schlingel.me

A while back, I posted a bit about how to use Pandora without a VPN and it worked sort of. From time to time, I’d also like to use other services like Hulu.com or whatever service thinks I am not american enough to use it. So I finally subscribes to BlackVPN. It gives you a US IP by providing a VPN connection that also has some kind of anonymization without plastering your face with ads like HotspotShield does, but it costs 5€/month. (If you want to sign up for BlackVPN, use my offer code TRSHNHG, it’ll give you 2 extra months free.)

So here was the problem again: I don’t want to send all my traffic over the VPN so I started searching and asking people on Twitter. My friends @Loredo and @wnetoa finally showed me how to properly set up static routes.

In essence what has to be done is to create a file (or modify it if it already exists) called ip-up in /etc/ppp

It’s contents need to be

#!/bin/sh

# pandora
/sbin/route add 208.85.40.0/21 -interface ppp0

This will install a new static route for every IP from 208.85.40.0 to 208.85.47.254 (that is roughly the iP range Pandora uses) over your VPN connection everytime you connect a VPN. Please also make sure the file is owned by root and chmod it to 0755.

That also means, whatever VPN connection you establish, this route will be set. You could add an if-statement to check if the correct gateway is selected but as the BlackVPN gateway changes all the time I just didn’t care. Furthermore routing this IP block through other VPNs wouldn’t matter as it would just not work as it does without the VPN.

Make sure that in OS X you a) use the built in VPN client and b) DON’T send all the traffic over VPN!

Why didn’t I do it for e.g. Hulu? Well, while finding out the IP range for the site might be easy, their data comes from akamai and this will most likely turn out to be a PITA. So I just created a second VPN connection in OS X that routes everything through BlackVPN.

This will most likely also work on Linux, and if you have Windows: do a format c: and install a proper OS like e.g. Ubuntu :)

If someone intends to buy MS Office:mac 2011 that will be released in October, I’d suggest buying Office:mac 2008  now. If you buy it from now on, you’ll be eligible to upgrade to 2011 for free. Even better: you buy the normal home & student version and get a 2011 familiy pack, that contains 3 licenses and would retail for about 149€ (equals $857495,12)

The best deal I found for germany was actually on amazon: http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/asin/B0010QTCKM/digital0c-21

For the US: http://www.softwaremedia.com/microsoft/office-suites/office-2008-for-mac-home-and-student.html

Where to get the free upgrade and all the Terms: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/office-2011-upgrade.mspx

Hey guys, I am a little out of ideas here.

At home, I need to re-connect to my wifi every five minutes, because my internet connectivity is gone. 

I still have an IP address, and I don’t need to reset my router or so. It is just disconnection from the Wifi in OS X and reconnecting. At the office, I have absolutely no problem but at home, I do. At first I thought it was my old Airport Express as it is over 5 years old. So I got an Extreme today, set it up completely fresh but no luck. Same problem. 

This happens with all the machines in the household, also iPhones and is pretty annoying. 

My setup: Airport Extreme, connected to a router/DSL-Modem in the basement. I didn’t replace the router so far as I don’t have a spare one. Would a it make sense that this issue comes from the router? (The Airport Extreme is in DHCP Bridge mode BTW). 

I always get an IP adress within seconds. Weird.

Any other ideas than replacing the router?

Google did all to prevent non-US residents to get a google voice number. But there is a way.

• At first you need a Google Voice invite (I have three left if you are interested) and this might be the hardest part.
• You need a US IP address, this can be done by using HotspotShield from http://anchorfree.com. Install the software, connect and go on.
• Now you can sign up for Google Voice. Choose your number wisely, because changing it costs $10.
• It will then ask you for a real US Phone number to verify (and redirect) your calls.
• Get yourself a free number over at http://www.virtualphoneline.com
• In the Virtualphoneline settings, redirect your Number to your Skype acount.
• Go back to Google Voice, enter the VPL phone number and let them call you
• Your Skype will ring and you have to enter the two digit code to confirm the number
• Done.
• If you happen to have registered a Gizmo (http://www.gizmoproject.com) account a while back you can add Gizmo as a phone number (http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115122)
• Maybe you can simply download Gizmo from e.g. versiontracker.com and register an account inside the app.
• You still can’t add non-US phone numbers to your account, but you have a free US phone number and as you might know: GV even gives you the possibility to make free US calls e.g. using Gizmo (http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115123).

So, why not just going with the Virtualphoneline number?
They only have longer numbers for free. The call quality is rather poor. The service is good but a little weird. No customizable voicemail. No free outbound calls.

Any Questions?

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

was mir allein an einem Tag in Ihrem Kundenservice widerfahren ist, ist für mich unerklärlich und in Anbetracht dessen, dass ich jeden Monat 70€ an sie zahle eine absolute Frechheit. Natürlich verstehe ich volkommen dass 70€ für T-Mobile vernachlässigbar und Bestandskunden gegenüber Neukunden nicht wichtig sind.

