How to calculate the total bytes you’ve downloaded if you’re using a Huawei dongle in Ubuntu

Since I’m using Globe Tattoo right now and its SUPERSURF service has a daily cap of 800Mb, I have to have a way to check my usage.

And I wrote this one liner to do just that:
$ pcregrep "$(date +%b)\s+$(date +%d).+pppd.+received" /var/log/messages | perl -e 'use strict; my $t=0; while(<>) { if(m/received (\d+)\s+/) { $t=$t+$1; } } print "$t\n";'

If pcregrep is not installed in your system, you can install it by running : sudo apt-get install -y pcregrep

The downside of this approach is I have to disconnect first to get an accurate reading. If you have a better idea, please let me know 🙂

Globe Tattoo’s SUPERSURF download cap dropped from 1Gb to 800Mb

I learned only a few weeks ago that Globe Tattoo’s SUPERSURF service has a daily cap of 1Gb. I’m not really complaining, the speed is now bearable and sometimes fast, but I’m just disgusted in the way it’s advertised. They should change the “unlimited” to “super 1GB” or something.

Anyway, I subscribed to Globe Tattoo’s SUPERSURF service yesterday and my connection just stopped working. I’m connected and I know that my usage hasn’t reached 1Gb yet (I wrote a one liner script to total the bytes I downloaded, I use Ubuntu). To confirm it, I rebooted to Windows and checked my dongle if it received any text messages.

I got this text message:

It seems the 1Gb cap is not small enough…

By the way, if someone has an idea on how to read text messages from a Huawei dongle in Ubuntu, I’ll be thankful for any tips 🙂

UPDATE – 12/14/2010:
It seems Globe has finally changed the confirmation message for SUPERSURF (well, for SUPERSURF50 at least). No mention of “unlimited” anymore, it was changed to “for moderate use only”. I think this is a good start for a more “transparent” service 🙂

By the way, I finally figured it out. I can now send/receive SMS in Ubuntu, see my post about it if you want to know more.

Gmail with Offline enabled with Firefox 3.6.12 in Ubuntu 10.04

A couple of months ago, I switched from Firefox to Google Chrome because the fox is eating a lot of memory. And to free that up, I have to quit Firefox with all the opened tabs (unlike in Chrome) and just run it again, which is pretty annoying if you have a lot of tabs opened.

So, I decided to switch to Google Chrome. Then, I found out that Google Chrome for Linux doesn’t support Gmail’s Offline feature, one feature that I really find quite handy. Still, I stayed with Chrome, hoping for the best that eventually, Offline will be supported in the next releases. Ironic that Gmail Offline is not supported in Google Chrome…

After months of hoping and waiting… still no Gmail Offline support. *sigh*

I decided to switch back to Firefox. The last time I installed Google Gears, it’s not supported yet in 64-bit, that’s why I looked for ways on how to do it.  I was using Ubuntu 9.04 back then. Since I already upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04, I figured that I’ll just have to retrace the steps that I did back then.

Apparently, I don’t have to. Google Gears installs fine in 64-bit nowadays 🙂