Simiya

Posted by: Peter | December 2, 2009

Comparing Game Adapters to Wireless Bridges – Linksys WGA54G vs Linksys WET54G

Well, I have spent the last two weekends trying to set up a lab at home to retest the tutorials for the http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com website. I put it in the garage but needed the test servers on the lab’s switch to connect to my wireless network whose WAP/Router is in my bedroom.

I thought of doing this some years ago, so I bought a Linksys WGA54G game adapter that allows you to connect your Playstation’s ethernet port to your WLAN. I decided to attach the switch to it instead, so that in its “infrastructure mode” I could provide WLAN access to all the lab servers.

Well, I soon discovered that it bridges at layer 3, but at layer 2 it is a little different. The MAC address of all the servers are re-written with a MAC assigned by the WGA54G. This is OK, but the MAC it uses is always that of one of the servers it discovers on its ethernet port. It presents this MAC on both the WLAN side and the wired side. When you try to connect to another server on the wired side the packet gets sent to the server whose MAC address it cloned, not that of the server to which you really need to connect.

I wondered whether putting a single IP address behind it would fix the problem, so I put a DSL router behind it to NAT the traffic from the switch to the WGA54G. I then used port forwarding to get access to the lab servers. Same problem. This makes me wonder whether it also sends traffic on to the LAN using a single source MAC address, not its own, but that of the first MAC address it sees on the WLAN. This is OK for a Playstation, as I assume it only wants to talk to the web, and the first packet it receives will always come from the home router / DHCP server. But in my case the servers were communicating with the internet and my personal WiFi laptop.

I now have purchased a Linksys WET54G on Craigslist for the price of a half dozen submarine sandwiches, and in “infrastructure mode” using MAC cloning, and a fictitious MAC address, everything works fine. It seems to have memory allocated to mapping the rewriting of the source and destination MAC addresses as traffic passes from the WLAN to the LAN.

The cost difference for this extra RAM to store more than 2 MAC addresses? A new WGA54G costs $129 and the WET54G costs $99. The replacement model Linksys WET200G costs $125 list.

My question is why does a device with more functionality cost less? Maybe because they can make more money selling low cost hardware to price insensitive gamers for a small fortune.

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Posted in Technology

Posted by: Peter | November 1, 2009

The Alice in Wonderland Online Backup Disaster

My latest literary project is reading Alice in Wonderland in Spanish. I had been disappointed by the fact that most of the recent Latin novels I had been reading centered around “putas”, so I decided that something more uplifting was required. Little did I know that the Cheshire Cat and modern technology live in similar fantasy worlds.

After losing my files in a mysterious incident involving my 13 year old son and an aging computer that I was using as a file server, I decided to search for a really kid proof solution. After restoring my data from DVDs to a modern, but cheap $100 NAS appliance I began looking for an automatic online backup solution.

I quickly realized that no one offers consumer backup products allow NAS backups, so I found myself having to sync data between my NAS and a sub-directory on my laptop, using Microsoft’s SyncToy as Plan A. Though SyncToy not automatic, it is free, quick, easy and requires no plastic disks. That was good enough for me.

Plan B involved searching for software that would backup this sub-directory to the cloud. I did some research and chose mozy.com as it offered free backups up to 2GB of storage for free and unlimited storage for $4.95 per month. I decided to test it one evening after work. The software downloaded and installed easily, but then as night fell, this demonic code turned into Dracula and began to suck the life out of my laptop. Whenever I opened up the client from the task bar, or started browsing through its big menu buttons Windows would freeze while oddly maintaining low CPU and memory utilization. Mozy paralyzed all my other applications while it chugged along looking for fresh blood to add to its archives. Like a true vampire, it had a single mission in life, not listening to reason. When I told it not to backup the system files suggested in its default settings it would fiendishly reselect them. It took 4 days to back up 5GB. After the backup completed I went looking through the client’s menu options to see if there were any interesting features and it would have to pause an think after each click, not a second or two, sometimes up to a minute or more, especially if you were selecting files to add to the backup set. Then the laptop froze completely, and I left it for half a day to haunt windows while it stalked potential prey. I eventually had to pull the plug and then had to live through a blue screen of death and an automatic registry fix before it would boot up properly.

