Wifi Combat

I suspect someone has been jamming my wireless network today.

I noticed that web pages were taking a long time to load, which is strange since my cable internet is normally very fast. Then my laptop's wireless connection to my router
started dropping out within seconds every time it reconnected.

I opened my site monitor and found that new non-broadcasting wireless networks were suddenly popping up on channels 1 and 11, and the strongest one was on the same channel as my router. Though my connection kept dropping out, I managed to connect to the admin page on my router long enough to move it to channel 6. It's not a good idea to use the wireless network to do router configuration, but I wasn't too worried about someone spying on my router password out of my packets because I run WPA-2 encryption.

After I moved to 6, someone opened a new nonbroadcasting network on channel 8! Usually, 1-6-11 are the three channels used. These are chosen because they are as far apart as you can get; the intermediate channels interfere slightly with each other. It is possible that someone might choose 8 knowing that it would interfere with my 6. I thought, "they're trying to squeeze me out."

Haha, they don't know who they're messing with. I went into my router again and this time I sliced my broadcast power down as low as it would go: 3 percent.

You might think, that if you are in a wifi jamming war, you would want to make your signal as strong as possible. That's brute force thinking. The Zen way to beat them is to make it so they don't know your signal is there at all. A signal that is too strong is a common security risk for wifi networks; if you instead use only the minimum signal you can get by with, you reduce the chances of someone eavesdropping on your signal from far away. By setting my broadcast signal so low, hardly any of it spills outside the walls of my house.

Once I had the signal turned down so that my jammer couldn't see my network, I switched channels one last time - from 6 down to 5, so that it would both be farter from 8, and odd instead of even (if that matters -?). Though my 3% signal only gets two bars on my meter, it still runs at the full 54 MBps, and I haven't been knocked offline since.

I Didn't Clear the CMOS - D'Oh!

At work this week a computer was hit by a power surge and it wouldn't come on, though the lights would light up. "Aha," I said, "I know just what to do!" I suspected that the power surge might have corrupted the CMOS memory. Back when I used to be in electronics class at Vo-Tech, I often ran into computers that appeared totally dead because of something as minor as a corrupt CMOS setting. They often had nothing major wrong with them once the CMOS was cleared.

I wasted no time in opening up the work computer that had been scrambled by the power surge, and I set the jumper to clear the CMOS. When the procedure was finished, the computer magically came back to life.

Later that day I got to thinking... Isn't it strange, I told myself, that the computer at work which I fixed by clearing the CMOS had exactly the same symptoms as my dead motherboard at home. For some reason, though I instantly knew to clear the CMOS on the work computer, when my home computer had had the same problem, it had not even occurred to me to check that!

My computer has been dead for a month while I struggled to find the time to set up a new motherboard and hard drive with it. I pulled my old motherboard out of the trash and set the jumper to clear the CMOS. I had already parted out all the pieces of the computer that the motherboard went in; I would feel like a fool if a 2 minute procedure could have saved that computer. "If this works, I'm won't know whether to be happy or pissed at myself."

I cleared the CMOS. The motherboard, which I had thrown away, the loss of which had thrown me off work and gaming for a month - the motherboard worked.

D'oh!

In Hindsight, my Foresight was 20-20

When I bought my portable harddrive, I went to no small amount of trouble to install Ubuntu Linux on it, wasting valuable storage space to make a sort of "Ubuntu rescue partition." Most of the people I asked told me running an operating system from a USB drive was pointless, and probably impossible. Impossible it was not, though it required tedious study of arcane documents and a bit of black magic. For a while it was fun to see Linux booting off a USB drive, but eventually I grew tired of the trick and just installed Ubuntu onto the internal hard drives in my machines.

I came to regret having wasted the space on my external drive, so a few weeks ago I prepared to clear off the drive and repartition it. But before I could start, the motherboard in my desktop was killed by a runaway power supply.

Between my junk box and donations from friends, I was able to gather a booty of no less than eight replacement motherboards, each of dubious origin and doubtful reliability.

Three motherboards evidenced fire damage; they had been toasted before I ever got them.

One motherboard worked, but only with a goofy old style of RAM and not with my fastest processor.

