Cerberos.net

For anybody who’s ever been using a DLink DPR-1260 print server and have it drop wireless constantly using WPA or WPA2, here’s the solution:

It’s using TKIP for its WPA alogrithm first, then AES. Every time it tries to sync with your wireless, which seems terribly short from my observation, it will try TKIP first then AES. If you only use AES, it will be wash-rinse-repeat every time it attempts to sync. If your router has an option to use TKIP and AES at the same time, set it to that option and you should be fine.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Holidays.

Maybe it’s me but as I’m reading some forums, I find that vocal minority being kinda bullish about remembering stuff from when they were kids. “It doesn’t look like the old series” or “That’s not how it looks like”, or the infamous, “OMG, they just raped my childhood!!!!”. Maybe it’s just me but don’t you think it’s time you joined the current day and move on? Most movies based off comics or some old franchise DO NOT translate well from their medium to film. Even a film like Watchmen had to change some things to look right on screen. Stuff as flashy as that probably won’t work too well on screen if they did a look-for-look interpretation. And really, don’t you think it’s time some of you people move on? We’re talking about shows from the 1980s which are now moving to new mediums of entertainment. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older (which I admit, is probably where this is coming from), but come on people, stop hoping and waiting to relive your childhood. You ain’t young anymore. Your childhood will always exists in DVD/Blu-ray discs and that ain’t going away.

Let the kitchen arguments begin!

Happy Tukey Day

Modern Warfare 2 did pretty well for its opening week. Now while console players are jumping for joy, PC players…well, let just say they aren’t thrilled with how this went down. People who bought this game through Steam have the unfortunate problem of not being able to play it till a few days after the release date. That’s not good. No dedicated server support is unfortunately a slap to competitive and league gamers. No mod support, no console, etc. really takes out the teeth behind competitive gaming, especially PC gaming. It’s sad to see this trend. I was looking forward to joining some competitive players on multiplayer but stripping out many of the things that make PC multiplayer great is a turn off for me. While the single player may be fun, enjoying the game after the single player portion is, to me, where the fun is. And that would be the multiplayer portion. I enjoy competitive and mature gaming that PC gaming offers. But that’s a sign of the times. PC gamers are starting to become a niche group. And Modern Warfare 2 is making that niche only smaller.

Now that certain SF supervisors want to protect illegal immigrants who have been arrested for felonies, I say it’s time to remove them from office. What they don’t understand is that this will lead to lawsuits from victims of arrested or convicted illegal immigrants. On top of that, you’ll have federal issues coming down. They are willing to put their politics ahead of public safety. The public isn’t happy about this already. These people aren’t listening to the districts they represent, only the groups that line their pockets.

Get rid of these 8 nutjobs:
Eric Mar
David Chiu
Ross Mirkarimi
Chris Daly (He’s gonna be termed out but get rid of this nutjob)
Bevan Dufty
David Campos (The one who started it. Definitely should be removed)
Sophie Maxwell
John Avalos

Now that I’m done with my duties, I wanna rest. Spending 2 months of planning really eats into my time. Images coming soon.

So yeah, after a year of pondering it, I finally decided to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. What took me so long? I’m a hold out. And I didn’t feel the need for a smartphone at the time. I was very happy with my Nokia 6300 and Palm TX. Then, I started getting frustrated with Palm’s software breaking after every Windows update. By the time I felt the need for a new phone, I picked up the Nokia E66. After 6 months, I found myself using the features on the phone as well as installing some apps. But I found some problems with the software which make me reconsider the iPhone. I waited to see what Apple would announce at WWDC ‘09 and a month later, I decided to make the jump.

Build
The phone is a solid phone. There’s no creaking plastic and everything is nice and tight in there. Being a Nokia user for quite a while (like almost 10 years), I’ve felt my share of creaking plastic and it’s nice to know the iPhone is nice and tight. But I do wish they kept some metal backing. One nice thing about the build on the E66 was the metal. Metal has it a nice solid feel which I would have liked on the iPhone. I do wish they kept the metal on the iPhone 3G/3G-S as from the 1st gen iPhone. Running around a local Best Buy, I found a Palm Pre and although I do like a good slider, The Pre felt pretty flimsy compared to my E66. Compared to the iPhone, I could feel the plastic creaking. So my vote goes to Nokia and Apple on that one.

Hardware
The specs are plastered all over the net so I won’t gloss over those. The phone is fast. The boot-up is less than 30 seconds. Apps load fairly quickly. The Camera is okay. I do miss the built-in flash on my E66 and I wish Apple incorporated a flash unit into this model. I also wished they put in a front facing camera. Apple, in my opionion, should consider international markets a bit more and not just what AT&T’s overloaded network can handle. Video calls may pick up steam when cellular networks start moving to 4G/LTE standards. Data speeds will probably run faster over 4G.

