o2 Mobile 3g Broadband - upto 10 x quicker!

I bought a o2 Mobile broadband Pay as you Go (not sure how much I'd use it). Despite having a very strong signal I got very poor performance and lag on the internet when connected using my Macbook running OSX.

With some investiagtion I managed to get far better and almost impressive performance.

Here's what I did:

Preferences, Network Settings
Choose your o2 adapter (Huawei)
Cick on Advanced
Make shire the modem field has "HUAWEI Moile Connect - 3G Modem" selected.
In the DNS tab, enter the following DNS servers: 193.113.200.200 and 193.113.200.201

Also, the o2 Mobile broadband includes access to The Cloud Wifi, same as the iPhone package - but doesnt include BT Openzone.

Is there a Doctor in the house?

Staying at Ramada Jarvis the rest of the hotel was taken over by paramedics staying at the hotel for a conference or training.  At first I thought someone must have been ill at the hotel but as they all continued to check in I realised they must be staying.

The car park was full and even the four disabled spaces were taken, non of which showed blue badges but I guess if you're a blue light ambulance driver you're allowed?

Getting Things Done Easier - URL sharing

I often want to send someone a link from a website - the problem is they are now getting so long (e.g. http://www.amazon.co.uk/iMac-Desktop-2-4GHz-1GB-250GB/dp/B0018O9QUM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231662830&sr=8-1) they dont easily copy and paste and still make sense.  In fact they get broken by my favourite IM, GoogleTalk.

I've used tinyurl.com before - give it a long URL and it gives you, yup, a tiny URL back that you can pass on.  Now that adds copying the URL, going to tinyurl.com two clicks and then copy again to the process.  So I had a look for an extension, and found http://tinyurl.com/6ye7zg

It works perfectly.  I turn off some of the butttons in the preferences but it works really well.

Whoops, I forgot to actually attach the attachment

How annoying is it when you click on send and then realise you didnt actually add that file you said you'd attached?  Its just as annoying to receive that e-mail.

Google Mail has a new Labs feature to spot this mistakes.  The same functionality is now available for outlook users.  Read about it at Lifehacker.

Superbreaks “Mystery” hotel in York

A few of the travel booking sites now offer deals at Mystery Hotels.  I found a deal at Superbreaks
The hotel details page give away the name of the restaurant and bar and a few other details.  Didnt take much to find out which hotel this is.
It’s the Queens Hotel inYork, off Skeldergate.  Hotel appears nice, has an awful website and probably isnt such a Mystery Bargain!