Dan Murphy's Blog » Miscellaneous

D-Link DIR-655 Wireless N Router

Dan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:45:55 +0000

So I ended up picking up a new router after bricking my good old WRT54G which I have had for a long time and served me well but kinda left we wanting more. That is probably why I was pushing a firmware upgrade to the router only to have it fail and brick it. So after doing a bunch of research as far as what was available at MicroCenter and reading reviews from NewEgg and Amazon I ended up with a D-Link DIR-655 Wireless N.

The main thing I was looking for in a router was stability and supportability I had a few other things in my mind that I figured would be awesome if I could find but were not too big of deal breakers. One thing that really led me to choose D-Link was their support network and the forums and their emulator of their firmware. The emulator was nice because it let me test drive the options of the router before buying it, why more companies don’t do that I will never know. Also you have the ability to easily download old firmware if you need to downgrade after an update. The forum was a welcome support link for the router but as usual you have to take those with a grain of sand as there seems to be a lot of angry people out there! Although I did take the biggest advice of the forum and did not upgrade to the latest firmware as it seems to have a lot of issues, and is not something you can remove after installing it. I figured since 80211N just made gold that there would be another update coming soon anyways.

A nice feature of this router is I have the ability to set up schedules. So I can open my FTP port for the 1 hour I need it to do my automated website backups. I can also do some port mapping from incoming external port to another internal port in my network. I also get some very useful logs and a whole bunch of other buttons and options to change (QoS, DHCP Priority Address, Guest Access, Email new Firmware, Uptime Clock). I can also enable a second WiFi hotspot with a different security level for guests so I can easily open and close a non-secure wireless access point. And it has a gigabit switch to boot so that is helpful for all four ports which i have plugged into my PS3, DirecTV, Media Center, and weather station.

It was on sale for $99 at MicroCenter and has turned out to be a very good router. I have tested it by pumping a ton of data through it via Bit-Torrent and Hulu and downloading 1GB files from FTP all at once without a hiccup (well my cable modem did reboot but don’t think that was the router’s fault). So this router gets my vote!

UPDATE – I have found some other settings that are particularly useful with this new router. Looks like you can setup a dynamic DNS account and setup the router to ping the service and update your IP if it changes so you can have a static URL go to your home server.

As far as stability goes this thing seems to be fairly solid, it likes to reboot every once and a great while and does it by itself and just looks like it takes a long time for a page to reload when it happens, so no really effected services. I have also been making a bunch of changes to the config of the router which require reboot so that kinda screws up my uptime counts.

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DirectTV – The Move to HD

Dan — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:30:56 +0000

So I finally decided to jump into 2001 and upgrade our cable package to include HD programming. After creating a spread sheet and running the numbers of my current Comcast cable/internet package and moving to DirectTV I found that I save a whopping $6/month on service and I get all the HD channels and an addition 50 channels. I decided to keep my internet with Comcast as unfortunately that is one thing that they actually do very well. I picked the choice package which has 150 channels and then picked up the HD package and an HD DVR. The DVR has a 500GB HD and holds 40 hours of HD TV and 200 hours of standard def. It also has 2 USB ports and 1 eSATA port so you can easily add an additional external drive. And yes they actually work unlike the Comcast or Tivo boxes that you have to kinda hack to get those ports working. HDMI out makes super easy installation to the TV and it has 2 ethernet plugs (not sure why, wish I had a redundant internet connection!) so it is hardwired to my network. The internet is how it downloads the On Demand features.

After waiting all day for the installer to get there (hey at least they gave me a discount afterwords) and watching him install the satellite and then plugging everything in a setting it all up I am very happy. I was sad to call Tivo and let them know I needed to cancel my account but running the numbers on a new Tivo box and staying with Comcast and doing a cablecard was just too much money and sounded kinda complicated. One nice benefit that I didn’t even take into consideration was the dual tuner of the box. This was something we have fought with on our Tivo for as long as we have had it, we could only record one show at a time. Well not anymore so finally we can capture just about all the shows we can throw at it.

The navigation of the menu and moving around is a little slower than I would like but nothing that is a deal breaker. I actually found it easier to use my iTouch and download the DirectTV app and browse the shows that way to decide what should be recorded. Then go on the DVR and just search for the show. It is also nice to have On Demand type features so we can download via the internet certain shows and not have to worry about recording them. The downloads work pretty fast and you can queue up as many as you want and it just pulls them down in about 10 minutes or so for a 30 minute show. One funny thing we noticed is all the adult channels and porn they have that you see while searching for just about every show. Chances are I will play with the parental controls and try and remove those from the search as it just makes it more cumbersome.

The Tivo like functions work as expecting and the video output is set to the highest of 1080i which looks a little bit better than my old standard definition basic extended cable! I took a $12 increase on my internet because I dropped the cable package but thats alright as I get $13 back from cancelling Tivo so it’s basically a wash there.

