How to change your Mac's Computer Name

I just went and picked up my new Mac, which was kindly replaced by my insurance company after water damage. I used to have a MacBook Air, but after experiencing the lagging performance of the Air when ever I tried to use intense apps such as Lightroom etc... , I decided to get something with a little more grunt.

Happy to say that the Air is actually more expensive than some of the other MacBooks, this is because of the portability factor with the Air. So, since the insurance company offered a replacement at a particular price, the macbook pro that I purchased came about the same price (I had to pay an extra $50).

While I was getting he computer registered on my home network, I noticed that the Mac defaults its' name to a long string of text. So I hunted around to change the name, and surprisingly it was in the spot that I would not have thought to look at:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Select Sharing
3. Update your name 
4. Close the window

Done!

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UBUNTU 10.04 is out

Well you may have seen that Ubuntu 10.04 is out, with all its great features which the Ubuntu's site doesn't mention that well.

This is something interesting, when you type in Ubuntu in google this is the first image that is presented... interesting.



When ubuntu first came out, several years ago, a friend of mine came over to my place with a stack of CDs and gave me my fist copy, it was being handed out at our UNI. My first impressions of the first Ubuntu, was that it wasn't going to last in a heavily crowded distrib scene of Linux.

I've been pleasantly surprised since then of how many people now use Ubuntu over any other distrib.

I use Ubuntu at home for two reasons: 1) as a server, 2) as a media pc.

I'm firing up VMWARE to check out what the latest version has to offer.

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Port Forwarding with NetGear DGN2000

Port forwarding within the DGN2000 can a be two step process if you are looking to customise the rules. DGN2000 comes with a bunch of common ports and services, but if you are looking to stray from the common ports (which is sometimes the best thing to do) then follow these instructions:

First create your own service.

From the left hand side menu click Services, then click on Add Custom Service.

Enter the Name, Type, Port Range (read the help section which is displayed on the right hand side for information on each field)

Click Apply

You can see your custom defined service within the list of services, then once your ready to apply the rules for the service click on Firewall Rules on the left hand side menu.

Click on Add under the Inbound Services section  

Select the Action

Enter the IP of your machine to forward the packets to under Send to LAN Server

Keep the WAN Users to Any

Click on Apply

There you have it, the port has been successfully forwarded to your custom service. 

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Belkin Belkin, I thought your service was good but it turns out your product is shit!

This post is about the problems that I have been having with my Belkin Wireless N Router. 



Last year I purchased a new wireless modem router combo, and decided to go with the the Belkin range purely because it looked good. It had been working perfectly for about 8 months, and then it suddenly started to drop the connection. At first the connection was being dropped occasionally, and I didn't really notice it until I started to review the logs. 


At first I decided to contact my ISP thinking that they were dropping the connection to free up the service to others, they confirmed that it was not them and then asked me to check with my telephone provider. I did this as they had suggested, and I had a technician come out to inspect the line. The technician showed me that it wasn't the line that was causing the issue, but left the diagnostic equipment at my property overnight to collect the data (this was only because I was the last job). After reviewing the diagnostics results I was satisfied that it wasn't the line. 


So, after confirming with my ISP and Telephone Carrier that it wasn't them, I was baffled as to what it could be. I then realised the only other equipment was the modem. I should say at this point that the modem I had prior to purchasing a Belkin was a Netgear modem (no wireless) - which was an ugly white thing. 


I contacted Belkin, which sounded like an overseas call centre, who ran through their check-list and also updated my firmware to the latest firmware. The modem then didn't drop the line at all for about a week, I was quite satisfied with the results. A week later, the connection started to drop out again, except this time it was a lot more frequent than before. The connection was dropping out from being every 1 hour, to 5 mins, to within a minute of being online. 


I was seriously pissed off and contacted Belkin again, the operator went through the same check-list and said that they had to escalate this to a level 2 technician. A couple of days later the technician called me and requested my address, and said that they will be in contact with me. I later realised that they had shipped out a new modem to me, I was really satisfied with the outcome - but a little annoyed that they didn't tell me that they were shipping out a new modem. 

Now with the new modem, the connection has started to drop out AGAIN. Not only that, but it cannot manage multiple users sharing the bandwidth. For example, if my house mate decides to watch a clip on youtube then I will be locked out. I called Belkin again regarding this, and the operator that took the call went through the same check list and said that they had to pass it to level 2 technician. I still haven't received a call from Belkin about this, it has been over a month now. 



Overall, this has gone for about 5 months since I first noticed the line dropping out. As you can imagine I'm not very happy with Belkin and their product. I feel that the product is overpriced for poor quality product. Yesterday I had enough with Belkin and decided to go and purchase a new Netgear DGN2000 modem to carry me through for a couple of months till I can get a stable modem. Since plugging in the Netgear DGN2000 I haven't recieved a single drop out, and the modem comes with QoS which is great since I can now manage the traffic. 


Belkin if you reading this, please return my calls. 


Thanks

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