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I'm being throttle by Flow (Jamaica)

Recently I've noticed a significant fluctuation in Internet bandwidth. I've taken issue with my Internet provider, Flow (Jamaica) before, in a number of attempts with Ookla's speed test, I've never been able to 'burst' up to the 12Mbps using their own Ookla hosted node in Kingston (Jamaica). Though this could also be a reflection on the network traffic condition, I've also tried another web-based, none-flash tool, Test My Net.

"Speeds depend which service you subscribe to and its upload and download speeds. Actual speeds may vary and are not guaranteed. Internet speeds can be affected by many factors, including your equipment, traffic, and the specific site that you are visiting."

Source: http://discoverflow.co/jamaica/customer-care/additional-information#faq-496

After a recent 24 hour monitoring of my downstream and upstream with Test My Net, the result were far from favorable. Later, a phone and email conversation with their Tech Support team and reiteration of their recently revised Usage Policy, confirmed I'm being "throttled", "capped", "thrown in Flow jail". 

"The following activities in conjunction or individually may constitute a violation of this AUP and can result in the application of this AUP by the Company to reduce a particular User’s bandwidth consumption for a period to be determined by the Company in its sole discretion:

(i)  Aggregate bandwidth usage in excess of more than a factor of ten (10) times the average User usage during a calendar month.

(ii)  Usage patterns that negatively impact other customers on the network.

(iii)  Any other criteria that the Company may in its sole discretion develop and implement from time to time.

The Company may take such measures as it deems necessary, including but not limited to the termination of service, restricting capacity during periods when other Users may experience unsatisfactory service due to the actions of a particular user."

Source: http://discoverflow.co/jamaica/customer-care/additional-information#faq-496

What I've gathered the criteria for meeting their usage policy threshold is dynamic and based on your "usage patterns" and network traffic condition. What have my own usage patterns, I'm tempted to find out as I've been capped 2-3 times, possibly more during this month alone. I had a few thoughts about how to go about monitoring my bandwidth usage. My first thought was to use a tool on my computer, but that would be very unreliable as there are other devices on the home network, I had to do this from the source. I recall from my own days at Flow (Jamaica), the Arris modem has SNMP data, I only need to capture and graph that. I came across a tool called NetUse Traffic Monitor (for Mac OS X) in the AppStore for $7.99, which has a feature to capture SNMP from your Internet Gateway devise, in my case the Arris (DOCIS 3.0) cable modem. I used their free SNMP Test Utility to verify the SNMP data and it works. 

Flow (Jamaica) billing cycle starts or ends on the 28th of everything so I will start my monitoring for the next 28-30 days to see what my usage pattern looks like. If anyone else would like to share their own experiences, you can reach out to me on Twitter, leave a comment below or even join the flurry of discussions on the topic on Tech Jamaica.

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After a long hiatus I'm going back to my health and fitness routine, I've even recruited a few things to help with that. I bought a Gold's Gym Olympic Bench, as I'm more focused on strength training and weight gain. Weight gain, this is not as easy as it sounds, I spend a lot of my everyday life in front of a computer and you tend to pick up very bad eating habits. I have to re-train myself to eat at regular intervals and do so wisely, my choice of foods have to change as well. There is technology somewhere in my routine, went I started early last year I got onto using FitBit's web app to calorie count, this helped quite a bit and I will continue to use this. In addition, I have started to use another app on my mobile device and desktop, Fitocracy. On first glance this app allows you to log your daily workouts and rewards you, it is also community driven through groups and "propped", which are equivalent to "likes". These automated rewards and community engagements are motivating elements to help you towards your health and fitness goal. One other thing I have learned from my earlier attempts is, get a partner or someone who will work with you or push you to your goal, you can't rely entirely on an app for that. I have been debating wether to get a Nike+ Fuel Band or FitBit Flex, but I have convinced myself on getting a WiThings Scale for tracking my weight, with its integration with FitBit's web app that's a plus. From my amateur research on both devices and this is clearly my own opinion here, for my own health and fitness goals they would not be very useful as they were not designed to track you activities outside of stepping or waving your hands around. I think I have found reasonable alternatives for keeping track of my health and fitness activities.