One went into nuclear meltdown in my lap.

Two more simply did nothing at all.

I saved the best one for last. With its beautiful silver coating and more features than even I will use, this motherboard was obviously targetted at gamers and custom system builders. The only caveat was that it dated from a couple years earlier than my old motherboard, so it would run my processor, but not as fast as the recently deceased board had. But it was the best candidate, and it was new in the box. Could it be, could this one actually work? My heart was in my throat as I connected the cables.

Nothing.

Anticlimax. Pack up and go home.

I don't think so. This motherboard, I mean you could just look at it, and you'd just know, it was too damn pretty to not work. Like seeing a shiny Corvette on the showroom floor and being told it doesn't run. Doesn't add up, does it?

When I get stuck, I try to put my problem in the larger context of the situation as a whole. So... This motherboard had to come from somewhere. I didn't know its history but I do know that someone had taken this expensive new motherboard and thrown it away. Now what would cause someone to do that? Maybe they bought it and it didn't work. I refuse to accept that it doesn't work. Then - what could cause someone to think their motherboard doesn't work?

User error.

And the antidote to user error? RTFM. It stands for "Read the F--king Manual," and it's good advice.

In the manual for the motherboard I found that a jumper was incorrectly stuck on where the power switch belongs. That's like holding the button in all the time; it won't turn on until you let go. Furthermore the presence of the jumper had led me to put the real power switch onto the wrong place. Someone had stuck a jumper where it didn't belong and the motherboard was just wired permanently off. I removed the jumper, and the system booted; it seems the original owner threw out something worth $200 rather than open a book and read about it.

Now we come to the foresight I alluded to in my title. Obviously I could not really have known ahead of time, but I might as well have. It turned out that my little Linux partition on my external storage drive was worthwhile anyhow. The hard drive I'd been using with my old motherboard was SATA, but my replacement motherboard doesn't have SATA. It meant that I couldn't boot the hard drive that had my operating system on it. Instead, I had to gut my external storage drive to get a P-ATA drive that would work with the replacement motherboard. And on the drive, there was the preinstalled Ubuntu partition, working just as well now that it is inside my computer as it did when it was outside in the USB enclosure. So I have an operating system for my computer after all.

Project Pages - Powerwheels Robots

I'm stoked because I just finished the first of the Project Pages on my website! I made a complete write-up about Hagrid, my powerwheels robot. Expect to see more projects up soon too.

The Dearly Departed: My Poor Bicycle

This morning I awoke (at noon) to find my bicycle stolen. Ack! That's what I get for using a cheap Walmart chain to secure a valuable item. The thieves didn't even have to cut it; they just pulled and the traitorous links separated without protest. They left the chain, broken, on the ground.

That's my brother riding it in this picture. It was a 1962 Huffy; an English bicycle with a 3-speed hub. Completely irreplaceable - a collector's item these days. I liked it because I hate dérailleurs; with a 3-speed hub there's no chain derailing and you can change gears at any time, even at a dead stop. Despite half a century of age and neglect, the bicycle was in perfect working order. It had brand-new tires and I'd just installed all new cables.

I actually noticed the chain out of place a second before I put two and two together: "Hmmm... If I'm holding the chain... and the chain is broken... and it was on my bicycle last night... and today it was on the ground... Holy Crap! WHERE'S ME BICYCLE?"

It's a strange feeling one gets at this moment of realization. It reminded me of when I was three and let go of my balloon on accident. As I watched it disappear into the sky, I somehow understood that there was nothing that could be done to retrieve it. Something ought to be done - yet nothing could be done.

You let go of your balloon - it goes up and away. Simple physics. You leave your bicycle chained outside in a neighborhood of juvenile delinquents - it gets vandalized. Cause and effect.

An Opinionated Review of the Orlando Presentations

As I said in my previous entry, the quality of the presentations varied widely. There were many presentations I thought were very good.

But it's more fun to attack the bad ones.

By far the worst presentation I saw was blue text on a lime green background. In ALL CAPS. Incredible. It was so bad, I couldn't look away. It was like a cheesy horror movie. I can't remember at all what the research was about, but I was so fascinated by the abomination that I just had to make a spoof of it. See it for yourself.

Oh but it wasn't just the slides; his presentation style was... unique. Picture this: this guy loads his slides up on the projector and you can tell from his title page that it's going to be a terrible presentation. He steps out in front of the crowd, and says... nothing. He looks at us through round coke-bottle glasses a gives that deer-in-the-headlights look that only public speaking can inspire. (Did you know some people fear public speaking more than death?)

So this poor guy steps out and just looks at us for two minutes and I'm thinking, poor fellow, he's going to die of pure fright right there in front of me. When he finally spoke it was barely more than a mumble through the whole presentation.

A different presentation that struck me as funny was not bad in the usual sense, in fact it was a polished presentation and the speaker was well-practiced. Problem was, it didn't look like a research talk. It looked like a coporate motivational presentation. Straight out of Dilbert. "In order to maximize your profits, you want to minimize your costs and maximize your revenues!" Complete with a histrogram showing costs that are down and revenues that are up, but the chart doesn't mean anything because there is no Y-axis and no units! It was also full of motivationally meaningless phrases like, "The future is tomorrow's now!" and "Today is yesterday's tomorrow!"

That presentation was supposedly about data mining - stick to your subject, please!

Another presentation was about the effectiveness of a new teaching method. This was a good presentation but here I consider the work itself questionable. The researcher gave a pre-test to a student on a subject they were doing badly in, spent one hour tutoring the student, and then administered a post test. Naturally the students did better. Based on this data, the researcher declared the teaching method a resounding success.

Wait, no way. How is this science? Setting aside the issue that he has hand selected his subjects (it is not random) the form of the experiment is also bad. He has an experiment with a variable but no control. I suppose he thinks the pre-test is a control. That's not a control, it's your baseline for your measurements. A control would have been to administer the pre-test and post-test with one hour in between in which you did nothing. Or to compare it to doing the pre-test and post-test with a different tutoring method for one hour. Only then can you get a real comparative analysis.

I told the presenter I personally liked his teaching method, but I can't consider it objectively if he doesn't compare it to anything else. He said that in all of the previous literature, the other researchers in this field are doing what he does - comparing pre-test and post-test only for their own method.

In other words, it's ok because everyone is doing it.

(How much science would a scientist chuck if a scientist could chuck science?)

Some other things I found hilariously bad in other presentations:

• Slide transitions that make it take ten seconds for everything to finish. The speaker is trying to make her point but words are flying around like helicopters.
• Talking with your hands in your pockets. Good: you don't wave your hands around like a madman. Bad: Makes you look sheepish. "Ah gee shucks Mr. Wilson, I didn't mean nuthin' by it."
• Getting defensive over questions. The moment you get defensive, you've lost all credibility with the audience.
  

Paranoia and Computer Science in Orlando

I'm sitting at the hotel cantina, enjoying a beer with my new friend from Iceland. We are searching the internet, using our laptops to try to uncover the truth about the strange suspicions we share about the computer science event we are attending.

There is something odd about this conference.

I showed up Monday morning bright and early to check in for the conference right on time. I arrived to find nothing set up, and a sole conference organizer surrounded by unopened boxes. He told me "it was hot" so he "didn't feel like unpacking the registration materials." Come back later, he said.

It was on my way out of the room that I noticed the conference sign was written in magic marker. Like a lemonade stand.

To kill time I ate a continental breakfast in the hotel diner. Everything was stale. Usually continental breakfasts - especially at conferences - are complimentary; this one cost $4.70.

I was more concerned whether or not there was salmonella on the week-old boiled eggs.

I came back and registered for the conference. If you didn't have a receipt, they gave you a bank account number where you could transfer $ to attend the first day; when you find your receipt, they promised to refund your extra payment. But it was abundantly clear that it was very important that they get payment, and they wouldn't complain if someone wanted to pay twice.

Luckily I had my receipt, and a transcript of an email with Prof. J E which documented that I would be presenting a paper for my colleague. I was never to meet the mysterious JE, but I did get in to the conference with no trouble.

