Home network issues

Update: I was noticing a network slowdown a couple of hours after rebooting the router and so I tried setting the number of ports from 512 to 2048. I've got a lot of computers on this network and the kids are playing games all the time. This seems to have fixed the slowdown problem.

I was having big problems at home with network speed and latency so I tried a few things:

• Set the time server on my router to something reliable (time.apple.com).
• Set the router to use the OpenDNS servers for DNS.
• Set the router to reboot at a certain time each day.

I'm not sure I need to reboot the router, but I'll give it a try and see if that helps keep things running smoothly.

I realize that OpenDNS isn't really going to do much for line speed, but I think it might be having an effect on my initial latency, if I'm understanding how these calls are working. My latency was around 250 ms before the change, and 41 ms afterward. I'll let you know if my BF2MC scores go up as a result.

This is looking pretty good!

JWZ cracks me up..

He totally nails the headline on this one.

Second Life - Visual Studio Island

Did you know there was a Visual Studio Island in Second Life? Well, I didn't. I just visited and took a picture of the sign:



For those in Second Life, this link, should get you there.

Poll: What game machine are you using most often?

I added a poll on my right nav.

Current question: What game machine are you using most often?

I'll leave it up for a few weeks and see how it does. I'm really interested in finding out the answer to this. Leave a comment here if I don't have your machine of choice listed.

Useless, but cool

Get this widget!

WebTrends 2007 Map of the Web 2.0

I had a ZD poster like this on my wall in 1995. (I wish I still had that.) Anyway, these are a ton of fun to look at. They even sell it as a poster.

Web Trend Map 2007 Version 2.0
We have done it before: The 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective. We have done it again and better. Upon popular demand here is iA's next Web Trend Map:

Via Valleywag.

How to enable iPhone syncing with Entourage

Andy Ruff dropped me a note today with a link to a new Apple page that describes syncing an iPhone with Entourage via iSync. Note that this works for any iPod that supports iSync also.

How to enable Entourage syncing to iPhone
Microsoft Entourage 2004 is one of the applications on a Mac that you can sync contacts and calendars with iPhone.

Entourage contact and calendar syncing requires the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.5 Update, accessible here. or you can use the Microsoft AutoUpdate application.

The Entourage MVPs have more information here.

Finally, last year I did a video for Sync Services in Entourage that you might find useful. The UI for iTunes is now different, but you'll get the idea:


Video: Sync Services in Entourage

Resized Videos

I decided to resize my video windows from 425 x 350 to 200 x 165. I think they look better when they're a little less obtrusive. I need to start doing more videos of my own. Maybe I'll shoot some this weekend.

Internet Crash :)

Found this on Technorati. Pretty funny.

Tech Editing

In my 3 years with Microsoft Press (1999-2003), I was technical editor for a number of really good, interesting books. I had an old web page that I kept this list of books on, but I might have to get rid of that site soon, so I thought I would store at least a screen shot of them on my blog:

Numfar

I can't believe that I've never seen this before. Hmm.



via JWZ

I found the country...

I ended up taking a really long hot ride yesterday afternoon, but it was a blast. I managed to find the country, which is great because it's so much cooler than city riding. This route was about 118 miles, according to the GPS. Somehow I ended up putting about 150 miles on the bike yesterday, so I'm not sure what the difference was.



I found some country roads west of Orlando. They were pretty empty, and even the smaller roads are in really good shape for motorcycle riding. I should have taken some photos, but I was having a Zen experience (probably due to the heat stroke) and so I didn't bother. I will some other time though. It was really interesting to see the variation in terrain in Florida. I went through some really mossy woods, I found some hills and curves, and I went over some pretty flat scrub. The lakes are nice and I saw quite a bit of cattle between Haines City and Kissimmee.



My next long ride is probably going to be a loop around A1A (Daytona and Cocoa Beach). I'll definitely try to get some pictures from that.

Twitters on your blog...

I just added my Twitter content to my blog home page. You can get the code from Twitter here.

Moving my blog again...

I'm going to try this without too much fuss. I've decided to change blogging hosts. My bufferoverrun.net domain now points to http://brianjo.blogspot.com. My RSS feed on FeedBurner is the same (a redirect from http://rss.bufferoverrun.net), but it's updated from this site's feed.

My photos stay the same, so this is really no big deal. I just got tired of jumping through hoops to edit from the different odd machines that I use every day. I'm hoping that this will make it easier blog more regularly.

It did cross my mind to just go with twitter as my blog full time, and while that's fun idea, it's not really too practical. :)

So here's a recap of blog addresses:

Blog Home: http://bufferoverrun.net
RSS Feed: http://rss.bufferoverrun.net
Photos: http://photos.bufferoverrun.net

We'll just see how long this one lasts.

The Simpsons Movie promo set

The Simpsons Movie promo set
Originally uploaded by brianjo

This is a big prop at the theater in Downtown Disney. The kids loved it. (I'm really using this post to test the Flickr connection to my Blogger blog.)