Tomorrow I shall go for reservist for one week. Refresher training is over, better than previous years I must say. Good start.

My fish tank: all fishes died, so I cleaned it up a bit, changed the canister filter to Eheim ecco series. Added in 2 yamato shrimps, 1 snail (somehow 2 other snails popped up along the way, bring the total to 3), 6 zebra danios, 3 platies (all 3 died).

Lots of deaths in my tank these 6, 7 years. I really miss my 2 big catfishes and all the different sizes of clown loaches.

I think I will add in at least 10 harlequins or guppies and a lot more plants. After the plants have settled in, I’ll add in more yamato shrimps. They are pretty cute to observe.

I have a smaller spare tank. Still thinking of how to set it up to keep shrimps. Possibly the red crystal shrimps. Or maybe I’ll have a dwarf puffer. Definitely a species tank with snails to keep the algae off. But puffer don’t work well with snails. Hard to feed as well. Oh well, red crystal shrimps then. Hahaha

Please be informed that the speedtouch ST536 from Singnet is a router and adsl modem rolled into one. It is not the same as starhub’s cable modem. It is not just a modem where you plug it to the WAN/INTERNET port of your home consumer router. Buy another adsl/2+ modem (purely just a modem) and do your singnet configuration like PPPoE/A VCI = 100, VPI = 0, username and password if you feel the below suggestions are too much of a hassle.

You have to either disable the router in Speedtouch by putting it into bridge mode, or enabling bridge mode on your router of choice (subjected to availability of this feature on your router), or disable DHCP at your router, set your router IP address to be in the range of the speedtouch dhcp range and plug it to the LAN/switch ports.

Choice 1: Disable router in speedtouch ST536. Basically do it in command line. Apparently singnet GUI does not have such an option, not sure with further firmware updates, but as of now, command line. Is a bitch to do for some, daunting for some. Burning an ISO to do is another method, but I’m not sure if singnet permits. Connect from speedtouch to your router WAN/INTERNET port. This will be the best method in my opinion as you can freely configure your router knowing the speedtouch is acting just as a modem and not router/gateway, applying firewall rules, port forwarding and QoS with ease.

Choice 2: Enabling bridge mode on router. For my Dlink DGL 4300 router, I can configure the WAN/INTERNET port to bridge mode, therefore no configurations to be done on the speedtouch router. Everything else applies and you can set DMZ of the router on speedtouch, or simply turn off the firewall on the speedtouch so that during port forwarding, you do not have to do it on your router and again on speedtouch. This will eliminate problems especially during port forwarding in future. A good method to use if you do not want to change the firmware of your speedtouch. A good thing anyway, in case singnet gets buggy during support, saying that personal upgrade of firmware is not permitted or stupid stuffs like this. QoS, port forwarding might be a problem, subjected to the bridge mode capabilities of the router.

Choice 3: Another method, basically using your router (also switch rolled into one) as a wireless access point. You connect the speedtouch Ethernet to any of the LAN/switch ports of your router, not to the WAN/INTERNET port. The main drive was that speedtouch ST536 do not have wireless capabilities, therefore requiring the router to act as a wireless access point and switch. Set the router IP to be in the range of the DHCP scope of speedtouch, default 192.168.1.100 /24. So choose something like 192.168.1.140 for your router in case of IP conflict, leaving about 40 new devices to connect and get IP addresses from the DHCP of speedtouch, not your router. Applying QoS, firewall rules and port forwarding of your router will be a problem, basically you are relying on the QoS, firewall and port forwarding of speedtouch. Used when there is no bridge mode option on the WAN/INTERNET port for your router. Few people tinkers with their QoS, firewall and port forwarding anyway, so it’s a viable method.

Conclusion: In order of personal preference, choice 1 then 2 then 3. Good luck. I’m sticking to cable. Call up singnet for more help, if they render any. Haha

There’s gonna be an hour long bleach episode next week. yay!

And I just broke my own record long working hours. 17 and a half hours.

Bought the Asus EEE pc 701, cheapest version for SGD $398. Bragging rights: My first ultra low voltage processor machine (celeron M ULV) and my first machine with solid state harddisk (SSD).

Woo!!! So basically I’m using it to check my emails in school that’s all. Can’t expect much out of this machine, probably I can use it to configure some of the network devices since it’s so portable and basically I just need to punch in some command lines to configure.

Battery life: Windows XP has a shorter battery life than the Linux OS it came with. Approx 2 hours now with constant installations going on. Going to test it out in the days to come with my usage pattern of just plain surfing the web and turning down the LCD brightness and tweaking the wifi tranmission power. I should expect it to be longer than 2 hours with Windows XP. The power adapter is small enough to bring around, it’s only as big as my compact printer AC adapter.

Why not use the linux os? Because I can’t get the thing to work with WPA2/WPA wireless encryption. Don’t ask me why as I don’t intend to find out. With Windows XP I can also use the Maxmobile usb modem after installing the drivers (not sure if they had a linux driver or not), but I do not have that service, basically just an option.

Various tweaks: This thing comes with 512 MB of DDR 2 ram (5-5-5-5), but I’m going to upgrade to 1 GB (for around SGD $35). I disabled paging or virtual memory to save the puny 4GB SSD space. Windows XP with the various patches is big. blardy hell. Thinking of using nLite to shrink it, but at the moment it’s managable since there’s a SD card reader so I can just buy a 4GB SD card (for around SGD $35 possibly) and permanently put it there. Instant 8GB of flash memory hahaha. Problem with no paging and 512 MB ram is that some software might not work when it runs out of memory. First encounter is with Windows Live Messenger installer. Don’t ask me why it takes up so much memory space, it’s just dumb shit. But with 1GB ram, I should be safe, since I’m currently running 2GB with vista without paging.

It’s not the fastest (not some dual core or quad/octo core shit), but it works. And works damn well. Now I’m really striving to get ultra low voltage processors for my next laptop (Thinkpad x300 / X61s / Sony TZ, damn expensive). For now, this works well. Still in the midst of tweaking it to install programs that I need and removing those that I don’t.

I should get an external usb mouse for it, the trackpad button sucks. Good buy. Probably they are clearing stock now to make way for the model 900/1000 with bigger LCD screen and more expensive price tag.

It’s interesting how MediaCorp or MDA (media development authority of Singapore) allows dual channel korean drama to be aired on national television channels. Meaning you can hear audio in korean language or chinese (voice over). But yet they censor away hokkien in taiwanese variety shows. It’s discrimination. Pui ~

I think that’s the name of the place. Can’t remember. Went out to drink for the first time with my supervisor and gang. Dude from UK dropped by Singapore that’s why. As most friends probably knew, I don’t drink. After 2 pines of beer… Carlsberg, now I’m a bit sleepy. Nonetheless, I’m going to watch episode 16 of 太王四神记 (Tae Wang Sa Shin Gi).

Two pretty girls from the drama.

Lee Ji Ah:

Lee Da Hee: