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-Most Recent Blog Entries-
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TPG Voip Settings for Linksys SPA3102 |
Blog of Steve
Electronics + IT
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By Stephen Rothery on
21/12/2007 19:36
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Long time, no posts. Been quite busy with end of uni semmester & etc, plus been postin a bit on facebook.
Anyway...
Given that TPG have recently enabled ADSL2+ in our local exchange, we decided that it would be a good idea to make the move away from Netspace. Basically we will be getting double the speed and a similar quota for about half the price. :D
Anyway, we have for some time now been making use of VoIP for all of our phone calls (resulting in quite a considerable saving) through the use of a Linksys SPA 3102 ATA.
Upon reading the fine print for TPG it seemes that in order to make use of their "VoIP" plans, one must purchase their pre-configured VoIP ATA.. What a scam. Furthermore, upon registering on their site for "Softphone Voip", it seems that they don't actually give out the settings for manually configuring you own VoIP gear. What a pain. I then decided to install the soft phone anyway and just have a look at what settings it came preconfigured with. The problem is that TPG are actually trying to be sneaky and their softphone is actually a standalone executable with which you just shove the username and password and then go. No configuration avaliable or user editable... :(
Furthermore none of the settings that I found on sites like Whirlpool gave me any success.
Anyway, after jumping on our router and having a look at all of the outgoing traffic, I found the following settings.
Proxy Server Address: gphone1.tpg.com.au
Use Outbound Proxy set to "No"
UserID: 0+<User Id given in sign up email> (Same as per the instructions for setting up the TPG softphone.
Pasword: Normal TPG User Account password
And finally, upon testing these on our ATA they worked fine. :)
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More Nintendo Wireless Wierdness |
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Blog of Steve
Electronics + IT
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By Stephen Rothery on
18/10/2007 12:07
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While the solution of sharing a common BSSID between two AP's was working nicely for the Wii, the more I thought about it the less of an ideal solution it seems to be.
The issue that would be arising would be that during handover, there would be all manner of problems each AP having a different PMK, but the computer not actually being aware that it is talking to a different device, causing the actual process of the handover to take longer than it should due to the reauth that needs to take place.
That said, the issue of the Wii not working was still present, so I decided to have another look at it.
Upon further inspection it seems that the Wii was having issues connecting to my Edimax-7206 Access point, no matter what the other access point was doing. One setting however seemed to let the Wii connect quite happily.
In its configuration the Edimax access point (like most) allows the user to select either 802.11G only or B and G (for compatibility). Given that all of the the devices that run on our network are G, I had naturally set this to be G only. Upon setting it to B+G however I found that the Wii decided that it would connect.
How strange...
Anyway, it now works (with one AP on G only and the other on G+B) with both Access Points running on a seperate BSSID again and on different channels.
Happy days.
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Nintendo Wii Wireless Wierdness |
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Blog of Steve
Electronics + IT
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By Stephen Rothery on
30/09/2007 21:32
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Hmm, long time with few posts. Have been getting stuck into facebook a bit.
That said, I have found something odd in configuration of our Nintendo Wii that may be of assistance to some.
But first, a bit of background information:
At home, we have a wired network with a number of devices hanging off it. In addition to this we have also had wireless that I used with my laptop and my mobile phone around the house. The complication arose when we added another three devices onto the network, it was basically observed that there was a decrease in performance (as expected) of performance. There was also the issue that coverage was weak at points. To address this, I set up a 2nd wireless access point with the same SSID and security details on a seperate channel (ie: 6 channels away from the existing one)
It seemed for a while that devices would happily roam between them and select whichever had the strongest signal and connect, increasing the capacity of the network.
The following problem arose however.
It seemed that, for reasons unknown, the Nintendo Wii would no longer connect to the network. It would work fine when the 2nd (new) AP was disabled but would also not connect to the 2nd AP. Basically, it would seem that Nintendo have elected to make the wireless profiles use a specific BSSID (ie: not just SSID) and that it did not like having a 2nd BSSID using the SSID that it was configured to use.
The fix for this was fairly simply but not entirely standard.
Basically, on the 2nd AP, I cloned its wireless MAC from AP#1 so that they both shared a common BSSID. So what we not have is fairly nonstandard in that we have the same BSSID shared between two physical access points, just on different channels.
It did however make the Wii happily connect. Furthermore, none of my wireless devices have any issue roaming between the two at all (due to the break/make nature of 802.11 they will drop a few packets). Happy days.
