jonlee.ca

In Canada, data plan rates are through the roof.  They’ve gotten a bit better recently but is still out of reach for many Canadians.

If all you need a data plan for is to check your e-mail, then maybe there is a free alternative.

Requirements

• Cell phone capable of receiving text messages (pretty much all cellphones)
• Free unlimited (or very many) incoming text messages
• A carrier that offers E-mail to SMS messaging
• An e-mail account with forwarding capabilities (pretty much all e-mail services)

WIth most cellular service carriers, receiving text messages is free and only outgoing text messages cost money.  And if your provider offers E-mail to SMS, then you can take advantage of these two facts to get your e-mail on your cell phone for free!

In fact, you’ll be receiving a notification almost instantaneously (much like push e-mail) so you don’t need to be actively checking your e-mail!

Step 1: Find your carrier’s E-mail to SMS Gateway address
Most carriers offer this service which allows e-mails sent to a special e-mail address to be forwarded as a text message to your phone.  For example, with Verizon, if you send an e-mail to:

9876543210@vtext.com

The e-mail will be forwarded as a text message to (987) 654-3210.

To find what e-mail address your carrier uses, check out this extensive list on Wikipedia.

Step 2: Forward your E-mail to the Gateway address

Set up your personal e-mail account to forward a copy of your e-mails to the gateway address from step 1. In Gmail, you can find the setting under Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP -> Forwarding.

Alternatively, if you’re using Gmail, you can also set up a filter to forward only specific e-mails to your cell phone.  That way you won’t get bombarded with text messages if your daily volume of e-mails is large.

And that’s it! Just two simple steps to get your e-mails on your cell phone.

Things to Note
My carrier is Rogers and they offer 1000 free incoming text messages but E-mail to SMS isn’t free.  Instead, what happens is they only inform me who is sending me an email and I need to reply ‘read’ to get the content of the actual email.  If I had unlimited outgoing text messages then this would essentially be free but instead it costs of 15 cents to read a message.  Nonetheless, I’m happy with just knowing that I’ve received an email and who sent it.

Also, I had to send a reply of ‘Yes’ upon the delivery of the first message to subscribe to the service (subscription is free, minus the cost of sending the reply of ‘Yes’).

Finally, some carriers let you reply to e-mails or send e-mails through text messages by formatting the message in a certain way.  I’ve personally never tried it but there are some basic instructions here.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I’m currently in the process of recabling my Koss KSC-75 headphones to give them a more professional look and perhaps better sound quality.  The recabling is taking longer than expected since it is my first time doing it.

When I was purchasing the materials for the recabling, I ordered an extra 7ft of clear TechFlex so I could spice up my plain ol’ black ethernet cable.  Hopefully this will turn my $1 ethernet cable into a $500 Denon ethernet cable.  This mod adds absolutely no practical functionality to the cable.  It simply makes it look a lot cooler.

Materials Used

• 6ft Belkin Cat5e ethernet cable – $1 from dollar store
• 7 feet of 1/4″ TechFlex (Polyethelene) cable sleeve – less than $3
• 2 inches of 3/16″ heatshrink (Shrinktube) – less than $1

Total cost: less than $5
You’ll also need scissors, a heat gun (a hairdryer might work).  I chose a black ethernet cable with clear TechFlex and black heatshrink.

Steps

1. Slide the TechFlex over the cable.
2. Trim off excess TechFlex.
3. Cut heatshrink to desired size to secure the ends of the TechFlex
4. Use a heat gun to shrink the heatshrink around the cable.

Final result
The final result is an ethernet cable with a lot more class than before costing less than $5.  It’s not faster but certainly looks like it might be and is even comparable in looks to a $500 ethernet cable!

I got my materials from TakeFiveAudio.  They have a lot of DIY materials for audio mods at pretty good prices.

Popularity: 11% [?]

So I brought my Thinkpad X41 tablet to Hong Kong to use. I had spent most of the battery watching movies on the plane and when the plane arrived, it was already fairly late at night. The first thing I wanted to do was to charge my laptop but I didn’t have an AC power adapter converter to change the North American plug to the Hong Kong/UK style plug.

My solution? My brother had an Apple World Traveler Adapter kit which comes with a bunch of heads or “ducks” that fit into the Apple power adapter. As it turns out, the type of plug on Apple’s AC adapter is pretty common amongst laptop AC adapters. My Thinkpad X41 did indeed use this type of connection so I simply replaced the North American cable with Apple’s Hong Kong/UK duck!

Popularity: 12% [?]

