So, the hunt for the ideal replacement router began. My requirements:
1) 1000Mb/s switching
2) Wireless N capable
3) DD-WRT support
It turns out that the Linksys WRT610N has all of the above. As far as pricing was concerned, the 610N was cheaper than the first generation Wireless N Gigabit routers, but it's still no cheap buy. With a price tag of just under $200 on amazon, it took a bit of saving for me to finally afford one.
When I received my unit, I opened up the packaging and noticed that I had gotten a version 2 model. A quick check on the dd-wrt website left me unpleasantly surprised to know that the WRT610Nv2 models were at the time brand new (I literally ordered mine on amazon the day that they started shipping without knowing) and currently unsupported by dd-wrt... D'OH! While the stock firmware on the router is actually extremely nice, it was missing a critical feature that I wanted to implement on my LAN: Always-available VPN.
The reason I wanted to run OpenVPN on my router (which dd-wrt supports) is because ideally I would like to access my home network from my laptop wherever I happen to be in the world. Using OpenVPN, I could create a tunnel through the internet and into my home router that would link me up to my home network as if I had an ethernet cord plugged into it directly. Cool, huh?
Flash forward to a few weeks ago, where one of the dd-wrt developers, Eko, managed to get an svn build of dd-wrt running on the WRT610Nv2 models. Success! I immediately got to work.
Flashing the router was relatively straight forward. Eko has provided experimental builds for the WRT610N in his ftp repository here. There are several files available, and I recommend a 30/30/30 reset before flashing the version that you'd like. For more detailed information about flashing, I suggest you visit the official forum topic for the WRT610N models. Ignore the giant text in red at the top, they just haven't gotten around to updating it yet.
After I got dd-wrt up and running for my normal setup, I started with OpenVPN. The official dd-wrt OpenVPN wiki proved invaluable for assistance, and I followed it almost verbatim. In the end, I have a setup in which the address range 192.168.1.50-99 is reserved for external VPN clients, and the range 192.168.1.100-150 is reserved for local clients that are assigned via dhcp.
This allows me to access my network shares, printers, media server, and anything else hosted on my network from afar. It also easily allows me to maintain my machines using ssh and/or vnc. Pretty neat!
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( 2.9 / 181 )I upgraded my phone over the summer to the Nokia E71x. There were a number of reasons why I chose the E71x in particular. It's a single "candy bar" style phone with no moving parts, it has a full keyboard, it has wifi and bluetooth, and it makes use of AT&T's 3G HSDPA network. And to top it all off, the phone uses Nokia's Symbian S60 operating system, as opposed to Windows Mobile, which most other smartphones out there run. I'm not much a fan of windows mobile for various reasons, and I've only had a symbian phone once before several years ago. It was time for this more than overdue upgrade from my old Samsung SGH-A707.
The main reason why wanted to get the E71x was for it's wifi functionality. With AT&T's rebates, I was able to get the phone for $99, which was by far the cheapest smartphone that AT&T had to offer with as many features as this one. With a simple application called JoikuSpot, my new phone was turned into a wireless access point that acted as an Ad-Hoc 802.11G router (Infrastructure mode is in progress). This is fantastic! Now I can access the internet anywhere that I have 3G signal. Enabling JoikuSpot makes the phone broadcast an ESSID that any wireless devices that support Ad-Hoc can pick up. My Laptop, Ipod Touch, Nokia N810, Even the Eye-Fi Pro card can make use of this! This means that I can literally be taking pictures anywhere in the world, and have them automatically uploaded to my computer or flickr or facebook account. It's really so fantastic and simple, and best yet, it's fantastically cheap for all of the functionality that you get. I have AT&T's cheapest plan with a $15 unlimited media + 200 txt messages add-on. It comes out to about $60 a month.
JoikuSpot works with just about every smartphone with wifi running the symbian OS. If you have windows mobile, an application called wmwifirouter is available that provides almost the exact same functionality.
One of the down sides of this router functionality is it's tax on the phone's battery. I'll explain various charging solutions in another post...
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( 2.9 / 239 )Last night I finished up Grand Theft Auto IV for the PS3. I bought the game on the day that it came out back in 2007? 2008? I can't remember now, but unfortunately my Playstation was incapable of playing it due to an issue where the game would freeze every 15 minutes. This was completely unrelated to the wide spread issue of GTAIV freezing across multiple platforms on launch.
Rockstar tech support told me to call Sony tech support, Sony said I had a defective copy of the disc (which I knew was bullshit). And so I sat on it for a while.
