Consumed Consumer . org

There was a time when having a “media center” involved building an HTPC, which was a difficult project to undertake, wrought with frustrations and hardware/software incompatibilities. OTA HDTV came along and many felt left behind just when they had gotten things working. Some experimented with Popcorn while others played with NZBs/NNTP/Usenet downloads. After all these years, one media interface has emerged dominant: XBMC / Boxi / Kodi.

After wasting time and intense frustration, I have decided that waiting for videos of photos to upload to online services is not something I want to do from my laptop. I shall thus explore alternatives..

Now that we know what VOIP is and the hardware and the provider have been chosen, what's left is to do some finer configuration of our service and start VOIP-ing!

Having briefly discussed how to choose a virtual private server (VPS), we have experimented with a number of (hosting?) providers, some providing limited-time free service, some providing rock-bottom prices, and we are now ready to make a recommendation. We started this overview in 2020 and finished it in 2022.

I once stayed at a hostel that had terrible Internet connectivity. This contrasted harshly with the superior customer service provided by the staff and the otherwise modern, cutting edge amenities. Let’s see how this problem could be solved.

After discussing options in choosing a cheap, low-end, learning VPS , we take a look here at how to set it up for secure use, for when you get a so much for so little, you want to make sure it’s only yours!

Although I have purchased my WRT-610n router (pretty much the same as the newer E3000 ) many months ago, only recently was I forced to install the Linux firmware on it – mostly due to lack of time and procrastinating. This is primarily due to some issues with my Internet connectivity, which I am hoping could be solved with a better router.

After discussing the softphone options in the first part and the VOIP device in the second, we are now looking at finding a provider and setting up the system.

After my RAID-0 has recently failed catastrophically, the time has come to set up another pair of HDDs in my DNS-323. I figured a step-by-step howto on what I've done would not be useful only for me if I had to do it again, but to any other owner of this extremely popular unit. This is a rather long article, as it contains several smaller articles, but it is hopefully complete and suitable for a reinstall, cuz that’s the way I roll.

After installing Windows, I started playing with it extensively. These are the voyages of the Windows 10 Technical Evaluation, its continuing mission to explore strange new apps and computing paradigms, to seek out better GUIs, to boldly go where no stylus pen has gone before. In this article we will look at partitioning for dual boot with Linux and the very first impressions.

I recently had to buy a stand-alone camera for security purposes and I ended up buying what seemed to be the best value I could find. It still is after using it, so I am sharing this with you.

Unlike softphones , discussed in the first instalment of our beginner’s guide to VOIP , hardware solutions enable you to use the regular phone(s) you are presumably accustomed to use. There are three major solutions that could enable your home phone line to be routed over the Internet.

For a long time I’ve been toying with the idea of running a TOR relay for my own privacy reasons and to give back to the community as well. Though my router and NAS (and possibly even my WD Live box) have enough chutzpah to run it, I prefer to use a very old computer instead for reasons of separation (security). For a while, I even considered buying a Raspberry Pi or some other similar cheap gizmo, then I remember I have a bunch of old computers I've never used..

I recently bit the bullet and tried to set up my PAP with a VOIP service with my Cisco / Linksys PAP2T. Here's how it went.

Now that we recovered passwords and we're in, it's time to do a little clean up of this older Win XP / BT5r1 box.

I recently installed 11.10 on an old Toshiba tablet - color me impressed. I was itching to try this new version especially since I just inadvertently blew up the linux 10.10 partition in my old dual boot Toshiba Tablet and rather than fix it I had decided to wait for the new release.

I recently had to play a bit with a new installation of Ubuntu and again, old unnerving ghosts came back to haunt me. Since these ghosts have a habit of tormenting indiscriminately, I am sharing my solutions with you.

I have recently received a Valentine's Day card from Google. But rather than signs of love, I'd much rather get signs of respect, for where there is no love, it's just (corporate) lust.

Recently, my Linksys VoIP adapter malfunctioned. Here's my adventure in customer support.

I have recently resurrected some older devices with flaky connectivity and while ssh-ing into them had to use some terminal tricks (aka multiplexers ) to restore connections if disconnected (or to purposely disconnect/reconnect on long commands). I used tmux where possible, but occasionally only GNU screen was available, making a summary of features opportune.