[Update 2] We’ve known for a while now that major ISPs in Canada have been utilizing traffic shaping technology to throttle the transfer speeds of certain types of traffic. Rogers Hi-Speed and Bell Sympatico customers who use Bittorrent to transfer files know all too well. It’s for this reason that some consumers have been switching to smaller independent ISPs like TekSavvy. While it isn’t the main reason, I’d be lying if I told you it didn’t play a role in my decision to switch providers.
Well, if Bell is allowed to get away with it, looks like the honeymoon may be over. News broke yesterday in major news outlets, technology blogs and internet forums that Bell Canada has been traffic shaping the wholesale internet connections they provide to competing DSL ISPs who rely on Bell’s infrastructure to provide their service. That’s right, Bell is dictating their competitor’s terms of service. The worst part about it is Bell failed to notify any of their wholesale ISP customers that they were going to do it. (more…)
March 26th, 2008 at 04:06pm
madgunde
[Update 2] So I recently attempted to re-apply the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Combo update to my MacBook Pro in the hopes that it would fix an annoying little bug that is preventing the contents of my Desktop folder to get dynamically updated. To my surprise, when I went to select my boot volume to install on, the Installer wouldn’t let me continue stating:
“You cannot install Mac OS X Update Combined on this volume. This volume does not meet the requirements for this update.”
At first I thought my OS installation was corrupted, but before I reached for my Leopard install DVD to do a clean install I decided to investigate whether one of the recent Apple software updates may have caused the problem. Read on to see the results of my investigation.
Continue Reading March 25th, 2008 at 12:28pm
madgunde
[Update 1] Well that couldn’t have gone any smoother. For those that have just tuned in, we switched Internet service providers this morning. I’m happy to report that the migration went smoothly and without issue. I’m actually quite pleasantly surprised that this is the case, since I haven’t had the best of luck in the past when it came to dealing with ISPs. They almost NEVER deliver what they promise. The fact that I was dealing with two ISPs in order to make it all happen borders on a miracle.
Bell was scheduled to suspend my Sympatico DSL service at midnight, so I decided I’d stay up and wait for it to happen so I could connect my new Thomson SpeedTouch 516 DSL modem up in preparation for my TekSavvy DSL service to be activated in the morning. So I figured I’d get some last minute email and websurfing in and then settled into playing Call of Duty 4 online on my PS3. In other words, what I do almost every night. My plan was to play until I lost connection, then install the new DSL modem, then go to bed and reconfigure my router to connect to Teksavvy in the morning. (more…)
March 18th, 2008 at 10:50am
madgunde
Please note that Art Of Geek will be unavailable for a good part of Tuesday, March 18 due to an ISP migration. We’re migrating from Bell Sympatico to Teksavvy DSL. Unfortunately, there’s no way to be sure about how long the outage will be, but trust me when I say I’m going to try and make it as short as possible.
See you all when we’re back up and with a static IP address. No more short bouts of downtime because I have to reset my router. Yippee!
March 17th, 2008 at 11:23pm
madgunde
Mention “Lode Runner” to any veteran computer user and chances are they’ll not only be familiar with it, but they’ll have fond memories of playing it. It’s been remade so many times and for so many platforms over the years that many younger gamers are probably familiar with it as well. It was after the topic came up with a friend and fellow computer veteran earlier today that I became determined to find a version of the game I could run on my Mac. While there are one or more Lode Runner-like shareware games for Mac OS X, it became clear to me after a bit of searching that if I wanted the original Lode Runner, I was going to have to run it under emulation.
The world of emulators on the Mac is very diverse. I had a lot of choices available to me of which version of Lode Runner I wanted to run, on which computing platform and using which emulator. I ended up choosing the original Lode Runner game running on the Apple II, and rather than using a traditional emulator, I decided to go with one that came packaged as a Dashboard widget, that way I could quickly jump into a game of Lode Runner no matter what I was in the middle of doing, and just as quickly put it away when I’ve had my fill. Following these step by step instructions, you’ll be able to get your Lode Runner on too. (more…)
March 3rd, 2008 at 07:18pm
madgunde
OK, here’s a hint I think a lot of you Windows switchers are going to love, and I’m sure more than a few long time Mac users will appreciate as well. I love Safari. I think it’s the best web browser out there. My primary Mac is a MacBook Pro that I use in a dual monitor setup at home, connected to a 24″ widescreen monitor, and on it’s own when at work or on the road. I use Safari all the time, no matter where I’m at, and one thing that can be annoying is having to manually move/resize my Safari window whenever I switch between single and dual monitor set up. Since Safari is always running, this is something I have to deal with at least twice a day.
For the longest time I got around this by using an AppleScript, which I placed inside my ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari/ folder (where “~” represents my home folder). Then whenever I’d switch monitor setups, I’d simply run that script from within Safari via the AppleScript menu on the top right side of the menubar. The AppleScript menu can be enabled using AppleScript Utility located in the /Applications/AppleScript/ folder. (more…)
February 29th, 2008 at 10:36pm
madgunde
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