Recently, the 3.0 firmware update has come out for the PS3 and so I decided to try my luck with the game again, and it works! My game has about 34 hours clocked on it and the game hasn't frozen once. There are some weird issues, however. Most notably, the game will throw up weird artifacts a lot. I assumed this was because of the console overheating, so I attempted to remedy it by making the PS3 stand vertical and putting a fan against the front vents. This made the artifacts appear less often by about 10x or 15x, but didn't completely get rid of the issue. I'm thinking about replacing the thermal compound between the dies and the heatsinks and seeing how far that gets me.
I have a first-gen PS3, by the way, which includes native hardware support for PS2 games, dual-booting into a hypervisor, and a 60GB harddrive. Unfortuantely, it's using the old 90nm chipsets, which is probably why I'm having such an issue with heat.
I'll put up an article soon on my mediatomb setup and how I've gotten media streaming working perfectly with the PS3 and PSP.
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( 3 / 178 )As some of you may know, I'm a huge linux fan and advocate. I've been subscribed to @linuxjournal on twitter for a while now and I love the great articles they post. Right now they're hosting a contest to give out free subscriptions to their magazine, and all you have to do is watch some videos that they're putting online between now and march 13th. Check out the first video in the series, here. This is a really fantastic offer from one of the best linux information resources on the web.
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( 3 / 308 )It's been a long time once again! Here's the update:
I'm aware that I've been slacking on website updates. I'm not going to lie, I've been pretty lazy. I had plenty of time over winter break but most of it was spent playing games. Now that there's less time for games, hopefully I'll decide to put some much needed attention into this site again. Expect renovations soon (I mean it this time :).
I've been hired on by iD Tech camps yet again! I'll be holding the lead instructor position in the Berkeley area this year. In case you're wondering, iD Tech Camps are a fantastic place for kids to learn about (mostly software) technology. We have fantastic courses in C++/Java, Maya 3D, Robotics, Final Cut Pro (Yeah, on macs!), 3D Game Creation using Unreal Tournament 3 and Warcraft 3, as well as a plethora of other courses all geared towards young audiences (from ages 7 to 17). Check out their site over at their website.
Also, I'm going to be starting up a podcast with a friend of mine soon. I've got a small recording area all set up and the mics and mixers are just about ready to go. Here's the status so far.
Mic: AKG Perception 220
Mixer: Behringer Eurorack 1204FX-PRO
Software: Ardour (Linux only)
And speaking of Ardour, I can't believe how professional and quality this piece of FREE recording software is. Easily besting some top-notch commercial equivalents costing several hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Unfortunately it looks like the lead developer's main sponsor has recently decided to cut funding for the project. So please, if you have the money, go and donate for this wonderful cause. Free software of this quality is few and far between.
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( 3 / 247 )I recently got a hold of an arduino clone called the freeduino. It's a cool little prototyping board with a PIC and several digital and analog IN/OUT headers. The first time I tried setting it up to run programs off of it, I had been running Ubuntu 8.04 amd64 version. It ended up being quite a hassle making sure that java was compatible for the arduino's IDE and the included version of avrdude was 32 bit specific, which meant I had to compile the source by hand. While none of this is really a huge issue, it was more complicated than everything should have been.
Last week I made the switch to Ubuntu 8.10 and decided to try the whole setup process again. Looking at the arduino website, I noticed that a new version of the dev environment, 0012 alpha had been released for amd64 platforms, and so I tried again. :)
After installing avr-gcc and java-1.5, the IDE started up and was able to write to my freeduino on the first try! Awesome!
I would like to give a huge thank you to both the Ubuntu and arduino developers for making my life with Linux easier and more enjoyable every month. Less time fiddling with getting things working and more time spent working on my own projects is very satisfying.
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( 2.9 / 287 )School has been progressing absolutely fantastically this semester!
Calculus 3 and Physics 4A are my best classes so far. As of right now, my grade is ranked second in the entire class in math and either first or tied for first in physics. Tomorrow is the big day in physics, second midterm of the semester. I'm stoked!
Aside from school, I was able to revive my dead Neo Freerunner tonight. The battery had managed to completely drain itself a few weeks ago and the circuitry was designed in such a way that the phone will only charge when on. I ended up having to order a cheap nokia BL-6 compatible charger off ebay to charge the Freerunner's battery externally and then load it into the phone afterwards. It seems to have done the job well.
More updates (and less boring, hopefully) soon!
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( 2.9 / 296 )
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