I have a Virtual Private Network (VPN) setup so that I can connect to my home network and use things such as my Synology file server when I’m not at home. This works most of the time when the IP address network of the local (e.g., Wi-Fi hotspot, etc.) doesn’t conflict with my home’s IP address network (10.x.y.0/24). However, I have come across some Wi-Fi hotspots which use a subnet of 10.0.0.0/8. The default route through the hotspot network is then used when I try to access my home resources, instead of going through the VPN.
Dennis
I am currently a software developer at A Thinking Ape Entertainment Ltd. I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science with the Software Engineering Option. I primarily speak Python and C# these days, but in the past I've also done Objective-C, Java and PHP.
Outside of work, I'm a volunteer on the youth ministry team at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, and also on the Canadian Ski Patrol team at Mount Seymour. I'm also an avid transit enthusiast/photographer.
Driving the Sea to Sky Highway
The Sea to Sky highway (BC Highway 99) from Vancouver to Whistler is one of my favourite drives. It is both picturesque, and fun to drive with all the twists and turns. On this beautiful autumn day, I was heading to Whistler to check out the Turkey Sale, and was able to finally capture the drive in great weather conditions. Update: The dashcam video of the southbound journey is now available.
Suspending Browser Tabs for Memory Conservation
Update: As of February 2021, The Great Suspender is no longer available due to the releases being overtaken by a malacious owner. Modern Chrome versions are said to have better memory management anyway, so you may find a separate extension unnecessary. If you’re like me and have upwards to 30-50 browser tabs open at the same time, you may notice that your computer becomes sluggish. In my case this was because all the tabs still consume memory even though I might not need them for some period of time. I still like to keep some tabs that I might need Continue Reading
Synology Hyper Backup Options and Pricing
The Synology Hyper Backup app allows owners of Synology NAS devices to easily set up backups to various cloud services. However, one thing that isn’t shown in the app is the pricing of each service. So here’s a pricing comparison (prices as of Aug 4, 2018). Synology C2 Location: Frankfurt, Germany 100 GB = €9.99/year (approx. USD $0.0100/GB/month) 300 GB = €24.99/year (approx. USD $0.0081/GB/month) 1 TB = €59.99/year (approx. USD $0.0058/GB/month) 1+ TB = €69.99/TB/year (approx. USD $0.0068/GB/month) Amazon S3 Location: Many, using U.S. (N. Virginia) to compare Pricing: Complicated – only comparing standard S3 storage costs here USD Continue Reading
Desktop Computer Upgrade
I last posted about my computer specs six years ago when I first built my VMWare ESXi Whitebox server. Here’s an update to what happened to it: From the software point of view, it was all and well for the first 2-3 years. I had FreeNAS, Windows 7 and Windows 8 virtual machines running on it, and some lesser used Ubuntu virtual machines for playing around. With the IOMMU capabilities of the motherboard, I even was able to get the GPU accessible by the Windows virtual machines to use it as a desktop and even play some games on it. Continue Reading