Monday, July 31, 2006

Busy Weekend

Had a busy weekend, on Saturday we went to Gemma and James's Wedding which was magical and then visited old neighbours Beth, Daniel and Benji on the way home. Along the way we took a few photos. I need another weekend now.

Enabling Ping on Speedtouch WL780

By default you can't ping the speedtouch WL780 from the internet, I'm not paranoid about security so I wanted to enable it. Todo this telnet to the router and login. The execute the command: service system ifadd name=PING_RESPONDER group=wan This should enabled ICMP from the internet which then means you can use a service such as l8nc to monitor your internet connection. I currently have l8nc graphing my connection.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

MaxDSL and Poor Router

Recently we had been getting allot of disconnects on our ADSL line with the router (Safecom SWAMRU-54108) failing to reconnect and requiring a reboot or even being powered off for a short while. After trying to fix it unsuccessfully and with it being out of warranty I decided to get a new router. I opted for a SpeedTouch 780WL from DSL Source which is an ADSL router, wireless access point and voice over IP gateway all in one. They are currently selling it for 75 pounds with free delivery and it arrived the next day. After a very easy configuration it was connecting at 8,157kbs down and 636kbs up and has been rock stable for the past few days. This is much better than the old router which was only managing to sync at about 3,600kbs down. I don't know if my old router had developed a fault recently or was just a bad design. However the old router was very poor in comparison to the new router, it didn't have any polish and things never worked quite as they should.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Nintendo DS Lite (White)

I ended up trading in my PS2 for a white Nintendo DS Lite. Although there isn't the breadth of games there are some great ones:
  • MarioKart DS - Having played MarioKart 64 as a student I felt right at home and this has to be one of the best games for the DS. Friend Code: 257771 280248
  • New Super Mario Bros. - Never played the orginal so this is all a little new, but very enjoyable.
  • Advanced Wars Dual Strike - A great turn based strategy game, although the characters are a little annoying the gameplay is excelent and well balanced.
  • Tony Hawk's American Sk8land - Having enjoyed Tony Hawks on the PS2 I picked this one up, although it is probably the worst game I own, although still good. Friend Code: 068792 703458
  • Metroid Prime Hunters - A great 1st person shooter which makes very good use of the touchscreen. I'm not very good at it but it is still very enjoyable. Friend Code: 2534 7629 8211
I'm really impressed with the DS lite, it looks good, is nice and small, has some great games and the battery life is excellent.