Wisedigs

If you want to build your own custom firmware for the Belkin N1 router this guide will explain how to do it for the F5D8232-4 v2. The others should be similar. I will explain this using the Debian distro. The reason for this is the cross compiling tools used by belkin are Debian only executables. You can create your own cross-compiling tools for Cygwin, Ubuntu, Suse, etc if you prefer them over Debian (or you happen to have a box setup) and then use this guide to assist you through the rest of the process.

Cygwin is not recommended as it is very slow and you will spend many minutes twiddling your thumb while it compiles.
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Everyone has heard of culture shock: a state of bewilderment and distress experienced by an individual who is suddenly exposed to a new, strange, or foreign social and cultural environment [dictionary.com]. Generally, it is assumed one goes through this upon leaving their country of residence. Or possibly upon discovering a strange tribe or rural village with unusual habits.

How about traveling from a smaller town, to a bigger town? The feeling shouldn’t really be described as a “shock”, its more like “disgusting”. What the heck am I on about?

In small cities, there is a higher chance of encountering a unique personality vs a personality witnessed before. Everyone is content, people are not too keen on outdoing each other in every department. The environment is relaxed and non-toxic.

Enter the big city mentality: everyone is better than everybody else, they will lie, cheat, steal, do whatever is necessary to protect their image of being the best. Too busy chasing after money to worry about correcting that mentality, or to worry about raising useful offspring. From this we can conclude that big city folks are dumber, in general, than their small city counterparts. It’s simple: when you use up precious brain processing power worrying about how to one-up your neighbour, you end up shutting down the rational and the logical part of the brain. Your brain is no longer giving enough time to other processing units, there is only one unit constantly active using up all the juice. “Oh look she just got a new car” “oh look he just got that $150 haircut” “oh look their house is shinier than ours” “oh look his kids are wearing designer diapers”… It never ends. Everything will be evaluated, judged, and compared to whatever they have.

I actually wouldn’t mind all of this, if people feel like they have to prove they are better than someone else, they have already proved to everyone observing that they clearly are not. What I do mind is the fact that you can’t befriend these people. How can you be close friends with someone who judges the colour of your socks to determine whether or not they are in a higher class than you? “Stop looking at my socks you fool!”. Or one who will lie to you to cover up their shortcomings? Or one who will say anything and everything to their friends, even if it means exposing all of your dirty laundry? I am talking about your best friend. So-called.

It does have its advantages though and supporters of the “big city” can you tell all about them.

It isn’t 100% of the population of a big city that thinks like this, you will find pockets of intelligence dispersed throughout. You just have to be picky. And careful.

1. Laptop/netbook
2. Power extension cord, preferably 30 feet. Funny how people end up surrounding wall sockets meant for vacuums and other janitorial purposes. Not sure on the max length allowed through security…
3. Earphones/headphones
4. Teabags – only if you are super cheap and/or starbucks doesn’t cut it for you.
5. Disinfectant spray – when you have to go
6. Cellphone signal blocker – for entertainment
7. Reading/viewing material (e.g. ebooks) – when you are bored with your signal blocker

If you are not mindful of these rules, bad things may happen.

Probability gives ridiculous people the opportunity to reduce events to numbers, then translate these numbers into laws and regulations.

Ever since I started thinking about probability I haven’t been able to get one sentence out of my head: this is flawed. The math behind probability is fun, easy to grasp if you have the right teacher, but is probability practical? Is it something that can be used to dictate the lives of people?

Examine this sentence: the chance of surviving a car crash improves by 30% when wearing a seatbelt. Let’s say the chance of surviving a car crash while wearing a seatbelt is 80%, that means 20% of the time I would not survive if I was in an accident. What’s wrong with what I just said? When speaking to a stats professor, he will explain to you it is not sufficient for you to flip a coin 10 or 20 or even 30 times to get that 50% probability figure. You must flip it a thousand times or more until you can be sure you have determined the correct probability of heads or tails for that coin.

Let’s apply that logic to surviving an accident. How many accidents am I going to be in throughout my entire life? What if that 20% of the time happens to be my first 10 accidents? (That’s a bit ridiculous given it is the chance of NOT surviving, but let’s stick with it just to see how ridiculous this is.) Now we have a problem. Unlike a coin, I don’t have the luxury of experiencing both outcomes indefinitely. This implies that given any accident I am in I may either survive, or I may not. It does not matter if it was a 90% chance of survival! As long as both outcomes are possible and can occur under reasonable circumstances (not 100%+/-0.0001%), what difference does it make to the one who just stepped outside their house that its 60-40, or 90-10?

There are obvious advantages to wearing seatbelts, especially for those with poor motor skills such as toddlers and young children. Seatbelts also provide peace of mind and a false sense of security. Making seatbelts mandatory on adult drivers? Airbags, for example, are another safety mechanism we find in vehicles. The harsh reality is, if the Canadian government truly cared about the safety of the public and their well-being and truly believed that airbags protect people’s lives, cars that are not equipped with airbags would have been banned from the streets long ago. How expensive would that be? Exactly my point. It is not about our safety, not out of concern for us, it is simply a way for them to shift the blame and shift responsibility. It all boils down to one thing: dollars and cents.

Probability isn’t Apple, it is safe to handle. But, as with anything taken for granted, we must be critical of it. It’s nice to be able to attach a number to anything, numbers are easy to understand, easy to manipulate. Numbers make nice pie charts and fancy curves. Putting your trust in numbers is like putting your trust in a piece of metal or cloth. It all amounts to nothing.