Nach wiederholten Ausfällen meiner Telefon und Datenverbindung wurde ich von Apple Care dazu aufgefordert einen Ersatz für meine SIM Karte zu bestellen. Das habe ich am 16.11 gegen 09:45 Uhr getan und mir wurde von ihrer Mitarbeiterin versichert, dass mir eine inaktive SIM Karte zugeschickt würde, die ich durch einen Anruf beim Service aktivieren müsse.

Zehn minuten später zeigte mein iPhone nur noch “Kein Netz” mehr an. Da meine Kollegen im Raum nebenan auf ihren T-Mobile iPhones problemlos Netz hatten rief ich wieder beim Service an. Die Mitarbeiterin teilte mir mit, dass es in meiner Region gerade eine Netzstörung gäbe. Auf den Einwand hin dass meine Kollegen Netz hätte meinte sie nur, dass so eine Störung auch mal nur ein Telefon betreffen könne. Wie sich später herausstellte waren diese Aussagen eine glatte Lüge, wahrscheinlich um mich aus der Leitung zu bekommen.

Nach weiteren vier Stunden rief ich erneut an und teilte dem Servicemitarbeiter mit, dass ich vermutete, dass die erste Kollegin die SIM Karte, entgegen Ihrer Aussage, aktiviert und damit die aktuelle Karte deaktiviert hatte. Er liess mich wissen dass ich nun wohl mal 2 Tage ohne Handy auskommen müsse, sicherte mir jedoch auf meinen Protest 15€ Guthaben zu, da er auch nichts weiteres tun könne.

Die 15€ investierte ich dann in eine Prepaid Karte, auf die Anrufer mittels Anrufweiterschaltung geleitet werden können. Was bei einem früheren Vertrag schon Problemlos funktionierte.

Bei meinem vierten Anruf der Servicenummer erklärte ich der Mitarbeiterin, dass ich “gerne eine Anrufweiterschaltung meiner T-Mobile Nummer auf eine andere Nummer” hätte. Es dauerte 3 weitere Anläufe bevor sie überhaupt begriff was ich wollte. Nachdem sie mich dann erst in die Warteschleife gelegt hatte eröffnete Sie mir dann plötzlich, dass sie “das System nicht mehr hereinlässt” und ich bitte in 10 Minuten nochmals anrufen solle. Ich würde natürlich niemals annehmen, dass sie mich nur abwimmeln wollte.

Für den heutigen Tag habe ich mein Anliegen aufgegeben und werde wahrscheinlich auch die nächsten 2 Tage immer mal wieder damit verbringen erbosten Kunden, Kollegen und Freunden zu erklären, dass ich sie nicht absichtlich ignoriere sondern mir vorübergehend die Leitung abgedreht wurde und es scheinbar technisch unmöglich ist eine deaktivierte SIM-Karte wieder zu aktivieren bzw. Anrufweiterschaltungen einzurichten.

Die 15€ sind ein schwacher Trost in Anbetracht dessen was ich inzwischen an Zeit und Telefonkosten (von der Prepaid Karte mal abgesehen) bereits in diese Unternehmung gesteckt habe.

Für den Fall, dass sie meine kleine Erlebniserzählung bis hierhin durchgelesen haben (was ich in Anbetracht meiner Serviceerfahrungen in ihrem Haus stark bezweifle), fordere ich Sie dazu auf meine Kündigung an die entsprechende Abteilung weiterzugeben.

Hiermit kündige ich meinen Mobilfunkvertrag mit T-Mobile zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt. Ich erwarte eine schriftliche Kündigungsbestätigung mit der Information über das Enddatum des Vertrages binnen 14 Werktagen.

Mit verbindlichen Grüßen,

_____________________________________
Bastian Wölfle

During the last weeks (since the 3.1.2 update) I experienced that my iPhone lost its data and phone connection, without displaying any error. I was just not reachable and couldn’t make calls. I restored my phone and set it up completely new, but after one day the problem was back.

So I called T-Mobile to ask for help. They directed me to Apple Care. So I spent 30 minutes on the Apple Care Hotline. The result was: Please call T-Mobile and get a new SIM card. So I called T-Mobile. At first they wanted to send me back to Apple but I really didn’t like that, so I was able to convince the lady that she sends me a new SIM card free of charge. Just to be sure I asked what I needed to do when the card arrives. She said “It will not be active when it arrives, so please call us as soon as you have it. It’ll then deactivate your current card and activate the new one” Fair enough. So I left for work.