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My Setup 2.0

What's my desk setup like? Here is a list of my hardware and accessories:

Apple MacBook Pro 13"

Apple Wireless Keyboard

Apple Trackpad

Crucial 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 (x2)

OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD

Other World Computing Data Doubler

Matrox DualHead2Go ME

Genuine Joe Anti-fatigue Mat

Twelve South MagicWand

Twelve South Arc Stand

Moshi ClearGuard MB US Layout

Viewsonic 24" VX2450wm-LED

MonMount LCD-1940 Dual LCD Monitor Stand Desk Clamp

AudioEngine A2 Speakers

AudioEngine D1 Premium 24-bit DAC

Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920

Tripp Lite U360-004-R USB 3.0 SuperSpeed 4-Port Hub

Tripp Lite TLP810NET 8-Outlet Surge Protector 3240 Joules

Custom Standing Desk (inspired by Tinkering Monkey build by Modern Woodcraft)

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Standing Desk / Battlestation Update

 I've officially made the switch to a standing desk last week after completing the setup of my workspace (or battlestation for those of you who know what that is). 

There were a few things I noticed about myself after a few days of using my custom standing desk, I found myself moving around more often to shift my weight, as I tend to favor my left side and my stance has changed somewhat to balance my weight across my feet. I also take more breaks away from the computer with the absence of a comfortable seat. I would regard those as positive changes to my daily routine for working in front of a computer all day.

A closing tip, if you choose to make the switch as I have, your most essential accessory for a standing desk will be an anti-fatigue mat, this lives up to its name.

Note: If you're interested in having a custom standing desk made, feel free to contact me.

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A quick look at my battlestation, I will post a blog about it over the weekend.

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My minimalistic desktop

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Last weekend, I took some photo of my friend's pride and joy

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My Desk

I need a computer that doesn't get in the way and provides mobility. I chose to go with the Apple MacBook Pro 13" (without Retina), mainly for its cost and upgradeability.

While the MacBook Pro 13" comes with a 500GB HDD storage and 4GB of memory right out of the box, I improved the performance with 2 simple upgrades to memory and storage. Starting with two (2) Curial 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 memory, bringing the memory the maximum capacity recommended for 2012 models of 16GB. Having heard so many great performance stories coming from the storage upgrade to a Solid State Drive and having done my own research, I went with the OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD. To increase the storage capacity, I installed the original 500GB HDD as secondary storage using a Other World Computing Data Doubler doing away with the optical drive.

My Desk

Custom Standing Desk (by Modern Woodcraft)

Genuine Joe Anti-fatigue Mat

Apple Macbook Pro 13"

Apple Wireless Keyboard and Trackpad

Twelve South MagicWand and Arc Stand

(2x) Viewsonic 24" with MonMount LCD-1940 Dual LCD Monitor Stand Desk Clamp

Matrox DualHead2Go ME

AudioEngine A2 Speakers and D1 Premium 24-bit DAC

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Standing Desk

One of my goals this year is to trade in my sit-down desk for a stand-up desk. Last year, I sold my my 3-piece desk to a good friend and started looking for a good stand-up desk, when I came across a Custom Standing Desk by Tinkering Monkey. The main attraction of this standing desk is its natural wood grain of Birch, dried Redwoods and clean lines. At $750 (USD), that's way out of my budget and Tinkering Monkey only ships within the San Francisco Bay Area. The alternative, have something custom made locally with a similar design and within a shoe string budget. 

Why a standing desk? Often I find myself sitting for several hours in front of a screen, whether in bed or more recently at the dining table. I can't imagine any either positions are good for my body. There are a host of dangers accompanied with sitting for extended periods, a NY Times article, "Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?" elaborates on the dangers. Other users have resorted to more cost effective means of building a make-shift standing desk, from cider blocks, boxes and wall mounted shelves. This is something I am willing to commit to, so I foregone the trial phases of building a DIY standing desk to train my body.

A few things to keep in mind when considering a standing desk, get comfortable shoes or flooring. A Genuine Joe Anti-Fatigue Mat  is a good solution for those long hours standing. If you are going with a custom or DIY standing desk, the surface height of the desk should be the height of your elbow and the monitor elevated to your eye level.

