The Efficient Networks Speedstream 4101a ADSL bridge doesn’t really have a lot going on under the hood, which is generally a desirable trait for a little plastic and circuit-board brick that connects your computer to the Internet. Its inability to perform NAT and DHCP render it incapable of fouling up a connection in the way that a combo router/modem like a Zoom X6 or 2Wire Homeportal might. However, it is sometimes useful to use that dumb little brick for diagnostic purposes, mostly to answer the question “can my computer speak Internet at all?”

Considering the manifold components of a DSL line that can fail, being able to rule out your computer itself is frequently an excellent place to start. If you don’t have any other IP-aware devices on-hand, that can be troublesome. Here’s how you can get your Windows box to talk to your Speedstream 4101a:

• Connect the client computer directly to the 4101a
• Configure the client computer to use
  • IP: 10.0.0.5
  • Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
  • Gateway: 10.0.0.1
• Open a shell prompt (cmd on a windows box), and run the following
  command:
  • arp -s 10.0.0.1 speedstream’s MAC address
  • on Windows systems, you’ll use a dash to separate each pair of
    characters in the MAC
  • on Macintosh systems, you’ll use a colon to separate each pair of
    characters in the MAC
  • The MAC address is the serial number without the first character,
    e.g. a bridge with serial number 20018D564BB will have a MAC address of
    00-18-d1-85-64-bb
• Open the web browser of your preference and surf to http://10.0.0.1/
• You will be prompted to set an admin username and password.

Once authenticated, you’ll have access to some very basic
information about the bridge, including its firmware version and serial
number. From the admin interface, you can reset the bridge to factory
defaults. From some very limited testing, this doesn’t appear to break
anything (other than wiping out any admin password you may have previously
set).

More importantly, once you’ve been prompted for a username and password, you know that your computer can talk to other IP-aware devices via Ethernet.

So I just upgraded to WordPress 2.3 and POW, my site stops working, dead. Did they change the instructions? It used to be that you just make sure you don’t overwrite your wp-content or config.php files. Nope, that’s still the same. Quick, to the Apache logs!

[client 64.142.72.114] PHP Fatal error: Cannot redeclare get_terms() (previously declared in /var/www/html/burrowowl.net/wordpress/wp-includes/taxonomy.php:447) in /var/www/html/burrowowl.net/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/Similar_Posts/similar-posts.php on line 848, referer: http://burrowowl.net/wordpress/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

ah-ha! One quick find-and-replace later, we’re back in business.

Today I read an interesting commentary on The Register that proposed to tell me “Why Microsoft vs. Mankind Still Matters.” Before wading in too deeply, I’d like to point out that I’m aware that most writers for proper periodicals have to pass their work through editors, and have little influence on the titles and headlines that are slapped atop their words. Having been a computer geek long since before there was any hope of being perceived as both “cool” and “owning a computer,” I’m familiar with the concept of Microsoft-as-evil-empire, and have been exposed to a long, droning litany of the crimes that Microsoft has committed against the market, freedom, justice, and small woodland creatures. Was somebody proposing that Microsoft’s eternal struggle to subjugate us all was no longer important?

Continue reading →

Two weeks ago, Logtar posted his take on how to find a Wii, which reflected the experience of many people seeking this elusive console. Nintendo has apparently found that sweet-spot where they’ve hit an optimal efficiency of scale balanced against a voracious public appetite for the device. Unlike Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3, which have focused on pushing the envelope of high definition output, Nintendo has taken what I consider to be a higher road: they focused on play experience. The result has been a technically-inferior but greatly-loved platform that has earned praise from professional and amateur reviewers alike. They broke away from the sitting-around-mashing-buttons model that came in with the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System in the 80’s. This was a bold move, and looks to have paid off for them.

This brings me back to how one actually gets a hold of the mythical device. Various retailers in my area, including big-box electronics stores, major toy stores, and boutique electronic gaming stores all seem to get small shipments of Wii consoles every week or two, and almost immediately sell out. Alas, Logtar’s advice (which amounts to “happen to be at the store right after the consoles show up) isn’t as helpful as I would have liked when I gave it a try. Every store I went to over the course of three days didn’t have one in, and the clerks were unable to guarantee when a new one would show up. I briefly contemplated paying an inflated price online and eat a shipping charge to get one in time for my wife’s birthday.

Turns out that’s unnecessary. Here’s how you get a Wii Console:

1. Go to the Funcoland in Coddingtown.
2. Bring a kid.
3. Talk to the over-enthusiastic long-haired sales guy. Mention that it’s a gift.
4. Play along with his attempt to get you to put down a deposit on a game you wanted to buy anyway. Sales guy now has the kid’s cuteness, your impressive generosity, and additional profit motive all working to fuel his all-consuming need to get your money.
5. Give him your cellphone number.
6. Wait for him to drive an hour away to the secret lair where somebody actually has a console in stock.
7. Pay for it.

If you don’t happen to live near Santa Rosa, you’re on your own. Sorry, folks.

Comfortable with your system’s cursor speed? Give Cursor Invisible a shot. It’s a very simple flash game: shoot any of three targets with your a mouse click. There’s a very simple catch: you aren’t given any indication of your cursor’s position until after you click. If you’re like me and leave your mouse speed settings alone most of the time, it can be pretty easy at first. On my third try I managed to hit 142 in a row.

The other night I was exposed to a lovely little web game called Stick Remover. The instructions are in Japanese, but the controls are super easy. Use your mouse to remove support beams from a structure that suspends a star above the red line. Every time you remove a structure, you risk dropping the star too low. When you’re satisfied that you’d removed as many support beams as you can, click “next” on the upper right.

Five levels of fun. I scored 131, how ’bout you?

Blizzard Entertainment has finally caved in to the inevitable, and in a bid to preempt military action by a rabid South Korean fanbase have announce that Starcraft II is far enough into development for a web launch.

Back in the stone age when the original Starcraft came out, my coworkers and I would stay late after work for multiplayer games, eschewing Battlenet and its uber-teenagers. I never cared for the Protoss and their rather impressive end-game abilities, preferring to get the fight started relatively early on. Sometimes this resulted in accusations of “Zerg Rush” cheapness, but really it’s just part of the game; I could never mount a credible defense against a well-built carrier force.

I look forward to seeing what they’re doing with the Terran and Zerg units. Blizzard apparently wants to trickle new information out on a per-faction basis, starting with my least favorite. I can wait, though.

I’m not a Linux guru by any means, but one of my favorite programs over the years has been joe, a text editor with an interface that is nearly-identical to Wordstar, the first word processing software I ever used. Joe makes handy little backup files whenever you edit a text document, named filename~, with the tilde character denoting that it is an old version. After a long day of wrenching away on code, this can result in a lot of clutter. For this reason, the sysadmins at my benevolent employer brewed up the following shell script ages ago:

#!/bin/sh
rm -fv *~
rm -fv .*~

They named it rmtil, and I’ve run it many hundreds of times over the years. Having just implemented it on my own server, I figured I’d put it somewhere others could benefit from it as well. Put it somewhere in your $PATH with execute and read permissions (chmod 755) and rejoice!

*edit (2007.05.10): Bosco wrote this version of rmtil as a Solaris-friendly modification of the original.

The Actiontec is a device that has been available at several retail electronics stores, including Radio Shack. It provides three means of connection, via Ethernet, 802.11b/g, and USB, which makes it rather appealing when you aren’t quite sure what kind of computer configurations will be making use of it. Other models are also available, including a bridge and a “triple-play” oriented gt724 model that are beyond the scope of this article.

To disable PPPoE on an otherwise-functional Actiontec gt704-wg, use the following steps:

1. Configure the client computer to be physically connected to the Actiontec. Make sure it’s using a local IP address like 192.168.0.5 for itself, with a gateway of 192.168.0.1 and subnet mask of 255.255.255.0
2. In the web browser of your preference, surf to http://192.168.0.1/ to get the Actiontec’s web interface. Unless it has been previously assigned a new password, you should not be challenged to provide one.
3. A menu will appear. Select the first option, “Setup / Configuration.”
4. You will be prompted to select a basic setup, a wireless setup, or an advanced setup. Here is also where you can assign an administrative username and password. Select “Basic Setup” to continue.
5. Presuming that the modem is already connected to the DSL line, click “next” on the following page.
6. You will be prompted to select the means of authentication. Select “My ISP does not require a username and password.” Click “next.”
7. You will be prompted to save your changes and restart the Actiontec.Click the “Save and Restart” button, and wait for it to reboot.