I have to ISP coming in and I have two different technical setups for them, but both of them are the same idea. An ADSL modem which is a attached to a router which handles the network. For past couple of weeks my internet from Qnet has been acting up, I have done pretty much every possible conceivable solution to try and remedy this but to no avail. I have decided to do some testing with my modem, I have feeling that its life has come to an end after 6 years of good service, its a Thompson ADSL Modem but I can’t really do any configuration on it when I try to access it, so I wanted to replace it. Called my Qnet and all they offer is the Linksys ADSL which was crap from Kems, I asked for a Cisco modem but they said that it is only for corporate customers and they don’t have that in stock.

I’m judging these modems by a few of the points listed below, the main point is stability and no issues then I go on to other testing.

Key Points for successful modem:

• Faster Connection, with the newer modems surfing is substantially faster due to the better architecture, a Cisco modem is much more stable and faster the a Linksys modem and I have tried that first hand
• FTP and VPN access without any issues
• Extra features such a Port Forwarding, VPN configurable, Black or White Listing IPs & MAC addresses, DynDNS, and Wireless options

I have taken the options into my own hands, and after reading up online I decided to do some testing on affordable regular ADSL modems to post it up later. All the below have decent reviews and had their own problems and what they were good at, I’m going to test it to my preferences and see what I come up with as a winner.

• D-Link ADSL Modem/Router/Wireless
• D-Link ADSL Modem/Router
• Actiontech ADSL Modem/Router/Wireless

Who doesn’t want to be a ninja or at least have skills of a ninja. I think this man has skills that surpass any ninja, he is bouncing of walls, flipping through the air, doing impossible and dangerous moves. The video pretty much speaks for himself, his coordination and agility, plus everything else is pretty amazing.

I picked up this list from the Maximum PC April 2009 issue, there are some publications which are still worth buying in print and this is one of them. PC Geeks over the years have developed certain skill sets, some are through education, some through knowledge, and the majority of it is through breaking stuff. Well this is a list of things that I can relate with and I know a few people that can as well, there are people with a lot more skills and I’m one always willing to learn.

• Knowing the difference between the board connectors; PCI Express, DDR Memory, Dual Channel Rimm
• Benchmarking a PC
• Know basic HTML tags
• Bypass the Government content filter
• Run all your essential Apps on a USB stick
• Getting through to the real technicians of customer service
• Use photoshop to doctor a photo
• Wire your home with your know Ethernet and know how to crimp it
• Say NO to extended warranty
• Mooch Wi-Fi pretty much anywhere
• Use a DSLR in full manual mode
• Install a Hard Drive in a Laptop (Laptop broke down in the first month, damn annoying)
• Protect your Wi-Fi
• Take apart a damage external hard drive and extract the data
• Pull off an elaborate prank
• Set up a RAID configuration
• Securely Erase your data (They don’t know how to do that at Lockheed Martin)
• Solder like your life depended on it (I used to do that when I worked on my R/C Cars, would probably do some damage to a mother board)
• Rip CDs to FLAC
• Stream your movies, Music, Photos, and anything else to any location in your house
• Dual-Boot your PC
• How to hack a Windows Computer or Router
• Watch TV Shows on the Internet (Legally)
• Installing and configuring a Virtual Machine
• Protecting your tracks on the PC
• Run multiple monitors
• Know the important Linux Commands
• Avoid DRM at all costs
• Use Remote Desktop
• Rip a DVD to H.264
• Find everything you need to know Online
• Install Third-party firmware on your router
• Be an addict to Star Wars or Star Trek
• Be able to use the command prompt like a pro
• Be able to change your own tire
• Connecting to the ECU of your vehicle to tweak, or flash, clear codes
• Play Halo1/2/3 and still don’t want to sleep
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I have been a user of statcounter for a while for all my stat drilling needs for the blog and other websites. Didn’t really think much of switching to Google Analytics even though I keep reading a lot about it. I switched it on a couple of days ago for the blog and the information is pretty interesting and the way the reports are presented to you, the best part about all these tools is that its for free. Lifehacker had a post about Polaris, which takes all the Google Analytics data and presents it for you on your desktop. Polaris is an Adobe Air application which presents all the information with an attractive look and feel, free for personal use and $15/year to handle multiple profiles.

Link: DesktopReporting

I think I have a love of building PCs and seeing these creations come to life, such simple steps to building great machines. I’m going to dismantle and pretty much cannibalize the first Windows Home Server and use it as parts for the current WHS Server. I’m also building a rackmounted server as test bed and I managed to find another Asus P5Q WS motherboard, I have to say that it is probably one the best motherboards I have used and its a real work horse.

