RaSchi’s Valhalla

I’ve been playing with the reborn Gna for a couple of days now. Warnings that I received about the low battery life seem to have no reason so far. Two days of operations including Bluetooth being active most (if not all) of the time, several not too short WiFi browsing sessions and some application installations over Bluetooth didn’t run down the battery, so I figure this shouldn’t be an issue. Synchronization with Lotus Notes (so far, R5) works as expected. LN7 will be up sometime in the next months. The WiFi does absolutely rock. Despite the small display resolution, the Opera browser does a pretty good job of fitting the pages on the screen in a usable manner. And with wifi bandwidth, Mobile GMaps or the original Google Maps Mobile are neat tools as well. Mobile GMaps seems to be a little easier in handling at start, the original has some more features such as searching for an address instead of coordinates and compiling directions from one address to another.

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For a couple of weeks already I had some trouble with Gna’s touch screen. It seemed to send it’s controller the signal as if someone touched the lower right corner of it (where the battery indicator is located). Thus the backlight of the screen was switched on and depending on the lock being applied or not, the message to unlock or the battery status dialog would appear. As you can imagine, having the backlight illuminated all times drains the battery terribly. Stand-by times of less than half a day were the consequence. Since I played with the thought of replacing Gna anyway (which was postponed due to other “investments” of higher urgency), I finally did the move.

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I read about this over at Basic Thinking and thought it looks quite nice. If you want to test the speed of your internet, this is very neatly designed application. And yes, it does remember your IP address and gives you a history of past tests run from that IP (of course, if you are behind a proxy or NAT router, all tests from different computers are listed one history). And yes, it gives you the latency as well and you can test the connection to multiple servers across almost all over the world.

Oh, and if you should have, say, 3′000 kBit/s and only get 1′200, you might want to check whether your backup tool is currently syncing data :-).

Mal wieder ein Beitrag auf Deutsch, denn wer kein Deutsch versteht, der ist ohnehin nicht betroffen.

Letzte Woche kam eine Reportage über Deutsche in der Schweiz auf SF 1 dem ersten Kanal des Schweizer Fernsehens. Als die Ankündigung im Fernsehen kam, wollte ich’s mir eigentlich gern ansehen, aber hatte dann doch etwas Anderes vor. Vorgestern hat mich Philipp drauf angesprochen und heute kam im Büro beim Mittagessen wieder das Gespräch darauf. Also habe ich mir die Sendung dann heute Abend angeschaut (eigene redaktionelle Beiträge gibt’s bei SF nach der Ausstrahlung auch im Internet).

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There’s a new toy in RaSchi’s home :-). Back then, while in college in Paderborn, we played foosball quite a lot. Later on, I kind of lost track of it, just until recently when I saw a special offer at ALDI Sü. As usual, there were only very few items in store and I didn’t get one. But I was started on it again. So I checked out some auctions on eBay and found a company selling some nice ones. In the end, I even won an auction for less than what ALDI wanted and this thing arrived the other day and was assembled today :-). Whenever you’re in the vicinity of Basle and want to play a little, just let me know.

Today I dared a little. I upgraded the firmware of my Fritz!Box. It shipped with the firmware 29.04.22 and recently 29.04.29 was published. I was especially interested in running WPA and WPA2 in parallel, also I like the alarm function to be dependent on the weekday. I wasn’t brave/stupid enough to go and update just like that though. First, I waited a little while after the publication of the update. Also, I took the time to search the web for reports by other users potentially indicating a problem. I only found one guy who couldn’t get to the admin interface after upgrading. So I figured, I’d give it a shot.

As you can see in the screenshot of the WLAN monitor in the admin interface, I am now running WPA and WPA2 in parallel. That means that the older hardware in Valhalla can still connect, yet the newer stuff is as secure as possible. Admitted, as long as the WPA connections are up an attacker could simply try to break that and since the key is the same to all clients, also the WPA2 connections are compromized. But since only the old hardware such as Buri are running WPA (since not capable of WPA2), I think that’s acceptable.

Update: Of course, I can connect Buri via the TRENDNet adapter, which does support WPA2, and be safe. But there’s more older hardware around (which is even less frequently used than Buri…). So the argument still is valid.

I guess all readers know Murphy’s law: A slice of toast always lands on the buttered side when dropped. And I guess most readers also know, that cats typically land on their feet when falling from tall enough hights. Now what happens, when you strap a toast with non-buttered side to the back of a cat and drop them?

[via SOUND OFF!!!]

Heimdall, my wireless router is reborn in the new appartment. And miraculously he changed shape (hey, he’s a god, why wonder…) On Wednesday the postman rang the door bell and delivered my Fritz!Box Fon WLAN 7170. I was waiting for it since early December. To be fair, I must say that it was announced to be available some time in December and the shop where I ordered it told me a scheduled delivery in the week of January 8th (which would be next week). So they actually delivered it early. Still I was desperately waiting for it from the day I ordered it. That mainly because in the new appartment, the only Internet connection I had was wired via cablemodem and unfortunately there is no table near the cable outlet. That is, internet work meant standing in front of the shelf with the laptop in the shelf. Not very comfy.

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I am said to be Superman

Superman 75% Green Lantern 65% The Flash 65% Spider-Man 65% Supergirl 60% Robin 50% Catwoman 45% Iron Man 45% Wonder Woman 35% Batman 35% Hulk 30%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

P.S.: Anyone rated anything else but Superman???

[via Parcival]

I know, I know… it’s been quiet in Valhalla recently. I’ve been fairly busy with getting accustomed at the new job and with setting up the new apartment in Basel. Actually, both isn’t complete, as you probably might have guessed. For the next six months I’ll be working on a new project at work, so far it sounds very interesting, yet challenging. And it’ll most likely involve a trip or two to Norway. It’s been over 20 years since my last visit there and I sure would like to be able to spend more time there than I probably will be able to. But, oh well…
Also, the new apartment is still far from being ready. Most of the moving boxes are in the basement now, but still there is lots to fix and set up. And my internet connection is still bound to a twisted pair cable nowhere near a chair or a proper table. So PC usage is restricted to offline or short time frames, which also doesn’t really contribute to frequent updates in Valhalla.
Anyway, by the second week of January the new Fritz!Box fon WLAN 7170 should be shipped and that means a) proper telephone connection again (no more softphone) and b) wireless access all over the place :-). Expect more Valhalla activity then.
For now, this should be it, I hope all of you had calm and happy Holidays and I wish you a Happy New Year already. Yup, this most likely the last post for 2006 since tomorrow I’ll be taking off for a skiing vacation until New Year’s Day. Cross your fingers for me that I won’t break any bones or injure myself in any other way. Wouldn’t be the first time