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Partying on Koh Pha Ngan

Published
by
Callum
3 months, 2 weeks ago
in Travels and Videos
. 1 Comment

To my amazement, when I called my bro at 11pm on Saturday night he was sleeping. Aghast, I decided I’d have to party on alone. What a night.

There was Thai on Thai fighting. Two guys who both work for the same bar apparently! Some farrang (foreigner) girl on guy fighting. Then lots of drinking buckets, dancing, and general debauchery.

I was last on Koh Pha Ngan for the new year party 2006/7. It was much, much busier, the beach was absolutely packed. The vibe this time was a lot better. Fewer people, but enough to make a good party. It had less of a thugs out on the town feeling.

Here’s a short clip of the fire skipping to give you an idea of what it was like.

Sharing wifi connections

Published
by
Callum
3 months, 2 weeks ago
in Techy
. 1 Comment

I’m staying at Delight Resort on Koh Pha Ngan with my brother. Ferg paid 700 baht (~$20 USD) for a week of internet. I spent some time time working out how best to share the connection. Here’s my solution.

I connect to the internet on my laptop. Then I add a second IP on my wireless card and enable IP forwarding from that IP to the internet. Other machines on the network then connect to the internet via my laptop. This relies on a couple of things. Firstly, you need to be able to run 2 IPs on the same card. Secondly, the wireless network needs to allow machines to talk to each other.

Here’s the commands to set it up.

  1. Add a second IP on the wlan0 connection with the command:
    $ sudo ifconfig wlan0:1 192.168.7.1
  2. Enable ip forwarding:
    $ echo 1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
  3. Add the iptables rule to masquerade (network address translate) traffic:
    $ sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -s 192.168.7.0/24 -j MASQUERADE

Now connect the other machines to the network, then change their IPs to 192.167.7.2-255, their default gateway to 192.168.7.1. Leave the DNS server as the one supplied by the wifi access point, or if you have dnsmasq (or another dns server installed) set it to 192.168.7.1.

The first command `ipconfig wlan0:1 192.168.7.1` adds a new virtual ethernet device called wlan0:1 and sets the IP of that device to 192.168.7.1. This means you now have two IPs on the same NIC.

The second command enables ip forwarding in the kernel.

The third command adds the iptables magic. The command `iptables`. Modify the routing table called nat `-t nat`. Append a rule to the POSTROUTING chain `-A POSTROUTING`. On the wlan0 interface `-o wlan0`. Iptables doesn’t recognise virtual devices, so it’s not possible to specify `-o wlan0:1` here. Instead, we specify the source IP range `-s 192.168.7.0/24`. Then tell the rule to masquerade the IPs `-j MASQERADE`.

Somebody might find this useful. It took me a while to figure out. I was firstly using my wireless router as a second wireless card on my machine and sharing the connection that way. This seems much simpler.

For my non-technical readers, here’s a picture of me geeking out by the pool.

Geeking out on Koh Pha Ngan by the pool

I’ve joined the tribe

Published
by
Callum
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Travels
. 0 Comments

Another stroke of genius from Seth Godin. Hopefully my email made the cut in time, in which case, I’ve joined the tribe. :)

Back in Bangkok

Published
by
Callum
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Photos and Travels
. 0 Comments

I’m back in Bangkok. Several people have said “You just can’t get enough of that place” or “You need your Bangkok fix every now and then hey”.

Bangkok is my home away from home. My base in Asia. I have friends here. Places I can stay. I know the city reasonably well. I can order food, get around, get online, etc. If I transit through Asia, I typically stop in Bangkok.

To keep the pics flowing, here’s the view from the 17th floor where I’m staying.

View from the 17th floor

Sydney to Maleny and back

Published
by
Callum
4 months ago
in Photos and Travels
. 3 Comments

Ross and I set off in the eco camper van…

Ross and Callum set off in the eco van

We left Sydney heading north. Our first night we pulled off the road onto a track through a forest and camped for the night.

First night on the road trip

Second day we made it to Nambucca Heads and awoke to this view.

