ICSI Netalyzr comparison of SiADSL and Tiscali

I'm in the process of migrating from SiADSL to Tiscali for my home ADSL connection. I have been very happy with SiADSL but I need more bandwidth in upload for video conferences, i.e. Google+ Hangouts with extras. The increase from 7Mb/512kb to 20Mb/1Mb should make a significant difference.


I heard from Michele that Tiscali blocks some ports so I wanted to have a record of the differences between the two provider in case I had problems. Netalyzr to the rescue! It can run as a Java Applet or as a command line client for the more security conscious. It takes several minutes to run and tests everything I ever knew about and then some...

So, what changes between Tiscali and SiADSL?

Tiscali blocks some TCP and UDP ports which I consider a feature, not a problem, if you have Windows machines on the network:

• Direct TCP access to remote RPC servers (port 135) is blocked. This is probably for security reasons, as this protocol is generally not designed for use outside the local network.
• Direct UDP access to remote NetBIOS NS servers (port 137) is blocked.
• Direct UDP access to remote IKE key exchange servers (port 500) is blocked.

I was surprised to notice this potential problem though after I moved to Tiscali:

I passed from PPPoE which uses a max MTU of 1492 to PPPoA which supports 1500 and I had forgotten to update the max MTU on my border router. I tried to leave the max MTU at 1492 but quickly had problems so I increased it to 1500 and it has been working like a charm since. I would have blamed my connectivity problems at Tiscali unless Netalyzr found the problem for me.

I'm also pleased to see that this warning I had on the SiADSL connection is gone with Tiscali:

Exactly the behavior I have seen over the last year(s). Uploads with Picasa killed internet access and video conferencing with many participants is "impossible" even with no other traffic.

Finally an anti fog solution for helmets and glasses that works!

I use my motorcycle every single day of the year as long as the roads are not icy which is 360+ days a year in Milan :-)

The only problem I have is that my helmet and glasses fog up when it get's very foggy or cold. I have tried everything, but so far the only thing that has worked is keeping the visor up.  Not fun when it's below zero...

EICMA changed that when I found the Zeibe.es stand. I got a sample of their helmet anti fog product which worked very well on my glasses so I ordered a set of their long lasting anti-fog treatment. It worked perfectly today on my helmet visor and glasses. I don't know if it will last the advertised two weeks, but I'm very happy so far.

It really does work as well as the demo video shows:

How to fix Roomba 500 series battery problem

My Roomba 520 has been out of service for more than six months. The wheels worked fine but the internal brushes didn't turn around anymore. I picked it apart and cleaned the internal gears and engine several times which made it work for a while but I finally gave in and bought a new engine.

Surprise, surprise, it refused to start even after charging it for more than one day. I always got this never ending loop:

It successfully undocked from its docking station but it just reset whenever it tried to start the brushes which led me to believe it was a low battery problem.

Mixing various instructions I found on the internet, I ended up with this procedure which seems to fix the problem:

1. Connect the Roomba and charge it completely (until the light turns  green)
2. Disconnect the Roomba from the charger (the light turns off)
3. Turn on the Roomba by pressing the Start button once (the light turns green)
4. Press and hold down the Dock and Spot buttons for 15 seconds to reset the Roomba (the Roomba turns off)
5. Release the Dock and Spot buttons (the Romba plays the 5 tone startup sound)
6. Go back to step 1

I have repeated the procedure 5 times so far and the run time keeps increasing. 

The Nabaztag is dead, long live the Nabaztag

My Nabaztag has been collecting dust on my desk since the online service powering it died this summer.

The first meeting of GTUG Milano was the perfect excuse to have some fun and use the Nabaztag for something useful. Using this Nabaztag disassembly video it didn't take long to pick it apart and figure out which wires controlled what.

Thomas took care of all the electronics work and I added some lines of code to the Android ADK demo code to create a proof of concept Android ADK powered rabbit.

  

Take it for what it is; a proof of concept that just controls the two ears, 3 multi color LEDs and does some text to speech. It does not do any of the useful things that the Nabaztag did like reading mails, rss feeds, showing weather information etc.

It could though, as all of it is easy to implement on Android. Which is why it's time to make it do something useful :-)

I've decided to replace the Android ADK Demo Shield with a Arduino Mega ADK which is smaller an "only" costs 59 euro. It will be the interface with the Nabaztag hardware and control the ears and LEDs initially. The rest of the work will be done by an Android device.

To be perfectly honest, I probably got a bit carried way when ordering the Arduino Mega ADK. I got some LEDs with the idea of organizing them in a grid to show basic symbols, but then I found the 32x16 LED matrix and couldn't resist it. The idea of replacing the 3 multi colored LEDs found in the Nabaztag with something that can display information was just too much to resist. I think it should fit in the almost empty Nabaztag shell but I may have to do some rabbit surgery if it doesn't.

Add the power of cellbots and we have a pretty powerful rabbit on our hands. Let's just hope it does not turn Evil...

WhyMCA Mobile Developer Conference tomorrow and Saturday in Milano

The free WhyMCA Mobile Developer Conference looks very interesting with tracks for Android, iPhone, Windows Phone 7, cross platform development etc. There will be a parallel Mobile Hackathon if you want to show of your coding skillz.

Plenty of interesting topics on the agenda.

Friday 13th

Disaster struck Friday:

You can say what you want about the dreaded BSOD on Windows but at least it tells you something.

Murphy's law struck at the worst possible time (of course) as I had just moved a lot of photos from my digital camera to my harddisk for editing and I hadn't uploaded them to Picasa yet. 

PhotoRec to the rescue, again, as it was able to recover all photos from the memory card. I've used in the past when my Compact Flash card got corrupted. PhotoRec managed to recover all the pictures including old, partially overwritten, photos. It's free, it works and runs on just about every OS there is. What more can you ask for?

I've got almost all my data in the cloud so I didn't loose much but I did loose some Android code I was playing around with. Time Machine would have kept my data safe but I cannot use it on my work machine so I put together a quick script using rsync to backup my personal directory yesterday. Let's see if it works on Friday January 13th 2012...

Challenge: a new dinner recipe each week

I'm trying a less extreme version of Matt Cutts' 30 day challenge for the next few months; at least one new dinner recipe each week.

Why?

I have a set of dinners recipes that I really like so I end up making them over and over again instead of trying something new. It's not a problem from a nutritional point of view due to the variety (meat, fish, pasta, salads, etc) but it gets boring after a while. The kids are old enough to try something new and tell what they think my experiments so why not?

What?
Try at least one new recipe each week.

The first experiment is: Meatballs in tomato sauce (automatically translated so be careful...) with spinach as a side dish: