Went to StarHub Shop at VivoCity on the 24th June 2011 to apply for MaxOnline Infinity which is Starhub fibre Internet service. I chose the MaxInfinity Elite plan which has a download speed of 150Mbps, upload speed of 75Mbps and international speed of 15Mbps. It cost SGD$82.18 per month for a 2 year contract.

They did not tell me when they are coming to setup the fibre Internet service. I waited a month and they called me on the 3rd week of July 2011 saying they will come on 26th July 2011 to install the service.

StarHub is forcing us to use the crappy Huawei HG256s Residential Gateway (RG) and there is no way to bypass it yet. I heard the wireless on it is just pure shitty. So the typical setup would be:

Terminal Point (TP) -> Optical Network Terminal (ONT) -> Residential Gateway (RG) -> Router

If order to get your router to do the routing you need to bridge the connection between the RG and Router.

Step 1: You need to disable WLAN and DHCP on the RG

Disable WLAN on RG

Disable DHCP on RG

Step 2: Enable DMZ on the RG

Enable DMZ on RG

My RG’s IP address is 192.168.2.1 and my router WAN Port is connected to my RG’s LAN Port 1 with WAN Static IP address set to 192.168.2.2 on the router.

My router IP address is 192.168.3.1.

RG (192.168.2.1) -> DMZ (192.168.2.2) WAN -> Router (192.168.3.1)

Step 3: Setting WAN Static IP on the Router

Setting WAN Static IP on Router

Router IP Setup

That is basically it. I have disabled all the firewall features on the RG side and let the router handle it. DDNS on the other hand is handled by the RG instead of the router.

DDNS on RG

Since the router is behind RG’s DMZ, port forwarding is handled by the router.

Port Forwarding on Router

BEFORE (Cable): Speedtest – MaxOnline Ultimate (100Mbps)

AFTER (Fibre): Speedtest – MaxOnline Inifnity Elite (150Mbps)

I am unable to obtain 150Mbps speed though. I am wondering if Speedtest can output more than 100Mbps. However I am able to obtain about 80Mbps on 2 computers while doing Speedtest simultaneously. I did my speedtest on StarHub’s Speedtest before doing it on Speedtest.net.

Upon further investigation, I am actually on 150Mbps, I downloaded a iPad 2 firmware update (iOS 4.3.5) from Apple and I am getting about 16MB/s to 18MB/s which is about 128Mbps to 144Mbps. Woot!

Credits
Thanks to MarineX for his post on HardwareZone Forums.

Corrupted Image In Dropbox

If you look at the above screenshot, that is what happen to a few of my photos in different folder within the Dropbox’s Photos folder. Recently I upgraded my Dropbox plan to 50GB for USD$99/year and hence I am able to place all my photos in Dropbox for syncing them across all my computers.

Here is what happened previously:

There will be a “red x” beside some of the photos, and when I open it, only the top part of the image will appear while the bottom remains grey throughout.

Under my Dropbox folder, the status will be saying “Uploading 2 files”. These 2 photos are corrupted and will never be uploaded.

How I got rid of the “red x” was to copy the corrupted photos from my backup drive and paste it back to my Dropbox and it immediately change to a green tick. I am guessing it didn’t even sync back to Dropbox because Dropbox detected that the photo I pasted from my backup drive has the correct checksum which is stored locally in Dropbox’s database.

Something more serious happened to me few days ago and it is the same problem:

I went to a concert last Saturday and took some photos. When I got home, I extracted the photos and placed it in a folder on my Desktop.

After I uploaded the photos to Facebook, I copied the whole folder and placed it in my Dropbox’s Photos folder.

After a few hours, I realized that there are 2 photos that are not being synced and there is a “red x” besides them. I viewed the photo and to my horror, it was the same problem as what I mentioned above.

As these photos are new, I do not have a backup and I have to use a data recovery software to recover the data from my CF memory card and put it back into Dropbox.

I have learned my lesson and I will ensure that all the photos in Dropbox is properly sync first before I delete the copy I have.

I did searched on Dropbox Forums but can’t seem to find anyone which has the same problem as me and hence I filed a ticket with Dropbox and they replied me with instructions on how to resync/reindex my Dropbox. Just sharing it with you guys

Windows PC

1. Download the newest version of the Dropbox desktop application:
   • http://www.dropbox.com/install
2. Stop the Dropbox desktop application (if needed)
   • Click on the Dropbox icon
   • Choose Exit
3. Delete Dropbox meta-data folder:
   • Open a Windows File Explorer (not Internet Explorer)
   • Type %APPDATA% into the navigation bar (include the % percent signs)
   • Look for the folder “Dropbox” and delete it.

   If you get a “file in use” type error, then do this:

   • Run “Programs -> Dropbox -> Uninstall”
   • Restart your computer
   • Try again to remove %APPDATA%\Dropbox

   If it still says “file in use”, then do this:

   • Press “Ctrl + Alt + Delete” together
   • Choose “Start Task Manager”
   • Find the task “explorer.exe”
   • Click “End Task” button
   • Your “Start Menu” will now be gone
   • Clik “File -> Run”
   • Type %APPDATA%
   • Now look for the folder “Dropbox” and delete it.
   • Press “Ctrl + Alt + Delete” together again
   • Click on the button at the bottom right hand corner of the screen, and choose restart
   • Your computer will now restart
4. If your Dropbox folder was called “My Dropbox” please rename it to “Dropbox”
5. Reinstall the Dropbox desktop application
   • Run the new installer from step #1
   • Relink your account.

