December 4, 2003 Archives

Some recent retail therapy ...

Nick Cave: No More Shall We Part
Daniel Lanois: Shine
Kruder & Dorfmeister: Conversions
Once Were Warriors
Arvo Pärt: Te Deum
Underworld: A Hundred Days Off
Microsoft: Age of Mythology (Mac)
Future 3: Like...
Kenneth Koch: One Train
Capucon & Capucon: Duos for Violin and Cello

The Daniel Lanois CD is really growing on me. I just got Underworld and Nick Cave yesterday, but I think they'll both get steady rotation in iTunes as well. The rest I haven't really had a chance to listen to yet. (Or to watch the movie, play the game or read the book).

Oh, I also got sufficiently tired of the miserable transfer speeds of 802.11b to buy a 802.11g access point (a Linksys WRT54G). But I haven't unpacked it yet ...

Speakeasy were supposed to upgrade my DSL to 1.5/768 (from half the outgoing speed) yesterday. Same monthly price, apparently they are just improving their service level. Very cool. It was down for a few minutes today but it's still running at the old speed. I should try resetting the modem/router gadget.

I got T-Mobile to enable GPRS ("T-Mobile Internet") on my phone the other day. It works alright with the t68i and the PowerBook. I used Ross Barkman's "modem scripts". With the right script with the magic "use GPRS" commands I just had to choose the correct "CID" and enter "internet2.voicestream.com" as the phone number. I also setup a "Data account" on the phone; I'm not sure I actually needed to do that.

A few odd things:

• The T68i (or OS X) can't figure out to have both AddressBook.app and the PPP connection connected to the phone at the same time.
• I get a 10.x IP address, having a public address would be slightly more convenient.
• The latency is about a billion years. Alright, that's not true but it's around or more than a second. Not fun for interactive connections (understatement meaning: that really fucking sucks).
• I haven't tested the transfer speed, but it seems better than normal GSM data (9600). I was mostly going to use it for interactive connections I don't really mind whatever it is.

I can't figure out if I could use the $10 "T-Zones" service rather than their "Internet" service which is more. I only need web access and ssh. Can they really tell if you use the phone as a modem rather than just use data from the phone? That was what the customer service person told me.