New cable modem and router

For a really long time, I was renting a Scientific-Atlanta Webstar DPX-100 cable modem from Comcast. The last couple of weeks, my cable connection has been flakey As it turns out, this cable modem was EOLed on 10/29/2008.  So, I decided to purchase a Motorola SURFboard eXtreme SB6120. 

I also decided to get a new router (Linksys 320N) since I was pretty sure that the new cable modem might saturate my old D-Link 704.  Since I read that the Linksys firmware was buggy, I carefully flashed it with DD-WRT, a 3rd party Linux based alternative firmware

Here are some speed tests:

Webstar DPX-100 with D-Link 704:
5 Mbps down/0.99 Mbps up/48 ms ping

Motorola 6120 with D-Link 704:
5 Mbps down/4 Mbps up/51 ms ping

Motorola 6120 with Linksys 320N with DD-WRT
19 Mbps down/4 Mbps up/52 ms ping

Moving to an off-campus building at work

On Friday, my entire group at work, with one exception, will be moving to a building off-campus.

Caught

I wasn't careful on my walk.
I was seen and had to talk.
Sunglasses, a hat, and a trench coat, I did not wear
Because I thought very little risk was there.
Unfortunately, that was not the case.
And now possibly discovered is my base.

Birthday

I actually had an enjoyable birthday this year. I thought I was going to Best Buy and found myself at Margot Cafe in East Nashville. Sneaky!

Day 3 Post-op

Vision from my left eye (which has a subconjunctival hemorrhage) seems sharper than my right eye. My eye lashes have a lot of crud from the Pred Forte.

The Pharaoh

I had my first encounter with the Pharaoh. He asked whether I had heard the good news. I said no. He said that the White House was plagiarizing his articles. And that he was running for president and that his running mate is going to be Jerry Rice.

Leaving Greece

Today I left Greece. George and Kristen took me to the airport in the morning. Unfortunately the flight was delayed about 1.5 hours. While I was waiting in the airport, I bought a Greek Easter bread to bring back.

Since I was going to have a 5 hour layover at JFK, I was originally planning on going into NYC. But, because of the delay, I didn't have time. I arrived in Nashville at around 9:30pm, where Osman picked me up and gave me a ride home.

Second to last day in Greece

I didn't do too much today. In the morning, we went to a grocery store to buy some food to bring back. I bought some halva, kinder eggs, and Nescafe (to make frappe).


At the Costco-like place we went to, some guy tried to get George to buy some stolen watches. He ended up giving him some loose change to get him to go away.

For lunch, we had octopus, octopus pasta, feta cheese, and salad.

Dinner was at a restaurant whose owner was a friend of George's father. We had salad, greens, calamari, lobster pasta, fruit, and some other desserts.


Afterwards, we went to a bar in town with some of George's friends.

Mykonos

Leonidas drove us to Rafina where we got on a Flying Cat at 7:15am to take us to Mykonos, a popular island in the Cyclades. We had to run to the boat because we were afraid that we were going to miss it.

We arrived at Mykonos at 10am, and called a taxi to take us into Hora, the main town on Mykonos. After walking around town a bit, we decided to rent a car so that we could visit some of the beaches.

Since it was the offseason, all the beaches (including the well known Super Paradise Beach) were pretty much empty.


After driving around the island to a bunch of empty beaches, we returned to Hora at around 3pm. There were had a lunch that consisted of Mykonian sausages and a seafood platter which had small fish, bigger fish chunks, fried calamari, grilled octopus, and shelled shrimp and crawfish.

We left Mykonos at 6:30 and arrived back in Rafina at around 9pm, were George's father was waiting to take us back home for dinner.

Second day on Hydra

For breakfast, I snacked on some chocolate-hazelnut filled croissants. After checking out of the hotel, we went to a cafe next to the hotel where I had a frappe and Kristen went to get a gyro.

While we were relaxing, I went to buy some revolutionary flags of Hydra that were used as a war flag during the Greek War of Independence. On it is the quote "I tan i epi tas" which means "with it or on it". This is an ancient Spartan motto which means that you should either come back with your shield victorious, or dead on it.

Since we had some free time to kill after buying tickets to a Flying Dolphin back to Athens, we visited the Historical Archives Museum of Hydra and then took a water taxi to a different part of the island for lunch. Lunch consisted of Greek salad, cold octopus, grilled calamari, zucchini balls, and fish.

At 3:25pm, we left Hydra to go back to Athens. For dinner at George's parent's house, we had goat with potatoes, Greek salad, feta cheese and some other type of cheese, and vegetables, plus dessert.

Hydra

I checked out of my hotel at 8:30am and took my luggage with me on the metro. Leonidas picked me up at the station and took me to his parent's house.

After dropping off my luggage, George, Kristen, Leonidas, and I took the metro to Piraeus where we met Leonidas's girlfriend, Chrysoula, and took a Flying Dolphin hydrofoil to the Saronic Gulf Island of Hydra.


