TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

I’ve dug a little deeper on top of my previous blog entry on ADSL2+, and the central coast, and when we can expect it. Unfortunately, we are still no more clear on when that will be. My Original prediction at that point was that there would only be a short delay to several exchanges, including [...]

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I’ve spent a few hours working on editing the QoS this afternoon for the DD-WRT. I tried a few different tricks to getting the script edited, but you can’t do that in read only firmware, and I don’t really feel OK with editing firmware and loading it on right now. I could do it, and [...]

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I’m surprised at just how far 256k in upload goes when you have VoIP, online radio, updates, and other activity happening. Our 256k connection is nearly always constantly choked for upload room, and that makes VoIP calls have a little flake in them SOMETIMES. Today, my partner was a little annoyed with reports that her [...]

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Ever designed a website and wondered how you can check if a number is valid? Or, wanted to validate credit card numbers on the fly, before contacting a gateway with them to confirm their validity? Well, there’s apparently.. a way. Credit card numbers can be validated using an algorithm, known as the Luhn algorithm. Basically, [...]

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Here’s something fantastic, for all those interested. With PHP, you can simply execute command line commands by shell_exec, exec and so forth. You prepare your command, you tell it what to execute, and .. it gets executed, output is returned. If you want a more controlling interest in the application, you connect to stdin / [...]

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I’m absolutely surprised by this recent stuff up of a webhost that has caused a few issues for a few people. I won’t name the host or the company involved, as they are liable to take the action that a few people seem to take, when I write something that isn’t promoting them. Let’s get [...]

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I heard recently heard that Vonage are being sued by Verizon for patent breach. I was digging through the patents after I was linked to them, and was shocked to see the wording of some patents. They are so poorly worded. I was browsing the titles, and just for VoIP i found a few weirdly [...]

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What should a business do when they are alerted to a negative message about the business on someone else’s media stream? 1. Email them threatening legal action. 2. Accept it, learn from their mistakes and try and improve themselves. 3. Shrug it off and let others do the same later on. There are several companies [...]

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WARNING: The following content might be too graphic for some viewers. If seeing scarred tissue, or the internals of a foreign body might make you ill, you are encouraged to look away now. Ok, with the wimps gone, we can now go into detail about my recent attempts at recovery data. First, some history. The [...]

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I solved my crashing PC issue today. I didn’t need a new power supply, just a different card. I upgraded from the 256MB AGP 8x fx5500 by Gigabyte, to a 256MB AGP 8x GeForce 6200. I have to say, the difference is pretty good: Games run smoother. Passmark’s BurnInTest (the 3D Graphics test) scores around [...]

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The G9 telcos behind the proposal in competition with Telstra’s FTTN network, have made some ground, ahead of Telstra, as is nearly always the case, gotta love innovation. Anyway, just today they have submitted a draft plan to the ACCC for their proposed FTTN network. Look at the essential differences between the proposals: 1. Telstra’s [...]

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Here’s an interesting issue, solved though. Client calls in. My internet’s broken. Run the usual checks: Proxy: Nup. Virus: Nup. Firewall: Nup. Modem Online: Yep. Modem has IP: Yep. Computer is turned on: Yep. Computer has IP in same range as Modem: Yep. Computer can access modem: Yep. DNS resolution works: Nup. Pinging IP works: [...]

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The server that I spoke of in a recent blog post, which is kernel panicing every 2 days under kerel 2.6.9-8 and 2.6.9-10 compiled by CentOS, but is running fine on 3 other VPS’s, and 1 other dedicated server, seems to be flying through its tests. The testing done thus far has shown that the [...]

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This issue had me running around in circles, trying to recreate the same issue many ways. My system was BSOD’ing when I would load a game, or any full screen 3D video application. I’m sure most IT savvy folk out there would have immediately ran straight for the one device that would be the start [...]

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I’ve got two concurrent machine issues right now. One is a Linux Server, which for the last few months has been Kernel Panic’ing every 2 days or so. That issue is expected to be a problematic CPU, however, memory tests have come back fine, so I’m not too sure if we are gonna find it [...]

