Sunday, May 26. 2013
Just got my S4 last Sunday (May 18). My antique Linksys WRT54G v1.1 flashed with DD-WRT firmware failed to perform. When sharing media files from my S4 to my Panasonic TV through DLNA, there is a serious lag. The video playback was extremely jerky. I did not see this problem when sharing media files from my desktop to the Panasonic TV previously. I figured it must be because of the wireless speed because both S4 and the Panasonic are using wireless connections whereas the desktop was connected through LAN.When both S4 and Panasonic are on wireless, the wireless speed is effectively halved for each of the devices. Assuming the fastest the Linksys router can provide is 54 Mbps, each device can only get at most 27 Mbps.
Thus, I got a TP-LINK TL-WDR4300 simultaneous dual band router yesterday.
I placed both S4 and Panasonic on the 5 GHz band, and the video playback is now smooth.
I have been buying a lot of TP-Link products lately. Very satisfied. I can find most of the features I needed in DD-WRT on TP-LINK products. Saved me a lot of troubles trying to flash DD-WRT into these products.
TL-WDR4300 comes with 2 USB ports that can support media server, FTP server and mass storage. Sadly, the media server support is NOT good enough.
Monday, February 4. 2013
Out of a sudden, Windows 7 spit out this error message.
Fixed by copying libicuuc.dll from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Apple Application Support" to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support".
Monday, January 7. 2013
After migrating to Amazon, segmentation fault 11 was haunting me. It happened about every 30 minutes. When it happened, a few consecutive segmentation faults could be seen at /var/log/apache2/error.log. [Mon Jan 07 13:08:46 2013] [notice] child pid 1593 exit signal Segmentation fault (11) [Mon Jan 07 13:08:47 2013] [notice] child pid 1471 exit signal Segmentation fault (11) [Mon Jan 07 13:08:47 2013] [notice] child pid 1503 exit signal Segmentation fault (11) [Mon Jan 07 13:08:47 2013] [notice] child pid 1590 exit signal Segmentation fault (11) [Mon Jan 07 13:08:47 2013] [notice] child pid 1591 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
The annoying thing was, subsequent access to any Serendipity page will be timeout, and more Segmentation faults will be thrown. The problem will rectify itself after a while. But this would happen again after some time.
Tried a lot of things. The faults did not occur if I disable Serendipity. But I could not afford to disable Serendipity.
Finally, I guess I had the answer. Serendipity seems NOT working well with APC. Occasionally, the following error is observed.
PHP Warning: include(): GC cache entry 'serendipity_event_trackexits.php' was on gc-list for 3607 seconds in Smarty.class.php on line 1263
After the GC cache entry error is observed, a request to any Serendipity page will cause the Segmentation fault.
Thus, solution is to disable APC until either Serendipity or APC fix the problem.
- PHP Version : 5.3.10
- APC Version : 3.1.7
- Serendipity Version : 1.5.2 to 1.6.2
Monday, December 31. 2012
2012 is ending soon. Have finally decided to migrate my web site to Amazon. The original web hosting company has a very slow database. It is unbearable sometimes. The DNS propagation took took about 3 days to complete entirely. During the transition, I could see some people are accessing my site through Amazon, but some are still going through the old web hosting company.
A self review on my web site. Some of the information are out of date. There are just too many todos in my list. The first priority is to remove the out-dated information. Make the web site as simple as possible.
Tuesday, May 8. 2012
This is the lousiest Android device that I have ever seen so far. Big let down.
The screen is highly reflective. If I put it flat on the table while using it, it is painful to the eyes. Need to find a thick book to tilt it to an angle to make it more comfortable for viewing.
The fonts are small. Again painful to the eyes. Even on the top screen, applications do not make use of the full width of the screen. There are 2 black stripes at both left and right.
Friday, April 27. 2012
Have been looking for a cheap Android based media player for a while. Bought this one from Taobao. It is called GOOGLE TV Box ATV310.
Booting up is slow compared to all my previous media players. Well, this is expected since this guy is a mini computer.
It supports my Logitech wireless mouse m325. This is very crucial, it will be a real pain to use the remote control to enter characters using remote control otherwise.
I am able to install PPStream, Funshion onto it. For some unknown reasons, PPStream sometimes fails to play movies. It just shows an blank screen.
I have also installed SWIftp so that I can transfer files to it or the USB hard drive attached to it through FTP.
Other softwares tried including ES File Explorer, Firefox, Angry Bird.
Overall, it is value for money.
Sunday, May 22. 2011
Got this modem from Mei Fan's sister. Good stuff. Now can surf anywhere, anytime.
Spent some time to figure out the Singtel's settings.
Monday, April 25. 2011
Finally gotten GNUStep installed on my Windows 7 laptop. Figured out how to compile simple console and GUI programs. The language is still very alien to me.
It is definitely not a modern programming language. It is harder to write and harder to understand (the syntax) compare to C++, Java, C#. Resources are scarce. If it is not because of iphone and Apple, I wonder if this programming language can be as popular !?
Sunday, April 17. 2011
Installed Windows XP on my Macbook Air. I should have done this long time ago. Unfortunately, Macbook Air does not comes with built in CD ROM drive (win2flash does not work for me in this case). I had to borrow one from my friend. There are a few challenges in doing that. Apparently, the Boot Camp guide is really for Windows 7. Google help me to solve get most of the drivers installed. However, I am still having some yellow exclamation flags for some of the hardware. Will figure that out later.
My wife is the most happiest with the XP installation. She can start watching online movie now.
Updates :: I have found the drivers to fix all the yellow exclamation flags. Unfortunately, there is still one thorny problem. The display brightness cannot be adjusted. The Boot Camp control panel (version 3.2) has a brightness tab, but it does not work. Half hearted support from Mac.
Wednesday, February 23. 2011
DHL delivered my Mac Book Air after 11 pm. Life must be tough for those delivery man.
Mac Book is a lot slimmer than my previous Mac Book. Looks good and feel good. A lot of setup to do.
Wednesday, February 2. 2011
I am disappointed with iZZi. The connection is getting from bad to worst. It is slow and unreliable. I really wonder whether they are still interested in the business. Although I have 100+ days left for my subscription, I could not login anymore. Ah Fatt and I went to Giant to look for something that I can use for the next few days. We met MK and his wife there. They were recommending the Maxis HSDPA plan. Bought that and surfing with it now.
Much better than that stupid iZZi.
It comes with a Huawei E220 USB HSDPA Modem. The installation software is embedded in the modem as a virtual CDROM. Installation is a breeze.
Wednesday, January 19. 2011
Our Wii is back online again. I am happy and the kids will be happy too. The mother who wants to limit the Wii fun time may not be.
Friday, December 24. 2010
I flashed in DD-WRT into my WTR54GS router. I followed the instructions step by step. One thing to note is that, the Sercomm utility did not work on my Windows 7 (64bit) laptop. It popped up the following dialog. I had to use a Windows XP machine.
I was under impression it is a v1 router. But Sercomm indicated that it is a v2 hardware that has only 2M flash, 8M RAM. I could only flash in the DD-WRT micro (v24 pre SP2 build 12533). So far, I found that the telnet capability is crippled (does not even have "ls"). Other than that, it seems to be running as expected.
DD-WRT v24 comes with a Repeater feature. It can logon to a wireless network and create another personal WIFI network. That is what I need when traveling with this WTR54GS. I can then connect multiple devices using a single wireless login.
Updates : Firmware updated to DD-WRT v24-sp2 (08/12/10) micro, 14929.
Tuesday, December 21. 2010
I am constantly plagued by the network congestion problem. Some members of the family needs to use PPStream, Funshion and Xunlei, which are real bandwidth suckers.
I am now switching to my old Linksys router (WRT54G v1.1) flashed with dd-wrt.v24-13064_VINT_std.bin firmware. I am playing with various QoS settings. Hopefully the problem can be resolved.
With QoS enabled, the router is rebooting periodically (every 5 ~ 10 munutes) with PPStream running. Unfortunately, I have not figured out what is wrong. the number of opened TCP and UDP connections are well below the 4096 maximum. The average load (given by uptime) is less than 0.5 most of the time.
I found this post, seems to be the same problem. However, his problem is with wireless connection, mine is with wired connection. I wanted to post to the forum, unfortunately, I failed to register as a user for the forum.
Ticket 1568 seems to be talking about the same thing also.
For me, as soon as I disable QoS control, I do not see an problem. I can have PPStream running on my laptop (connect wirelessly) and on my desktop (connected with Ethernet cable). I found out by accident that TCP Vegas has already been turned on by default. My IP Filter Settings are 4096 (Maximum Ports), 600 (TCP timeout), 120 (UDP timeout).
Updates : After upgrading to dd-wrt.v24_std_generic.bin 14929, the rebooting problem disappears.
Sunday, December 12. 2010
I am using a company Fujitsu laptop. It is a nice & light laptop. The problem is I have only 1 power adapter. Thus, I have to bring along that power adapter coming back from work and going to work everyday. Since I have some spare Dell power adapters, I changed the power connectors of the Dell adapters to the Fujitsu power connectors.
The DC output specification for both Dell and Fujitsu are similar.
Dell's DC output, 19.5V 4.62A
Fujitsu DC output, 19V, 4.22A
The picture below shows the wires cutout for the Dell power adapter. The inner pin is not used for Fujitsu.
The picture below shows the connector used by Fujitsu laptop.
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