I don’t even know why I called Linksys’ “tech support” in the first place. I guess I was pretty desperate. Have I not learned nothing over the years? After finding nothing but people who are having the same problems as me and not getting any answers from Linksys, I decided to try to figure it out.
The issue that I was having (as well as all those other people) was that the WUSB54GC would drop connection. For some people it was random. For me, it was when I downloaded large amounts of data. I couldn’t visit Google Maps or Google Images. If I’d open a few websites in seperate tabs, depending on how much content each site had, I’d dropped connection. Of course going to Linksys was a waste of time. They haven’t updated the drivers since 1/2007. Don’t even get me started with the phone support.
Continue reading ‘WUSB54GC and Vista’
On my previous article I talked about how I’ve upgraded from DD-WRT to Tomato and how much of an improvement it was over DD-WRT. While I’m still tweaking my setup I thought I’d provide a quick tutorial on how to setup QoS in Tomato.
For those of though who don’t know, QoS (Quality of Service) provides different priorities to different users or data flows, or it can guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow in accordance with requests from the application program or the internet service provider policy. In Tomato’s case we are going to set it up to give priority to data flows. In a nutshell QoS tries to guarantee that important network protocols are given priority over non-important protocols. For example, http has priority over BitTorrent.
I’d like to start off my mentioning that there isn’t just one correct way to setup QoS. This guide is only intended to give you a basic idea on how to setup your own.
Continue reading ‘Tomato QoS Setup’
About a year ago I discovered DD-WRT. I got excited when I started discovering the features it promised. I read a number of different forums about how much of an improvement it was over the “stock” firmware provided by Linksys. I was also sharing the internet connection between three people and was seeing the horrible performance. So I installed it.
After installing DD-WRT, I immediately saw a huge improvement. That slowly faded as the days passed. I started having to reboot the router after a few days of it being up. I spent countless hours scrolling through various wiki entries and forums to get the configuration perfect. I wasn’t alone in my issues with DD-WRT. I noticed that a large number of people were having issues similar to mine. Many people said how they have to reboot it after a few days. Other people were having issues with the QoS configuration. The biggest problem with DD-WRT was the lack of updates. The last stable released was in mid September 2006. I kept using it though because, regardless of its shortcomings, it was a much better solution than the stock firmware.
Continue reading ‘DD-WRT vs. Tomato: Winner is Tomato’
I thought it would be interesting to focus the lesser known freeware applications that are available instead of just listing all the popular freeware applications (Firefox, SmartFTP, etc). I’ve tried to attach a screenshot with each program so you can get a feel about what the program does before downloading it.
Feel free to comment if you think I missed something and would like it added. Remember that the focus of this post is not to point out well known pieces of software but to focus on the lesser knowns.
Continue reading ‘Lesser Known Windows Freeware’
Here is just a quick post. If you use Firefox and Gmail I highly recommend getting this plugin. It’s called Better Gmail. It makes several enhancements to the Gmail interface.
This plugin is a compilation of over 30 scripts that change how Gmail works. My favorite part of the plugin is the skinning portion. If nothing else, enabling Gmail Air from the plugin’s options is worth it alone. Here is a screenshot.
Check out the website for Better Gmail to see what this plugin has to offer.
If you’re looking for quick and free solution for remote desktop software, no need to look any farther. I recently came across a free service from LogMeIn. In the past when using VNC, I had to map it to port 80, 21, or any other highly used port that my work couldn’t block. I always hated the idea that my PC sat there with an open port such as port 80.
Here is where LogMeIn is different than your traditional remote desktop software suites. It utilizes 256-bit SSL encryption thus removing the need to firewall changes (assuming you have a standard, non-strict firewall). You then simply go to the website and log in. It will list your computer(s) that are available to be connected to.
It works with both Vista (though not advertised to, I’ve been using it for awhile with no issues) and XP and best of all it’s FREE.
I know that a simple Google search reveals similar sites, but I thought that I’d bring it to the attention of everyone here in case they might have missed it.
Notepad++ is a free replacement to the standard Notepad that comes with Windows XP and Vista. It is small and lightweight. This is an awesome program for anyone. You don’t need to be a programmer/developer to benefit from this application.
Features:
- Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
- WYSIWYG Editor
- User-Defined Syntax Highlighting
- Auto-completion
- Multi-Document View (Tabs!)
- Search/Replace Feature
- Full Drag ‘N’ Drop Support
- File Status Auto Detection
- Brace and indent guideline highlighting
With a few easy steps, you can easily replace your default Notepad in Vista or XP with this one.
Continue reading ‘Free Notepad Replacement For Windows Vista and XP’
As happy as I was to receive all the traffic from Digg, it did however kill my host and got my account suspended. I’m in the process of upgrading to another server, which should be done by tomorrow.
Thanks for all the interest in my blog. Hopefully I can continue providing you with decent content
This tweak can easily be found all over the internet. This tweak is for broadband users (do people even use dialup anymore?). When you go to a website, Firefox will make a single request to the web page at a time. This tweak changes that so Firefox makes several requests at once, thus speeding up how long it takes for page to load.
- Type ‘about:config‘ into the address bar and hit enter (obviously with no ” ” characters).
- This should bring you to Firefox’s configuration “page”.
- Find the following entries and make the following changes:
- Set network.http.pipelining to ‘true’
- Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to ‘true’
- Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests between 3-5.
- NOTE: If you make this number too large, you can really cause a headache. For example, if you set it to 30 when you go to any site, you can possibility make 30 requests to it at once. This can cause issues with page loading, and it can piss off whoever runs that site. Play around and find a low number that works for you.
- Right-Click anywhere and select New->Integer. Call it nglayout.initialpaint.delay and give it a value of 0. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on the information it receives.
- Restart Firefox (not sure if this is required, can’t hurt) and you’re all set.
Enjoy a slightly faster internet experience.
I’ve been using Firefox to block ads so long, when I use someone else’s computer I’m sometimes thrown off when I see advertisements.
First off, I recommend getting Adblock Plus. This plugin will download a list of report online advertising sites and block them from even showing up on any website in the first place. It’s as simple as installing and setting it up with the initial setup, and you’re done.
Now we are going to use Firefox and Stylish to block various ads and restyle websites with those ads removed.
- Download Firefox (Well, for some reason you might be using IE and trying to figure this out)
- Download the plugin called Stylish
- Restart Firefox
Continue reading ‘Using Firefox To Block Ads’
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