Increased capacity and also increased coverage and noise tolerance.
Just on the side, it may also be worth knowing that my experience has been that the Wii also doesn't like it if you have your AP to use "Short Preamble".
Happy days :D
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Enabling Avivo codec in Vista Media center |
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Blog of Steve
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By Stephen Rothery on
23 August 2007 10:54
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After running the Cyberlink Codec on Vista media center to avoid a problem where I got a green screen in HDTV playback, I noticed that it doesn't seem to handle deinterlacing very well at all.
The problem was getting quite annoying so I set about to see whether it was possible to use the ATI Avivo codec with Vista media center.
The issue had been that it had not appeared in as an option when using the "Vista Media Center Decoder Utility" (mentioned in the previous post).
After looking around on the net I stumbled across a tool distributed by Microsoft that could apparently resolve this issue.
It can be found HERE
Even though the tool is made to run on XP, it seemed to run fine on Vista x86.
With this tool you can then select the ATi codec as default (ignore the warnings), which then allows it to be selected from within the Vista Media Center Decoder Utility. Happy days.
Making use of this also gives the advantage of making use of the built in hardware accelerated decoding that the X1250 can provide.
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Media Center PC musings |
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Blog of Steve
Electronics + IT
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By Stephen Rothery on
18/08/2007 15:04
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Well after messing around with our Media PC for a bit, I believe that I have finally got it doing everything that I want. It is now hooked up and running with full HDMI goodness.
Some of the set up issues were:
- Playback of HD content within Vista Media Center (VCE)
The first bit of wierdness that I encountered with VCE was that when viewing digital TV, standard definition channels would come through fine but for HD channels I would get nothing more than a solid green screen with audio... Upon recording some HDTV I got the same result.
I installed DNTV Live! (which comes with my TinyUSB2 receiver) and attempted to replicate the issue. The problem that I found with this was that I could not get any of the Codecs in DNTV Live to run with hardware acceleration.
After this downloaded a tool that lets you select the Codecs used by Vista for Video and Audio.
http://mediacenterexpert.blogspot.com/2006/07/vista-media-center-decoder-utility.html
Since the sound worked fine already, I left it set on the default. I did however change the Video Codec to the Cyberlink Codec that comes with DNTV Live.
Upon restarting VCE I could view HD channels without issue... Happy days..
- Getting Australian EPG information in Media Center
Upon setting up VCE with the channels for my region, it became apparent that Microsoft did not have any EPG set up for VCE to use within Australia.. What a shame..
This disappointment was short lived however as I found that epgstream provides a plugin for VCE that will allow it to use free EPG services like OzTivo and free*EPG.
http://www.epgstream.net/
- Installation of Webscheduler
I have been using Webscheduler on my desktop PC for some time now and it has worked fine. Because I have never really had issues with it I have not been keeping up to date with the latest release.
Upon attempting to download the latest version for the Media PC I found that this software is apparently no longer open source... What a shame..
The previous GPL versions however are still available and do the job fine.
Version 4.0.14 (the last free version of DVB Webscheduler can be found HERE
- Getting the PC to wake on lan while in Standby
Just one point that I noted with this PC.
I noticed that the PC would wake on LAN (WOL) from either a powered off state or from hibernate. It would not however wake from standby.
This proved most irritating but upon inspection of the Network card (and the switch that it was connected too) as the PC went into standby, it was switching its network card off.
Once the power options of the network card were changed so that it could not be shut down to save power, it would happily WOL from Off, Standby or Hibernate.
- Allow the MCE remote to be used as a mouse
Another feature that I wanted to get working was to be able to just use my MCE remote to move the mouse around if required.
I found a great little app that lets you do this which also runs happily under Vista :)
It can be found HERE
And just for the sake of it, a piccy of the finished product
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New TV |
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Blog of Steve
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By Stephen Rothery on
30 July 2007 13:06
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Heh just on the side, we have finally jumped on the HDTV bandwagon, with the first new TV to be purchased in our house in the last 25 years.
It has also been combined with a spiffy little Home Theatre PC for other multimedia and iTunes goodness.
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Reflections on return from Melbourne |
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Blog of Steve
Theology/Christianity
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By Stephen Rothery on
23/07/2007 15:17
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Well after what was effectively a two week paid holiday in Melbourne, it is back to reality in Brisbane. The two weeks I had down there were an excellent chance to simply take a break and make use of the time through some good reading and reflection.
