Author Archives: mihtjel

Telia / Cogent routing dispute

Leave a Reply

My current internet connection is with a local company delivering internet connectivity to the student housing around here. They get their traffic routed through Telia, which has worked rather well for a while. But a few days ago, a couple of sites stopped working from here, though they still worked using the internet connection in my office at work.

Today, someone I know working at Telia solved the problem for me: Telia and Cogent have stopped exchanging traffic, due to a payment dispute. This is ridiculous.

I’m not sure who’s right or who’s wrong in the dispute, but it must be bad for business for both parties – far worse than the amount of money they would stand to gain from getting paid for peering traffic, or to lose by paying up.

I hope they get it solved soon.

What superpower would you have?

4 Replies

I’ve been watching QI, and just noticed one of their discussions again – What superpower the contestants would like. Stephen wants invisibility, while Alan would like to have no bodily smell.

I think I’d like extreme speed, being able to go where I want when I want it, without having to spend time on moving around.

What would be your choice?

Modelling where I live

2 Replies

I wasted a bunch of time on this, stupidly. I should’ve been writing some stuff I have to hand in on the 2nd, for a class on peer to peer networking, but instead, I modelled where I live in Google Sketchup. Screens of the results are below. It’s not only possible to model the flat I live in, but converting it to show a whole floor or building, and even showing this inside Google Earth is very easy to do. I like it a lot, I shall have to do more of this.

Pictures are clickable, for bigger versions of same. Please link to the article and not to the pictures.

The flat I live in, from the top down
The flat I live in, from the top down

Same, different angle
Same, different angle

This is how the apartments fit together
This is how the apartments fit together

The building, in Google Sketchup, with Google Earth terrain
The building, in Google Sketchup, with Google Earth terrain

My home in Google Earth
My home in Google Earth

Hotlinking my pictures as backgrounds

Leave a Reply

A couple of times over the recent weeks, traffic has suddenly spiked here on my blog server. I don’t pay for the traffic, so I don’t care that much, but I usually investigate – and most times, it’s random people using a high-quality JPEG I posted of some piano keys as a profile picture. I guess I should feel flattered, but none the less, they always get a rewrite to the copyright overlay I usually use. I hope they’ll get it at some point, or I’ll have to start watermarking all my pictures. 🙁

If you’re reading this, and want to use one of my pictures on your webpage: Write a comment, send me an email, or otherwise, get in touch with me. Don’t just use them without asking. It might end up being expensive.

Christmas is here again …

1 Reply

Argh. So, it’s December 1st, and time for a couple of random holiday links, that might cheer people up to get a bit less depressed.

First of all, Richard’s site has a really great advent calendar, of random fun and games. He posts fun stuff as well in his diary, and the all famous TCMI – Tacky Christmas Music Interface. This year, there’s even a bookmarklet of it, whatever that is. I’m sure it’s smart.

Second, a game I played a bit last year, with some nice music and catchy gameplay. It’s simply called Winterbells, and the goal is to jump up through all these little bells and score points. Simple. Catchy. And when you get good at it, very time-consuming. Want to beat my high-score? Just get to 559,146,770 points.

I’m sure I’ll be back a couple more times through December with random tidbits from the Christmassy part of the net.

World in Conflict

Leave a Reply

I just played a demo of a newish game, World in Conflict. On Wikipedia it’s classified as a “real time tactical game” – that is, rather than the grand overview of the real time strategy game, you control a smaller group of troops, and are yourself under the command of a higher-level officer. This also means cooperating with other parts of the force, and having to fulfill ever-changing objectives. It also means gaining complete control over the special abilities of each unit, which does take quite a bit of time. An option to tell a vehicle to “stand ground and fire TOWs as needed” could be nice. Maybe it’s in the retail version.

It is set in 1989, and depicts the other course the Soviet Union could have taken – invading West Germany and the United States with force, instead of breaking down into little pieces. The setting is great, with the mission offered in the demo making use of the then-new HMMWV and the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, both quite recognizable from the first gulf war, and beautifully modeled.

