Friday, February 14, 2014

USB Tethering to Mac with Nexus 5

I've been traveling around Australia for over a month now. Mainly we've been staying at hotels where we have some sort of status, Hyatt, Hilton, Sheraton, etc., and the WiFi has been free.

This week I'm staying where they outsource the WiFi to Tomizone, which is fine, but they only let you use one device at a time, even though I've paid $60 for my 9 days.  I'm using a Nexus 5 lately so I've been using the N5 on the WiFi and then tethering to my Mac over bluetooth. This works but seems a bit flakey.  Occasionally the Mac can't connect and I have to turn the N5 bluetooth on and back off.  Luckily Android also supports USB Tethering.  Great, but of course the Mac doesn't support that out of the box.  A quick search lead me to HoRNDIS by Joshua Wise.  It works like a charm.  Extra bonus, my N5 is always charging while I'm using the Mac.

Thanks to Mactip for the great Android Mac USB Tethering howto guide.

Next step, turn on internet sharing and get my Kindle and Nexus 7 on the net through the Mac via WiFi!

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Lake Wakatipu versus Lake Tahoe

We've been spending some time next to Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown New Zealand. It reminds us a lot of Lake Tahoe at home. I decided to look up some stats. Tahoe is a bit larger, deeper, and higher. Wakatipu is amazing though, and longer. The water is fed from the glacier and it's filled with very finely ground granite, so it's a really unique color. Tahoe water is also amazingly blue but it's a different kind of blue.

Both lakes are amazing. We did have a windy day recently and I got to speak with a guy who just came in from kite surfing. He said it was pretty rare to be able to kite on Wakatipu.  The same could be said for Tahoe!

Max Length
Wakatipu 75 km
Tahoe 35 km

Max Depth
Tahoe 501 meters
Wakatipu 280 meters

Altitude
Tahoe 1,897 meters
Wakatipu 310 meters

Area
Tahoe 191 square miles
Wakatipu 112 square miles