Posts

DWL-G122 Rev. A2 Wireless Adapter on Linux

Finding working drivers for D-Link DWL-G122 Rev. A2 USB Wireless Adapter to use in Linux Mint 14 (32-bit) based on Ubuntu 12.10. The adapter is only compatible with WPA and WEP security modes; not compatible with WPA2.  PSK can be used.  This adapter could not connect to a router running in 802.11g/n mixed mode; but does associate with a router set in 802.11g mode. On Mint/Ubuntu, attempts to use the native p54usb kernel module, and the necessary isl3887usb firmware placed in the correct /lib/firmware path resulted in dmesg log lines "authentication with AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF timed out" despite success registering drivers to the interface.  See firmware installation instructions at http://wiki.debian.org/prism54 . There appears to be a newer version of the isl3887usb firmware available here, http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/p54 , which I did not try I had success using the old method I had running on an earlier edition of Ubuntu. Ie. load ndiswrapper Use nd...

Yet another blog post about tethering your Android-powered phone to a router via USB.

This post summarizes my experience with flashing my router's stock firmware to an opensource firmware to enable it to use the USB port as the WAN connection. The Internet (WAN) connection is provided by an Android-powered smartphone via USB tethering. Specifically, I have a D-Link DIR-825 Wireless N router. HW Rev. B1. It has one USB port. The phone is a Samsung Galaxy S 4G (SGH-T959W); it is not the same as a Samsung Galaxy Vibrant. My cellular provider is Mobilicity and my phone number is.... j/k. I'm not releasing that.  So I first tried flashing the DD-WRT firmware to my DIR-825. This is a very nice firmware: nice GUI and excellent features, most of which I don't know how to use. It can bridge the various interfaces such as WiFi to the LAN, it can act in a Wireless Distribution System, it has various hotspots for potential revenue-generation using landing pages to share Internet, it has awesome graphs for monitoring bandwidth and usage, and it has support for v...

Do Canadians finally have a feasible and fair option for DRM-free music downloads?

Here is a very quick review of the music download service available in Canada. urMusic.ca - Is limited to Rogers Wireless customers (can only register if you have a Roger's phone number) - other features like selling tickets to concerts and events. - Appears that only the pay per song and pay per album downloads are DRM Free - Fairly good rates for per track download in Canadian dollars - Very confusing language and clauses in urMusic's Terms and Conditions. They have a number of sentences existing in the Terms and Conditions that ostensibly portray all downloads from urMusic are limited to registered devices (whether technologically enforced by DRM technologies or only enforced by acceptance to the Terms and Conditions). But there is also language in there that suggests Content is not protected by DRM technology. The Terms and Conditions appear to be out-of-sync with the service's marketing department's pitch that they have DRM-free tracks. The language makes it un...

Calculating total interest accrued while paying down the simple interest loan periodically.

I was unable to find a web service or calculator on any websites that had a simple interest calculator in which the total of the loan was being payed down regularly. I was forced to make one in Excel. There are plenty of amortization calculators out there that generate the schedule for a loan with compound interest, like a mortgage, but none that show the schedule for a simple interest loan, like some HELOCs (in Canada). My Excel spreadsheet allows one to compare an amortization schedule on a compound interest loan to a schedule for a simple interest loan. This is useful if you want to see the affect of making payments on a simple interest loan, equal to the same amount at the same time of the month on the same frequency as you would on a mortgage. The spreadsheet assumes interest for the simple interest loan is calculated daily and that payments against the loan are applied to the interest accrued first, and then toward the principal. It can be tweaked if you wanted to calculate i...

New annoyances: Windows 7 and Bluetooth enabled devices.

Thorough testing on my part has proven that Windows 7 can not receive large files, approximately anything larger than 225 KB, from some Bluetooth devices. In this case, my Nokia 6301 can not send to the "fsquirt.exe" utility on Windows 7. I tested this with 3 different machines running Windows 7 (6.01.7600), two laptops with built-in bluetooth and a desktop using a bluetooth dongle. The error message offers no clue as to why or what happened. All it says is " Bluetooth file transfer not completed " " The transfer was cancelled by the Bluetooth device or Bluetooth enabled computer. " However, the Nokia 6301 has no problem receiving large multi-megabyte files from a PC running Windows 7. The Nokia 6301 is also able to send/receive large files to other devices (phones, PDA's), and computers running Windows XP, Vista, or Mac OS X. On the other hand, Windows 7 was able to receive files over bluetooth from other bluetooth-enabled devices, including: com...

Using Apache ProxyPass to redirect requests to mongrel server obscuring the mongrel port and loading a default Ruby on Rails model.

Must run mongrel_rails using sudo on Mac OS X Leopard Server rails_app $ sudo mongrel_rails start --prefix /field_management_system -d Apache setup: Create <Location> directive/"realm" in serveradmin, Add lines for ProxyPassReverse with BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3001/field_management_system Rails app configuration. In routes.rb add a regular route for events model. map.connect '', :controller => "events", :action => "list" Delete the file index.html in rails_app/public

Failed attempt to use Mac OS X Leopard stock installation of Ruby on Rails.

Stock installation of RoR, if updated to Rails 2.2.2 fails because it breaks MySQL functionality. Using gem install mysql fails because the stock Ruby interpreter packaged with Xcode 3.0 is only 32 bit and the stock version of MySQL and its libraries for building mysql clients are 64 bit. Link to Chris Cruft's blog about MySQL gem problems Faced the same error messages as in the blog above, and followed basically the same steps. Below is the initial error message when trying to install the mysql gem. /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby extconf.rb install mysql checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no checking for main() in -lm... yes checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no checking for main() in -lz... yes checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no checking for main() in -lsocket... no checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no checking for main() in -lnsl... no checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no ***...