Internet hell: My AT&T 2Wire router and me

Gosh, I haven’t blogged in forever, but I say that too much.

I was so excited to install the Linksys WRT54G2 router. I was fed up with my 2Wire HomePortal 1800HG’s unreliable, and overall crappy performance. One of my friends taught me how to properly configure the setup so that there would not be two routers on the same network. I set everything up so that I wouldn’t have to use the 2Wire as a router at all — just a modem. It worked great for about a week. Then, bad things started happening.

After about a week, the power went out. Usually this doesn’t happen too often. This power outage rebooted my entire setup and happened during the day while I was at school. When I came home, I was without internet. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting cables furiously. I then connected my Mac straight to the 2Wire, instead of the Linksys, and configured the IP settings so I could configure the 2Wire. Everything was set right. The last thing I tried was changing to the more default settings: PPPoE, routing enabled, etc. I then reversed those settings: direct IP, routing disabled. Finally, I initiated a connection from the Linksys (of course I connected the Mac back to the Linksys!) and it worked. I wasn’t confused, I was pretty unhappy. But at least it was fixed.

This fix was not to last. The power seemed to go out again. And again. And again! It turned out eventually to just simply be tons and tons of system reboots. Sooner or later, every week, and even every day I would have to do the deconfigure/reconfigure process over and over again. Eventually I got fed up with that and stopped using the Linksys altogether, and started using the 2Wire by itself again.

I went searching for a standalone modem, and I found one: the Motorola Netopia 2210. One Ethernet port, one WAN (DSL line) port, and one power port. So simple, an orangutan could figure it out. I set that to bridge mode, and reinstated my Linksys. Instant connection. I was so happy. It was a little slower, but I was still happy.

That happy changed to a “WHY IS MY INTERNET SO F***ING SLOW” expression on my face and in my head. I almost said it out loud. I held back, though.

After digging through the Motorola’s statistics page, I found out that the modem had a (slow) speed that was set as the “Max Allowed Speed” of 1217kbps. We pay for the best AT&T DSL service, aka the “Elite” plan, the 6Mbps download, and 0.7Mbps upload. My response to this was to calmly put the almost brand new modem out of commission.

As we speak, I am back to using the 2Wire as only a modem, but not how I like it. The Linksys is simply DMZed on the 2Wire’s network, versus the Linksys directly connecting to the Internet with PPPoE. The 2Wire handles all Internet now, instead of the Linksys. This is how I have to live until I move out of the house…

The iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 3.1

Recently, I got my hands on an iPhone 3G 8GB. It is my dad’s but I used it for a week. I would have liked it much more if I didn’t update to iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1.

With the new 3.1, there is a horrible feature. Well, it’s not a feature, it’s a bug. The iPhone 3G seems to freeze constantly with 3.1! In fact, it freezes so much for so long, people think that the phone shut itself off. Even I thought it turned off, but I would take out the phone a minute later and it would be on. In another case, I’ll be writing a text message and all of a sudden the screen will freeze while my music continues on. This frusturated me to no end.

There is even an entire group of people having this “mysterious shutdown” problem which, as described above, is only a really, really long phone freeze. You can read this here on Apple Discussions. People are reporting that their iPhone is, “running noticeably slower, and it randomly shuts down to a black screen at least twice a day.” They also say, “it went to a “coma” two times, right after connecting the earphones…it was having “comas” EVERY DAY, at least 10 times a day.” Even according to one user, and me noticing it, it seems to freeze up only when Mail checks for new emails. This is especially a problem if you have an hourly fetch setup. It’s definitely crazy how many iPhone 3G’s are affected.

In my opinion, Apple needs to get this fixed very soon, because the situation is getting out of hand! Too many people have problems. I have a 1st generation iPod touch, and I loaded 3.1 (then 3.1.1) onto it. I love the app arrangement features of it! It’s the best way to organize all of my apps. I haven’t used the drag system since Apple came out with 3.1(.1). However, most are left out in the water because their iPhone 3G’s keep freezing so much and can’t experience it.