Mac OS

1. Download the newest version of the Dropbox desktop application:
   • http://www.dropbox.com/install
2. Stop the Dropbox desktop application (if needed)
   • Click on the Dropbox icon
   • Choose Quit
3. Delete Dropbox meta-data folder:
   • To delete this folder open up Terminal (Located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
   • Copy and paste the following lines into Terminal and press RETURN:
     • rm -r “$HOME/.dropbox”
4. Delete the Dropbox Contextual Menu Item Plugin
   • Open the Finder and select “Go to folder…” from the Go menu (or press Shift-Command-G)
   • A dialog box should appear. Now copy and paste the following line into the box and press the return key:
     • /Library/
   • Drag the DropboxHelperTools folder to the Trash and enter your Administrator password if prompted to complete this action
5. Reinstall the Dropbox desktop application
   • Open the Dropbox .dmg file and drag the new version of Dropbox to /Applications
   • Restart Dropbox from /Applications
   • Relink your account.

Before I start this tutorial, I would like to give full credits to crimsontwo from xSellize forums and joshua.menke from cocoaforge. I merely improve on crimsontwo’s work.

In the thread, Gmail + push on iPhone w/ Prowl on xSellize forums, crimsontwo gave instructions on how to run the Prowl python script on your iphone. The downside to it is that if your iPhone connection change from EDGE to 3G or 3G to Wifi or any vice versa, the script will be disconnected from Gmail. To solve this problem, he recommends you to upload the script to your own web server instead.

You need to have SSH access to your web server as well as Python installed in your web server which is not covered in this tutorial.

So here we go:

1. Get Prowl from App Store for USD$2.99
2. Register your Prowl account at http://prowl.weks.net/register.php
3. Once registered, click on Settings Tab
4. Under API key, click on Generate API Key Button and note copy down your generated API Key
5. Download the required files in a zip, called, Gmail With Push On iPhone Using Prowl
6. Using WinZip, extract the zip file which you have downloaded from Step 5
7. You should see a folder called gmail_and_prowl
8. Open the file main.py using NotePad or WordPad
9. You should see these lines on line 11 to 13:
   

   prowl_apikey = “your_prowl_api_key”
   IMAP_USERNAME = “your_gmail_username”
   IMAP_PASSWORD = “your_gmail_password”

10. Replace the text your_prowl_api_key, your_gmail_username and your_gmail_password accordingly and save it
11. Using your FTP, upload the folder gmail_and_prowl to your home directory in your webserver
12. Login using SSH and browse to the path where you uploaded gmail_and_prowl, for example, /home/username/gmail_and_prowl/
13. Type this command:

    nohup python main.py > /dev/null 2>&1 &

14. The PID of the process which is executing the script will be displayed. You may want to know that number down, just in case you need to kill the process.
15. You can now log out from the SSH and send a test email to your Gmail account

Received the 4th and final challenge of Teach a Technophobe last week! But both my mom and I was pretty busy and both of us only manage to complete the 4th challenge today.

Teach a Technophobe – Challenge #4

The 4th challenge involves using a camera to record a video to spread your views on the E75′s email capability. Since my mom is a little camera shy, she do not really want to face the camera. So I thought why not ask my mom to use the E75 to record a video of something and then email me the video so that I can upload it to YouTube.

We are thinking of what to record and we finally decided to record a video of my dad’s pet birds “chirping”.

With the 4th challenge completed, my mom and I have completed the Teach a Technophobe challenges by WOM World. For the past 4 weeks, it has been fun teaching my mom to use the email capabilities in the E75. I also picked up a few things along the way.

Thank you WOM World!

Teach a Technophobe – Challenges Completed

Looking Back:

• Challenge #4
• Challenge #3
• Challenge #2
• Challenge #1

Challenge #3 from my Nokia’s Teach a Technophobe has arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Finally my dad was at home and hence he is able to received it on my behalf and hence I am able to complete this challenge earlier.

This challenge is slightly more complicated and even I myself have to figure it out for sometime before I can teach my mother. It involves sending a location using email on Nokia Ovi Maps as well as attaching a picture of my mom.

As I have used N82 before, I know how the maps software works and that is the tedious part. I heard about Nokia Ovi Maps 3.0 quite sometime back and decided to upgrade the current version which is 2.0 to 3.0 and after that I need to install Singapore Map to Ovi Maps using Nokia Map Loader.

After getting everything ready, I was fiddling with Nokia Ovi Maps 3.0 to figure out how to send my current location. I found it it was pretty easy (press the middle button and choose send). Now the tough part is how to add photos to it. I solve the photo problem by taking a picture first then sending my current location in Maps and when the Create Email screen pops up, I went to Add Attachment and browse for the photo I have taken. Once everything is set, it is pretty easy to pass on the “instructions” to my mom.

1. Take a picture of yourself
2. Open up Maps
3. Under Options, choose My Position
4. Press the middle button, choose Send and then Via Email
5. Create Email screen will appear
6. Under Options, choose Add Attachment
7. Choose Memory Card -> Images -> Camera -> 200907 -> 200907A0 -> Choose the last file
8. And you are done!

Teach a Technophobe – Challenge #3

Email With Image And Location Attachment (Photo & Address Removed)

Teach a Technophobe: Challenge #1, Challenge #2