Web 2.0 idea generator

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Mr. Angry and Mrs. Calm

This is a really neat optical illusion; I have no idea why it works, but it does:

Mr. Angry and Mrs. Calm

Where are the paper towels?

There's really nothing special about the title; I really want to know the answer to the question "Where are the paper towels?" The answer, of course, is "in the hall closet where the food is."

Video Gaming + Rubik's Cube = Nerd Heaven

Two great tastes that taste great together:

Camera Fun

So I broke down and violated the guy code today: I read the instructions that came with our camera, to see if I couldn't find a way to get some better pictures out of it than we were getting. The problem mainly revolved around the flash and the anti-redeye feature. When taking pictures of the baby, he would get a really freaked-out look on his face when the anti-redeye light flashed, and when the acutal flash unit went off. So, the first thing I wanted to figure out was how to turn those off. Then, of course, I needed to figure out how to mess with the exposure so I could compensate for the lack of flash, and still get some sharpness in the pictures, babies not being the type to sit still.

What I found was there was a vast improvement between the washed-out, flash-induced big-head-shadow pictures, and the ones where I set the exposure myself. Sure, some of the pictures were too dark, some were too blurry, etc., but I feel like I'm more involved with the creative process of photography by adjusting those settings instead of just pointing and shooting.

Here's a picture with the flash and autoexposure, shutter speed, etc.:

And here's one without the flash:



It's kind of blurry, but there's a definite improvement in the quality of the light.

Finally, here's one with better focus where I was able to take advantage of the skylight almost directly overhead:



The first picture, incidentally, is one that I took after fiddling around some more with the full-manual mode settings.

I'm excited about getting back into photography a bit, as I always enjoyed it when I did it in the past. The great thing about digital photography is the instant-gratification factor, and the fact that you can not only set aperture and shutter speed, but you can even set the ISO, do color balancing, and all kinds of other things that were so much more difficult to do with a film camera.

Dell TrueMobile 2300 bridge configuration

Recently I ordered a second Dell TrueMobile 2300 wireless router so that I could use it and my exisiting one as a wireless bridge between my main home network and a couple of computers in the garage. Running cable out there would have meant crawling into the deep, dark recesses under the house and mingling with the wide variety of spiders under there, so clearly that was not an option. I was able to find a used 2300 on eBay for about $35 US, which is a pretty good deal considering I paid $80 for my first one new. I knew it was possible to bridge two 2300s the way I wanted to, but I didn't know it would be so difficult, and the Dell documentation was almost useless. The problem is that it is missing a few steps, and Dell won't provide any support for bridging because it is an advanced feature of the router, and they don't support the advanced features. I did end up finding the answers I needed at Dell's web site, but it was in the Dell Community Forum, but not through google.

So, the FAQ is nearly useless, and isn't anything more than you get in the manual when you buy the router, but it's a start. The forums are where you really get the information you need from other people in the same boat. For some reason, though, none of the forum threads are indexed by google. I found this out after days of trying to find answers through google, and only on a whim tried looking at the forums, and that's where I found the best information.

Anyhow, based on reading the documentation, some newsgroup postings, and postings in the forum, I finally was able to get my two 2300s configured as a bridge, and it's working great. Following are some key points to keep in mind; note that this is not an exhaustive list of the steps to get bridging working. Instead, they are the things that are likely to trip you up even if you follow the Dell documentation.

1. Encryption: Works if you use WEP, and the key is hex. I tried WPA with an ASCII key, which didn't work, and then I found some postings in newsgroups that said you have to use WEP and a hex key. I tried it, and it worked that way, and I never did try it with WPA and a hex key. I was happy just to get it working with encryption at all, and didn't want to hassle with another couple hours of trying to get things going again if WPA didn't work even with a hex key. I know WEP has been proven insecure, and I'd like to go back and attempt to get WPA working with the bridge, but from everything I've read so far, it doesn't work. If this is a deal breaker for you, then you can't use the 2300s for bridging.

2. Do a Reboot (power cycle) after setting things up; do not use the Reset button. Often I found myself stuck when the second unit (the one in Access Point mode) was no longer acting as a DHCP server, and the computer I connected to it to configure it couldn't connect to the network at all after releasing its IP address. For a long time I would hit the reset button on the back of the unit and start over, until finally I read some newsgroup postings where people had power cycled after changing all the settings, and things worked for them afterward. Turns out that helped me too, and it saved me from having to reenter all the settings like you do when you do a full reset.

3. Hide my wireless network should be checked: this is the setting that disallows the router from broadcasting your SSID to your neighbors. It won't keep out anybody who is determined to get in, but it will keep your neighbors from seeing your wireless network name and at least keep them from trying to connect to your net.

4. Limit to wireless G: this is another one of those simple steps that may help to keep some users out that you don't want in. If you limit the wireless connections to only wireless G, you eliminate the possibility of anybody connecting who just has wireless B. Again, this won't keep out someone who actively is trying to access your network, but if you have a choice between using both B and G or just G, and you only have G devices in your network, you may as well allow only G connections.

5. Set IP of second (Access Point/Bridge) unit manually to 2.2 so no conflict with primary unit. Actually you *should* be able to just allow DHCP to set the IP address of the second router, but I chose to just go ahead and reserve 192.168.2.2 for the second unit in the first unit's reservations table, and then manually set the second unit's IP, mask, and gateway (192.168.2.1, the first unit) manually. This is one of those things that was pretty obvious once I figured it out, but is not mentioned anywhere in the documentation that I could see. Seems like a pretty important step to have left out.

6. Turn off DHCP service on the second unit, and make sure it's almost the last thing you do in the setup process. You don't want the second unit acting as a DHCP server in conflict with the first one (it's not necessary), but once you turn off DHCP, you need to know that the computer attached to the second unit for configuration no longer will be able to get an IP address. It's easy enough to go in and set the IP address of the computer, but it's a pain, and I found that it's just easier to wait until you are almost done to turn off DHCP on the second unit.

7. Router password: if you have reset the second unit at any time, or have never set the password to begin with, make sure to change it. It is trivial to determine the make of a wireless router, and all manufacturers have a default password for their units, so you really need to change yours as soon as possible.

That's about it. Again, these are some highlights that aren't mentioned in the Dell documentation. If you can get through the steps in the FAQ at Dell's site, and still are stuck, try the above steps to see if you can get things working.