This is my first conference so I didn't know what to expect, but I was sure that I could expect a printed copy of the proceedings - that is, a printed schedule and a book containing all of the papers submitted to the conference. I got no such item. They gave us a CD, with the conference proceedings on it. Ok, this is the 21st century, I can dig this. Paper is dead. Long live digital media! Yet... it seems somehow an insult to hand us a mere CD when we were promised a book. Like they couldn't be bothered to print it out for us. What about a schedule? - they didn't even print that. It is a pain to pull out your laptop every time you want to know what's happening next, and I wanted to circle the talks I wanted to attend. You can't (easily) do this with a PDF.

The conference organizer (J E) did not show up; there was no explanation.

At least the rest of the proceedings began innocently enough. We had a guest speech called Forty Years in the Software Trenches. I love hearing stories about the early days of computing, and this guy's been around since the days of punch cards.

After the speech, BP, the assistant organizer, popped in to say that it was break time, and that there would be free breakfast food during the break times. (I'd just paid for breakfast. D'Oh!) I asked him if we could get our money back if the hotel erroneously charged us - he said, "Next time, if you're not so hungry, you can just wait until break time!"

I took break; what the heck, might as well snack again, since it's free. I loaded my plate with some petrified cinnamon buns and the archeological remains of a danish. "That'll be $4.70" I thought it was free! "No, not this - that. Only that side. The conference organizers only paid for what's on that side." D'Oh!

What was on "that side" of the buffet was: ice water, burnt cookies, and stale tortilla chips. Breakfast of champions, yes?

I considered coffee, but I'd made some in my room this morning. Good thing. A.B., from Tunisia, approached the coffee percolator. A hotel staff physically blocked her, dashing to place his body between her the percolator just as she reached for the spigot. "Can't have that," he said. WTF? "The conference organizers didn't want to pay for you guys to have coffee. So you can't have any. You can only have the ice water or the coke." (A fellow attendee later informed me that even the coke was cut with a great deal of water to make it go farther.)

AB and I sat at the same table and during the break discussed our disappointment in some aspects of the way the conference had been organized. BP, who you will remember was the assistant organizer, asked if he could join our discussion. I felt a little sheepish - had he heard us? - but AB took the opportunity to confront him (tactfully). "No coffee allowed at the coffee break? I never heard of such a thing!" she said. BP said, "No you see, different people have different tastes, yes? And you can't please everyone. So really, we can only give water." Amil said, "Yes, but no coffee? I've been to conferences in many countries, and this is the first I've seen that." BP said, "Yes but you see... in other countries, they are more hospitable. They are not so hospitable in America. So you see we cannot provide coffee."

Huh? That doesn't even make sense.

This wasn't getting anywhere, so I asked him my question: "You know, I was disappointed to not receive any printed proceedings, or a schedule." BP had a justification for everything: "Yes but you see this is better, because this way you can print out just what you want. You can go on the CD, you see, and click click click and get right to the paper you want to see."

Thanks. I know how a document on a CD works.

AB said to him, "Wait, he's got a point! Some of us don't even have our laptops here. How are we supposed to review the papers before the talks? It's not like you provided a PC available for us to use to at least view the CD." BP went on the offensive now: "Well I went to a conference in India and there they told us to bring our own laptops and I am not responsible if you didn't bring your own laptop. So you see it is really your own fault that you don't have your laptop with you." Amil countered, "But the rules for this conference don't say to bring your own computer!" BP had his story and stuck to it: "It is your fault!" he declared, "And as for us providing you a computer to view it on, that is not our fault either, ha ha, it's not like we can force the hotel to provide you with a PC."

Huh? Strange logic, these Indians have.

The content of the presentations varied widely in both quality and topic. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the selection criteria for papers.

There is a common scam involving books of poetry, in which gullible young writers are led to believe that their poetry is so good that a publisher wants to include it in their next book. Anyone will be accepted; as long as they buy a copy of the book. The book is expensive.

The basic concept appears over and over - short story contests, the who's who of students, etc. Might someone do that with a conference? Might someone have done that with this research conference? I haven't a bloody clue.

But I do know this: if they had, they would have made $400 - $800 off every person here.

Honestly this conference is not really a scam. It would be better to say that: it borders on scandalous. Hopefully the conference organizers learn to do better next time, and I know all of us attendees have learned an important lesson about being selective where we publish.