If anyone is interested if having a custom standing desk build locally (Jamaica), feel free to contact me on Twitter and share your own experiences with a standing desk. 

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Microsoft plans to make a smaller 7-inch Surface to compete with the Apple iPad Mini, Google Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire. The lackluster behind Microsoft's Surface has nothing to do with the physical dimensions of the tablet, but everything to do with its relatively high prices, consumer dissatisfaction and lack of Windows RT applications for the Surface RT. Surface and Surface RT tablets haven't exactly lit the world on fire.

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AWS Diagrams

Last weekend I spent a day working in Adobe Illustrator creating Amazon Web Services (AWS) architecture icons for personal use, this came after searching high and low later coming across a blog post by Juan Domenech a couple of week ago.

Having created my own icons based on AWS Architecture icons, this give my diagrams a little more panache in the eyes of my client presentation. Here is something which came out of my efforts over the weekend.

Like Juan Domenech, I don't know if I am violating any copyright for AWS, however I have found anything regarding it. So until then I'm having a bit of fun with it.

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Configure Your iOS and Android Development Environment with PhoneGap

For 2013, I'm planning on learning how to develop cross-platform HTML5 mobile applications using PhoneGap. Here is how I configured my .zprofile (or .bash_profile) to allow me to use the create command for iOS and/or Android.

Using aliases, I created a pgios and pgandroid alias to the path to their respective bin/create files.

# PhoneGap Settings export PHONEGAP_IOS_HOME=~/phonegap/lib/iosexport PHONEGAP_ANDROID_HOME=~/phonegap/lib/androidexport ANDROID_SDK_HOME=~/android-sdksexport PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_SDK_HOME/platform-tools:$ANDROID_SDK_HOME/tools

# PhoneGap Alias alias pgios="$PHONEGAP_IOS_HOME/bin/create" alias pgandroid="$PHONEGAP_ANDROID_HOME/bin/create"

Now I can create project files for each platform

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Install AWS Toolkit for Eclipse 3.6 or higher

Thought I would share this, as I had an issue installing the AWS Toolkit on Eclipse without having first installed Data Tools Platform plugin.

Install DTP for Eclipse 3.6

In Eclipse Version 3.6, install the latest version of Data Tools Platform.

Select Help ]]]]> Install New Software and select the Available Software link to launch the dialog box.

Either click Add to register the http://download.eclipse.org/datatools/updates/ update site for DTP, or select the check box to enable the DTP update site if it is already in your list of available software sites.

Click OK to close the window.

In the Work with field, select the DTP update site, and select the Eclipse Data Tools Platform Enablement SDK, and the Eclipse Data Tools Platform SDK from the list of available software.

Click Next and follow the installation instructions.

Restart Eclipse when prompted.

Install AWS Toolkit

Open Help→Install New Software….

Enter http://aws.amazon.com/eclipse in the text box labeled “Work with” at the top of the dialog.

Select “AWS Toolkit for Eclipse” from the list below.

Click “Next.” Eclipse guides you through the remaining installation steps.

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Is Our Social Graph Moving?

Facebook is the Internet for a lot of people, but for some reason I’m using Facebook less and less. Is the social graph is moving, again? Facebook hasn’t “cracked the code”, that’s because there is no code. Our rolling timeline of relationships are outdated as instantly as they are created and Facebook has little visibility into our real world situation to reflect out “friendship model”. So, why do we move our social graph every few years? And where is it headed?

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5 Tips for Working and Living with CloudStack

I've been spending a lot more time on IRC these days getting help from the CloudStack community on problems and solutions with my implementation. There are a few pointers I would like to share from my recent experiences with CloudStack 1. #CloudStack IRC chatroom is your best friend 2. When deploying CloudStack 3.0.1 do so with CentOS 6.2, you will thank me later 3. Keep a ticket log of the issues you have encountered and how you were able to solve them 4. Write your own documentation walk-thru, it helps when you need to retrace your steps or write your own automation scripts later on 5. Take a breaks and do so often

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My Short Ramble About the Cloud

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The Future of Skype

Published in the Jamaica Observer Wednesday, May 9, 2012