My original H4 Bi-Xenon kit back in 2006 was great! It was plenty powerful and the light cut off was decent using the stock reflector, making it possible to aim the lights a bit higher, and get better road visibility.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case with the next set of H4 bulbs I purchased, after one of the original bulbs died a couple of years later. Even though the light was sufficient, It seemed like the light coming from new set of bulbs, wouldn’t focus properly on the reflectors, causing bad light reflection and occasionally blinding the other drives. Therefore, I had to aim my headlights lower, reducing my road visibility.

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A couple of months ago, I came across a very weird issue with Google’s chat client (GTalk) on my Android phone.

After installing a new custom ROM, I have full Internet connectivity over my service provider’s 3G network (Cytamobile-Vodefone), except for GTalk. GTalk kept failing to connect over 3G, but it was fine through WiFi. Of course my first thought was that the custom ROM’s GTalk client was problematic. Also GTalk is not treated as any application within the Adrnoid OS, since it’s considered one of its core apps, so root access was a requirement. I even tried upgrading the the custom ROM’s Beta version, hoping that this glitch is fixed. But despite all effort, at the end of the day, the result was the same! In every forum I checked, I couldn’t find anybody else facing the same problem.

Since the problem occurred only over the 3G network, I decided to take a look into the phone’s APN settings (Settings -> Wireless and Network -> Mobile Network -> Access Point Names). I noticed that for some reason, I was using the old APN settings of Cyta which were:

APN name: cytamobile

Username: user

Password: password

I found this very weird, since I was 100% that I always used the most recent, simplified settings, without a username/password. So I reverted back my settings, et voilà! My GTalk connected right away, and my 3G Internet was faster than before, as this APN seems to point to a newer, faster server.

Summing up, the CORRECT APN settings are:

APN name: internet

Username:

Password:

It’s really questionable WHY this is happening. Why the old server still exists but not operating correctly. But then again I though that this must be an old forgotten server the custom ROM creator found and used. So I didn’t bother myself much about it.

But just yesterday, a friend of mine had a brand new gorgeous Samsung Galaxy Note, and she was facing the exact same problem with her stock ROM! Thanks to my bad experience above, I immediately found the problem and her GTalk worked. It’s an I.T Miracle! Therefore I decided to post the solution to this common issue, as I highly doubt Cyta’s support line, or any third party will be able to help you in case you face this problem

I hope my quick post was of some help to an Android fan out there

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This is just a minor update from my previous CarPC v.2.0 setup, but I decided to document it in order to add further details and photos missing from my original post. The only hardware changes in this new setup are: the removal of the laptop DVD drive, since I never used it all these years. the replacement of the ancient 2.5″ 60Gb IDE HD, with a 2.5″ 250Gb SATA one.

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Before I start, I would like to emphasize that i am not a “hacker”, neither a security expert. I am just another judgmental, pretty-disappointed Cyta subscriber, who enjoys messing around

It hasn’t been long since CYTA received a serious security blow, when all of their subscribers’ DSL Access and Cytanet credentials, including email passwords leaked to the public. Oh wait…actually that has been a while ago, back in 2001! Damn time flies by! :/

Back then the chaos began with the Code Red worm, affecting IIS of Windows NT/2K servers, which allowed attackers to easily gain access to a server and browse around its files. So their server affected by the worm, was the DSL Access authentication portal and all subscribers’ credentials, were stored in its log files! Oh the joy!

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While looking for methods for making an inventory of the Windows/Office  licenses in a 100+ PCs network, I came across Spiceworks. A free inventory and monitoring tool, rapidly developed over the past years.

After using it for the first 10 minutes, I had to stop because I was salivating on my keyboard, out of IT-happiness

Spiceworks is the ultimate tool for any system administrator! It offers a huge range of useful features to help you monitor and manage your systems in any size of network, enabling you to run a proper IT helpdesk.

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A long time ago (Windows 95 long time ago), I attempted experimenting with Linux (Red Hat), with no particular success.

After going through an odyssey to install, I finally managed to boot Red Hat… but my experience ended there more or less. My crappy modem (MWave 28.8K, ISA… good times!  ) wouldn’t work under Linux, so I gave up.

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My dear old friend Yianna turned… 24 ( ) lately. Knowing that she enjoys uniqueness…I decided to make something special for her.

Since she has a thing for the symbol  ॐ  (wikipedia’s explanation wasn’t very insightful on this matter I can say), I focused my design around it.

Basic parts/tools of the whole design were:

• small plastic project box
• semi-transparent perspex
• the obvious electronic parts blue LEDs/switch/battery holder
• patience
• black glossy paint
• black paper
• etc

Hope she likes it

HAPPY BDAY YIAN!

I finally got some days off work, so I decided to go through my messy room (aka chaos, lab, storage place, etc) and put some order.

So far it’s been very tiring and very time consuming, but very entertaining… thus I decided to write a quick post to show my findings.

It feels so great when it’s time to upgrade your PC, and you put away that old piece of hardware in order to install your new toy. But it’s even greater, when 3…5…10+ years later, you come across that old hardware. It brings back memories, as well as questions like “WTF???”.

Since I haven’t posted much in my blog lately, I felt like sharing this little experience

My first interesting finding, was a 3  button Genius mouse. As you can see from the pictures, it advertises an astonishing 200dpi resolution, has a DB-25 RS232 interface, and requires no pad! WOW!

It looks like new, and I found it boxed, maybe I can throw it on ebay?

Most probably it was a late upgrade to my 8086 PC, and my new 286 PC didn’t have a DB-25 type of RS232, so it remained boxed and stored

Space wasting:    [********************]
Money wasting:  [********************]

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It’s been a year already since I purchased my beloved Canon EOS 1000D which despite being an entry level model, it never stopped to amaze me.

As I expected when purchasing back then, it’s hard indeed to carry around with you all the time, thus I kept my good old Fuji F30 compact camera. But it’s so awesome how easily you can take great shots with the 1000D (and any other SLR camera I guess), that I’m trying to have it with me whenever possible. At one point I even found my self carrying it around at the beach,  or even on a roof top while raining, risking getting it wet, but the result was totally worth it!

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