Push notifications with Prowl on the iPhone/iPod touch

Recently, I got Prowl (iTunes link), the Growl forwarder for iPhone and iPod touch. I was gonna use it for mostly highlights from IRC in Linkinus, but I found more uses for it.

One thing I have running behind Prowl is Prey Fetcher. This Prowl API-based…service uses Prowl to push your Twitter mentions and direct messages. You don’t even need any extra apps on your iPhone/iPod touch to get important Twitter push notifications, nor do you need to pay anymore than you did for Prowl: in fact, Prey Fetcher is free.

Another thing, which is running on my computer, is, of course, Linkinus, so I can get all my highlights and such pushed to me so I don’t have to be clueless as to when someone highlighted.

Now, lets get a little more “pushy.” I have 2 apps that run on my Mac of which I am dedicating mostly to Prowl’s push. One being Notify, which is the best GMail notifier, period, for Mac. This will give me a bit of a sense of push email without paying for GPush. The second app is called FMenu. What that’ll do is show Growl notifications of things happening on Facebook. It is also a menu-run application, which makes accessing all your Facebook pages easy. Oh, and same with Notifier.

For now, this is all I have toward Prowl. I will eventually add more and more toward Prowl, but for now, I am done.

My first few weeks with iPhone OS 3.0 on my iPod touch

iPhone OS 3.0 preview ad on the Apple Website

On Sunday, the day before I went to Captiva Island in Florida, I  found the 3.0 software. Yes, before release. I’m gonna make a few review-ish comments about some features.

First big 3.0 thing I noticed was when I was in the Fort Meyers airport. I connected to the network, and a Log In screen came down from nowhere, and gave me a small survey. I pretty much forgot to take a screenshot, which I find silly that I wouldn’t screenshot that.

Second big thing was that when there were no headphones connected, my iPod said “Dock Connector” over every volume controller. Note that I have a 1st generation iPod touch so it does not have a speaker built in. I couldn’t change the volume, though, without headphones plugged in. It’s not really a feature, more a ease-of-use thing.

Radio in QuickTime

My next noticeable change was the horizontal ability of Notes, Mail, and such apps. It’s much easier to type in these apps now, even though I already type pretty fast on my iPod already. This is probably my least used feature of 3.0, as I can make do with the regular keyboard on the iPod, as well as iPhone.

The following has to be my favorite feature: radio in QuickTime. I can now click on any audio stream in Safari and have it play back. The reason why this feature is the best is because you can close Safari and the radio will continue to play! Now you can use other applications while listening to your favorite internet radio station. This probably will be the most under appreciated feature because most people think apps quit when you press the Home button. Not Safari.

The only drawbacks I suffered were caused by an app and it’s incompatibility with the 3.0 software. In Rooms, an iPhone IRC client, I usually use the channel switcher (double tap on the screen or select “Channel switcher” from the menu) to switch between channels. This was where things went wrong. My screen, in every single app, got all funky. Here are two screenshots of what it looked like:

Pretty weird, hmm? I got over it by sliding my finger across channels.

Now, lets get back to positives. The spotlight search is a good feature. In fact, it’s great. If you can’t find something, you can search for it. Thankfully, this includes apps, contacts, emails, and even music. It’s really neat when you don’t know where your stuff is.

When Tap Tap was the only push notification app...

My second to last feature: the new YouTube stuff. Now you can view your YouTube accounts subscriptions, favorites, and videos right on the spot instead of browsing the YouTube Mobile site. This is a great feature that has made everyone happy!

Of course, we couldn’t forget, I had push notifications the whole time. Yes, it was only one app, but it eventually went to two (Tap Tap Revenge and AP News). It didn’t really do much, those notifications, because I was disconnected from WiFi most of the time, sadly. But, in later weeks, I have like seeing these push notifications, letting me know stuff was happening.

Well, now that I can’t think of anything else, I’m just gonna put down a gallery for you to see some pics of these features in action. Happy 3.0-ing!

Spotlight function on the Home Screen

Rooms bugging up my iPod (1)

When Tap Tap was the only push notification app…

Landscape Mail application

Radio in QuickTime

“Dock Connector” replacing the volume control on the iPod controls

Subscriptions in the new YouTube app

Rooms bugging up my iPod (2)

My thoughts on the new iPhone 3GS

Today was the WWDC keynote as most people know. I watched it on Ustream with crappy video and audio, and I missed the section about iPhone Os 3.0 and all the app demos. I did see, however, the last 10-15 minutes about the iPhone 3GS. In my opinion, it is truly awesome.

iPhone 3GS on the Apple website

After the keynote, I caught up on the Apple website (picture is linked to the iPhone page) and found that I didn’t miss much. Unlike many rumors, the iPhone’s visual apperance wasn’t changed at all, like a front facing camera and a moved earpiece. I think it’s good to keep the good ol’ iPhone and not mess it up with a front facing camera and an akwardly moved earpiece.

Secondly, apparently, the iPhone 3GS is faster than the iPhone 3G. This will call for a faster processor, but,  thankfully, the battery was upgraded. That is mostly people’s pet peeve about the iPhone: you can’t change the battery.

Also, they (finally) added video with the camera. The video is impressive: 640×480 (VGA) at 30fps. Also, the camera itself is now auto focus, auto white balance, and auto exposure. You can even focus on one certain thing (like a person), a feature known as “Tap to Focus.” There is even a macro mode, sequence photos, and good pictures in low light. It’s even at 3-megapixels.

Camera on the iPhone 3GS

And I’m not done. My favorite new feature is voice control, where you can tell your iPhone to call a person, and it will call it, or tell it to play an artist or song and it will. This is truly my favorite feature by far, even though most phones can already do this. My old Motorola RAZR can even do this (except it requires actually learning the names). At least you can tell the iPhone to play songs similar to the one currently playing.

Ooh, Cut, Copy & Paste. Finally. This is what all iPhone and even iPod touch users have been waiting for. It’s shocking it took OS 3.0 to get this in there. But, here it is. Finally, once again.

Another awesome feature is voice memos. A built in application for voice memos is definetly needed. There are already many applications for voice memos on the App Store (as shown below, click opens iTunes search page), but it’s finally here for free with the iPhone.

What happens when you search Voice Memo on iTunes

Another feature is Tethering, which makes your internet on your iPhone available to your computer. Thing is, even though the terms of service of AT&T says I can’t do this, I can do it via Bluetooth and USB with my RAZR, and just Bluetooth on my BlackBerry. Interesting. I also believe I heard that, as with MMS (more on that later), this will be delayed. But, it’s still a good feature.

I’m gonna finish off this post with the improved messaging system. Not only will MMS be added so you can send pictures and videos with your iPhone via text messages. Unfortunately, this will be delayed thanks to AT&T. But, the new text messaging chat will be improved, including a horizontal keyboard.

Messaging on the iPhone 3GS

Well, that’s all I got for you. If you want to check out some of the features, just click the first picture to go to the iPhone page on Apple.com.

Why you might need an external hard drive

This post is to follow up my post about installing OS X on an external hard drive.

Have you pondered a second hard drive, but don’t wanna poke inside your computer to get an internal one? Or, are you just not sure whether you need an external hard drive or not? There are a few reasons why you might want, or even need,  an external hard drive.

Backup. Your data is important. Why not clone it on another hard drive? This is probably the main thing people get external hard drives for.

Store all your media. If you like music, taking photos or movies, or like backing up all your DVDs, but you are running out of hard drive space, you probably want more space. And, you aren’t a computer geek. This is the perfect solution, because most hard drives are plug and play, so right away, you can copy your music, photos, movies, and ISOs to a larger hard drive, opening up space on your main hard drive.

Have a portable operating system. If you are more of a geek, then you probably have installed an operating system on any hard drive. Well, generally, depending on the OS, you are allowed to install it on a USB drive. As you have read below, it’s easy to do with OS X. It’s easiest to have a portable OS with Linux, because there are tons of drivers preinstalled, or available for install.

Just extra space. If you ever get low on space on your main hard drive, you will start freaking out, cause “everything is important and I can’t delete it.” Well, an external hard drive will provide as a bleed-over either just in case, or if you have big files that won’t fit elsewhere.

Extra hard drive. Generally, if you are more of a DIY guy, then you can actually take apart the hard drive, and use it internally. This would require opening the drive, which may cause damage to the drive if you even touch it with your prying tool. Then, you could pop the drive in a computer. Generally, if you get a portable hard drive, the drive inside will default  to  fitting in a laptop. A regular external hard drive will only fit inside a desktop.

Those are probably just a few. Comment here if you have anything else for me.

Mac OS X on an external hard drive

This weekend I got a second external hard drive. Then I wondered what I wanted to do with it. I finally decided that I should put OS X on it!

It was pretty easy, actually. All I had to do is choose my USB drive as the disk to install stuff on. Because I did not have a retail Leopard install disk and only had a drop-in DVD included with my purchased-in-February 2008 Mac mini.

It wasn’t quick. The upgrade from the Tiger install disks I had, to that drop-in disc install. Then I decided to install the iLife ‘09 on the Leopard.

The only bad thing about booting off of a USB drive is that it is legacy, also known as “unsupported by Apple,” which means, if things break when you boot from a USB drive, it will not be covered by your warranty. That’s all I got for you, so good luck.

Full Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit soundtrack coming soon

I recently stumbled upon Game Music Player in hopes to extract entire songs from Need For Speed III. I figured out that I needed to scan the files, and so I converted them and all. I’m in the process of sleep, school, and homework, so I will get these to you shortly.

Progress updates: See my twitter for updates!

Jailbreaking my iPod touch

So tonight I decided to attempt to jailbreak my iPod touch. I sent the restore file to my laptop, loaded QuickPwn from there, and did the instructions. Right as it was instructing me about putting my iPod into DFU mode, “QuickPwn…encountered a problem and need[ed] to be closed.” Problem is, the app was working just fine. So I continued to use it. Bad idea.

I let the QuickPwn software and Installer.app and stuff to load. Once it was done, it booted. Or at least it was supposed to. My iPod was pretty much bricked, until I found a fix.

Now, QuickPwn asks you to do a few things to get to DFU mode. It involves pressing a lot of buttons. Well, from searching the internet, I found a blog post saying how to get your iPod into recovery mode:

1. Press and hold Home button and Sleep/Wake button (this forces down the iPod).
2. Continue to hold the buttons.
3. Release the Sleep/Wake button when the Apple logo appears.
4. Let go of both buttons when the Recovery Mode screen shows.

Sound familiar? This process is very similar to the one QuickPwn tells you to do. After that process, I was able to restore my “bricked” iPod. Right now it’s syncing all the stuff to it. I did have a 48 minute video of it. I trashed it because it was so uneventful and boring, and it took more that 1GB of disk space.

Digsby is adware???

Today I came across something that kinda shocked me. So, today I attempted to download Digsby, a multi-protocol IM client. I am on OpenDNS and all I have blocked is pretty much adware. Now when I clicked on the Download Now button, instead of a download page, I got this:

Yup, that is in fact the URL of the Digsby download site. What this brought to mind was that Digsby is technically adware. If the download site is filed as such, then Digsby is ought to be infected with it. I know a few people who use Digsby, but they also use AVG. There is their problem (hehe). If you don’t believe me, try it yourself! Or I’ll make a video.

Update: A Digsby official has noted me (in the comments) that they are aware that it gets blocked, but has provided a download link which is probably somewhere where I haven’t looked. If you are looking to download Disgby, here it is.