All in all if you are looking at an HD package I would suggest DirectTV. Of course we only have one TV in our house so setup was pretty easy and our house isn’t pre-wired seing as our house is older than me!

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Lacie USB Key Drive

Dan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:24:38 +0000

Why it took so long for these products to actually materialize I will never know. I always have kept a USB drive on my key chain but I have had issues with it breaking or being a little too bulky or fragile. These new ones from Lacie are all metal and the shape of your keys so they fall in line super easily. Since they are a whopping $27 for 8 GB I think I will be picking one of these up when they come back in stock. Check them out: Lacie Key Drives

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Too Big To Fail

Dan — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:14:43 +0000

I couldn’t help myself and I have to post this as I think it sums up things very very well!

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New Blog Theme

Dan — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:46:58 +0000

So this is a modification to the Architect Digest theme that I found a little while ago. I had to make a lot of changes to the theme files so that it would show the full posts for the archive pages and search pages. I also had to add in the Ajax stuff and change the header. I played around with the CSS a little here and there to make links stand out a little more. All in all it took me about 2-3 hours to flip over to the new theme.

I decided it was time to update the picture in the header to the new S4 because its a great looking car and matched my color scheme pretty well.

Color Scheme Design Picker Not that you could ever have enough websites to help...
7zip Theme Manager I have tried playing around with some different file archiving...
For Web Designers Website This is a pretty amazing site and has a bunch...

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Tiny Package Big Punch – PC Mini

Dan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:36:08 +0000

Yes those are a pair of keys on top of that fully functional computer. This machine is available in a pared-down 256MB configuration (sans Wi-Fi, hard drive) for $220; a 512MB Wi-Fi version (with no hard drive) for $245; or go all out with the 512MB / Wi-Fi / 60GB hard disk version pre-installed with either Ubuntu or Windows XP Home SP3, for $295 or $335, respectively.

No links to distributors of this bad boy but I am really starting to think that I need to have one of these and keep it connected to my TV so I don’t have to worry about plugging in a computer to the TV.

CompuLab Fit-PC Slim is the name of the model and manufacturer I will have to keep and eye out for this one to hit the streets

LinuxDevices.com

Volery – Create your own Install Package Wow this site may have eliminated the reason for my...

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HDR Pictures – Amazing!

Dan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:53:00 +0000

These pictures are just amazing. HDR is the technique used here, it stands for High Dynamic Range photography. I allows for higher definition and more texture to the pictures. Wikipedia has a little more explanation on the technique but it basically creates these very vivid and amazing pictures.

Follow this link to see a few galleries of this technique in practice! I love it!

Below are a few more links

New York City in HDR

20 Beautiful HDR Pictures

HDRCreme.com

Flickr: The Biggest Building in HDR

HDR Japan

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LG Dare Phone

Dan — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:15:48 +0000

I just recently bought the new LG Dare phone. With my new job I was not able to check email or be on IM so I decided that would be the deciding factor between getting this or a regular phone.

I read a bunch of reviews about the phone because Laura was the first to bring it up. They are referring to it as the iClone. While its not quiet the iPhone, and the browser leaves a little to be desired and doesn’t support JavaScript it certainly gets the job done. I picked up a 4GB SD Mini card at Microcenter and plugged it in for a little extra capacity. Also the benefit of doing this is I can load content easily to the phone by taking out the SD card and putting it into a laptop and loading information then putting it back on the camera. A really nice thing about this phone is it has a 3.2 Megapixel camera which is super nice. It has a virtual QWERTY keyboard which is super easy to use and I like it better than the iTouch keyboard. It has a little forced feedback as you press the keys. The only issues I seem to have with this phone are when I try to scroll a webpage or list it seems to have a few issues, but I am sure that is more user error than anything.

I have high expectations for the phone as LG hasn’t let me down to date as this is my 3rd LG phone. Form factor is great and phone is easy to hold

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Small Form Factor: Asus Eee Box

Dan — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:36:33 +0000

I wasn’t aware that Asus was coming out with a small affordable desktop solution to complement the Eee Laptop. This thing sounds like it would be perfect to shove into you entertainment center and give your plasma/LCD screen some very nice Internet connectivity. It even has built in Wi-Fi and all the ports you need for basic use. The main gripes about the box are that it doesn’t have an optical drive or HDMI out, but you have to cut the costs somewhere plus really are CD’s/DVD’s really going to be in our future? I think the price point is just dead on at $299

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Tag-Heuer Shows 8 New Watches

Dan — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:14:55 +0000

Wow why can’t I like things that are cheap? These watches are amazing and I really really need one. The best part is the ad that Tag has on their site starts off with an R8. What can I say we are made for each other. Check out the images from Autoblog and then Tag’s site below.

Autoblog
Tag’s Site

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