Call clarity and reception
For the most part, calls have been fairly clear and about on-par with my Nokias. Volume is fine and so is the speaker so I don’t think I’m really worried. Reception, is about the same as well. 3G is still spotty in the city so I can’t say and since this is my first test of 3G in the city, I have no basis to compare the iPhone’s 3G reception to. Here’s the speed test. It says its connected to AT&T’s 3G network, but I can’t confirm that it’s actually using it.

I have had 1 dropped call, but that was due to lack of reception. My Wi-Fi connection hasn’t dropped out at all so mileage may vary while my 3G experience has hit some dead spots on the commute home.

UPDATE: After testing it in the Financial District, I got some much better speeds on 3G.

Web Browsing
I will have to say that web browsing on an iPhone is a sure-winner. The S60 browser was was good but on more feature filled sites, the iPhone is definitely a better experience. I did try SkyFire and Opera Mini on my E66 and while it did work, I’m found Safari to be overall a better browsing experience. I would say the native browsers (S60 web browser and Safari Mobile) are better for mobile surfing. Skyfire and Opera Mini try to do too much. It’s great that they do, but when I’m on the road, I don’t need my browser to load all that crap. And on some sites, Safari Mobile is pushing it when loading entire sites.

Software: Apps and OS
The App store on iTunes is definitely a very good idea for centralizing applications for users. I am not happy that it’s fairly restrictive. I did try Mozilla’s Fennac mobile web browser when the alpha test came out and I would be interested to see that on my iPhone but Apple doesn’t allow that. Some other things from Google would be nice if it ran natively, and not through software layers. But I am enjoying some of the apps for this device. The multi-touch interface is making the app experience pretty smooth. Now the question is, how long will I keep most of these apps.
As for the iPhone OS? That’s a mix bag. I did like the S60 3rd Edition home screen. Being able to see some calender items and missed calls and messages on my screen without opening the application really does help. iPhone users don’t really know how useful that home screen is. But being able to flip through the application screens is pretty useful. The S60 OS is a more mature software but it’s hit a plateau, in my opinion. You can only add so much stuff before it becomes just adding layers upon layers. Symbian needs to start tearing down and rebuilding much of the S60 platform with ideas from RIM and Apple built-in as opposed to throwing layers on top of the software. I hear the Nokia N97’s S60 5th edition runs fairly smooth but still buggy. Not as bad as the 5800 XpressMusic but still needs some work.

Battery Life
On my first run with the device, I did less than 15 min of Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE per day on average for an entire week with either web browsing, e-mail and a few social networking apps. Calls were sporadic with maybe a few phone calls during the testing week. I left 3G, Wi-Fi and Location services off most of the time and I actually turned off my phone while in my office where I get no signal. Screen brightness was down to 25%. The result? I went through the week on basically 1 charge, bringing the battery all the way down to 2% before it finally turned off. So 7 days isn’t bad for me. Multi-tasking vs. Push? I’m gonna say for me, Multi-tasking would be better idea than Push. Granted I probably use less networking than most people, I’d say multi-tasking would have been a better idea than Push to maximize battery life. But that’s just me at this current point in time. Push may be a better idea down the road.

Other issues
Yes it did get warm. On one day, I did about 25 minutes of 3G web browsing and e-mail and I did notice the phone getting warm. Not “unable-to-hold”-warm, just warm.

Conclusion
Do I like the phone? Yeah. I still have some more playing to do with it like the calender but for me, the phone works. There are somethings my Nokia E66 does better but I’m fairly happy with the iPhone and Iphone OS 3.0. The phone is not for everyone and I would suggest you look at the Nokia N97 if you want iPhone-like features in a phone without the Apple-branding. Business users may want to stick with the Crackberries or Nokia E-series. However, I feel Symbian needs to start coming up with something new to keep up with Google Android, or Palm WebOS. The upcoming Nokia E72 (sucessor to the E71) has the hardware but since it’s still using the S60 platform, I’m skeptical about how much longer Nokia can keep symbian’s S60 platform on it’s toes. That said, Apple should look at some features of S60 to use on iPhone OS. Features that are now incorporated into the iPhone OS should have been there quite a while ago. But overall, it’s a solid device. It will be interesting to see how the competition counters.

The rest of the gallery

I love getting fireworks on my birthday.

Now if only this it could walk and carry a real beam rifle, I’d be more amazed as it vaporizes me.