Lee.org

It’s so easy… once you know how!

In the image above, my laptop computer is running everything. Screen number 2 is plugged into my laptop. Screen number 3 is on my desktop computer. I made another “display” on my laptop and I’m showing that 3rd display using Teamviewer!

How I made it work: On the laptop, go to Windows 7’s “Screen Resolution” screen. Click “Detect” and Windows 7 will claim “Another display not detected”. That’s ok. On the properties for that display, under Multiple Displays click “try to connect anyway on: VGA”, and click Apply. Then under Multiple Displays click “Extend desktop to this display” and click Apply. You are done on your laptop!

Now go to your desktop computer. Connect to your laptop with Teamviewer (this will probably work with other VNC-like programs). Choose to view the 3rd display.

Tada! You now have multiple monitors on one computer, with the help of your other computers.

I have also used Synergy to connect two nearby computers to one another. You can use both Synergy and this Teamviewer trick at the same time. The mouse movements get a bit confusing but it works!

Short form: I changed from the excellent Tomato firmware on my Linksys WRT54GL to Toastman Tomato in order to get IP based bandwidth monitoring. It works great!

Long form:
I’ve been using the excellent Tomato firmware on my Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 router since 2009. It was easy to install and has worked flawlessly. My router now provides service for about 30 devices, many are not under my direct control. I wanted to get IP bandwidth stats so I could tell, on those infrequent occasions when the internet was running slow, who was sucking up all the bandwidth.

I looked around a lot, comparing the open source router firmware: DD-WRT, OpenWRT, TomatoUSB, EasyTomato, Shibby, Toastman, pfsense,

I bought a new router, a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v 1.10. I installed OpenWRT (version: Attitude Adjustment 12.09-beta2). I had a little trouble with it. I tried installing the bandwidthd mod and I had a little trouble with the wifi on the router locking up every few minutes.

How I installed OpenWRT

After spending an hour reading the manuals, installation was way simple
* fetch the firmware mentioned in the hardware-specific documentation
* install the firmware by “upgrading” the router from Tomato. 3 clicks total
* tada, the router mostly “just works”
* enable wifi (the documentation clearly mentions that wifi is turned off by default), 3 clicks “enable wifi on the LAN, on the WAN, Submit!)
* tada, the router is totally working

To install Bandwidthd
* I tried using the web interface something wasn’t working right. I tried to jump-start Bandwidthd from within the ssh interfce but nuthun doin. So I uninstalled it from the web interface and the couple commands mentioned at the top of the Bandwidthd documentation from the ssh interface
* I then went to http://192.168.1.1/bandwidthd and darn if stats weren’t magically showing up!
* I noticed there was trouble with my wifi dying unexpectedly. I uninstalled bandwidthd and the wifi seemed more stable. I got bored trying to fiddle with it and switched to trying to install another router firmware. I’m glad I now had a backup router in the TP-Link, just in case.

Having given up on OpenWRT, I looked to mods of the Tomato firmware. Here’s what I found:
* Tomato hasn’t been updated since around 2009
* TomatoUSB hasn’t been updated since around 2011. And it doesn’t have the bandwidth monitoring I wanted anyway
* pfsense is far too complex to install and run
* Toastman Tomato looked good so I gave it a go

Having Temporarily Given Up On OpenWRT, I Tried Toastman Tomato

Toastman Tomato has the built in IP bandwidth stats I was looking for. It was confusing trying to find the right firmware to download. But I found Toastman answering my exact question online, “I have a WRT54GL v1.1, what version do I want to install?” His answer, “You have a Linksys WRT54GL which does not have a USB port. It is a MIPSR1 router. You should load 1.28.7626.1 BETA. Use the std build. 7628.1 is also good, but has a more complex interface for setting up VLAN’s, which you probably don’t need.” I took that and went to Toastman’s 4shared.com site and downloaded tomato-WRT54G_WRT54GL-1.28.7634Toastman-IPT-ND-Std.bin. I upgraded my router with that firmware and BAM!! It all just worked! It even imported all my old Tomato settings!

Here is a local copy of the Toastman Tomato that I use.
http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/tomato-WRT54G_WRT54GL-1.28.7634Toastman-IPT-ND-Std.bin

This open source tool by  Daniel Kinzler will convert CSV spreadsheet files into Mediawiki tables or HTML tables seamlessly.    The program doesn’t hang on to your your data, it just munges it and spits it out. It works great.  He has it hosted on his site  and now I have it hosted here.

Run  CSV2Mediawiki on Lee.org

(nerd alert)
Ugh. I clicked the shiny “upgrade” button trying  to upgrade from Mediawiki 1.16.something to 1.19.something on one of my private wikis. Now I’m stuck because apparently the <Poem> tag has broken, I can’t fix the problem, I can’t go back to Mediawiki 1.16 and… ARRRGH.

There is probably some stupid setting in the stupidly lengthy and cryptic LocalSettings.php that isn’t compatible with something. All I have to do is learn up on all the changes to Mediawiki in the last 3 years to find out what settings have changed, figure out how to integrate that into my setup and… did I mention arrrgh?

This is why (insert witty defeatist linux truism here)

After reinstalling Windows 7, my Bluetooth dongle (a Kensington Model 33348 Bluetooth USB Adapter 2.0) wouldn’t talk to my Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000. I would try to Add the mouse device but Windows did not see it. I browsed around quite a bit. Here is how I finally fixed the problem: (via)

jetpack1976
Junior Member
Enjoys Windows 7 uForums
Join Date
Nov 2010
Posts
2
Re: MS Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 not working
Hi Durden,

Went to another site and found a solution that worked. You might want to try it out.

Go to START icon and type in services.msc and select services.

The dialog box that opens has a long list of stuff but look for BLUETOOTH SUPPORT SERVICE. Double click to open. Make sure it is AUTOMATIC. Go to the LOG tab. Choose THIS ACCOUNT and type in LOCAL SERVICE. A list of password (a 15-dot string) would appear. Delete all the password in the PASSWORD and under CONFIRM. Choose Okay.

It will ask you to restart the service. Once restarted, turn on your bluetooth adaptor again. Put your mouse in pairing mode and add the mouse. It works perfectly!!!

Give it a try and see if it helps.

I’ve been fiddling with my Google Chrome startup screen. The Speed Dial extension for Chrome is good. It looks similar to the standard Google New Tab screen but it lets you customize it. (It drives me crazy that you don’t know with certainty what links will be on the New Tab page).

But I got the sense that Speed Dial was slowing my computer down just a tiny bit. So I switched to a more streamlined startup screen.

I open 4 tabs:
Blank Chrome page
Gmail
Gmail Calendar
Gmail Contacts

There are 3 ways I know of to create a blank tab in Chrome.  I’m still not sure which I like the most:

1. You can set the startup page to be about:blank, but the text will highlight incorrectly when you start typing in the omnibox.
2. Or you can set the home page to be: javascript:(“”)
3. Or you can open a Chrome New Tab page with:  chrome://newtab/

Here is how to set the Chrome startup page

1. Click the wrench
2. Click “Settings”
3. Click “Open a specific page or set of pages.”
4. Start adding new pages!

So what’s up with this?

Is this related to the Facebookification of the internet? No matter, I blog so my friends (and I) know what’s up in my world. Still, it’d be nice if I were super-famous and stuff.

I just installed Sonic.net DSL service. So far, it’s going great. I called Customer Support 3 times to hammer out setting things up and they were always quick to answer, very helpful, and nice.

I’m using an SBGGlobal Siemens SpeedStream 4100 ADSL modem. I thought it did ADSL2+ as well but I was wrong. My modem will go up to 8mbps. I ordered a $65 (inclusive) ADSL2+ modem so I should be up to 20mbps in a week.

AT&T = 5mbps down, 0.5mbps up
Sonic = 7mbps down, 0.8mbps up
Sonic with new ADSL2+ modem = 20 mbps down, [??] mbps up

To set up your service:
* Switch your DSL modem to “Bridged Mode (PPPoE is not used)”
* Set your router to DHCP
* Set your router’s DNS to Sonic’s DNS
* * Primary DNS 208.201.224.11
* * Secondary DNS 208.201.224.33

Update 12-11-11: The new modem showed up today. It was plug and play :-)
The speed was limited at 8mbps so I called support. The technical support reps primary suggestion was that the wiring in my building wasn’t good enough. I plugged the DSL modem into the wall right next to my phone jack but that didn’t help.

Then he tried uncapping the line (telling the DSL modem to go as fast as possible even though it didn’t think the line was good enough) and I’m now getting 16mbps down, 0.8mbps up :-). With the uncapping, maybe everything will suddenly go bad when the humidity climbs or when there are sunspots, but then maybe not. Life is a chance.

I want to write my posts in WordPress and have Google+ display them. It looks like this functionality doesn’t exist. Am I correct?

I want to get excited about G+ but I still can’t find any reason to use it. Oh well.

I submitted this to the Gmail team:

Here is a bug in the new version of Gmail. I don’t know if this was a bug in the previous version.

1) Go to your Gmail contacts list
2) Click the checkbox to the left of a contact’s name, let’s call him “Adam”
3) Scroll down to the next page of contacts
4) Click the checkbox to the left of a contact’s name, let’s call him “Bob”
5) Click the “Email” button near the top of the screen
6) Notice that Bob’s email address is in the To: field but Adam’s is not. :-(