I have about 8 TB in the new Hazmat Server, and that has been the capacity since day one. Now that I’m going to use the parts from the other server I’m planning to expand that to about 18 TB or more. WHS safeguards your data by spreading it across multiple drives and switching on the “Duplication” feature which basically keeps a copy of it, meaning I would need about 16TB to duplicate all the data I have, which I don’t have at this point. I have to commend Microsoft, for once, on a great product such as WHS, I think they need to dedicate more support and development for it since it can really make having a server at home a very simple task. The hardware setup is fun for someone such as myself, and the software setup is a breeze so I don’t mind that I keep reinstalling or reconfiguring. Then there are the new WD 2TB drives, I already ordered a couple of those and I am waiting to see their performance and durability, I’m hoping they drop in price quickly because right now they were a little too pricey. I’m planning to use the Kandalf case from the gutted WHS Server and use it as a power house machine, I have had the skultrail motherboard laying around for a little while now and its a powerhouse of a mother board, but its so damn big that it doesn’t fit in any normal case, it needs a special case and this beautiful silver case will do the job wonderfully. I also have this sudden urge to build some Lego Technic machines, those were the days I loved putting those machines together.

I have to say that its pretty cool that the President of the United States has a Flickr page. I think a lot of people like Obama and have hope in the guy, but he does throw in a few surprises here and there. It was mentioned that he refused to give up his Blackberry when he became President, and I really can’t blame him for it, now the NSA are working on a super Blackberry for him with all the security needed. Now they have this official Flickr page and there are some very nice pictures, I wonder what is the approval process to post up these pictures because it must be a security nightmare to have these up on the net, but he does seem to be a friendly guy.

These pictures are amazing, there is an amazing depth and clarity to them. There are a lot of photos that I liked and I think take a lot of skill to snap at that right moment, Pete Souza is one amazing photographer, I wonder how they choose him. Anyone notice that the official White House Dog “Bo” has white feet when the dog is totally black?

Link: Flickr

A WordPress plug-in which works with WordPress 2.7+, its meant to format the posts to be easily reable and loads up very lightly onto the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android phone. I like when its a very simple piece of software which works as it is supposed to. You can view the blog horizontally or in landscape mode, making it a versatile piece of software and simple.

You can change your view to the full normal view instead of this compress version. If you are just looking to read then this is the best format but if you want to see everything then you have to go into full view mode.

Link: WPtouch

I got an email with a link to an interesting article in Kuwait Times regarding bloggers. The writer has written her opinion which seems to have a narrowed outlook towards bloggers. She praises blogs which show a relative and useful information regarding Kuwait, or have some specific use. Those are acceptable blogs, but blogs that are about a person’s personal life then she categorizes that as “Diaries in disguise” and they write information about themselves that “even their own mothers don’t want to hear about”. I think that blogs came out as a persons personal view point to things in their personal or business life, or something of that nature. Recently blogs have grown in numbers in Kuwait, which I think is a good thing, it also connects people who wouldn’t have interacted previously. Maybe to each his own but I don’t really agree with the article.

Link: KuwaitTimes

I face a big problem with my blog over the past few weeks. It has been crashing every couple of days for a few hours a day. I wasn’t sure what was going on, and I have stopped hot linking of images from Google and Yahoo but still something was going wrong. I was in a state of panic with all that was going wrong at the same time, I expected the database to crash at this point as well, but I knew I was over reacting.

Suddenly when it crashed yesterday all my plugins were gone and I started getting a gigantic wave of spam comments. With the help of Michelle the blog has been updated from 2.5 to 2.71, and all my plugins have been reinstated. I’m thinking about a theme upgrade at a later point and making it mobile friendly (iPod Touch/iPhone/Android). Also at last the video embedding has been fixed, I think it was a problem that I was facing, this time around I tested it with IE, Mozilla, Opera, and Chrome. Even the flash problem with the picture uploader in WordPress seems to be working at this point, which is great. I have had problems with it for the past 5 months and at last its working. I still don’t know whats the cause of the recurring crashes, they told me its some script thats running on my blog, but I don’t know how exactly to figure that out but for now everything seems to be back to normal.

 I still play Halo 3 and so many people play, but you don’t realize how much until you put some numbers to it. 1’000’000’000 multiplayer game (4 player) has been played but the crazy part is the amount of time played to reach that number of games. It comes to 2,023,153,340,764 seconds to complete, which adds up to 64,000 years. I will still keep playing Halo 3 for a long time until I master it and be able to snipe people while sticking people with grenades and flying through the air.

Link: Kotaku