Chatter Of The Squirrel

TM Net blocking Peer-2-Peer Downloading

P2P downloads have been suffering of late, even before the Taiwan submarine cable fault.

TMNet has been upgrading their networks, and purchasing new equipment to block P2P packets.

Before it all began, downloads of 100+ kB/s were possible. Needing merely hours to get a movie.

Then, they started throttling the bandwidth. Speeds dropping dramatically.

It first appears that they throttle back connections going out of Malaysia that had been identified as P2P connections. Speeds dropped to a small fraction of its glory days. But occassionally, you can still get good speeds when the program locks on to a local peer who  has the file you’re looking for.

And then suddenly in the last two days? Connection dropped to zero.

Completely blocked. Getting SocketException errors.

Well… Have to applaud TM Net for taking multiple approaches to curb such rampant broadband abuse.

I can’t fix the bandwidth throttle…

But the SocketException blocking can be successfully bypassed via this link.

A trickle is still better than going completely without.

A Cygnar Army

A friend just came back from the States. He went there for several weeks to visit his girl. And since he was there, I thought that it couldn’t hurt to buy something on eBay and ask him to bring it back for me.

My initial plan was to get a new GPS. I had sold my GPSMap76 a few months ago, and could’ve upgraded to something newer. Something with the new Sirf III chipset, which is more accurate than the older models, and can even operate under moderate forest cover.

But while looking for a vendor, I thought it couldn’t hurt to search eBay for some WarMachine stuff. Occassionally, people quit the hobby and sell off their collection for cheap.

And I found such a deal, alright…

One guy was selling off a huge collection of Cygnar, in order to get his kids a Nintendo Wii for Christmas.

I placed my bid, and bought the goodies for such a steal!! For RM 1.1k, I got more than 4k worth of goodies!

It was terrible to impose on my friend to bring back so much stuff. There was even more stuff than I expected. The guy threw in extra goodies even.

With this big buy, I think I’ve got more than half the range of WarMachine models! All factions put together!

Can’t help boasting about what I got, so here goes…

• Lt. Allister Caine
• Capt. Allister Caine
• Capt. Maxwell Finn
• Capt. Victoria Haley
• Major Markus Brisbane
• Major Victoria Haley
• Commander Adept Nemo
• Commander Coleman Stryker
• Capt. E. Dominic Darius
• 6x Arcane Tempest Gun Mages
• Field Mechaniks
• 10x Long Gunners
• 6x Stormblades
• 10x Trenchers
• Trencher Chain Gun Crew
• Journeyman Warcaster
• Gun Mage Captain Adept
• 3x Stormsmiths
• Charger
• 2x Hunters
• Sentinel
• Ironclad
• Stormclad
• Lancer
• Centurion
• Thunderhead
• Kommander Sorscha
• 6x Doom Reavers
• 4x Widowmakers
• Kodiak
• Alexia Ciannor
• 2x Thrall Warriors
• 10+ Risen
• Gorten Grundback
• Gorman Di Wulfe
• Ashlynn D’Else
• Cylena Raefyll & 7 Nyss Hunters
• 6 Devil Dogs
• Eiryss - Mage Hunter of Ios
• 6x Greygore Boomhowler & Co.
• 6x Hammerfall High Shield Gun Corps
• Reinholdt
• 3x Grundback Gunners
• Ghordson Driller
• Mule

5 years from now, I’ll still won’t have finished painting everything.

Kakuro

Curses!

Came across a Kakuro puzzle in The Sun. It’s just some silly variant of Sudoku, in a crossword puzzle format.

Very much more challenging than Sudoku though, as I found to my detriment.

Designed an Excel sheet to tackle it.

And I lost about 10hrs of my life to it.

Good gawd.

Granted that this WAS my first Kakuro puzzle… but to take so bloody long is glaring evidence that my brain needs some serious overhaul. The uncompleted puzzle mocked me! Cracked my head against it deep into the early hours of the morning.

But it’s finally done!