On my way to work I suddenly realized that I had no cell reception any more. I was just driving through a forest so I thought this might be okay. After arriving in the office I noticed that I still had no reception. So I asked the guys here if they also had no reception, but they all had. So I called T-Mobile again. The lady asked me for my postal code and told me then that there was a network error in my region. I told her that all my colleagues that are on T-Mobile as well did not have any problem. She said “A network error can just affect single phones sometimes.” Even though I thought that was BS, I hung up and waited 4 hours.

It wasn’t better after 4 hours so I decided to call again. The guy just wanted to start telling me BS again but I interrupted him and told him that I was sent a new SIM card this morning and that I suspected the lady did send the card activated (what would deactivate my current card). He looked again in his records and guess what. This was exactly the case. In the next sentence he told me that I now had to wait about two days until my new SIM card arrives. I told him that he can’t be serious, but he was. Once a card is deactivated it can’t be activated any more. So here I am now. I am unreachable during the next two days and I got a ridiculous 15€ extra balance. The worst part is: The second lady simply lied me in the face just to get me off the line.

Dear T-Mobile, the moment my current contract runs out, I will be off (just like 95% of all other iPhone users).

Does anyone have had similar experiences?

This a description on how to scan documents directly to the Evernote application on the Mac. If you can’t really see the video, please watch it on YouTube in HD.

The required AppleScript can be downloaded here.

Questions/Suggestions/Improvements anyone?

Back in the day, when Pandora was still accessible from outside of the US it was my main source for music recommendations (and I spent a lot of money on recommended music). Then the record industry decided to limit Pandora to the US only.

You can still listen to Pandora if you use a VPN solution like HotSpotShield but this means you will Tunnel all your computers traffic to some VPN and might not be able to access stuff that is on your local network (and you slow down your internet connection).

After a night with little sleep and some help from a very nice Twitter follower (who has a VP Server in the USA) I found a convenient way to listen to Pandora from here.

Step 1) Get a SSH account in the USA. Either you know someone who can give you one, or you get yourself a hosting package with SSH (e.g. hostmonster.com has rather cheap ones) or you try something like bshellz.net, for a one time payment you get a shell account with tunneling capabilities (might not be in the US, I am not really sure. There might be other services like this that are definitely in the US).

Step 2) Establish a SSH tunnel. If you are on a Mac, you can either do this via terminal by typing in:

ssh -D -p <port-number> -D 2001 <username>@<shell-host>

or you simply get the SSH Tunnel Manager freeware app and enter your data.
Be sure to enable “Enable SOCKS4 proxy” in the options. In the Terminal this is the -D switch. The number (in this case 2001) is the port you can access your socks proxy afterwards.
Now connect either using the terminal or SSH Tunnel Manager.

Step 3) You can now launch Firefox, install the FoxyProxy addon and configure it to use a socks proxy on host: localhost and the port you set up above. And you’re done.

Or you get even geekier:

Step 4) Open your plain text editor of choice (SubEthaEdit, Textmate, BBEdit or so) and add the following lines:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
// send all pandora.com requests through our socks proxy:
if (shExpMatch(url, “*.pandora.com/*”))                 {return “SOCKS localhost:2001”;}
if (shExpMatch(url, “*.pandora.com:*/*”))               {return “SOCKS localhost:2001”;}
// All other requests don’t need a proxy
return “DIRECT”;
}

Save this file as proxy.pac. This file will later tell your system to only route requests to pandora.com through the tunnel.
Step 5) Open System Preferences > Network. Now select your active network device (Airport or ethernet). Now click “Advanced” and then select the “Proxies” tab. In here change “Configure Proxies” to “Using a PAC file” and choose the file we just created. Click OK then click Apply. That’s it.
If the tunnel connection is established you are now able to access Pandora.com. To make it even more convenient, I recommend the free PandoraMan application.

I need to generate a huge amount of traffic within a short period of time on one of my servers and this is where I need you guys. Everyone who can spare a little bit of bandwidth e.g. at night could help me by repeatedly downloading this file: http://essen213.server4you.de/du.mp4. You can delete the file right after downloading and start over again (it is a recent DigitalUpgrade show, if you wonder what it is about).

If you are using OS X, Linux or Unix you can create a .sh file with this content:

#!/bin/sh

# Loop forever

while :

do

curl http://essen213.server4you.de/du.mp4 -o /dev/null

done # Start over

This loads it right to nowhere and starts over after it has finished.

If you are on windows this won’t work, so I created a folder with 2000 symlinks to that file: http://essen213.server4you.de/download if you grab all these links using e.g. DownThemAll it’ll do the same trick.

(Hopefully) the download speed will become VERY slow sometime, but don’t worry, this is what I hope for.

This is really my own server, so it is really ok to do this, it won’t hurt anyone. This server doesn’t contain anything but this file.

I’d like to ask you to do this for a few days (or nights), this should really help a lot.