09.14.08

Lifehacking

Posted in Hacks, Life at 7:38 pm by cphoton

Hi All,

Finally I am breaking with the inertia of not updating this place as often as I would like!

This post is mainly focused to providing tips to increasing productivity. As some of you probably already know, I am usually filled with work for the entire day and as time goes by, I am forced to crank out more stuff in less time.

When I was faced with the dilemma to increase my productivity, I started wondering if there was any way to change myself in order to be more productive. Shortly after I discovered sites like Lifehack, Lifehacker and Zen Habits that give lots of advice on how to simplify organizing efforts and also how to change oneself in order to be able to achieve the goals intended.

Some of the key tips I have encountered are:

Of course there are many more tips, and most of the time implementing these tips are easier said than done, it is important to practice the discipline and have lots, lots and lots of patience to achieve the desired results. Most of the time you will experience failures, but the lesson here is to learn and adjust (meditation helps). Lots of tweaks might be necessary but once you reach the desired point it is very rewarding. I have a long way reaching that point yet, here are some tips to avoid when changing habits. I really like the part of trying any habit for 30 days, as it feels as if you are just trying a new program. If you like the new program, you can continue with the habit, if not, leave it alone ;)

Hoping this helps, I shall depart, and will try these techniques so that I can share interesting stuff more often here.

07.08.07

Mobile - Configure your PC to use ANCEL’s Internet plan

Posted in Hacks, Mobile at 9:23 pm by cphoton

For those that are using the $U 70 / month ANCEL’s service for Internet navigation, I’ve got good news for you. You can use your mobile as a modem from your PC, PDA or any other device that supports dial-up connections. Here are the steps to do that:

  1. If you have not already have done so, create a GPRS profile on your mobile with the following characteristics:
    • Name: wapANCEL (you can change this if you want, but take it into account when I refer to it later in the post)
    • APN: wap
    • Proxy type: HTTP
    • Proxy: 200.40.246.2
    • Port: 3128
    • All other settings: blank

    The proxy might be optional, but take it into account when you use your browser.

  2. Connect your mobile to your PC using Bluetooth, Infrared, etc.
  3. Run the +CGDCONT? command on your modem. On Windows, this can be done by going to Control Panel / Phone and Modem Options / Modems, then select your Mobile’s modem (if it’s not there, add it first), then go to Properties / Diagnostics / Query modem. Then click on the “View Log” button. A Notepad window should appear like this:

    bt-modem.png

    Notice the two lines highlighted. The first one says that wapANCEL is the wap profile number 6, and the other line is a special line we will use in the next step.

  4. Still on the Modem Properties Window, go to Additional parameters / Additional initialization string and add:
    • AT+CGDCONT=6,”IP”,”wap”,”0.0.0.0″,1,1 (note that the string after AT is the special line I highlighted before, change the semi-colon for an equals though!). This tells the modem to use the wap APN, use the IP assigned from the server, and use compression.
  5. Now, create a new network connection with the following characteristics:
    • Phone number: *99***X# (X is the number of the wap profile you created, in this case, as the wapANCEL profile is the profile number 6, the number would be *99***6#)
  6. Connect to the internet using your mobile’s network connection.
  7. Configure your browser to use the HTTP Proxy defined on step 1 (200.40.246.2, port 3128)
  8. Enjoy :)

One last thing, the proxy only allows HTTP and HTTPS traffic, if you want to use POP3 or other protocols you will need the data transfer plan, which does not have those restrictions but is more expensive.

06.11.07

Links added

Posted in Development, Hacks at 2:03 pm by cphoton

I added a couple of links so that you can see what articles I am interested in. I usually focus on productivity / life tips (such as the ones on LifeHack and ZenHabits), development (DeveloperZone, InfoQ, TSS, TSS.NET, among others) and internet news (/., del.icio.us, etc.). I read my feeds on a daily basis on Google Reader and share the most useful or interesting articles. I also save it on my del.icio.us page if it is very useful.

Enjoy!