Category Archives: Computer

Computer

Setting up an IP-over-DNS tunnel

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Iodine is a piece of software designed to forward IP traffic over DNS queries. Its main purpose is to circumvent the captive portals of public Wi-Fi networks. That can be possible because a lot of captive portals does not restrict DNS queries.

http://code.kryo.se/iodine/

I thought it is a fun idea to try out, so I set up my own server.

First I created a delegate for a subdomain to my linux server
dns

Then I installed iodine on my linux box.
Iodine comes in a package for Ubuntu, I could simply use that.

apt-get install iodine

Then start iodine

iodined

At first try I got Bad Handshake errors and was unable to connect

Opened dns0
Opened UDP socket
Version ok, both running 0x00000401. You are user #0
Received bad handshake
Retrying login...
Received bad handshake
Retrying login...

I found that adding a -c option fixes the problem. If you are stuck with handshake, add -c to your launch options.

iodine

I downloaded precompiled iodine for Windows and started it.
Then I could connect to my linux box via ssh at 10.0.0.1

I could use SOCKS forwarding over SSH to browse the web.
But browsing the web is very slow, opening the Google main page takes about 20 seconds to finish. So I would say that its not practically useful. It would be better to use a text based browser like elinks over the SSH connection.
Anyway with Iodine enabled I could successfully connect to the internet on a local Wimax network without paying for subscription.
In conclusion I say that Iodine is a neat application but it requires so much time (and patience) to actually use it.

 

+to add the iodined as a service, edit /etc/init.d/iodined and adjust DAEMON_ARGS as per your needs.

Computer

Calibrated color profiles for W230SS

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These ICC profiles are created with Spyder4Elite
It will help you get rid of the overall yellow tint of the original Chi Mei LCD panel and give much more natural colors

Following photos are for comparision, on the left is my W230SS and on the right is my Lenovo workstation Calibrated with Pantone colorimeter
All pictures are taken with static White Balance adjusted to match the Lenovo for accurate comparison.
W230SS looks kinda darker but thats because of the brightness settings so it does not matter, I just forgot to increase brightness…

SONY DSC

Original uncalibrated display (6100k) vs 7000k calibrated display
Notice how the display has a light yellow tint

SONY DSC

Calibrated to 6500k vs 7000k display
Without the yellow tint, the colors look more vivid

SONY DSC

Calibrated to 7500k vs 7000k display
If you prefer cold color temperature, this can also be a choice

Download links below
6500k is the most widely used profile for photo editing
7500k is slightly colder, if you are used to TN panels you might like this one more

W230SS-6500K

W230SS-7500K

Refer to this post on how to install a color profile

Check this post for warmer profiles

Computer

Easily switching between ICC profiles

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Having bought a new color calibration tool for my computers, I wanted to publish new calibration data for other people.
My Spider4Elite comes with a neat set of software to switch between profiles easily, but what about others who don’t have a Spyder to use?

I looked up on Google and came up with a nice little tool.
It is called ‘Display Profile’ and is developed by pcmonitors.info

No installation required, straight forward setting.

First, install a color profile using Windows Explorer

icc

Unextract the zip and select the profile of your choice.

dp
Voilà, everything is done.

Download at pcmonitor.info

Computer

Getting the SteamID of current user using Steam_API

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This is the code I used when integrating ManaGuardian with Steam.
I could not find any other posts regarding this so I am publishing my code for reference. I hope it helps

Steam API header files from valve SDK are required

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013/tree/master/sp/src/public/steam

//Initialize Steam API

InitResult irResult = g_oSteamAPI.Initialize(g_szAppPath);

if (irResult != IR_SUCCESS)
    return EXIT_FAILURE;

//Open Steam User Interface
ISteamUser* pSteamUser = g_oSteamAPI.GetSteamUserInterface();

if (!pSteamUser)
    return EXIT_FAILURE;

CSteamID sSteamID = pSteamUser->GetSteamID();
uint64 uSteamID = sSteamID.ConvertToUint64();
char cSteamID[64];
sprintf(cSteamID, "%lld", (long long)uSteamID);
printf("User SteamID : %s\n", cSteamID);

The code is pretty much self-explanatory.

Computer

Interesting domain spam

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Yesterday I registered my new domain manatails.com.

But I was quite surprised to see this spam mail in my mailbox today claiming that I needed to pay a fee for registering my domain to internet search engines. Are they really checking each new domain registration just to spam everyone registering a new domain?

Oh dear,

spam

 

 

Computer

Regarding battery wear on laptops

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After having used the laptop for 4 months. I opened up the battery info to check how much of life the battery has lost.

The results were much better than what I expected :

battery

Before calibration it showed 0.3% wear rate.

battery2

After calibration battery wear was completely gone.

The calibration is done by fully discharging and charging the battery 2 consecutive times.

I kept the charger plugged all the time whenever I put my laptop on my desk and I took my laptop very often in weekends. People say that using the charger after full charge can severely cut the battery life, but from these results, at least I won’t worry about it again.

Computer

GeForce vs Quadro SPECviewperf 11.0 benchmark

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Computer specs

GeForce box:

i7-3970x, Geforce GTX690, 32GB RAM

Quadro laptop:

i7-820QM, Quadro FX880M, 8GB RAM

SPECviewperf_11

As can be seen in the graph, even a 3-year old mobile Quadro card can easily beat a high-end desktop Geforce card in pretty much every benchmark, except for CEI Ensight which I believe does not rely heavily on double-precision floating point computations.

It was quite surprising contemplating on the fact that Geforce box had all the superior parts and still couldn’t even compete with old Quadro.

Computer

W230SS no headphone sound fix.

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Everything happy with my new laptop, but it had a problem that was quite irritating.

I could not get the headphones to work after my laptop wakes up from sleep mode.

I just figured out why, it was that the sound card of W230SS had a different way of handling sound traffic. It had a proprietary method of switching between channels and the default windows driver wasn’t handing them correctly.

I found that Clevo Control Center app was capable of handling them. Do this and you will get working headphones.

1. Download and install Clevo Control Center

2

2. Select the profile of your choice, and click on Gaming tab

1

3. Switch the headphone mode to Direct mode

4. Voila, your headphones will be working like a charm like before