The game seems to be really great, and has quite superior graphics. The battlefield starts out looking clean and nice, perhaps a little lacking in civilian activity, but is quickly pocked with craters and filled with the wrecks of fighting vehicles and buildings. The camera controls are a little strange at first, but they really allow you a good view of the superior graphics, even if it doesn’t allow a great overview.

I think I shall have to get this game.

Forced password change

2 Replies

Today I emailed a number of our users, asking them to change their passwords. To be exact, I emailed 7462 users, which in itself is a bit of a logistical exercise, when you want each mail to be personalized.

Of them, we got some 250 or so bounces – that I saw, anyway, I was smart and redirected them to a colleague. This was quite expected, and will help us improve the data quality.

We also received, during the time that I was there, 75 or so mails from people who were confused, or had problems logging in. This over the course of about 2 hours. This was also expected, although some of the responses were a bit more over the top than I’d expected. People seem to not want to change their passwords.

I had the pleasure of handling some of the support requests, and I think I can happily say that they are mostly an issue of noone having used this system before. People didn’t know what their user name was (even though it was stated in the email), not did they know what password was to be changed. Still, apart from the 75 or so support requests I saw, more than 400 people have managed to change their passwords. All in all, I am quite satisfied at this first try – we knew it was going to be a hassle, and it’s proven us right. 😉 It will hopefully improve a lot when we send out the 2nd and 3rd rounds in a few weeks time, and be much, much better when we do it all over in February.

Fog lamps

1 Reply

I know my vision isn’t the best. I wear my glasses, I moderate my speed if I have trouble seeing in night. I drive with my lights on at all time – daytime running lights are required by law in Denmark.

But I really don’t think I’m blind enough to ignore fog. It’s usually quite obvious when it’s foggy – or there’s heavy rain, dust or snow. If it’s serious, the right reaction is to turn on your fog lamps. Of course, turn them off again in city traffic, since they tend to produce a lot of glare.

Seriously. Turn them off. If there isn’t any fog, heavy rain, dust or snow – turn them off! I don’t care if they look good on your car, they’re bloody annoying, and anyone running them at night without need are bloody idiots.

Thank you.

Tax debate

Leave a Reply

There is a tax debate going on in Denmark at the moment. I say tax debate, it’s actually more that a number of political groups are making statements to the effect that they have the best tax plan. The groups are cut into two big camps:

  • Those who believe the tax should be lowered, especially in the top end, to give a bigger incentive for people to work more.
  • Those who believe the money is better spent on welfare, hiring more people to work with elders, children and so on.

I know enough about taxes and public administration to know that in theory, both of these things work. However, in practice – I find that there’s a few problems.

Sure, lowering taxes, especially for those who’ve hit the high marginal tax rate, is an effective means of incentive. But when a very large part of the society isn’t ready to accept people working more than the standard working week of 37(½) hours, it isn’t really going to do much. In particular, public employees are hired on very inflexible terms, even though this is among the areas where more people would make a difference.

The other suggestion, spending more money on welfare, is really a good idea too. Hiring more people, sure – but where are you going to get them? Denmark is the country in the EU-15 with the lowest unemployment – and I guess the same is true of the entire EU. Sure, they’ll find some way to spend the money – but it isn’t going to provide more employees. Again, flexibility is needed – if people were actually allowed to work more, it might be possible.

My suggestion is a compromise – and a focus on flexibility. Let’s cut the tax somewhat, provide some more money for paying public employees – and most importantly, find a way to open up for working more than the standard working week if you so desire. Why not?

By popular demand: Nokia N95 Review (part 1)

4 Replies

Since radiac asked me to, I’ll post a sort of review of my phone, the Nokia N95. Before I got mine, I read a bunch of reviews, that mostly mentioned all of the features of the phone, and the stuff it did – and then, in the last two paragraphs, listed that by-the-way, the reviewer hadn’t had that good battery time on his phone.

