Posts in category "software"

Buoyed by my recent, successful firmware upgrade of my Linksys wireless router, and for the sake of completeness, I decided to upgrade the driver software of the Linksys Wireless USB adapters to the latest version (2.0.2).

In addition, prompted by my wife's perceptive question of 'Is it not working because someone has hacked into it ?', I also decided to increase the security on my embryonic wireless network by disabling SSID broadcasts and enabling MAC address filtering so only specified PC's can connect.

Apologies to all my neighbours. This is probably undue paranoia on my part but if only you could have provided demerara sugar instead of fobbing me off with caster sugar all those years ago, none of this would have been necessary.

These simple configuration changes and software upgrades went surprisingly smoothly. Until, of course, I came to complete the very final task of upgrading the driver of USB adapter #2. This USB adapter is identical to the (upgraded) USB adapter #1, was purchased around the same time and was working perfectly on the old 1.x driver.

Inevitably, when I upgraded this driver, it stubbornly refused to connect to the wireless network. I uninstalled, reinstalled, rebooted, reinstated the original driver to confirm the adapter was still working in the new wireless configuration but, still no joy. So this irritating minor issue will now continue to nag away like a dripping tap until I can be bothered to revisit it.

I have been experiencing more wireless weirdness recently. What once was stable and reliable has become increasingly sporadic, unreliable and damned irritating for no obvious reason.

I am not a networking sort of guy. I am not particularly interested in wireless networking. I use WEP in an effort to secure my network and stop my neighbours piggy backing off it but that's about it.

I am ashamed to admit that, on one occasion, when my wireless network was broken, I briefly piggy backed on an unsecured network just to temporarily solve the problem.

I am even more ashamed to admit that, on another occasion, I simply unplugged the USB wireless adapter and just plugged it into an alternative USB port. Coincidentally, this just happened to work and I thought I had somehow miraculously addressed the problem (but deep down inside, I knew I hadn't).

Anyway, my kids have been moaning about this intermittent access to the internet for a while (can't play World of Warcraft, can't access email, can't use MSN, can't do homework etc etc) but today there was an important new development with very severe and wide reaching implications.

I was affected. I was trying to work from home and couldn't because my VPN connection kept dropping as I got kicked off the network.

Time for action. Could this action be completed in five minutes ? Probably not but let's have a go anyway.

I connected my laptop in directly to the Blueyonder cable modem with an Ethernet cable and the internet connection is fine. No need to waste anyone's time by calling Telewest technical support.

Then I connected the laptop directly in to a wired port on the Linksys wireless router and, again, the connection is rock solid.

So I head over to www.linksys.com and register for an account as a precursor to searching the FAQ and support forums. Then I register the wireless router so I can check the latest available firmware version for this model - WRT54G (V2.0).

The latest firmware version is 4.20.7 (dated 25 August 2005). I check the current firmware version and am surprised to discover that I am running version 2.02.7 which dates from the 2004 Jurassic period.

Ooh - how exciting. A difference of two in the 'major' version number for the firmware. Why this is akin to upgrading from Oracle 8i (RULE) to Oracle 10g (ALL_ROWS) ! I immediately download the software and briefly pause for a moment to read the dire warnings on the Admin screens about 'Only upgrade the router firmware if you are experiencing problems'.

I fleetingly worry that this is an American company and I stupidly reside in England so the firmware may be incompatible and could break absolutely everything. Then I take a sharp intake of breath and I press the inviting 'Upgrade the firmware now' button.

The firmware upgrade is successful ! There are some new menu options visible on the Administration screens. The firmware version is now listed as version 4.20.7.

I reconfigure to Channel 7 as Channel 11 is so 'last year' and also limit connections to 802.11G only.

Everyone is reconnected, connectivity is much improved and very stable with no drop outs thus far. Service to the InterWeb is restored !

Microsoft announce Virtual Server 2005 is now freely available.

Whatever you can do, we can do (but a bit later).

Some people might have expected the clock on an expensive Sony digital car radio to automatically switch into British Summer Time.

However, they would be wrong and I will now be forced to try to remember the location of the fine manual.

I thought this was simply hilarious. Thank goodness, he captured a screenshot for prosperity.

Everything was in its place. Then I went and changed everything (again). My therapist says this is a character defect and a sign of subliminal procrastination.

Hard reset Palm Pilot. Download Thunderbird extension to sync address book. Doesn't work.

So now my Contacts are in Thunderbird (periodic manual export/import) and I am using the Palm for Calendar and Tasks. If it's good enough for Dave Allen, then it's good enough for me.

Next Action: Wait for Thunderbird/Sunbird to fully support Palm synchronisation.

My old company used Exchange Server. I used to use Outlook for mail.

My new company uses IMAP. So now I can use Thunderbird for mail (news and RSS).

No more wasted time puzzling over why filter rules suddenly stop working.

No more wasted time messing around with proprietary PST files.

Fast, flexible, powerful search capability.

All my Outlook data imported seamlessly.

Small change, massive improvement.

Id just like to say that my Palm Vx repaid me today for a small element of all the valuable time it has wasted in the past.

A recent change in circumstance meant some changes to my email environment.

Easy enough to resolve. Synchronise old environment with Palm. Switch into new environment. Reconfigure Outlook profile. Synchronise. Contacts, Tasks, Calendar and Notes all migrated seamlessly. Finished.

Well, I'd like to but I can't.

Yesterday, I stumbled across Newsvine which is a very impressive news aggregator. Until now, I didnt much care for these type of sites. Digg left me a little cold with too many irrelevant, repeated articles (not to mention flame wars) and Slashdot hurt my eyes.

I currently use My Yahoo! with various news feeds configured and was starting to experiment with a similar, personalized Google portal with feeds from Google News as an alternative.

Newsvine is more focussed on news with feeds from Associated Press, tagging, watchlists, personalisation, discussions and your own news column (articles, links). The interface is well thought out, fast, easy to use and I quickly found myself exploring many different topics of interest.

Newsvine is yet another of those Web 2.0 applications currently in beta and needs an invitation to sign up. I anticipate Newsvine supplementing rather than replacing GreatNews as my RSS reader (for personal and technical blogs) but it is certainly a very impressive and interesting application.

I stumbled across Newsvine on this blog and the author was kind enough to issue me with an invite. If he has none left, I also have some Newsvine invites available if you are interested in trying it out.

I have been thinking (yes I do a lot of that) recently about managing my personal calendar more effectively. Ideally, I would like a simple Web based calendar that could also sync to my Palm.

I don't really like the Yahoo! Calendar that much even though it can sync with Outlook and the Palm. I simply don't enjoy looking at the Yahoo! calendar. I just think the interface is ugly and there are distracting ads liberally scattered at the top of the screen.

I am following the development of Sunbird with interest but this project is still in development and I think Sunbird only runs locally.

I have an outstanding, low priority ToDo to evaluate Remember The Milk but keep forgetting.

So, I was interested to read Matt Mullenweg speaking in glowing terms about the calendar functionality from 30 Boxes rapidly followed by similar sentiments from Scobleizer.

Mental note. Forego 'Songs of Praise' for just one week and remember to sign up at 30 Boxes on Sunday 5 February when it enters public beta.

In fact, add it to your calendar with an SMS alert so you don't forget.