It was not very far into the course when my other course mates began to head out onto town and conduct themselves in a less than ideal manner. I was surprised at this seemingly mindless behaviour from the vast majority of the group given that I seldom encounter it in my normal environment at home. At first I came to the conclusion that this group, and the broader Army must be, in general, more “morally flexible” and prone to poor behaviour when compared to the rest of society. Towards the end of the course however I developed the feeling that this may not actually be the case (Even though I believe that Defence encourages seriously damaging social behaviour patterns).
My theory is that this is simply coming as a realisation that morality informed by a classical Christian worldview is becoming increasing counter cultural. This can also be seen in the continuing unwavering commitment that both sides of Australian politics seem to have to economic rationalism.
That said, if we take what is found in scripture seriously, this should not be surprising.
2 Timothy 3:10-17
(10) You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance,
(11) persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.
(12) In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
(13) while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
(14) But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,
(15) and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
(16) All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
(17) so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Either way, it was a good break none the less and it is also good to be back to reality.
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Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry – Doug Fields |
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Blog of Steve
What I am Reading
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By Stephen Rothery on
22/07/2007 12:50
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I have been listening to the “Simply Youth Ministry” Podcast for a time now and they have made several references to a this book a few times as a good guide for those who are entering into ministry in either a paid or voluntary capacity.
I thought that the book was very useful as it covers a number of issues that people are likely to have to face when entering into any work within the church (and to a lesser extent, any organisation) in any kind of leadership capacity. It must be noted from the outset that hits book does not attempt to be an exercise in Biblical theology but is more based around practical advice that has come from experience, which is then supplemented with references to scripture for principals where it is relevant.
While nothing here really reinvents the wheel, I do very much think that the topics covered are those sorts of things that people simply forget to consider all together, leading them into trouble down the tack.
One point that I did notice, and something that is also present in a few of the works from Saddleback Church (ie: anything from the “Purpose Driven” franchise) is that there are times when the Bible is quoted quite selectively and pretty much using a different translation for each quote. That said, people can easily check verses for themselves.
While this is a bit of a read, I would suggest that it would be very helpful for those who may find themselves moving into ministry within the church in which they will be investing a significant amount of time.
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More Post Chrysalis Thoughts |
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Blog of Steve
Theology/Christianity
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By Stephen Rothery on
12/07/2007 17:27
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I have been reflecting upon my weekend at Chrysalis and had the additional thoughts about the weekend.
In addition to what was written earlier, I really think that Chrysalis and my trip to Melbourne came an I time when I really needed them. Simply put, Chrysalis was an excellent chance to rediscover the first love, prayfully re-connect and recharge.
I have also found, with some of the books I have been reading down here, combined with the reflections on Chrysalis that this is a great time to recommit to maintaining a deeper and more committed spiritual life, seeking to be closer to God. It can be quite easy to get very tied up with the doing within the Church, such that simply “being” can suffer from some neglect.
Coming down here to Melbourne for Army has given me an excellent chance to do something else which I slowly been getting out of the habit of and that is to simply pause, be prayerful and to listen.
I feel that these simple things will be very helpful in moving into a more full time ministry job, because if left unattended could have lead to significant spiritual fatigue. I think that the following sums it up quite well.
Hebrews 12 (from the NIV)
(1) Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
(2) Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Either way, I am very much enjoying this time down here as a break from reality and a time to stop, read, reflect and listen. (The listen bit being that which can suffer the most during a busy schedule)
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What Matters Most – Doug Fields |
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Blog of Steve
What I am Reading
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By Stephen Rothery on
09/07/2007 17:13
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I have been listening to the “Simply Youth Ministry” Podcast for a time now and they have made several references to a book that is written by Doug Fields called “What Matters Most” the book is written to those who do work within the church but would also have application for those who don’t.
Simply put, the book offers a critique of the current culture of endless busyness that is currently quite popular and how it has an even greater and potentially damaging impact on those who work within the Church. It is a short read, being easily read from start to finish while I was on a flight from Brisbane to Melbourne, but I think that this is an advantage. Quite frankly, those that this book is targeted at simply wouldn’t have the time to invest in a several hundred page book on this topic.
I do however think that the advice offered is extremely wise and does paint an accurate picture of the situation in which many may find themselves. Despite the fact that this book is targeted towards those who are in Ministry within the Church, I also think that those who aren’t would benefit from reading it too.
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