Rudi Engelbrecht's Blog

My Bucket List

Rudi Engelbrecht — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 08:38:42 +0000

I have been browsing some amazing pictures of Zanzibar last night. So here goes my first version of my Bucket List.

Visit Zanzibar – 2-3 weeks of bliss in sky blue waters
Live a summer in the French country side
Live a summer in Italy – country side

I will update this as I find new things to add or as I complete them.

CellC MyZone 3G WiFi Modem

Rudi Engelbrecht — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:08:49 +0000

This device from NetComm is shaped like a thick credit card, it works out of the box, and so far has the best User Experience of all 3G WiFi Modems I have used in the past. The only one that can come close is the Novatel MiFi.

I am extremely pleased with it. I have used it for a whole day, it is rock solid. No reboots were necessary during an 8 hour work shop (battery life was about 5 hours) and you can keep it charged via the supplied USB – Micro USB cable.

It is small, thin, and works.

Amazon Kindle

Rudi Engelbrecht — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 09:27:59 +0000

I have been playing with the Amazon Kindle 3 (6″) – WiFi version and I am very impressed. I managed to read 5 chapters of a book in one sitting without any distractions. This could mean less time on my iPad.
For a focused, no-nonsense, reading experience where content that matters hits your grey matter in the most effective way, go with Kindle.

Upgrading to new MobileMe

Rudi Engelbrecht — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 07:35:46 +0000

Apple recently upgraded their MobileMe services. When I logged in to me.com it prompted me to upgrade. I accepted and about 10 minutes later I was upgraded.

Afterwards my iCal was confused and “lost” all it’s calendars. It took me a while of playing around with the settings iCal and MobileMe, but I found a recipe which worked for me.

1. Make sure there are no accounts configured in iCal. See iCal->Preferences->Accounts.
2. Go to your MobileMe settings and reset your syncing by logging out and re-registering your computer.
3. Enable syncing on MobileMe. Wait for the process to complete.
4. Go to iCal->Preferences->Accounts and add your MobileMe account.
5. After a few seconds, your calendars will appear in iCal and will be synced after a few minutes

Good luck!

Cell C Data Bundle packages

Rudi Engelbrecht — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:13:04 +0000

I have previously blogged about the Cell C Data SIM on a Novatel MiFi. I also tested the Cell C Data SIM on a Huawei K3520 (the white one I received with my original Vodacom 3G contract). The Cell C Data SIM works just fine on the older Huawei modem as well.

Go here for a list of compatible modems.

If you already have a compatible modem, then you just need to decide between R999 for 2GB / month for a year or R1999 for 5GB / month for a year.

Get a US iTunes account

Rudi Engelbrecht — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 17:31:55 +0000

For those of you who would rather have a US iTunes account, you can follow these instructions at Marc Forrest’s post.

iOS 4.3 Personal Hotspot on Vodacom 3G

Rudi Engelbrecht — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:10:47 +0000

My iPhone 4 has been updated to iOS 4.3. I was looking forward to this update for a while since I wanted a MiFi Hotspot without carrying around my MiFi device.
So far it works really well. This post is published via my iPad, connected wirelessly to my iPhone 4.
This saves me from taking out another data contract for the iPad for the odd occasion when I need access outside WiFi range.
This makes an iPhone 4 and WiFi-only iPad a nice combination.

Below is a screenshot of the iOS Personal Hotspot option.

iOS 4.3 Personal Hotspot on Vodacom SA

InstaPaper

Rudi Engelbrecht — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:52:01 +0000

I installed InstaPaper last night. Browsed a few websites and marked them for reading on InstaPaper. From there I read the articles and discovered that I could mark other articles / links for later reading.
This fits my workflow perfectly!
And on the iPad the reader feels as smooth as the Kindle App. And it allows me to read offline. Also has a dark screen mode for night time reading.
I am absolutely hooked!
Bye bye Safari, long wait times to load pages, popups, ads etc.
Hello productivity!

Location:Nanyuki Rd,Sandton,South Africa

Cell C Data Bundles on a Novatel Wireless MiFi 2352

Rudi Engelbrecht — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 03:20:08 +0000

I have purchased one of the Cell C Data packages and so far it has been going great.

My Novatel MiFi 2352 supports UMTS 900 which means it has access to HSUPA speeds.

Initial tests around Sandton, Midrand and Centurion achieved download speeds in excess of 4 Mbps (around 5.5 Mbps) and upload speeds of 2 Mbps (or more) with an average ping of 125 ms.

I am very impressed – let’s hope the throughput stays that way for the whole 12 months

Git Recipes – Initialising local and remote

Rudi Engelbrecht — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 10:53:03 +0000

Understanding git and using it as a distributed version control system is easy once you manage to ‘unlearn’ the the concept of a server repository used by SVN and CVS.

I usually start a new project by working on my local machine and then after a while I would like to continue the project on another machine.

Starting a Git Project

mkdir project
cd project
git init

Create and edit files as needed.

git add .
git commit -m “initial commit”

The local files are now commited to the local master branch.

Once you are ready to share the files / project on another machine, create a git project on your remote machine, or use github / repositoryhosting.com / projectlocker.com to provide a remote repository.

The next few steps will link and push the local master branch to the remote master branch hosted at projectrepo.com.

git remote add origin git@projectrepo.com:project.git
git push origin master

The local master branch is now pushed to the remote master branch.

You can continue working on the local repository, create local branches, merge them into your local master branch, and once you feel the remote master branch needs to be updated, then you can use the line below.

git push origin master

Hope this helps