Author: chuma

What crappy awful weather today. Pouring rain all day. Have a job interview this afternoon at 3pm, sitting at my current desk for the last time now. Gotta collect my stuff, upload all of my files and crap somewhere to the network, turn in my security pass and SecureID keyfob, grab some lunch, run up to Active Surplus to look at this security camera they have, sit around and play Wario Ware, go to interview, go home. There will probably be a lot of getting wet as well.

The new Guster album, Keep It Together, comes out on June 24th. Guster kicks mega ass. Also, they’ve made six out of the thirteen tracks on the album available for listening (not downloading, sort of) on their website – at the Guster Player.

Super-secret stuff: the tracks are stored as MP3 files embedded into Shockwave Flash files. So if you were to, say, sniff the packets that the Player sends out, and find a url such as http://wbr.bandbuilder.com/guster/amsterdam128.swf then you might be able to save the files and then extract their bubbly goodness. An exercise left up to the reader, but only because I failed. I want to listen to these songs on the subway! Damn you, silly proprietary player! PS: hell yes I will be buying their album, I might even pre-order a signed copy.

This was originally posted to the RBUA forums.

Well, I promised in another thread that once I got my TFNet (Toronto FreeNet) connection setup I’d write a post about it. So, this is that post 🙂 I suppose it’s also sort of a good “what happens when you sign up for DSL” for people who’ve never done it before. Before this connection I had an @Home / Rogers cable connection in Guelph.

TFNet’s URL is http://tfnet.ca/. I signed up for their 3Mb plan (3000/800 advertised), which is $65.00/month with a 45GB/month combined? transfer limit. There’s no setup fee right now, you just have to pay for your first two months up-front. You provide your own modem, otherwise you have yo buy one from them at $175 (it is a combined modem/router/hub box). Also, since TFNet is run by Toronto Freenet, a non-profit organization, you don’t pay PST, only GST.

I moved into my new apartment around Don Mills & Sheppard on May 1. I had called TFNet about two weeks before to place my 3Mb order with them. They couldn’t convince Bell to install the line card when they hooked up my line (grr slow Bell), but placed the order with Bell the day after the phone got hooked up. Excellent. Let the waiting begin.

On May 7, my DSL modem (Alcatel SpeedTouch Home, upgraded to Pro) got line sync, and the following day TFNet sent me my login info. Hey, less than a week to get a line card! Not too shabby. Unfortunately, two things prevented me from getting hooked up until late on May 9.

First of all, I had never set up a DSL modem before. Since I didn’t buy TFNet’s DSL modem (they offer a combined modem/router/hub solution, I can’t remember which brand), I was stuck configuring my own. Some FAQs and instructions I found on the Net led me to believe that I could initiate the PPP connection from the SpeedTouch instead of from one of my PCs. I could never get this to work and ended up just setting the SpeedTouch up as a bridge and doing the PPPoE login using my Linux gateway. I had to reconfigure my Linux gateway of course, but my setup is rather arcane so I won’t go into it 🙂 I use the Roaring Penguin PPPoE client.

Second, TFNet initially sent me the wrong login name: they had truncated it by a character. They corrected it the next day, but still… little things. Overall every time I called or e-mailed TFNet they were very nice. Their office hours are rather restrictive (Wed-Fri 12-6) so don’t expect much phone support.

Since I signed up, I’ve learned that TFNet is reselling Velocet/Wiznet/DSL.ca. Which is strange, because none of those companies seem to provide 3Mb via PPPoE (DSL.ca has 3Mb but via a more direct connection and it is hella expensive.)

So, how is the speed? Well, last night I ran a test on DSLReports using just a WinXP box directly connected to the DSL modem. The test came out to around 1600/700. Upload speed is definately there, but perhaps I have to tweak some things to get that download speed up. I also have no idea where my CO is…

While those were the test results, last night while downloading three TV episodes via BitTorrent I was getting a combined 200K/s. So some more testing is in order.

All in all, I am fairly happy with the connection. Obviously the download speed test is disappointing, but it certainly “feels” much much faster than my old cable connection. If anyone has questions feel free to ask them.

I got the DSL up! Rejoice! Rejoice!

There’s something so succinct in summing up products or processes in three words. Things like “Rip. Mix. Burn.” or, to extend it a bit:

1. Steal Underpants.
2. ?????
3. Profit.

Anyways, last night we went to see X2 (aka X-Men 2, aka some other silly titles) at the budget-conscious Rainbow Cinema Fairview across the street from our new place. The theatre is actually a re-opened six-screen deal that was originally operated by Cineplex Odeon. Now it seems like Rainbow Cinemas are purchasing these facilities, as well as some rural single-screen theatres, and keeping their prices low in order to compete with Famous Players and AMC. The advertised price is $7.50, but for some reason when I bought two tickets they were only $6.75 each – buy bulk and save? Anyways, the theatres were rather nice: everything was very clean, and the theatre was DTS Digital Sound equipped. My only real complaint was that the theatre wasn’t dark enough! The house lights were kept on at a very dim setting and these combined with the red/purple side wall lights made the theatre a little too bright for my liking. The seats were comfortable though.

Anyways, X2 was a fun movie. I was glad to see that the SFX, especially the fight scenes weren’t overly-laden with SFX-rendered people fighting each other: it was only used when necessary, which is good. Compare to The Mummy Returns, where I could literally point out every single CGI in the film because they were all so poorly integrated. Keeping the movie PG-13 was a bit of a stretch though, as there are some times (usually when Wolverine is shredding someone/something) where you expect to see at least a little blood.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that we helped someone sneak in 🙂 When we took our seats about 15 minutes before the start of the film, there was a kid around 13-14 lying on the floor in the aisle. He was alternately getting up, and then lying back on the floor, all the time getting closer to us. Sandy finally realized that he had probably been seen sneaking in and was being pursued by theatre staff. He ended up sitting beside us and asked me to borrow one of our ticket stubs. Being an upstanding citizen, and having snuck and theatre-jumped a few times in my adolescence, I helped him. A few minutes later a few theatre staff came by and asked him to show his ticket. He presented his (my) stub, and even though they had high suspicion that he had snuck in, and he was sitting right beside us with no one else in the row, the staff didn’t ask for our tickets. I guess accusing someone of sneaking in is a Bad Thing for theatre-patron relations. After the lights went dim, he returned my stub and went back to sit with his friends. I found the whole thing pretty funny. I guess it was my Daily Evil for the day.

Well, TFNet called me back with the status of my DSL order. As I suspected, we’re all waiting on Bell to install the line card, do the tests etc. The order for this went to Bell on the 2nd, so once they notify TFNet that it’s installed and ready I’ll get my username and password, the DSL modem should stop blinking, and I’ll be good to go. Woo! Many thanks to TFNet for getting back to me and being so nice.

guelph.unna.org/misato.chuma.org are still down though. The line card hasn’t been installed on my line yet, and actually the phone jack in the computer room isn’t even wired. Bleh. Gotta call torfree and buy a long phone extension.