After checking in to the Hotel Argo, everyone but me go into bathing suits and headed to a cement "beach". The water was cold, but George and Leonidas went swimming. We also went to a cafe where I had a frappe, and Kristen and George had hamburgers since she was hungry. After relaxing for a while, we wandered around Hydra town.

Dinner was at around 9pm. I had pork with manouri cheese, grilled tomato, and french fries. After dinner, we went to a bar that was initially playing reggae music.

Walking around Athens

In the morning, I walked to the New Acropolis Museum near my hotel to see the opening. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see. The first floor was open, but there were no visible exhibits outside of the excavations that were visible beneath the glass floor.

Afterwards, I walked around Plaka and Monastiraki to do a little shopping.

At 1:30pm, I took to Metro to go to George's parent's house for lunch. We had soup and 2 large fish. I also tried some ouzo. It was quite tasty and had a licorice flavor.

Later, we left for Syntagma Square. There, I went to see the changing of the guard outside of Parliament while Kristen and George went shopping.


After meeting in Plaka, we went to Lykavittos Hill to see the excellent nighttime view of the city from there.

Day trip to Delphi

In the morning, I took the Metro to the station nearest George's parent's house. He picked me up, and then we went home to pickup Kristen.

At around 10am, we left for Delphi and arrived at around 12:30.


We left Delphi at around 2:30pm and drove to Moni Osios Loukas (Monastery of Holy Luke). We had a really difficult time trying to find it. The church contained a body inside of a glass coffin. It's fingers were visible beneath its robes.

We left the monastery at around 4:30pm, and arrived in Chalkida at around 5:50pm. Between the mainland and the island of Evia, the tidal current is very noticeable. After walking along the waterfront, we had some ice cream and tiramisu at a cafe.

Dinner was at George's parent's house. It consisted of salad, cheese, feta cheese pastry, and orzo with leftover lamb.

Day 3 in Greece

I met Kristen and George outside of the Akropoli Metro station. From there, we walked to the Temple of Olympian Zeus and Hadrian's Arch.

Then, we walked to the Panathenaic Stadium and on to the National Art Gallery. After we left the gallery, we took the metro to Omonia station and walked to the National Archaeological Museum.

At around 3pm, we took the metro to Doukissis Plakentias station and walked to George's car. George then drove us to the Cape of Sounion where we visited the Temple of Poseidon.



For dinner, we ate at a restaurant with an excellent view of the temple. We had about 1kg of fish, a Greek salad, some cold little fish appetizer, fried cheese, french fries, and a grilled octopus tentacle.

Ancient Athens

Sometime after 10am, I headed out from the hotel and walked to Filopappou Hill. I climbed the hill to the Monument of Filoppapos where there is an excellent view of the Acropolis.


At around 1pm, I entered the Acropolis. Kristen and George were late due a Metro strike, so they had to take a bus into the city. Eventually, I met them at the front of the Parthenon at around 3pm.

Together, we went to the Ancient Agora and made a quick stop at Keramikos Cemetary.

Then, we met up with George's brother, Leonidas, and Leonidas's girlfriend, Chrysoula, and went to see Hadrian's Library, the Roman Agora, and the Tower of the Winds.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant that served souvlaki on pitas (aka gyros).

After dinner, I headed back to the hotel. Since the internet wasn't working in the hotel, I left around 10pm and took the Metro to Syntagma Square since the square has free wifi. I left to go back to the hotel at around 11:20pm.

Arrived in Athens, Greece

Yesterday, I got a ride to the airport from Ioana, and then flew to Athens, Greece, via JFK.

My plane arrived in Athens today 1 hour early. After getting my luggage and exchanging some money, I bought a Cosmote SIM card for 5 Euros with an additional 10 Euros of airtime.

George and Kristen picked me up at the airport, and we went to George's parent's house for some teas, sweet bread, and cookies. Since it was still to early for me to check in at my hotel, we went to the grocery store to do some shopping.

A little after noon, we left for the center of the city so that I could check into the Airotel Parthenon. After I checked in, we headed back to the house.

George's father, Dimitrios, and brother, Leonidas, had already started roasting a full lamb on a spit. We took turns turning the lamb.















Since it would take many hours for it to be done, we had lunch which consisted of stuffed vegetables (tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini) with rice and feta cheese. We also had some snails.

About 20 of George's friends showed up for dinner after 8pm. Besides the roast lamb, we also had pork, sausages, and spinach in phyllo. George also had a birthday cake.

Afterwards, one of George's friends took me back to the hotel.

Airport Extreme and Wireless Security Problems

I had some issues setting up the Airport Extreme 802.11n Base Station I recently bought. Even though I don't have any 802.11n devices, I wanted it to run in that mode in case I get anything in the future. Since I have some wireless devices that only support WEP, I'm using WEP (Transitional Security Network) for wireless security. I'm not sure if this is due to something odd in Apple's implementation, but my Powerbook G4 is only able to connect to this when using WPA even though one of my wireless devices can connect to it just fine using 128bit WEP.