Second morning on the road trip

As my two travelling companions are both non-drivers, it was agreed that I would drive and they would cook. So, inspired by this view, Ross whipped up a storm on the stove on our second morning.

Ross whips up a storm on the stove

We offered Fio a cup of tea, and in return she gave us the low down on the local area, and took this snap of us enjoying our first cooked meal on the trip.

Second day breakfast

On Tuesday (third day) we made it to Pottsville to visit Sharyn and Dennis. Sharyn is a long-standing friend of my mum’s. It was great to finally meet her after having met her kids and heard so much about her. When we arrived there was a freshly baked chicken pie in the kitchen of which we made short work! :) Here’s Sharyn on the phone in her kitchen.

Sharyn in her kitchen

After staying overnight at Sharyn’s (thanks again Sharyn) we drove to Brisbane to pick up our third hombre. On the way we met some tree girls. Good times.

Girls in trees

Then we collected Ahmed from the airport.

Ahmed joins the brotherhood

After picking up Ahmed we were heading north to meet Fergus and Trijntje in Maleny. We got pretty close and pulled off the road to find somewhere to camp for the night. Eventually we pulled off the road and stopped. We were awoken to the sound of something banging against the van…

Awoken by cows

Once our bedmates were chased away, we realised we’d chosen a splendid spot to camp.

Fourth morning

After a very late night and an equally late start, we made it to Maleny to stay with Fergus and Trijntje for a night. They live in a truly amazing house built from rammed earth. Here’s a shot from the gardens showing just how lush and tropical this part of the world is.

The house in Maleny

After two fantastic days with Fergus and Trijntje, we set off for a night out in Brisbane. We ran into one of our tree climbing friends again, and they invited us to stay at their place. In the morning we bore witness to the Australian man and his barbecue in action! Quite a feast it was. Thanks again Chris and Jasmine.

Aussie man and his bbq

Then we cruised a little further down to the travellers mecca of Byron Bay. We proceeded to get outrageously stoned on our first night. Here’s some small token of our adventures.

Stoned in Byron Bay

Naturally, severe munchies ensued, and the chocolate cake was rapidly devoured.

Munching of chocolate cake

After a couple of days of Byron Bay, we cruised on southwards in the direction of home. On the way we spotted a couple of signs for Fredo’s Pies. 50 varities of pies. We just couldn’t resist. Ahmed devoured the crocodile meat pie. He was fairly impressed. We had to snap a shot with Marilyn.

Mobile broadband is go!

Published
by
Callum
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Techy
. 0 Comments

Huawei E220I 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.

Smile launch faster payments

Published
by
Callum
5 months, 1 week ago
in Business and Personal
. 0 Comments

Smile! (Week 14) by cybertoadChanges are afoot in UK banking. I just received an email from Smile telling me about faster payments.

Dear Callum

At smile we’re always looking at ways we can improve the service we offer you. This is why we’re pleased to tell you about Faster Payments. The Faster Payments Service will speed up the way you make and receive electronic payments. It means, in most cases, the beneficiary will receive the payment in two hours, instead of the usual three working days it takes currently.

In future you will be able to use the Faster Payments Service to make funds transfers, including, future dated transfers, bill payments and standing orders.

The service will be free - and you don’t need to do anything to benefit. All eligible payments will automatically go via the Faster Payments Service once it becomes available for your account.

The official industry launch happened at the end of May 2008. However the Faster Payments Service is one of the most complex services introduced in recent times and we want to make sure it’s fully functional before making it available to our customers. Along with many other banks we will be conducting a phased introduction over several months, so it may not be available until early next year.

Visit http://www.smile.co.uk/faster for more details.

Yours sincerely,

The smile team

The email was also followed with this rather nonsensical disclaimer:

This e-mail is intended solely for the addressee and is strictly confidential. If you are not the addressee, please do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any attachments. Instead please e-mail it back to the sender and delete the message from your computer.

As you’ll notice I chose to ignore that! :evil: