Wey Gie's Weblog

Mobility is important. Getting Connected is important. I need to get the Broadband USB Modem to work.

I have a HUAWEI E220 USB Modem, Acer TravelMate 6292 Notebook. My Service Provider is StarHub (Singapore). After some research on the net, I know that the modem needs to work with usbsacm driver.

Finally this is what I did to get it work.

I installed the updated driver from http://chototsumoushinp.dip.jp/solaris/emobile.tar.bz2. I copied the driver "usbsacm" from the "amd64" directory in the archive to  /kernel/drv/amd64 directory.

I updated the driver with the following commands:

# update_drv -a -i "usb12d1,1003" usbsacm
# devfsadm

# ln -s /dev/term/0 /dev/huawei

I also created the 2 files.

/etc/ppp/peers/huawei:

nodetach
huawei
460800
noauth
passive
defaultroute
usepeerdns
noccp
novj
user 'ppp'
show-password
crtscts
connect '/usr/bin/chat -V -t15 -f /etc/ppp/huawei-chat'

/etc/ppp/huawei-chat:

'' 'ATZ'
'OK' 'ATQ0V1E1&D2&C1S0=0'
'OK' 'ATE0V1'
'OK' 'ATS7=60'
'OK' 'ATDT*99#'
CONNECT ''

I then connected the USB Model to the USB port. Rebooted the server with the USB stick connected.

After reboot, I disabled one CPU (as I read somewhere the with 2 CPU cores up, the driver may not work properly)

# psradm -f 1

I then run:

# pppd call huawei

The is the output from the command:

OK
ATQ0V1E1&D2&C1S0=0
OK
ATE0V1
OK

OK

CONNECTSerial connection established.
Using interface sppp0
Connect: sppp0 <--> /dev/huawei
local  IP address ....
remote IP address ....
primary   DNS address ....
secondary DNS address ....

I then manually updated /etc/resolv.conf with the DNS addresses.

That's it. Network is up, and I am writing this blog using this wireless broadband HSDPA connection.

Great !

I was jogging this morning (after a one week break) and was thinking about virtual worlds, and the movie Matrix came into mind. Will it come a day when physical world will be so closely linked to virtual world that humans could be influenced/controlled by what happen in the virtual world ?

Open Source technology sunch as Project Wonderland will accelerate the growth of the virtual world not just for gaming but for training and collaboration. Companies have started looking at the economic aspect such as doing financial transactions within the virtual world. I could forsee a proliferation of virtual worlds that would be followed by a consolidation of them.  

How then will a person divide his time between physical world and virtual world ? Will a person be present in both worlds at the same time ? Something for me to think about ...

As I planned to travel to the US, and my passport belonged to the category

"Passport issued, renewed or extended between Oct 26, 2005 and Oct 25, 2006, which has a digital photograph printed on the data page or a biometric chip containing information from the data page."

I went ahead to apply for a new passport.

Using APPLES, the online system for application, I submitted my digital photograph and was told that the processing time would be 3 working days.

After a few days, I received a notification by post that my passport was ready. I made an appointment online at 10am on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I arrived at ICA @ 9:55am. I collected a queue number and was at the counter by 9:57am. I was next in the queue. At about 10:03, my queue number appeared on the display and was attended by the friendly staff. I was out of ICA by 10:15am. The last time I collected passport for my kids, it took me more than a hour.

The total time I spent in ICA was less than 20 minutes. Although I used a 1 hr car park coupon, I was not complaining.

That is efficiency !

The training I had last week was one of the better soft skill training I attended. Mainly because I could apply it in my work. Although one could easily call it documented common sense, it was the realistic examples given and the practical way in which it could be applied that made it relevant and interesting.

To internalize the learning is probably the hardest. Picking two or three areas to focus on over the next few months and making conscious effort to practice will be needed. Putting down in words here will be a good starting point.