Note to self:

Front and rear derailleur cables replaced at 13,800km ridden

I embarked on this effort in an effort to syncronise my phone calendar and contacts with the Exchange server at work when I was unable to get the desired 2 way sync over the air using the other tools that are out there at the moment (Google mobile sync, Nokia PC suite etc).

The Nokia VPN client supports a variety of VPN systems which is one of the reasons that it is a nightmare to configure. That coupled with a baffling “Configuration Tool” that lists a raft of parameters and settings, none of which seemed to be mentioned anywhere in the Cisco VPN client that I had on my PC and was trying to emulate.

All I really wanted to configure were

• a VPN gateway (IP address)
• a Group name
• A Group Password
• A username
• A user password

This proved a lot more difficult than I expected. 

It turns out that the terminology I needed to know, that was used on the Nokia VPN configuration tool was

• The Cisco VPN that supports Group and User authenticate is “Cisco ASA using Private Shared Key” authorisation – There is a template that you can load which populates most of the settings
• Authentication method is Pre Shared key
• Identity type is 11 – Vendor specific
• Identity Value is the Groupname
• The Preshared key is the group password (un-encrypted)
• There is nowhere to provide the username/password, you are prompted for this by the client when you connect
• This form of authorisation, Group > User is called XAUTH which should be set to TRUE in the tool
• I needed to change the Encryption algorithm to 3DES-CBC in both the IPsec settings and the IKE proposals section so I recommend fiddling with this setting if nothing is working
• I also changed Send notification in the IKE settings to TRUE but I don’t know if thats important

Good luck!

About 13 months after I jumped on the bike (and fitted the speedo soon after), I discovered that it only goes up to 10,000kms. 

I thought I had better mark the occasion as I don’t trust myself to remember when or how many times it has happened. 

Onwards to the next 10,000…

Well about 1 year and 1 month since I first donned the cycling gear, clipped unsteadily into the Keo pedals on my Cervelo Soloist Team and pedalled out onto the asphalt, the Mt Cootha Challenge has come around again.

This was the first organised event that I entered so I was not going to miss the opportunity to smash myself all over again.

As expected, ot felt just as hard this time around but my 8:18 time was a considerable improvement on the 11:43 it took last year.

• Waiting for a bus. Haven’t done it in so long I’m a little nervous #
• celebrating with some penfolds RWT (on special from BWS) the birth for my first nephew. #

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• BBQing on a sunday. Its been too long. #

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• Possibly the fastest River Loop I’ve done this morning – 52 minutes. http://is.gd/kK0W #

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• Retweeting @drnic: Jonathan Jarvis’ “Crisis of Credit Visualized” is damn amazing http://vimeo.com/3261363 #

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• Elizabeth Gilbert about creativity at TED. I can’t pretend to have experienced this but its nice to dream. http://is.gd/iV30 #

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