Peng Xiao

Penteledata/SECTV Bandwidth Cap Info

Peng — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:57:51 +0000

After lots of mystery and frustration, my friend Moose finally discovered the official bandwidth cap for Penteledata’s internet service.

Summary of details

75 GB upstream and 75 GB downstream during peak hours.
Peak hours are from 5 PM – 1 AM
Unlimited bandwidth during non-peak hours
$20 fee for unlimited bandwidth

*Note: this may be different depending on your area. The above information is for Service Electric’s internet provided by Penteledata in Eastern Pennsylvania.

Here is the full phone call

Download audio file (ptdbandwidthcap.mp3)

In Honor of Watchmen

Peng — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:28:00 +0000

In honor of Watchmen, I made some Dr. Manhattan wallpapers. Feel free to use them.

This is my current desktop.

The Wallpapers. (1680 × 1050 Widescreen Resolution)

The Art of Papercraft

Peng — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:26:14 +0000

My friends and I have been really into papercraft recently. Anyone can easily make their favorite characters from a piece of paper and an exacto knife. Among my friends, we’ve made Leonardo, V from V for Vendetta, Stormtrooper, Darth Vader, Domo Kun, Goomba, Kermt the Frog, Mushroom, Mario, and Piranha Plant. I might make some more this weekend. In this post, I’ll give a brief walkthrough how to make your own papercraft characters.

Where to get instructions:

Cubeecraft.com

Adrian-Nation on DeviantART

Trogdoriangrey on Photobucket

What Instructions look like.

How to make them

Cut along the black outlines
Cut the slits
Fold. Match the letters. (remember, no glue is required for the cube type)

Each character is different. Some are more difficult and might take more than one page. The Cubees are generally easier than the round ones by Trogdoriangrey. The entire process takes around 1 hour.

Pictures of the finished product

Peng

Tyler

Jordan

More Pictures

Webology Weekly #3: Hang Drums, Samurai Swords, and Some Classic Videos

Peng — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:12:37 +0000

Time for the third installment of Weekly Webology! (or should I call it Week-and-a-half-ology?) The past week was pretty hectic in terms of schoolwork. I was supposed to be working on my research paper and graduation project. Luckily for you, I spent the entire week crashing cars in Burnout Paradise and constantly refreshing Reddit. You might call that procrastination, I call it dedication. :/

Hang Drum

This instrument should be a lot more popular. I get mesmerized every time.

Listen to the Hang Drum on Youtube

Samurai Sword Handle Umbrella

An umbrella never looked so badass.

Get one at Thinkgeek

Fences Help You Organize Your Desktop

This is now a must-have tool for me. My desktop has never been so organized.

Download it at Stardock Source: Lifehacker

Escape From City 17

The Escape From City 17 short film series is an adaptation based on the Half Life computer game saga by Valve.

Watch it in HD on Youtube

Verizon is Good At Math

Verizon thinks 0.002 dollars is equal to 0.002 cents. Unbelievable.

Watch it on Youtube

Google Earth 5.0 Beta Lets You Go Back in Time

Download Google Earth + Google Earth Demo Video

$819 Billion Stimulus Package

A nice visualization of the new stimulus package.

See it on the Washington Post

Oldies But Goodies

These are some old but really good videos. I’m thinking of making a pure video Weekly Webology for next week.

Google Van Hits Deer

Peng — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:37:59 +0000

The Google Van for Google Street View hit a deer. Watch as the tragedy unfold. Poor deer. :(

Here’s the link to the Street View page. (update: Google removed the image)

Click the images to enlarge.

Webology Weekly #2: Obama, Obama, Obama!

Peng — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:48:04 +0000

Nothing much happened in the world this week. Except for, you know, the single most significant day in the past decade, Obama’s inauguration. I’m still having trouble adjusting to hearing good things come out of Washington. In a mere week, Obama has signed the closing of Guantanamo Bay, brought back the Freedom of Information Act, ordered withdrawal from Iraq, and banned lobbyist gifts to executive employees. Change indeed! Follow Obama’s progress with the Obameter. http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Moving on… here are the coolest things on the internet this week.

Superuseless Superpowers

The newest addition to my list of favorite webcomics. I especially like this one.

Melting Bunny

Such a beautiful yet disturbing video. Poor bunny.

Incredibly slimming down (slightly disgusting pictures)

The pictures speak for themselves. This guy lost a TON of weight. Literally.

Hacking Road Signs

Atmosfear 1337 teaches you how to hack a road sign. Just so you know, DOTS is the default password. Holding “Control” and “Shift” while entering “DIPY” will reset the password to “DOTS”. Not that I condone such a horrible thing.

Portal Gun Replica

If you haven’t beaten Portal already, what are you doing on the internet?

