Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Is it going to the news tomorrow - M1 service disruption for a day?

Not sure if I am the only one experiencing M1 broadband service disruption. Anyway, if I am not the only one, then most probably the service disruption will be in the news tomorrow?

I can't wait to find out today, so, I decided to tether Singtel data-plan on my phone to my notebook and started investigating (easier to type on a notebook).

  • Keying in "M1 service disruption 2015" in Google returned this article from Straits Times "Five-hour service outage not M1's fault" (dated 7 Jan 2015). It was an old issue.
  • Next, I tried M1 on Facebook and the last update was 28 hours ago. That's a long time (or it could be a normal update frequency) but there is still no mention of service disruption.
M1 on Facebook with last update at 28 hours ago.
  • I tried to search for users' input at the sidebar (or rather side-column) and the last update by any user was around 18 hours ago. It still did not answer my question, "is M1 down?".
  • I tried to search for the service maintenance that M1 constantly send via email (which I promptly deleted because most of the time, it did not relate to me). Probably I missed out the announcement pertaining to service maintenance at my place. I went to M1 service announcement page. The fiber maintenance schedule and place weren't located close to my area. So, it is not possible that M1 is down due to maintenance.
  • I tried rebooting my router (with no luck) and I tried switching-off-and-on of the whole machine connected to my multi-socket plug (with no luck).
  • I give up and hope to get an answer tomorrow. I hope M1 will be able to cater to information-hungry consumer like me to know what went wrong today (from afternoon up today on 25 Feb 2015 until now at 12.15 am on 26 Feb 2015 and still counting in my sleep).
 Fortunately, I have a Singtel on my phone (capped at 2 Gb) when M1 is down to connect.

For those who aren't familiar with tethering and portable hotspot function, you can refer to this site or the following figure at the bottom.

How to convert your phone with data-plan into portable Wifi for your other devices. You can add security feature such as password to prevent other devices from connecting to your data-plan.

Just to share.

Update
Woke up this morning to try the connection and my router was still unable to connect to the internet. The WAN IP was 0.0.0.0 and attempt to renew the connection status returned "disconnected". There was a problem connecting to the M1 server.

Next thing I did was to go the the "fiber-optic modem thingy" (or indoor optical network terminal aka ONT), re-tighten all the cable connections, then switching off and then on the power button. Afterwards, I reboot my router via internet browser (key in "http://192.168.1.1/" in address bar) and waited for the good news. It worked.

Huawei ONT backpanel. I tried re-connect all cables and then press the Power button to switch off then on back again.


Well, I don't know if M1 was down or not yesterday, but the connection with M1 sure has it's ups and downs (most of the time) and sometimes, lost (in my case) without any way to know if M1 was down or my connection with M1 was down.

At least I know that if next time M1 is slow or lost, I will try to re-establish my ONT connection with M1 server by the above steps.


Wednesday, February 11, 2015

HDB should have more low cost advertisement board to minimize discriminate advert posting

Discriminate advertisement posting on walls, posts (or building columns), homeowners' front doors, windows, foyers, letter boxes, trees, and whatever surface that these advertisers can find - IS STILL NOT a major problem.

Do you know which type of advert posting that can drive you up the walls? For me, it is those adhesive (or sticker) type of adverts informing about plumbing or wiring services (or sometimes about sale of cooking gas tanks). These stickers are difficult to tear and usually will leave a mark on the surface. I find them pasted outside my flat.

For this reason, I would normally ignore such stickers because I wouldn't want to get another one pasted elsewhere, thus leaving many marks. What is funny sometimes would be to see competitors stacking their stickers on the earlier ones, and they do stack on each others' stickers several times, leaving at least three to four layers of stickers on the same spot.

I have seen tuition adverts being pasted in lift lobbies, walk ways, near schools, lamp posts, and even on trees. In addition, there are adverts offering room for rent, buy/sell liquors at attractive prices, and many others. The problem with discriminate pasting of papers is still manageable because early in the morning, there will be HDB cleaning crew who maintain our neighbourhood cleanliness. They will remove these papers pasted on unassigned places.

Sometimes, I wish that HDB could allocate a place for advertisers to paste their adverts in an organized manner. Such adverts will have an allocated duration on the advert/notice board (after which the advert will be removed and replaced with new applicants). That way, we won't see too many papers left stuck around for a long time (or until being eaten by mold).

low cost advertisement at notice boards
Alternatively, in the age of information technology (IT), I guess having a website catering to adverts posting would be great. Instead of receiving a lot of junk mails about property sales by property salesperson (or agent) in our letter boxes (those that can't be locked to prevent junk mails), advertisers can opt for lower cost (environmentally friendly without sacrificing trees) alternative of posting them on the internet.

Just a thought.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

No time to blog, the only index I have is how many diapers I've changed and how many oz my baby had drunk

Baby's 3 weeks old.

There is no greater place to be in the hospital than the maternity ward. The patients are happy and nice. The attending nurses and doctors are lively too. The comparison is astounding, especially when I had to register my wife during admission at the Accident & Emergency (A&E) ward. Over there, the staff are constantly admitting angry, frustrated and in-lots-of-pain patients around the clock. I asked one of the hospital staff there and she said that "tonight is considered better".

Going back to the maternity ward, the only cries are from babies reminding mothers that it is feeding time. As adults, we often forget that baby's only means to communicate to parents is through cries. Baby's cries can be grouped into main two reasons, (1) I'm hungry, (2) I'm uncomfortable. The second one is difficult to discern because it could be due to "shee shee" (pass water), "poo poo" (pass motion), "boo boo" (colic and wind), discomfort due to heat  or nappy rashes, etc.

I have been up and about for two-and-a-half hours feeding and cleaning baby. I took turns with my wife to help out the first week. After that, I only contribute at 9.30 pm, 11.30 pm, and the 2 am slots. I slept like a log afterwards and sometimes I would dream of cries.

That's how I spent my time these few weeks.

Balancing egg during LiChin or Equinox

I have no idea what Equinox meant and I Googled. Read about Equinox from Wikipedia here. I still couldn't picture the earth's spin and orbiting around the sun.

Anyway, I am guessing that the concept could be that when the earth's rotation is similar in direction to earth's orbiting around the sun, then the added up centrifugal force will be "singular" and less interference. That time, if you stand in the equator, you will be more lighter and "upright" (due to the combined centrifugal force). I'm not sure if that's how the egg balancing came about.

Today is Lichun and many of my friends are balancing their household eggs on the floor. They are posting their achievements on social media. I wanted to try that too in my HDB flat. However, I got no success in different location of the house. I guess I will need a "surface level" tool to spot which part of the flooring is truly flat.

It's fun to be able to balance eggs on flat surface but it has got nothing to do with celestial events. That's because the Earth's gravity is more influential to an egg than any other celestial forces. I think patience and luck are criteria for a successful egg balancing. Sigh.

What is fascinating is that for less dense matter like water, it is easily influenced by the moon's gravitational force (and Earth's centrifugal force) than denser matter like humans and eggs, hence the high and low tides. As for me, I don't feel lighter or taller during high tides.

I'll try again the egg balancing soon.
Good luck in your tries.

References