Things are going to be a little different in this review – I expect that you’ll have read a bunch of feature lists, so I’ll focus on what the phone doesn’t do:

Battery time
There’s no way around this. Oh my. The phone has a 900 mAh Lithium-polymer single-cell 3.7 volt battery. You could use such a battery to power model airplanes; I have a couple a bit like it for that purpose. It’s probably great for a phone, too. In this phone, on an average day for me, it will run out after about 24 hours. 24 hours. Don’t expect to get more battery time than this if you use it’s email fetching, power up the web browser a bunch of times to check things on Wikipedia, send a few text messages, and call for 10 or so minutes.

If you plan to use the GPS: Get a car-charger. I have used the GPS in the field for geocaching – I have a review of that elsewhere on this blog – and it seems to keep its charge fine when in the field. But invariably, when I get home, I have to charge it up. The car-charger isn’t really that expensive, I paid around £7 for it.

Recharge the phone every night. I’ve once had the phone run out of battery for me during the day, after I’d been using it quite a bit for web browsing, but mostly, It’ll work just fine all through the day on the nightly charge.

Camera quality
This is really the party piece of the phone, according to many reviews. A 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. Wow. Don’t be fooled. This is a mobile phone, not a camera. The camera is great, for a mobile phone, and probably passable compared to that of a compact camera of the same dimensions. But it is absolutely no match for my 6 megapixel (only a bit more) Dynax 7D SLR. The compression, especially, is terrible! It’s great for little snapshots, and it does fit my pocket better than my SLR-and-6-lenses, but I’d never use it for anything I really cared about.

All that said, I like that it has two camera, so you don’t have to be awkward if you ever video phone (I don’t), and I like that there’s a decent flash on the main camera. I don’t like the shutter thing you slide in front of the camera – it comes open in my pocket a bit too often, which unlocks the phone and starts the camera software – even if it’s only half way open.

GPS navigation
Reviews have proclaimed that this phone has turn by turn navigation. Nokia has wisely steered clear of such claims. Let’s set it straight:
This phone does not have built-in turn by turn navigation

Important part: Built in. You buy it. It costs a fee. It’s available as a 3-year subscription, and it isn’t expensive – but it isn’t included. But there’s a trick. Using the built-in maps, you can ask it to plot a route for you – that’s a free service, and it works. Preload the maps onto your phone, and it doesn’t even have to use the net connection for it. You can also – with firmware 11.0.026 at the least – ask it to track you as you travel along the route. Doesn’t cost anything, but it doesn’t tell you to turn either – you have to figure that out on your own.

Supposedly, the navigation you buy is really good, and works great, and the maps are updated free of charge, and all is good. I tried out Tomtom, couldn’t get it to work with the built in GPS. Someone mentioned that there is other stuff coming out that’ll do turn by turn navigation – but none of it is free. So, if you buy this phone, beware that you need to pay an additional fee for the navigation.

Software stability
The firmware I have on my phone is version 11.0.026, I think. Presumably, Nokia has gone through some 11 versions of the firmware, polishing it, weeding out the bugs, making it stable and nice.

They’re not very good at it.

They’ve ended up with a phone that I had to do a hard reset on (*#7780#) after owning it for some 27 hours. The web browser refused to start. It worked fine afterwards, and restoring my settings from the microSD was fine as well. But it isn’t really a sign of stable software.

I have also experienced the web browser crashing, or running out of memory, all to often for an “Internet Phone”. There also seems to be some kind of garbage collection running, picking up things like the GPS program that I had left running because I wanted to check a web-page while still knowing where I was… Not good.

It isn’t terrible, and it works most of the time – not worse than most other phones, I’m told. But it definitely doesn’t look like something that’s gone through 11 rounds of stability improvements.

To be continued…
I can’t really come up with more right now – I wanted to write all the positive stuff as well, but I will have to do that some other time…