This post is a rolling journal of discoveries I made since I got myself a new camera.
- Walking with camera nearly halves my speed
- Ceilings in shops look really bad and I haven’t noticed if for years
Life, the Universe, Software and Everything
Well… no.
I really wanted to have wireless headphones for running and gym visits, so I got myself a pair of Skull Candy SMOKIN’ BUDS 2 WIRELESS. Those headphones sound good enough for exercise – on par with in-ear headphones I used so far (Sony from Xperia Z and Z3 and Skull Candy buds).
But I’m not happy with the purchase. Here’s why:
Would I buy different headphones instead of SB2? No. The whole approach is broken and the whole ecosystem needs updating. I’ll try again in 3 years.
Most hotel wifis are open, so to secure my connections I’ve set up myself a PPTP VPN using QNAS TS-453A box (btw. great machine, get one!) to tunnel all my traffic via encrypted connection.
Windows 10 and Android are connecting to the VPN and the traffic goes smoothly, but my Mac OS X El Captain caused me quite a bit of grief – it connected to the VPN without a problem, the internal connections were working great, but the forwarding traffic got stuck. Ping was working fine, but WWW did not. Some initial parts of first website were loading and then the connection got stuck.
Cause:
The issue was caused by MTU mismatch. It seems that NAT on VPN server adds some headers, which cause the packet to be to big and get rejected.
Solution:
Go to apple->system preferences->network-><your connection>->advanced->hardware and set MTU to Custom with packet size 1400 instead of default 1500. You may want to experiment to find maximum MTU value that works for you.
And so I crashed today. I flew too far, lost orientation and decided for a firm landing instead of flying away into unknown. I’m glad I haven’t put cameras on this time.
Just last week I have installed the Diatone 5025 Propeller Guards. They looked nice and the green/red colours LEDs helped with orientation during hoovering, but not in flight. I’ve installed them to match DJI Phantom – red in front and green on the back, but I found them more confusing than helpful. Anyway – they lasted exactly one crash. The propellers indeed didn’t break, but one of them got bent. So the guards haven’t delivered on their promise. I paid £15 for them for which I could 8 full sets of propellers. Don’t buy them.
Now back to the workshop :)
Let’s start with something exciting – the final result! Say hallo to Bandit the Quad!
Building the Bandit was a lot of fun, but also a bit of frustration when I kept discovering I needed more things. Below you will find my final checklist.
Bill of materials
Tools
Tips and Tricks
The build took me two evenings after I have gathered all parts.
And now it is time to fly!
Background: My BT Infinity 2 gives me speeds around 37Mbps only, so I decided to try Virgin’s XXL Broadband 152Mbps. The installation was smooth and first speed check run after installation at noon shown 160Mbps. Wow! As I quickly learnt timing of the test was crucial – the Virgin infrastructure can’t gets congested around 6pm. On most of the days the actual speed around 7pm was between 30 to 80 Mbps, but on Sunday it dropped to 11Mbps. What’s worse the pings were quite unstable, up to a point that response time was noticeable on Ajax based websites (like facebook). Torrent downloads weren’t that great either even during the day – I tried to download Debian .iso and uTorrent never shown more than 50Mbps, so I suspect some kind of traffic management, which I do not like. All in all we decided to cancel Virgin and stay with BT.
Virgin doesn’t want you to cancel and they play tricks to make you give up and stay with them. When you join you get a paper letter titled “Your right to cancel before installation”. The last line of the letter says “If your new Virgin Media service(s) have been installed within 14 days from the day after you placed your order, you can no longer make a cancellation under this policy.”. I’ve googled a bit and they say the same everywhere.
“Crap” I thought…
But then I remembered that there is a EU rule saying that we have a right to cancel any contract bought on-line in 14 days (more info here), so I gave Virgin a call. The friendly guy on the other side of the phone listened to me and redirected me to “customer relationship specialist” who offered to lower the price to £31 (from £41 – great deal!). I declined and when I used “cooling off period” phrease he agreed to cancel my contract without any fees – basically he agreed to obey a law. The call took less than 10 minutes.
I’m not a lawyer, but I think Virgin’s catch is in the last few words of the letter they send – “under this policy”. Yes, you can’t cancel under this policy, but there’s a law above it that says you can (not under THIS policy though). That’s a nasty trick. Shame on you Virgin for hiding the information!
£31 Virgin offered was a better price and I thought BT may be flexible as well. I called them and told them I want to stay with them, but Virgin is cheaper. The guy spent 30 seconds clicking and came with a special discount of £6.15 a month – £73.8 a year for a another 10 minute call. Fair deal to me!
I understand this is against your nature, but get the phone, call your providers and demand your rights or at least lower prices!
Few weeks back I made a decision to complete a half-marathon this year. I set up myself a realistic goal of completing the distance of 13.1 miles (21 km) in less than 3h. For regular runners it may not seem fast, but for an obese IT pro guy it is.
Yesterday I decided to do a trial run to see how it feels. I have never before tried to keep required pace for more than 9.5 miles. And… I succeeded!
Here are few thoughts I had on my way:
* good podcast helps, but it should not be anything important. I do not really remember last 40 min of what I heard.
* using food supplements and sugary drinks helps. The body does not refuse to go further when filled with carbohydrates. In the past I tried walking just on a water and my body just stopped moving along the way.
* good socks matter. I was stupid to wear a pair of this socks and my right foot hurts today! My feet started to hurt about halfway. I knew that they will hurt a lot when I finish, but I was able to tell myself to deal with it. Don’t be sissy, push it!
* I kept controlling time all the way. Endomondo help by saying updates every mile. Calculating the remaining distance, checking required pace and estimated arrival time helped to take my mind of the walk itself, which I found quite helpful.
* At 2h15min I have made less that 10 miles which caused me to panic a bit. I had to make a decision – move slowly and miss my 3h target (with option to beat it in the next attept) or push more to make it. I decided to push and my 12th mile was fastest of them all with time 11m1sec!
* London is a multicultural, but quite segregated place. It’s fascinating how quickly it changes.
** I’ve started in quite traditional olde english area
** I quickly moved to a rural park
** Next area was inhabited mostly by Africans
** Then followed a patch of multicultural rich people with few Bentleys on driveways
** A mile down the route Asian and Middle East communities dominated the view – with Mosques, Arabic and Hindu centres
** Last bit of the way was “new urban” with people of all origins, but without much traditional look of any kind
See more details about my route on endomondo site:
And one more interesting view showing time of each mile I walked:
Btw: in September I will doing the half marathon in support of the Shine Walk to support Cancer Research UK. I’m collecting money to support their hard work and so far I got £197 out of my £250 target.
Big thank you to those who support me!