Making RJ45 cables

Excellent guide here  - http://www.groundcontrol.com/galileo/ch5-ethernet.htm

Worst part is getting the cables in the right order!

Stealth mode for the OS X firewall

In the firewall advanced preferences, you can enable the feature called "Enable Stealth Mode". This will ensure that traffic that you didn't allow won't receive a response, not even an acknowledgment.

Having to deal with corrupted Time Machine backups

A consequence of the regular, and as yet unexplained, power cuts we get is that the separate Western Digital 2TB hard disk drive that I have set up for Time Machine backups ultimately gets hacked off and refuses to start again.

Trying to verify and then repair disk doesn't work. So all that can be done is to reformat the disk, and start TM backups again.

Fortunately I have other backup destinations, so this is not as awful as it may sound

BT Home Hub5 - you win

Following previous post, I found to my amazement that a network outage (not even a power cut) was sufficient to knock my HH5 back to its reset gateway IP address.

Oh joy.

I decided this time to try and cut my losses, and move to that IP range. Which is sort of a reverse to previously.

First, I had to reset the static IP address on my Ubuntu router. Fortunately this was relatively simple and needed only a change in network settings. Then a check I could mount the network drives on Mac - all good.

Once this was done (and checked on Ubuntu that I could see webpages fine), I went into Mac's Network Preferences and changed settings to 192.168.1.x range. Then, with a spare ethernet cable, I went to the Billion router, the HH4 that I use as network extender, and my TP Link, and changed all these to 192.168.1.x range as well.

My HH5 was insistent that my password was incorrect and kept locking me out. So it now has a different default network name and wifi password. Meaning that for the first time, all connectivity is via the other routers rather than the HH5.

I'll change its SSID and wifi password tomorrow.

At least if this happens again (and it now seems inevitable it will), then the only place I will need to update will be those two items (and reinstall access control).

Android Watch Notifications

The benefit of an Android watch is to not constantly be checking phone for updates on various matters.

However, you also don't want the watch to notify you of any last little thing that happens.

With apps, these can be set to block notifications. This applies to both phone AND watch:

With "sensitive" notifications, the content of the message will not be displayed on, for example, the phone's lock screen.

However, for email, I want to see notifications, but not *everything* (e.g. mailing lists are not a priority). The way to achieve this is via the Gmail Settings. From there, select "Manage labels", which produces a list of all the labels set up on the Gmail account. Individual labels can be set to Sync, and there is a further setting for Label notifications:

However, there is still the question of how to ensure that I only get notifications for the emails which interest me.

The way I have done this is by using a not-so-well-known aspect of Gmail, which is the addition of full stops in email addresses. Gmail will treat anybody@gmail.com, a.nybody@gmail.com and any.body@gmail.com as the same address.

So the trick is to keep my address *without* full stops as my "real" address and then for any mailing list subscriptions (or indeed email used on any website / forums which are not important) use a variant with full stop included.

I then set up a filter in Gmail:

Matches: to:(xxxxx@gmail.com and -to:x.xxxx@gmail.com) -in:chats

Do this: Apply label "Me" 

This new label, "Me", is then set as the only one which sends me notifications in Gmail.

*** UPDATE ***

It would appear some of the Gmail settings in Android have changed, so below are screenshots of the necessary set up for "wanted" notifications only.

For Inbox:

For "Me":

BT HomeHub 5 resetting itself

The last time it caught me out, but this time I was more prepared.

A brief power cut meant the HH5 rebooted. And with it, all internet connections lost for devices with static IPs.

And why's that? Because the process of rebooting causes the router to reset! So SSID is changed, and the gateway IP is set to 192.168.1.254 (from the 192.168.2.x range)

At least this time I knew what to do:

• Go into Network Preferences on Mac. 
• Change Ethernet connection so IP address is in 192.168.1.x range
• Change router IP to 192.168.1.254
• Go into router settings (from 192.168.1.254 now)
• Amend SSID back to what it should be - save
• Amend Hub IP Gateway address to 192.168.2.x range - save
• Amend the DHCP range too

Then...

all (all!!) that's left is to rename the devices in the Home Network table (as they all get lost too) and then reset Access Control to avoid unfettered access. Half an hour or so of work that shouldn't be necessary

Mac OSX - stop Image Capture opening when SD card inserted

Where device is shown, click on arrow at bottom and choose "No application":