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Today, we decided we would set about getting ourselves a new bed, to replace an existing bed that has suffered torture from: Us both sleeping on the sides of the bed. Having a baby sleep in the middle, and practically push us right on the edge of the bed. The good news for the baby [...]

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We have a HDD here that has some data that we consider relatively valuable, and I want to recover it. The data was borked a fair while ago, when the last house we were at probably got hit by a surge, or lightning, or a bit of P2P perhaps. Either way, the data is on [...]

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New Zealand Telecom is looking toward selling its copper network rather than facing a regulatory split. That’s an interesting move, they don’t get regulated, and they get a lot of cash for a copper network, as most copper networks are monopoly networks (and thus avoiding duplication of expensive copper networks, and digging the sidewalks up [...]

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iiNet’s value for money continues to be diluted as the company gathers more customers. The newer plans from iiNet offer very poor value, and aren’t really that competitive. But they are still better compared to Telstra, and that’s a bonus all over. I guess they might be playing the “Brand name” card, considering they’ve got [...]

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What a fantastic site from the competitors (and wholesalers) of Telstra. Love the title: Tell The Truth Telstra. Good luck with that one. Probably have more luck finding people to work for free to install fibre cable, compared to getting them to say anything remotely close to the truth. The FTTN network proposed by SpeedReach [...]

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A while ago I posted how I was really annoyed with D-Link, and I moved our traffic to the DD-WRT (using a Linksys WRT54GL). I’m running the BETA version of DD-WRT, and looking through it, this firmware package just gets better and better. They’ve removed Samba, and swapped to CIFS (common internet file system), which [...]

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Points to both sides of the Fibre-to-the-node argument: Telstra’s FTTN plan: * Is approaching 2 years old. * Will affect competition for providers who have rolled out their own DSLAMs * Will reproduce the same scenario a lot of ISPs have now, trying to compete on price, but Telstra raise the bar. * Has a [...]

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When I’m duplicating a setup to another box, I tend to want to have things done with minimal interaction from me. For Windows Systems, you have Ghost, you simply ghost an image, and viola, you can duplicate it to as many machines as you like. You can’t do that with Linux. But, sometimes you don’t [...]

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One disappointment with many products is failure to stick to standards. Nearly every system you look at is ATX. They are either mini, midi or maxi. Generally, midi. They all are the same size however, to accomodate different hardware, for example, in a mini ATX you can stick in a IDE disk. in a midi [...]

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Telstra have certain charges. For example: $59 – Connection Fee to connect an inplace operational connection at a previously lived in residence. $125 – Connection Fee to connect an existing line, where there is work required to be done on the connection to bring about a working service. $200+ – Connection fee to get a [...]

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The ACCC served a competition notice against Telstra in relation to expensive wholesale line rental, that it had deemed as anti – competitive (and rightly so too). This notice was served in April last year, after Telstra raised the line rental price by $3.10 for wholesale. The ACCC removed that notice in early March due [...]

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Having issues with my D-Link DGL-4300 4 Port Gigabit Router with 108Mbps wireless, QoS, etc, and contacting D-Link to arrange for investigation of the issue resulting in replies that aren’t all too useful in helping the problem get resolved, I set about removing the dependance on the D-Link router, and replace it with something a [...]

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Under recent threat from the proposal of the Labor party to peer with the private sector, Telstra have again bought their FTTN proposal back to the table for further consideration. Telstra originally stopped talks around it’s FTTN network after they couldn’t get the ACCC to agree with their impression of adequate ROI (and frankly, I [...]

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In June 2007, Optus is expected to make a rather fantastic and interesting move. They will dump the Telstra garbage they resell, in exchange for reselling solely from its own footprint which carries much higher margins. There are good reasons for optus to stop selling the Third World Expensive Garbage that Telstra Wholesale describe as [...]

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April Fools Day. Some funny pranks: Whirlpool: Mandatory ISP filtering will block P2P This one didn’t get me. I was expecting it. Rather funny to see the shocking number of people that fell for it though. Whirlpool: Aura adjusted. This one DID get me. I recently have had my aura on Whirlpool on a steady [...]

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