Disappointed, I tried the Quicken online backup service as I use their personal finance product. The website portal was very spartan, only having two links on the main menu, a button for credit card information and another to upgrade your service. This was a warning I should have paid more attention to as you will see later. The software was nice and fast for my initial test run using the basic 100MB service at $9.99 per year, but then I decided to increase my backup to the $149.99 for 10GB option. First, after paying, the client didn’t register the updated service status and the website’s limited options would only allow me to upgrade to a level at which I should have been already without telling me where I was. I then noticed that the web portal URL was a sub domain of backup.com and I went to that site, logged in with my Quicken credentials and saw from their much better portal that I had the 10GB service. So I downloaded their client to see whether it would work and recognize the new 10GB option, it did and the client was spiffier. Then the problems began. Just selecting more than 1024 MB, or 1GB would make client crash. I uninstalled and the Quicken client would crash too.

So the following morning I call Backup.com, which is a subsidiary of Symantec, to tell them my plight. They responded promptly but told me I had to talk to Quicken Online Backup directly and gave me their number which I phoned. According to the robotic answering machine, Quicken’s operators were all busy and it would be best to use their website to get service. The robot then hung up without even saying “good bye”. I then used the website, I had to wait 10 minutes to online chat with a representative, but when the countdown timer reached 3 seconds, and stayed that way for about 2 minutes, I tried email which promised a 24 hour turnaround. I then tried the phone option, in which you had to give your number and they would call back in an hour. I did all this before going to work, so I received the surprisingly quick email response an hour later telling me that I would have to clear my browser cookies to get the client to work. I don’t understand why the fat client, not a web client would rely on a browser cookie, but Quicken’s accounting software would do some strange things like that, so it is not entirely surprising. I quickly realized I would have to wait till I got home to test at which point I start looking at what Symantec had to offer. For $45 a year I could backup 25GB! With that revelation fresh in mind I suddenly get the customer service phone call. They apologized for the delay, but told me that I had to be in front of my PC to fix the problem. Remember, the email response had given me a repair option and I had uploaded the same screen shot to the phone support web menu and now they couldn’t help me. I canceled the service.

Symantec’s Norton Online Backup installed easily, and it runs a little webserver behind the scenes that is only accessible from your laptop not the Internet. (For the techies, it runs on localhost 127.0.0.1) When you click on the client. it pops up a web browser page that references data on your little webserver and from the Symantec too. This was problematic for me too. I click on the client icon in the task bar and when Internet Explorer loads the client complains that I have to have IE6 or higher, and I am running IE8. Then Firefox, running the noscript plugin, recognizes that my computer shouldn’t be running a webserver, even if it is not accessible from the web and gets a coronary, but fortunately allows me the option to ignore the craziness for this particular scenario.

After all this, the backup is working well. The first backup of 5GB took about 30 hours and the incremental updates since then have been speedy.

Alice found things becoming curiouser and curiouser, and so did I.

My Second Language

I started learning Spanish in high school in the Caribbean but didn’t pay much attention to it as I found the sciences more interesting. Being surrounded by Spanish speaking countries, the language seemed to be something that would come in useful eventually, even if I didn’t quite know how.

After five years of half-hearted attention I stopped only to restart 10 years later when I saw an opportunity to visit Mexico as part of my MBA program. I found a student on campus who was willing to teach for two hours a week, and after about six months I was ready to get lost in Monterrey. I felt quite proud of my fearlessness to display my linguistic ignorance and left Mexico inspired to continue on my own.

Over the years I have had innumerable classes in which I have met an endless stream of people from varying backgrounds. Each were like me, struggling to find something to do that was new, interesting and completely unrelated to their daily lives.

Thanks to my interest in the language I can now read novels and watch films in Spanish as a hobby. I still have regular classes but they are are more conversational than strict lessons on grammar.

The question I keep asking myself is how has this has really helped me on a daily basis. There were the friendships, the better understanding of new cultures and their points of view, the relaxation of immersing myself in a different frame of mind but there was something else that was lingering in my subconscious mind that I couldn’t pinpoint until recently.

Spanish has undoubtedly helped me with my English. Not with vocabulary nor grammar as you may think. Speaking with a limited pool of words forces you to be more creative with your expression while also being more concise. This has helped me immeasurably in my home and work life. The skill was especially put to good use when writing my book. It has improved my interpretation of body language as so often many misunderstood words can be pieced together with a motion or tilt of the head. It has also made me more fearless in asking for clarifications and improved my subtle tenacity in asking for what I want.