Accurate GOP logos

What if the GOP elephant is accurate? Visit the site to see more. Sorry if I’m too biased. I’ve included a poll above to decide the political future of Webology Weekly.

P-P-P-Powerbook!

An Ebay scammer messed with the wrong guy. Hilarious read!

Windows 7 Wordpad Will Open .docx Files

Never worry about incompatibility again. -At least for people with Windows 7.

Honorable Mentions

Ridiculously Low Bandwidth Cap

Peng — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:55:56 +0000

UPDATED 7/17/09. –> Official Bandwidth cap information.

Back in October, I got a grim letter from my ISP, PenTeleData. The letter warned me that I used an excessive amount of bandwidth that month and my account would be suspended for 30 days if it happens two more times. I promptly put my Google-fu to use. Apparently, PTD has a bandwidth cap hidden in its Acceptable Use Policy.

PenTeleData and your broadband service provider offer multiple tiers of high speed Internet access with different speeds and bandwidth usage limitations (not all packages are available in all areas). Customer acknowledges that any quoted bandwidth rating/transfer rate for broadband Internet Service is a maximum rate and are not guaranteed. PenTeleData and your broadband Internet provider reserve the right to manage its networks to provide for maximum efficiency. As a user, you must ensure that your activities do not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user’s use of the service or PenTeleData’s ability to deliver and monitor the service, or our network resources and do not represent (in the sole judgment of PenTeleData) an unusually large burden on the network itself. Users found to be (in PenTeleData’s sole judgment) in violation of this policy may have their accounts terminated, suspended, or upgraded to a higher level of service, subject to the appropriate fees. PenTeleData will use reasonable efforts to notify a customer prior to service termination for excessive bandwidth use.

So the bandwidth cap is… whatever PTD feels like? My friend Moose has already passed this cap 3 times. One more time and he will be effectively banned from the internet thanks to the monopoly PenTeleData has in our area. Hopefully nobody will have to suffer that fate. Many other customers have also felt the burden of PTD’s bandwidth cap. Judging from the forums, the cap ranges from 50 gb to 80 gb. That might seem unreachable to most users, but I’m Peng. I live on the internet. My parents’ new hobby of watching streaming television on the internet doesn’t help either. In other words, PTD sucks.

That said, I’ve been pretty good with the bandwidth usage lately. With the help of Tomato firmware for my DD-WRTGL router, I can closely monitor my bandwidth usage with pretty graph. If you are in the same situation as me, I highly recommend installing Tomato. The whole process takes about 2 minutes with this Lifehacker guide. (Turn Your $60 Router into a User-Friendly Super-Router with Tomato)

Now I’m hungry. Hungry for truth. What is the real bandwidth cap? That’s exactly what I’m going trying to find out.

Attempt #1

I called their PA toll free number and pressed 0 to reach an operator.

Beeeeeep…Dead tone. Ok, I’ll try again.

Dead tone again.

Again.

You’d think a telecom company would be able to have working phone lines.

One more time, yay waiting music.

2 minutes later

I asked a lady about the bandwidth cap and quickly got transferred to the internet department.

The internet department lady then transferred me to a technician.

This is what I got. Download audio file (capcall1.mp3)

to be continued…

What I know so far (from comments and experience)

Bandwidth cap is 50 gb downstream or higher. If you’ve gone higher without penalty, let me know.
Suspension requires 3 consecutive bandwidth violations. (not 100% sure)
Visit http://24.229.18.60/ to check your bandwidth usage.
File a complaint with the FTC, FCC, or BBB. They may help you remove your cap if you drop the complaint.

Obama’s Inauguration

Peng — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:11:43 +0000

Obama’s inauguration is finally here! A record 3 million people will be attending the historic event tomorrow in addition to 11,000 soldiers, 25,000 policemen, snipers on every rooftop, scout drones, and F16 fighter jets patrolling the city. It’s going to be awesome! If you want in on the action, there are many online places to watch the inauguration.

Have fun and say bye to Bush for me. :]

Webology Weekly #1: Internet Dissection

Peng — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:19:47 +0000

As part of my continuing effort to waste time, I present to you… Webology Weekly: Internet Dissection. If you know me at all, you know I live on the internet. I don’t even know how much time I’ve wasted staring at a monitor. If you’re reading this, I’ve already wasted 10 seconds of your life. Hey, I feel better already. :]

In a nutshell, Webology Weekly will be a weekly digest of the web. All of the coolest, funniest, weirdest, dumbest, and WTFest stuff on the internet smashed into one delicious post. Calm down, it’s not healthy to be that excited. So let’s get started.

Honorable Mentions

Again, I’ll be posting one of these a week. An RSS feed of my blog is available or you can subscribe to the email notification.

The Super Happy Awesome Bridge (cont)

Peng — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:13:02 +0000

Here are the pictures for the rest of the class.

Back to pictures of the Super Happy Awesome Bridge