution service. A fabulous service, and one I can heartily recommend. Much quicker than most DNS services and much more secure, automatically identifying and blocking various phishing sites and also correcting various URL spelling mistakes. It's also a doddle to switch over to, no need to register or anything, all you do is modify your network connection (in Ubuntu -> sudo network-admin and then specify the two IP addresses given on the website in the DNS tab, in Windows, it's done at the TCP/IP protocol adapter properties). Literally, two minutes and you're away.
I'm also more active on IRC (efnet) (usually on #oracle or #sql) and Second Life than i've been for a while (OpenDNS helps here as well!). I tend to go via the IRC name of "sequel" and the Second Life name of "Sequel Acronym" (yeah, ok, I live and breathe Oracle...).
If you're ever on either, IM me and we'll have a chat.
Dora and Diego fans), just for starters, and coupled with the fact that i'm just lazy, means that my blog is getting very similar to my diaries from when I was a youngster, i.e. Jan 1st is about a page and a half long, detailing every step I took to school, which girls I fancied etc., but then quickly getting bored of writing diaries and the next entry is July 23rd "Auntie Freda's birthday".
However, I thought I'd just blog about the things that have happened recently. Firstly, and to my great delight, version 7.04 of Ubuntu Linux has been released. I've been using 6.10 for a while now, and loving every minute. 7.04, however, is a different class, so much quicker and easier to use.
Another thing I've switched over to, is using OpenDNS for my DNS resolution service. A fabulous service, and one I can heartily recommend. Much quicker than most DNS services and much more secure, automatically identifying and blocking various phishing sites and also correcting various URL spelling mistakes. It's also a doddle to switch over to, no need to register or anything, all you do is modify your network connection (in Ubuntu -> sudo network-admin and then specify the two IP addresses given on the website in the DNS tab, in Windows, it's done at the TCP/IP protocol adapter properties). Literally, two minutes and you're away.
I'm also more active on IRC (efnet) (usually on #oracle or #sql) and Second Life than i've been for a while (OpenDNS helps here as well!). I tend to go via the IRC name of "sequel" and the Second Life name of "Sequel Acronym" (yeah, ok, I live and breathe Oracle...).
If you're ever on either, IM me and we'll have a chat.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
What a bizarre day....
It's a common northern expression in England to say "The weather doesn't know what to do with itself today", and this has never been truer than today. The meterological events of today are (in chronological order) : Rain, Sun, Hail, Rain and, now (as I write), Snow!
And people think that climate change isn't an issue.....
And people think that climate change isn't an issue.....
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Coding and the silver screen
It's been a while since I blogged last (frankly, not had much opportunity over the Christmas / New year period), and this one isn't exactly war and peace, however, just thought I'd share the following couple of websites which, frankly, had me ROTFL (yeah, I don't use these acronyms really, not since leaving the IRC scene a few years ago anyway, but that seemed a perfect excuse).
Both of these sites are about the way that IT, and coding in particular, is represented on both TV and the movies. I've covered this in a previous blog, but these were hilarious.
Both of these sites are about the way that IT, and coding in particular, is represented on both TV and the movies. I've covered this in a previous blog, but these were hilarious.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)