UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

I’m topic-less today, so finally, here comes part 3 of my covert ops mission

Quick-hitters:

- Is the Wii Fit the 2008 version of the Gym Membership (the gift that is followed by a swift kick to the groin)?

Just wondering…

- Some more quick Celts-Lakers reax before Game Two.

1) I’ve heard more than enough about the Boston myopians comparing Pierce’s injury-and-return to that of Willis Reed.  Please!  It was a memorable moment, but let’s not get carried away now.

And enough with Laker myopians calling Pierce a faker.  I don’t buy that either.  Yeah, like Pierce decided to fake an injury, watch his team play for a couple of minutes without him, and then energize the entire arena with his return.  And Kirk Gibson did the same thing in 1988, right?

2) I’ve been thinking this over for the past two days:  should the loser of the Finals declare the season a failure?  You always hear that teams are only playing for a championship (true), and that anything short of that is a failure.  But seriously (and this has been stated eleventy billion times already, I know), who had Boston and LA in the Finals a year ago at this time?

I’m actually looking forward to next season.  Boston’s Big Three will get another year of playing time together, and the Lakers, hopefully, will get to trot out a front line of Odom-Gasol-Bynum for a full season.  Awesome.

- Time for part 3 of my covert ops mission!

(Part One and Part Two)

So after hacking the Fonera, I was ready to set up the Sony LocationFree LF-B10 on my mom’s entertainment center, when I thought to myself, “That Trendnet POS router I have at home is probably not going to be stable enough to handle the added stress that the LF-B10 is going to put on it!”

A week later, I found out that Staples was selling a Linksys WRT54GS router for $29.99, no rebates.  Knowing full well that this particular router could be flashed with DD-WRT firmware, I decided to order one.

(After a coupon and some free after rebate software, as well as sales tax, the router cost me about $13.  I figured that was a much better buy than $50 for the WRT54GL, which would have definitely run DD-WRT.)

Using this guide from the DD-WRT forum, I began preparing for the hack.  I got to step five, where I got stuck.  Unfortunately, I ran into a bit of a problem; I could not download the Linksys TFTP utility!

(Tangent:  Remember when I typed this?

Don’t you hate it when you need a critical piece of data or an application to do something, and the site hosting said file just happens to be down?

That happened to me TWICE this past weekend. I’ll recap what happened in a later blog entry.

Now you know what I was talking about.)

(Tangent #2:  Naturally, the download works now.  Sigh…)

I decided to go ahead with the hack, hoping that I could download the TFTP utility later.  After flashing the WRT54GS with the VxWorks killer firmware, I patiently waited for the Linksys FTP site to allow me to download their utility.

Thirty minutes later, I decided to research an alternate way to get the DD-WRT firmware on the WRT54GS.  After a bit of Googling, I stumbled upon the necessary TFTP command to use at the Windows Command Prompt:

TFTP -i 192.168.1.1 PUT [name of firmware]

Once the transfer was done, I waited for the WLAN light to turn on.  Five minutes later, it turned on!  When I tried to access the router, though, I got the dreaded “This page cannot be displayed” error.  Argh!

Several minutes, a couple network connection repairs, a power cycle of the WRT54GS, and a couple checks of the ethernet cable later, and I was finally able to access the newly-flashed WRT54GS.  Hooray!

The next day, I replaced the junky Trendnet router with the WRT54GS, and constantly pissed off my siblings by throwing them offline several times, while I made adjustments to the router.

(Note to self:  Do EVERYTHING late at night from now on!)

As for the router itself, I still have a couple of minor issues that I haven’t quite been able to iron out yet.  For some reason, my sister’s laptop and my own can’t connect wirelessly to the WRT54GS unless I use the wireless card’s software (not the Wireless Zero Config tool built in to Windows XP).  Also, for a while, my sister’s laptop could not connect to the wireless network on startup automatically; I would have to open the Intel wireless card tool and manually refresh the network to get it to work.  That problem eventually went away after a while (as some computer problems are apt to do).  I was also having trouble using WPA+PSK security on the WRT54GS; for now, my home network is stuck using WEP.

(That is NOT an invite to try to hack into my network at home :P)

Later in the day, I had an opening to install the Fonera and the LF-B10 onto my mom’s entertainment center.  That’s when I realized I forgot to bring an extra composite cable!  Half an hour (and $3 at the local discount store) later, I had everything I needed, and setup was a breeze.  I tucked the Fonera behind my mom’s TV, and the LF-B10 was installed on an empty shelf at the bottom of her entertainment center.

While finishing up, my mom walked in on my install and asked about the “black box” sitting on her entertainment center.  I simply told her that it was important to be there, and she took a cursory look at the box, uttered “I don’t like it there,” and walked out.

(It’s still sitting there to this day :P).

The LF-B10 works decently well; video streams get choppy on occasion, and I’m not completely sure from which end the problem is originating.  The audio stream is nearly perfect, though.

(EDIT:  I have not been able to connect to the LF-B10 for the last 2-3 days.  Hopefully my mom didn’t get so upset with my not moving it that she unplugged the damn thing!)

Until next time!

Tags: celtics, ddwrt, lakers, lf-b10, linksys wrt54gs, paul pierce, sony locationfree, willis reed by Peter
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Quick-hitters:

- Is it just me, or are those Mac v PC commercials getting exponentially stupider?

Actually, I’m almost certain it’s not just me.

(You can tack on that stupid Mentos commercial, where the guy chews a piece of Mentos gum, and a girl comes up to him and drinks out of his mouth, as if he were a water dispenser. Yeah, because THAT makes me want to buy Mentos gum.

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,244! And half of that is currently unfiled rebates!

Time to go on a shopping spree

- Quick NBA playoff thoughts:

1) David West is completely unguardable. The Spurs might win Game Six, but I don’t see any way the Spurs are going to beat the Hornets in Game Seven.

(Well, I can see one way: if Chandler and West aren’t 100% for the next two games, the Spurs have a shot.)

2) Orlando had two shots to win a game against the Chauncey Billups-less Pistons, and they couldn’t win one (and one was at home, no less!). Maybe Pat Riley will take over the Magic midway through next season.

Detroit’s gonna get a ton of rest, but I think that the Cavs-Celtics winner will be the Eastern Conference representative in the NBA Finals.

- Time for part 2 of my covert ops mission.

So after a bit of begging on the Slickdeals forum, I got an invite to purchase a Fonera from fon.com. I used this guide to assist me in hacking the Fonera.

(Tangent: Dammit! I didn’t realize that all the steps were compiled on to one web page! I had to print out four different web pages! Bah!)

As soon as I got the Fonera, I found that it came DOA! Argh. I contacted Fon CS, and they quickly sent me out another Fonera, which came in working condition. I decided to wait until the next time I was going to visit my parents to hack the Fonera. A week or so later (whenever I actually got around to visiting the parents again :P), I began preparation for the installation. I made sure to bring home the LF-B10, the Fonera, a spare router, and all cables that I needed.

Sure enough, I managed to forget a couple things! I decided to go ahead and hack the Fonera anyway, just to make sure that the Fonera would work as a wireless bridge. Unfortunately for me, I made the stupid decision of trying this at midnight.

(You see, the router and DSL modem are in my sister’s room, and she’s asleep early, meaning I would have to be hacking the Fonera pretty much in the dark. Browse through the fonera hacking guide, and you could see how I could easily make a mistake.)

I started out by plugging in my spare router, and connecting my laptop and Fonera to it via Ethernet cables. I got to step 4 of the first part of the tutorial, but could not get the Fonera firmware to downgrade to 0.7.1 r1. For the life of me, I could not figure out what the hell went wrong.

(If you haven’t figured it out by now, apparently I missed a key part of the tutorial: the hack requires the router to actually be connected to the internet! Fifty bazillion stupid points for that one.)

I grabbed my laptop, the Fonera, and the Ethernet cables, and hooked them all up to my main router, and began the process again. When I got back to step 4, I held down the reset button on the Fonera, and logged in to it (http://192.168.1.1), and was dismayed to see the wrong firmware version (0.7.0 r2, I believe)!

I looked over the guide, re-checked everything, and after two or three additional tries, I finally got the correct firmware version! W00t! I went ahead with the next step, hit submit, and was indeed redirected back to the Fonera.

I got to step 7, enabled SSH permanently, and began the process to enable Redboot (part 2). I got to step 10, and attempted to reconnect to the Fonera via SSH. That’s when I got a “Network refused” error. Grrrrrr. Immediately I thought that step 7 didn’t take, so I attempted to re-open SSH permanently again, starting from step 5. I ran the script again, and it appeared that the Fonera threw up all over itself. I got a ton of “invalid blah blah blah” errors, and I started pulling out my hair.

Unsure of what happened, I decided to start all over from the beginning. When I got to step 5 again, the Fonera threw up all over itself once again. Worse, I noticed that the firmware on the Fonera was 0.7.0 r2 again!

On a whim, I attempted to SSH into the Fonera again, and it worked! I entered the command to open SSH permanently again, and then I proceeded with step 10. I was hesitant to do this, though, as I couldn’t get the Fonera to downgrade to the “correct” firmware (0.7.1 r1, as directed in the guide).

Step 10 went to completion, and I attempted to access Redboot. For some reason, it was not working, and I immediately thought I bricked the Fonera. That’s when I read the instructions carefully, especially the blurb before step 11:

Make sure the Fonera is powered off. You also need to make sure you have a wired connection to the Fonera and an IP address in the 192.168.1.x range.

Again, it was late and dark. Never again will I hack anything late at night, I told myself. You will see later on, though, that I did not adhere to this

At first, I could not get into Redboot. It took me fifteen minutes to realize where I screwed up this time: step 12 says to ” Open putty and enter in “192.168.1.254″ for the IP address and “9000″ as the port number.” It says nothing about changing the connection type to Telnet (as the image states)!

I finally managed to get into Redboot, and prepared for the flashing process. I will neither confirm nor deny that I said a non-denominational prayer or ten at this point.

Each step, from 15-18, took me a while, because I was carefully typing in each character, triple-checking to make sure that I didn’t make a typo. It was eventually brought to my attention (from another guide I was reading) that I could paste commands into PuTTy simply by right-clicking! Bah!

According to the tutorial, step 19 was supposed to take about 10-20 minutes. I got really worried when that step only took about six minutes; I was almost certain that something went wrong at this point. Step 21 also took only a few minutes, and the final step only took a few moments. When step 22 finished, I could not bear to look at my screen as I rebooted the Fonera.

Once the reboot completed, I peered over at my screen, and was dismayed to not see the “dd-wrt” network available. I cilcked “refresh network list,” scrolled down the list S L O W L Y, and almost paraded around the room when the dd-wrt network finally appeared!

Much thanks to Krunk for assisting me throughout the hacking process, as well as setting up the hacked Fonera as a client bridge.

Part 3, including more hacking, to come another time!

Tags: david west, fonera, lf-b10, linksys, locationfree, mac commercial, mentos, nba playoffs, sony, spurs, wrt54gs by Peter
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Today’s blog topic will cover one REALLY long topic, so expect it to be split up into at least two parts.

Blog-related quick-hitters:

- As a fan of The Office, I am appalled at myself for the fact that I have yet to watch last Thursday’s episode!

I am ashamed of myself, and I don’t even have a good reason for not watching it yet! Well, unless you consider Spurs-Hornets, Korean BBQ, Olive Garden, Mother’s Day Weekend, etc., to be “good” reasons.

(Office fans may start booing me.)

- For a similar reason, I did not watch Game 3 of Lakers-Jazz. I was 99% sure that the Lakers were going to lose that game, not that that is a good reason to skip it, right?

(Laker fans may start booing me.)

Non-blog-related quick-hitters:

- File this under the fall-out-of-your-chair-laughing department:

So my sister (the one that doesn’t have karmic powers) visited us on Friday, and after settling in, she asked if she could grab some MP3s off my computer and upload them onto her iPod. I said sure, and went to go look for the USB cable.

After a few minutes, I couldn’t find it, but my sister spotted the wall charger…except that it didn’t register with her that she was using the wall charger. This conversation (slightly exaggerated) followed:

Me: You know you’re plugging your iPod into the wall charger, right?

Her: (blankly) OK. Is that not going to work?

Me: Not unless the data can transfer from the computer’s power supply, through the surge protector, and through the charger!

Eventually, she blamed lack of sleep and hyperglycemia—she bought an iced coffee from McDonald’s that was supposed to be sugar free vanilla, but was not—for the mistake. Uh-huh.

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,350. I better start spending some money; I gotta do my part to stimulate the economy!

(Tangent: I won’t be getting a stimulus check until mid-June! Booooooooooo.)

Current toothpaste-o-meter: a whole hell of a lot. Same with deodorant. I’m going to start selling this stuff to my neighbors real soon.

I better move on before I get too inundated with material. On with the topic at hand!

- A few months back, Staples had a great deal on the Sony LocationFree Base Station LF-B10 (think “SlingBox Lite”). I bought one as soon as it was for sale, thinking that I was going to hook up the device to my own cable box and use it whenever I was out of town.

It took me a day or so to realize how dumb of an idea this was. The only times I’m out of town are when I go to Monterey Park, or the much less frequent trips up to Sacto. If I’m in Monterey Park, there are three TVs to choose from that all have cable boxes. If I’m in Sacto, I’ll need a high speed connection to use the LF-B10 anyway.

I then decided that I would hook up the LF-B10 to my sister’s cable box. That’s when I discovered that the LF-B10 had an Ethernet port, making use of the device pretty complicated; I’d have to run about 50′ of Ethernet cable from my home router to the LF-B10. Compounding the problem was the fact that her TV is used frequently.

(Background: The LF-B10 works by connecting directly to your cable box via a composite cable. From a remote computer, you can log in to the LF-B10 and view the device’s live video stream, and you can even change the channel on the cable box using the included IR adapter that affixes to the front of the cable box. Of course, if somebody should change the channel on the cable box while you’re accessing it remotely, you’re stuck watching what they switch to, unless you cruelly change the channel back :P).

So I determined that installing the LF-B10 on my sister’s cable box was a terrible idea, due to all the “traffic.” That’s when I decided to hook it up to my mom’s cable box, which is HARDLY used.

(She has a $1,000—at the time of purchase—Samsung LCD HDTV that she hardly uses, either, in the sense that 99% of her TV-watching is of SD broadcasts or DVDs. Sad, huh?)

Unfortunately, it would have taken a lot of Ethernet cabling to hook up the LF-B10 to the home router. That’s when I got the great idea to purchase an Ethernet to wireless adapter. The idea was quickly sunk, though, until I heard of the Fonera.

Now, I knew that DD-WRT capable routers could be used as wireless bridges (Ethernet to wireless adapters), but I wasn’t going to fork up ~ $50 for a Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL just for this ability. $15 and a bit (or so I thought) of elbow grease for the same functionality? Why not?

If only it were that simple…

(Part 2 to come later!)

Tags: ddwrt, fonera, fontenna, la fon, lf-b10, linksys, putty, redboot, sony locationfree, ssh, tftp, The Office, vxworks killer, wrt54gs by Peter
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