I bought a Huawei E220 last week. It took a week or so to arrive. Then I wanted to get myself a 3 mobile broadband account. That turned out to be a pain in the ass. You need to sign a contract, so you have to go through a credit check. As I don’t have any paperwork in Aus, Ross kindly agreed to sign the contract. Alas, having only been in the country a few months, he failed the credit check. After some initial skepticism, Toppo kindly agreed to sign on the dotted line. Bravo!
So, today, this post comes to you via mobile broadband.
There were some initial glitches though. It took some serious farting around. I tried installing vodafone’s linux software, that didn’t work. It could see the modem most of the time, but it wouldn’t connect. Not sure why, some weird wvdial errors. Yet wvdial on it’s own would work fine.
Then I tried umtsmon. It worked ok. But it’s an ugly little application and it wouldn’t disappear into my system tray. Plus, NetworkManager thought there was no connection, so all my programs thought they were offline. Pain in the ass.
Finally, I upgraded NetworkManager to 0.7. Then bingo, it works like a charm.
I want to keep an eye on bandwidth consumption, so I’m using the Net Monitor screenlet. It’s not quite perfect as it tracks usage by calendar month. But it’ll do as a start.
Ubuntu
Top marks to Ubuntu. You plug in the modem and it “just works”. No farting around switching modes or any of that nonsense. In fact, if you know the init strings, you can just dial and go. Once NetworkManager 0.7 goes final and makes it into Ubuntu, mobile broadband will be a cinch.
Is there any reason why one should not use the username as the password salt? Storing md5( username . password ) instead of md5( password ) in the password column.
It seems like a very simple idea, so I’m sure there’s a good reason why it’s not in popular use. Hopefully somebody can tell me that reason! 
In Fedora 8 when I closed my laptop lid, my screen would lock. Under Ubuntu 8.04 this doesn’t happen. After a bit of digging, I found a solution. The gconf setting is “/apps/gnome-power-manager/lock/blank_screen”. When set to true, closing the lid will lock the screen. Luvvvly.
I spent 4 long hours on public transport today. I was eager to collect my new Nokia N810 as soon as possible. I twittered some first impressions. It’s a lovely device. Very tactile. It feels very solid. I was initially skeptical about the keyboard, but once I booted the device and started using, it’s great. So far I’m very impressed.
Unfortunately, the 5 way navigator button is faulty. The left side of the button doesn’t work, and the right side is super sensetive. So I can scroll right but not left. Bummer. It’ll have to go back to Nokia to be fixed. So much for getting my new machine in a hurry! A good opportunity to practice patience. Plus, it gives me some time to experiment. Once it’s fixed I’ll wipe all the settings and start fresh.
For all you picture lovers, here’s a shot of Mahjong:
I’m thinking about buying a Nokia N810.
- Email, web out and about
- Music, movies, books, on the go
- Skype / SIP calls
- Instant Messaging, IRC
- Meeting notes instead of a laptop
- Instead of a laptop for short trips
Anyone have any feedback? Have you got one? Does it work well? Is the keyboard easy to use? Does the GPS system work well? Do you have to buy the maps? Can they be torrented?
I’m pissed.
Happy Cogs recently did some work on the admin upgrade for WordPress 2.5. Through them, I found the hosting company Media Template. The pitch was appealing. They seemed professional, personal, all the things you’d want from a hosting company. That is, until I started digging.
One of their virtual server products costs $150 per month, and includes 2Tb of bandwidth. Excess bandwidth is charged, per Gb, at $2.56. Or, if you pre-purchase 1Tb, at half that price, $1.28 per Gb. That means that your first 2Tb cost $150, while your next 1Tb would cost $1′310.72, or 17.5 times more than your first 2Tb (1′748% to be precise).
Astounded by this absurdity I contacted their sales team. I was expecting the response to be in line with their website. Intelligent, considered, rational. I was sadly disappointed. It felt like the typical, corporate, monkey follow order, response you’d expect from Hewlett Packard or some other Indian outsourced outfit.
Not content to let matters lie, I have started a campaign. I have described my outrage at GetSatisfaction. Then I posted it to digg. Now I’m posting it here. Then I’m going to email all the links to the CEO and see what happens. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get an intelligent response. Otherwise, I’ll publicise the fact that their ticket system allows you to view the email addresses of people who contact them.
Spotted this on Guy’s blog. Cisco made a presentation in India. There were 3 people on stage. One in India. Two in San Jose, onstage via live, holographic, 3d, video conferencing. Awesome! Check out the explanation and video.
I bought a Huawei E220 last week. It took a week or so to arrive. Then I wanted to get myself a 3 mobile broadband account. That turned out to be a pain in the ass. You need to sign a contract, so you have to go through a credit check. As I don’t have any paperwork in Aus, Ross kindly agreed to sign the contract. Alas, having only been in the country a few months, he failed the credit check. After some initial skepticism, Toppo kindly agreed to sign on the dotted line. Bravo!
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