sadevil.org

I recently purchased an Alcatel Onetouch X200 3G USB modem, to be able to use internet on various locations where there is no wired or wifi available. Works fine under Windows/Mac OS X, bit more of a hassle under Linux.

Here are some hints on how to get it to work:

• You need to install usb-modeswitch to switch the card from it’s builtin usb-storage mode to the USBModem mode. Configuration is done in /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf
• Use /dev/ttyUSB2. The other two ports that your modem will give don’t really work well.
• Also, use atleast kernel 2.6.31. Earlier ones might not work.
• Disable PIN authentication on your SIMcard! This one thing was what kept it from working decently – I tried tons of things, and when I disabled the PIN, it worked nearly instantaneously.
  The command to do PIN auth is AT+CPIN=1111 (changing 1111 by your actual PIN), but when issuing this command the modem accepts it, but very often freaks out afterwards. Weird.
  You can find a nice list of GSM modem AT codes on gsm-modem.de.

Thats about it!

A good friend of mine introduced me to a new game: World Of Goo!

I’ve finished the demo, and it’s damned addictive ;)

There are user levels available too, so the gameplay isn’t limited to the game itself ;)

And, as a nice bonus: It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux!

I was bored recently, and decided to install Linux on my Macbook. I opted for the distribution I like best – Debian (unstable/Sid).

After some twiddling it all works rather well, I’m amazed how well ;) Even suspend to ram works flawlessly! (that was a different case a year ago, when I last had linux on a laptop). The only things I still have to get working is the framebuffer console (so I get something better than 80×25), and the infrared. Nothing very high on the agenda, though :)

I’ve detailed the installation instructions here, on my kcore.org website.

Sade linked me to this nice ebook by Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere. Unfortunately, you need Adobe Digital Editions for it, which only exists for Windows and Mac. Since she’s a Linux user, that one didn’t really fly with her.

So, to get that thing to work, here’s a very low-tech way of doing it:

1. Install Digital Editions on a supported OS (I used Mac OS)
2. Download/open the ebook’s ebx.etd file
3. Let Digital Editions open, download and authenticate the file
4. Print to PDF 40 pages (the damn thing won’t let you print more)
5. Close the digital Editions app
6. Delete (in my case) the ~/Documents/Digital Editions directory
8. Reload the webpage
9. Goto step 2

Repeating this until you have the entire ebook in PDF’s for easy reading at home, under your favourite OS / device! ;)

Here’s a short how-to to get the iodine dns tunnel working on your Mac.

In this short howto, I’ll assume you’ll be using a linux server to act as your gateway to the world. I’ll also assume you’ve read the iodine documentation and setup your DNS accordingly. For my example, I’ll be using a (nonexistant) DynDNS.org static DNS entry, iodine.rulestheworld.tld. I’ll also assume that you’ll be using a public internet address of 1.2.3.4, and a private subnet of 10.0.0.1.

1. Install the tun/tap driver for Mac OS X. Easy as doing *click* *click* done! :p
2. Next, install iodine on your Mac. Easy as download, extract, and typing make; make install
3. Now, install iodine on your linux box. It’s included in the package repositories of the usual suspects, for instance debian: apt-get install iodine.

   Start it (or configure it to use) with:
   iodined -P <password> <unused private IP> <dns name>
   or in our example:
   iodined -P mypass 10.0.0.1 iodine.rulestheworld.tld

   This should return the following:

   Opened dns0
   Setting IP of dns0 to 10.0.0.1
   Setting MTU of dns0 to 1024
   Opened UDP socket
   Listening to dns for domain iodine.rulestheworld.tld

4. Configure your linux box for IP forwarding: sysctl -e net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
(and add this to your /etc/sysctl.conf file), and configuring your firewall (iptables) for masquerading:
   iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.0.0.0/255.255.255.0 -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
5. Next, download NStun.sh, a very handy script that does all the hard work of changing the routes and so on :p

   You’ll want to change the script: change the first lines as the script reads, and lower, change the
   

   NS=`grep nameserver /etc/resolv.conf|head -1|awk ‘{print $2}’`

   line to read

   NS=”62.213.207.197″

Now, start NStun.sh on your Mac, and surf away! (well, slowly, but freely, atleast!)