So, I don’t know which are more awesome, these sexy massive headphones or these sexy small headphones.
I think it comes down to the fact that I probably couldn’t pull off wearing a massive pair of headphones while out and about, but dear god they’re so cool!
My new phone is arriving for reals today, so once I make sure its battery can handle playing music over bluetooth I’m totally in the market for a nice pair of A2DP ‘phones.
So, that post about email.
One could infer from it, if one were so inclined, that a message sent to my gmail account would not be read for some time. What with google’s rubbish forwarding and all.
I mean, it’ll get to me, so whatever, but if it’s in any way important then you might want to send it to that address I have that I’m not going to put here, but if I want you to know it, then you know it. You know the one, it’s [my really short name] at [this domain].
Also, if you have half a brain then you can probably work it out.
Sorry gmail. When you add IMAP I’ll come back to you, I promise.
OK, so it seems a lot of people still don’t “get” bittorrent.
You’ve downloaded the client, found some torrents and set it going, but maybe it’s going slow? It’s not supposed to, bittorrent is supposed to be fast – it’s based on maths and stuff.
So, in order of importance, here’s the shit you need to make right:
1. Ports. Whatever port you tell your client to use, make sure it’s being forwarded properly to your computer by your router.
2. Throttle back your upstream. If you’re uploading too much you won’t have any upstream bandwidth left to send out requests for new data.
Find out what upload speed your connection can support. Maybe your ISPs website will tell you, maybe your modem knows?
Anyway, the speed will be listed in bits per second, and torrent clients work in bytes per second, so divide by eight right off the bat. Then you generally need to leave 5k free for browsing and mail and whatever, and an additional 5k for each open torrent.
So, for a line with a max upstream of 512kb/s you divide by 8 to get 64kB/s (note the capital B), then take 10k to give you 54kB/s for one torrent.
3. Pick an uncommon port. Everyone knows BT runs on port 6881. Even the ISPs. The ISPs that don’t want you torrenting. See what I’m getting at?
Most ISPs throttle common file-sharing ports these days, so pick a random one. I use 56881, personally. You can use whatever.
4. Encrypt your data. Some ISPs now check out all your data to see if it’s for bittorrent, regardless of which port you use. A client like Azureus (for Macs it’s the only option, so far) can encrypt your data so it can’t be easily identified.
It’s not very strong, and they’ll probably find a way around it, but for now it certainly works for me.
So there you go. There’s no excuse now :p
Have you heard of the IMAP idle command? I hadn’t either, until I discovered that when Sony-Ericsson say their new phones (and, indeed, my new phone) have “push email support” this is what they mean.
Basically, it keeps some kind of terse, low-bandwidth connection going pretty much constantly between the mail client and the server, which allows new mail to be downloaded very quickly after it is received (though not instantly, it can take up to a minute).
So… what?
Basically, it’s email without the lag. And your phone maybe supports it (mine does). And your email provider maybe already supports it too? Dreamhost’s mail servers do, as do those of the university of Nottingham’s computer science department.
Gmail doesn’t support it though, since they only offer POP3. Their forwarding is also kind of manky too, it seems to take about an hour for email to arrive at its destination, even though it’s moved to gmail’s archive immediately.
Also: I sold six macs yesterday, pretty good for my first full day in the showroom. I didn’t get them to buy as many peripherals as is preferred though, which is where the real money is made.
But it will have to do for now.
I get paid for my time in like, 5 days. Being paid to be trained is something of a novelty, so yay!
Also, the people I work with are really nice. Well OK, so this one dude is pretty uptight, but I’m not going to have to deal with him in person once I actually start working in the Derby store.
I’ve actually met not one, but two people who play WoW regularly… with their significant others. I’m tempted to remark on how nerdy they are, but I’m pretty sure I’ve done worse. There’s a fellow DS-lite owner as well and they’re all, obviously, mac users.
Oh, and Three took 8 full days to activate that phone. It is being sent back. We are not amused. Instead, I contacted one of Orange’s customer-retention people. As is characteristic of their race he was eager to please, and has furnished us with 4 new handsets, and a showering of inclusive minutes, texts and data usage at no extra cost.
I’m kind of pleased by this, but mostly I just hate change. It’s a secret though, don’t tell anyone.
I got trained more today.
I put RAM in a G4 iMac, learned how to strip down a G5 tower, set up a dude’s router and investigated a funny smell coming from a G5 iMac.
It’s pretty interesting really, and I look forward to getting paid to do it. Not to mention doing it in Derby, which I can walk to. Getting out to Alfreton and back daily is not something I want to feature in my long-term plan.
Oh, and Three suck pretty hard. I’ve had this handset since Monday and it’s still not been activated. The plan’s great, the handset’s great, but the actual system behind it all seems to be built around the whims of an easily-distracted marmoset.
I emailled someone its IMEI number today and was assured that, armed with this piece of information, the marmoset would be able to make everything go. We shall see.