My second language has opened many new windows in my life and this has been a good thing. I highly recommend learning another language and am now learning Portuguese to prove that I practice what I preach.

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Posted in Everything Else

Posted by: Peter | September 1, 2009

Using Skype for Personal Spanish Lessons with a Private Tutor

I have found that Spanish has made travel more feasible and enjoyable. The knowledge has greatly increased the number of holiday destinations which I can visit without fear of being lost. Travel, not just for recreation but business and education too. I have worked and studied in both European and Latin American countries because of this ability. As you can see there are very tangible benefits that include improving your employment potential, improving your chances of being accepted into college or graduate school and expanding your opportunities to study abroad.

Spanish has expanded my global understanding significantly. I can view the world from a different perspective and recognize the world’s perspective of me, my community and country. Surprisingly, it has helped me understand myself and culture in unexpected ways. Explaining the nuances between the various English speaking Caribbean islands can be challenging enough in my native tongue, and in Spanish, it is even more apparent, and yet equally enjoyable. I now have a greater appreciation of international literature, music, and film and use every reasonable opportunity to learn even more.

I am certain that it has also improved my English skills, but I am not sure how, and finally it has also allowed me to make make many lifelong friends.

So as you can see Spanish is an important part of my life, but my busy schedule often makes it difficult for me to practice. Sadly in my case love isn’t good enough and I need regular sessions to remind you to practice.

Yes practice is the most important thing about learning a language and doing it often is best. Reading provides the vocabulary and grammar, but writing, listening and speaking provides the fluency. They provide the fleetness of the mind which is so necessary in conversation.

I continue to have regular classes. I chat with a Latin friend of mine every Sunday, and on other days I have regular classes provided by a personal Spanish tutor at PersonalSpanish.net, an online school based in Nicaragua. The prices are reasonable and the tutors have been professional. I found them by accident after searching through Craigslist for private Spanish tutors in my area. Most were charging between $30 and $40 per hour which is quite expensive, so I began looking for online courses that were cheaper. I soon realized that the people with the most flexible schedules were those not in my timezone, and the cheapest ones were based outside the USA. So I took a chance and have been pleasantly surprised. In reality I just chat with my tutor, as my fluency is quite good, but I have seen some of the course materials and they are good. Depending on the number of sessions you want, prices vary from $12 to $7 per class.

We are now planning the next family vacation to Central America with our excess airline miles. We started this trend in 2007 with a very enjoyable trip to central Mexico and we are all looking forward to the next visit to the region. Maybe we’ll even stop in Nicaragua on the way.

How to make Greek style yogurt

Here is a simple recipe I use every two weeks to create Greek style yoghurt.

Tools and Utensils:

1 Salton YM9 1-Quart Yogurt Maker
2 Cuisipro Donvier Yogurt Cheese Maker
Measuring cup

Ingredients:

1 quart of pasteurized milk (From supermarket)
1/4 cup powdered milk
1 container of plain yogurt with live and active cultures

How it’s done:

Add powdered milk to measuring cup
Stir in yogurt into powdered milk, adding milk to smoothen the mixture. With pasturized milk there is no need to sterilize beforehand.
Pour mixture into the yogurt maker container
Add remainder of milk to container
Plug in yogurt maker and cover
Wait 9 hours
Unplug yogurt maker
Put container in fridge to cool for 4 – 8 hours. This will make the yogurt thicker.
Pour thickened yogurt into Cuisipro Donvier Yogurt Cheese Makers, cover and place in fridge to strain 1-4 hours depending on desired thickness. You may have to restrain as sometimes the curds as may fall through. Just add the curds on top of remaining yogurt in the cheese maker.

Note:

Goat’s milk and goat’s milk plain yogurt have less lactose and will often not be as thick. Use 1/2 cup of powdered milk instead.
Warming the yogurt in the yogurt maker for more than 9 hours can make the yogurt very tart.
The more fat the milk has, the creamier the yogurt, but the likelihood of creating a tart yogurt increases.
After hour 8 in the yogurt maker, test the mixture to make sure it isn’t too tart. Plain yogurts and starter cultures from different manufacturers can cause the taste to vary significantly.

Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions