Adventures in Fixed Wireless

We are not able to get cable or fiber internet where I live we only have fixed wireless providers.  I thought I would share some of the technical issues I have with my provider (probably common to all fixed wireless providers) and some workarounds.

1. Vudu Streaming will not work.  The problem is multiple NAT firewalls between you and the internet.  With cable, DSL, etc. you have one NAT firewall (your wireless router).  With fixed wireless there multiple NAT firewalls (home, CPE, base station, ISP to internet) and Vudu can verify you are actually in the U.S.  There are two workarounds.  One option is to use Vudu's PC application that can download movies for offline.  The other better option is use flixster and connect it to you Ultra Violet account.  All your vudu movies are actually UV movies and you can access them from flixster.  All your movies will show up in both places and any movies you add to one will show up in the other.

2. abc.com will not work (same NAT issue as vudu).   The workaround is to pay for Hulu

3. OpenDNS Family Shield and Home parental controls don't work because the configuration is based on your internet IP address.  If losts of people share the same external IP address you can't configure it.  The workaround is to use Norton Connect Safe instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_ConnectSafe.

4. Dynamic DNS will not work.  You can't connect to you home directly from an outside network using IPv4.  Workarounds are to use chrome remote desktop or TeamViewer.  Another options is setup IPv6 using sixxs.net https://www.sixxs.net/

Anyway if your a fixed wireless use hopefully this is helpful.

Syncing music with my android phone

For may years I have just used Windows Media Player(WMP) to sync all my non-Apple music devices and for the most part it does an OK job, but recently I wanted to sync a daily reading plan to my phone and I ran into several short comings of WMP.

1. There are no playlist folders in WMP like in iTunes so managing 100s of playlists is really painful.
2. for non-MTP devices WMP  will sync the contents of the playlist but not the playlist.

The next thing I tried is Media Monkey.  I had already been using it because it’s really good for cleaning up and organizing your media library, unfortunately the sync was worse than WMP, if I removed a playlist it would not clean up the media in that playlist that was no longer part of any other playlist.  After that I expanded my search.

App	Sync by playlist	Sync playlists	Playlist Floders
Windows Media Player	good	MTP devices only	no
Foobar 2000	one-shot, doesn’t remember what you synced	one-shot, doesn’t remember what you synced	with plugin
Songbird	with foldersync	with foldersync	with plugin
Media Monkey	partial – delete is broken		yes
Winamp			no
DoubleTwist	proprietary	proprietary	no

The FolderSync plugin to songbird is what really sold me

You select the playlist you want to sync and this config is saved as a favorite.

Under the profile section you can configure how you want it synced.  Delete all other files, make playlists, etc. etc.  Just Press the down arrow to the right of the profile line.

favorite windows apps

Active Perl
Audible Manager
CD Burner XP
DAEMON Tools
Emacs
GNU Cash
Google Chrome
Google Desktop
Google Earth
ImgBurn
InfranView
Media Player Classic Home Cinema
Media Portal + Streamed MP
MP3 Tag
Open Office
PDF Creator
Picasa
Putty
TrueCrypt
VMware Player
WOL Magic Packet Sender
EventGhost
FreeMind
Juice
KeePass
Recuva
Synergy
VNC Viewer
Xming
Pindgin
SyncToy
WireShark
7-Zip
AutoHotKey
CCCP
GeoSetter
GnuWin32
RockDock
WinMerge
Xobni

How to reduce picture Size using infranview

Don't know if when you double click on photos if they come up in infranview but if they don't start this program:

Then most of the time just do an File -> save AS

set the save as type to JPG and put the quality at 80-90 and pic some new name that you will recognize.

just bringing the picture quality down from 99 to 90% can reduce the file size ALLOT (sometimes 10 to 1).

If that is not enough goto image->resize/resample and reduce the size of the image by half (this will reduce the image size 75%)