A direct flight from Toronto to Hong Kong is a full 18 hours in a cramped airline seat 35,000 feet in the air.  For a lot of people, this could very well be the most unpleasant part of traveling.  Unless you can afford first-class, here are a few things you can do to keep yourself entertained.

1. Read a book
   Assuming you don’t get airsick while reading, reading a book is a fairly good way to pass the time.  Do you have that book you could never get around to? Well here you have 18 straight hours to read the whole thing.
2. Watch the in-flight movies
   If you’re lucky, you’ll be in one of the new planes with a LCD monitor on the back of your seat.  On my flight to Vancouver, I had this luxury and 5 hours passed by really quickly by watching a movie (National Treasure 2), two TV shows (CSI: NY), and a documentary (Mega World: Sweden).
3. Listen to music
   You can listen to a bit of music on either on your own portable music player or the plane’s radio stations (or XM radio if your plane offers it).  Personally this doesn’t work very well to me except to help me achieve point number 4.
4. Sleep!
   Sleeping is probably the fastest way to get through a long plane ride.  Unfortunately it’s sometimes pretty hard to fall asleep with the rumbling of the engine and the cramped seats but if you do, it’s a great feeling to wake up after you’ve landed!  Make sure you don’t drink coffee or tea if you really want to fall asleep.  But beware, sleeping at the wrong time can increase the affects of jet lag!
5. Talk to someone
   Be it a friend or stranger, time flies faster when you’re having fun conversing.  On my flight, I met a very nice old man flying to China to teach English.  Boy did he have a lot of stories about his life!  If you’re lucky enough to sit beside someone who is from the country you’re flying to, you can get him/her to teach you a bit of the national language!

So there you have it, five simple and pretty obvious ways of spending 18 hours on a flight. What are your tips for passing time on a super long plane ride?

P.S. I like airline food despite what people say about it… it’s decent!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Great news! I won the grand prize in the Business-Directory.com contest I entered a few days ago! This means $500 cash in my pocket to spend as I wish. As I had mentioned in the previous post, I am in the process of building a system and $500 can go a long way to completing it.

I realize this article will probably be outdated within a few months with prices of computer components constantly dropping but since I’ve done the research already, I figured some readers might be able to benefit from it.

Core components
Prices of these components are the cheapest I’ve seen them for at retail stores (in Canada) after rebates and savings. You may be able to find them for cheaper elsewhere. Links may not go to exact product described.

• CPU: ($228) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4ghz
  The highly affordable Q6600 CPU from Intel retails for about $280 but I’ve seen it as low as $228 during sales. This chip is a powerhouse and can safely be overclocked to 3.0ghz using just air cooling. Although it is an “older” 65nm generation chip, its price and pure processing power can’t be beat.
• Motherboard: ($70) ABit AB9 Quad GT
  There is a lot of freedom in terms of motherboard. If you do decide to overclock your CPU you might need to spend a bit more on a better motherboard.
• RAM: ($38) 2x1GB OCZ DDR2 800mhz
  RAM prices are steadily falling and you can easily find 2GB for under $40 after rebate.
• Harddrive: ($60) Maxtor 250gb 7200rpm 16MB Cache
  These days a quality 500gb hard drive can be had for under $100 but since we are trying to keep things low cost, I’ve chosen a smaller yet more than sufficient 250gb hard drive.
• Graphics card: ($65) XFX GeForce 8600GT 512mb GDDR2
  An 8600GT may not be able to play the latest games at the highest settings but it can comfortably play almost all games at a reasonable quality level. Hardcore gamers would want to spend more on a 8800GTS.
• Case and PSU: ($50) Cooler Master Elite 330 w/ 350W PS
  Again, there is a lot of flexibility in this area. To keep things affordable, I’ve selected a low cost case and power supply. As for the CPU fan and heatsink, I am assuming the one that comes with the CPU will be enough as long as you’re not overclocking it.

Total price: $511 (before taxes/shipping)

As you can see, with a lot of patience to wait for sale prices (and a bit of luck), a quad core desktop for around $500 is not unattainable. The hardest piece of this puzzle is probably the CPU itself. I have seen it for $228 about a month ago at a local computer store. It may not be the best system but for around $500, it is definitely a beast that has more processing power than the most powerful home computer just a few years ago.

Of course, this is not the exact system I’ll be building. I’ll be spending a little bit more on some of the better upgrades mentioned above.

Note: The system above doesn’t include a monitor, I suppose you could add a used CRT for $20 to keep the figure around $500 but I figured most people would have an extra monitor sitting around.

Popularity: 22% [?]