One of my other devices can't connect to it using either WEP or WPA, so I'm still using my old Graphite Airport Base Station to support that.

Enabling PHP on Leopard

I don't really like editing the main httpd.conf file if I don't have to. So the cleanest way to enable php is to create something like /etc/apache2/other/enable_php.conf with the following content:

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Then, restart the web server.

VectorMagic

This is an online tool to convert bitmaps to vector images. It is kind of slow, but the results are fantastic. I wish there was a standalone version of the program.

Random Leopard Notes and Observations

• I did an upgrade install.
• When the machine boots up after the install is finished, there is a delay before going to the login screen.
• After the install, go to the the Installer DVD, and then Optional Installs->Xcode Tools->XcodeTools.mpkg to install the Developer tools.
• I had to delete some Help Viewer cache and preference files, otherwise it would crash when doing a two word search. This only happened with my primary user account on Hyperion (my MacPro).
• Spotlight has to re-index the harddrive. This takes a while (you'll notice the high disk I/O). On my laptop it took a couple of hours.
• The stuff in my KeyChain was missing. Fix is to just double click on Library/Keychains/login.keychain. Apple may a fixed this with an update.
• Sherlock is gone. No big deal since most of the functionality is in the Dashboard.
• I don't like the Grid setting for Stacks. Fan seems better (although it shows less). I have it set to sort by Date Added so I can quickly go to my last downloaded item.
• The indicators in the dock for running applications seems to be less noticeable due to the reflections. It's probably not a problem if the dock is running on the left or right since it doesn't have reflections in those places.
• iCal now shows the current date in the dock even when it's not running.
• CoverFlow view in finder is neat in certain situations (like browsing images or documents).
• Screen Sharing is nice (vnc://hostname). It's a little flakey via iChat (seems to spontaneously disconnect). I'd recommend only allowing certain users to have access to Screen Sharing (via the Sharing systems preference).
• Spaces seems to work pretty well. Can't set different backgrounds for each virtual desktop, though.
• Macs on the network have icons that represent their actual machine assuming they're running 10.5 (i.e. a MacPro looks like a MacPro, G4 looks like a G4, and a PowerBook looks like a PowerBook). Windows machines are represented with a computer monitor that has a blue screen.
• You can no longer scrub audio/video files directly in the finder (although you can still play them). But, you can hit the space bar or Command-Y (Apple-Y) to see the file in QuickLook. Quick Look is a floating window panel, so if you select something else, it'll replace whatever is currently in the window.
• Dictionary can now search Wikipedia (in multiple languages). There is also a Japanese<->English Dictionary.
• Drive icons on the desktop stay put between reboots.
• Going to the printer options in the Epson drivers for my ancient Epson Stylus Photo 780 printer causes the application to crash. These are really old drivers from Epson that only work on PPC Macs. The ink status utility works fine, though. There are GimpPrint and Gutenprint drivers that come with the OS, though. I'm not sure how well they work.
• Repairing disk permissions takes a really long time (compared to 10.4).
• Time Machine is actually a pretty nice way to do incremental backups. It takes a long time to do the initial backup. You can tell it what drives/folders to ignore. It uses hardlinks to preserve space (unchanged files are hardlinked instead of copied).
• Firefox and Camino need new themes to fit the new window colors (a darker shade of gray).
• Applications which use the OS's built in spell checker can also take advantage of the built in grammar checker.
• I haven't really looked at the Developer tools, but it appears that there is a lot of sample code for writing Cocoa apps in Python and Ruby. Interface Builder is different, so older tutorials may not be very helpful.
• The Mosaic screen saver is really neat. Only thing I don't like is that it creates the mosaic with photos from your entire iPhoto library (instead of just a selection).
• There is a new voice called Alex which sounds more realistic.
• In Safari, you can make a Web clip and use it as a widget in the Dashboard. This only really works if the thing you are clipping has a fixed size.
• There are different themes for terminal windows.
• Some software updates install after you click the restart button (during machine shutdown phase). Also, some system caches are rebuilt during shutdown (which sometimes causes the shutdown to take awhile). I think in prior versions, these caches were built at startup.
• There is now an optional Guest user account. It gets wiped when the guest user logs out.
• There is a silly iTunes Visualizer in Developer/Examples/Quartz\ Composer/Compositions/Music\ Visualizers. Copy "Club Lisa.gtz" to your $HOME/Library/Compositions directory (you'll probably have to create the directory). You can actually edit the visualizer in Quartz Composer and make the Allessandro and Peter dance around by tying the Audio Peak Output to their X and Y translations.
• Sandbox rules (in /usr/share/sandbox) are written in Scheme.

At Ars Technica, there is a really good article about what is new:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/1