Michael Henley

The Guardian gets sharing

Post-It Pong

Whilst abroad I am watching my background network usage pretty closely with Hands Off!, defining a new set of rules for use here. Mostly they block things like autoupdate programs from running. I noticed that Safari was making outgoing connections whilst not actually being running in the Dock. Is this something new in Lion, a random bug or something old I don’t know about? Unfortunately I didn’t have the presence of mind to check where it was connecting to before heading to Activity Monitor and killing the process.

Given it took a few hits and misses to finally get this all working ok, this ‘series’ (of one, so far) will document how I have got 3G data working in various countries. By this I do not mean Roaming, but rather using a local SIM.

In Cyprus there are two providers to choose from:  1) MTN and 2) Cytamobile. I am using a Cytamobile-Vodafone Mobile Broadband PAYG SIM that has been cut down to microSIM size; they did this for me free of charge in the Cyta shop. Unlike in England where even for PAYG you must provide name and address, I did not need to provide any personal details at all to get hold of a SIM. Simply ask in the shop for a Mobile Broadband SIM for an iPad and they will give you the details.

Settings:

The settings for this SIM are simple: APN is ‘pp.internet’ (no quotes), and other fields are left blank. If there is a telephone number field for configuring, set it to the standard *99#. If you are using an iPhone and want to use Tethering, which works free of charge and without any special config on the network end, set the Internet Tethering APN setting to ‘pp.internet’ and like above leave all the other fields blank. Unfortunately the iPad does not let you tether but I have an unlocked iPhone 3GS with me, which has the SIM in a microSIM adapter installed. I have also had it working with my unlocked Huawei E5830 using the settings I have mentioned here.

Top-Up:

Top-Up online is not totally available on this network, and all top up has to happen by text or call so you need to get a phone with you regardless of if you are using it for the actual connection. The top-up cards can be purchased online in the form of a code delivered by email, or in stores. As far as I have found you can’t buy top-up cards in supermarkets here; instead go to a soeasy store, a chain of convenience stores on the island.

The data amounts and prices as of Sept 4, 2011 are:

Amount	Validity period (days)	Volume of Data (ΜΒ)
€5	15	100
€10	30	200
€20	60	440
€35	120	820

I have loaded up €20 and used about half of it in four days. This is with my fairly excessive usage being only mildly curtailed and using it for iPad, iPhone and MBA with Maps, Email, Blogging etc.

…or why it’s difficult to please everyone.

I am spending my Sunday morning catching up with the news and hearing about the Tottenham riots of last night. Some reports say that things are still going on; the general feeling is that it reflects a much deeper lack of trust in the Police in some communities.

Reading the BBC News article there were quotes from No. 10 and Theresa May that said that the rioting was “unacceptable” and “would not be tolerated”. My first reading on this was that I was unsure that the authoritarian tone was wise. I felt it read like a school teacher chastising a child, not a government addressing citizens.

On my second reading though I realise that statements such as this are more likely for the benefit of the police. Officers that have been placed in danger ostensibly because colleagues of theirs did their job, a job that ended tragically in a gun-fight.

I do not know what tone I would put more importance on. Do you fully support the police with a hard-line statement but risk further alienating the people involved, or try to condemn without authoritarianism which may demoralise police that are facing difficult circumstances and need support?

As I said at the open: difficult to please everybody.

Have a good Sunday all.

Upgraded to Lion this morning and it has resulted in something weird. My computer can not make outgoing connections on port 80 unless I connect to a VPN. Other connections (ICMP, SSH, etc.) work normally but browsers, DropBox, apps in general can not connect and simply times out. Thoughts on what might cause this? Googling has turned up nothing and conveniently my Apple support has expired. I would rather not pay £35 for something that might not result in a solution…

UPDATE: Some further searching yielded this Apple Support discussion which gave me something to go on. Basically Avast breaks the internet under Lion. Should probably have run that compatibility check… Uninstalling Avast fixes the problem. Curious that a VPN connection allowed it to work. Guess it circumvents whatever magic Avast put in place for the web shield to work.

Dear customer, we are making an already useless service more useless. Yours, @O2:

FT launches web app for iPad. Further tablet support in pipeline. Free this week

A very necessary new filter

Sometimes sleep is the best option