Five Pounds of Flax

Netgear WNR854T access point: comes with a bad power supply

2008-12-30T09:36:00.001-05:00

If you intermittently lose your wireless connection, and you have a netgear rangemax access point, try swapping out the power supply. Apparently the one that comes with it is bad and causes the access point to reboot spontaneously. Since swapping power supplies, I've not had any problems with mine.

Time Machine, ZFS and iSCSI

2008-12-05T07:04:00.002-05:00

I have an OpenSolaris file server at home. I also have several Macs, which include Time Machine for backup services. I would like to have my household Macs back themselves up to the network server, but it's not easy to accomplish. Time Machine uses a goofy hard-link-farm method for making backups, and requires an HFS filesystem. It doesn't support network backup -- reliably. The SparseBundle format, which is used to create an HFS disk image on a remote file server, is prone to failure when the network disconnects, making future backups and restores fail until the sparsebundle is repaired (manually).

Apple is incorporating ZFS in to Snow Leopard, its next version of MacOSX. This would allow a tremendous improvement in backup service in OSX, because ZFS can make snapshots of filesystems and ship them over the network reliably. Simply having the mac make a snapshotof its local filesystem and send it to a zfs fileserver (running OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, OSX Server, Linux with fuse) would result in a reliable point-in-time backup.

Until we're all in ZFS nerdvana, I came up with another way to do backups to a network file server using Time Machine. Using Time Machine is convenient for users (my family in this case) because it has a nice, easy-to-use UI. One of ZFS' features on OpenSolaris is that it will export iSCSI targets. Using the free globalSAN iSCSI initiator for OSX, I mount an iSCSI volume from the fileserver and format it with HFS. Time Machine sees it as a regular local disk and makes backups to it as per normal. Time Machine works as expected. To prevent users (my family) from using the network backup volume as a regular disk, I hide it using SetFile:

$ SetFile -a V /Volumes/network-backup

Time Machine can still see it, but it's invisible in the Finder.

I wouldn't recommend this for computers connected via wifi, but it works very well for the iMac connected over ethernet.

sparsebundle won't mount, "resource temporarily unavailable"

2008-11-19T20:08:00.003-05:00

If you're having trouble getting a sparsebundle disk image to cooperate with hdiutil, disk utility or just mounting via the finder, it's probably got an incomplete "band" due to a crash or inconvenient network disconnection (in the case of sparsebundles mounted from a network volume).

To fix it, delete (or more safely, move) the last "band" in the bundle (see thing.sparsebundle/bands). It should be the last one, sorted alphabetically by name, and probably the smallest.

I have a sparsebundle with World of Warcraft in it, stored on an Opensolaris (yay, zfs) machine and accessed via NFS. I took the laptop to work one day and forgot to unmount the sparsebundle. When I got back home, it wouldn't remount, saying "resource temporarily unavailable." Grr. Removing the last band fixed it.

Seasteading

2008-04-16T07:48:00.002-04:00

The Seasteading Institute has opened its doors.

Mountain View, CA, April 15th, 2008. The Seasteading Institute today announced that it has been established in order to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems. It will continue and expand on the work of Patri Friedman and Wayne Gramlich, authors of "Seasteading: A Practical Guide to Homesteading the High Seas".

Homesteading on the open ocean. Sounds exciting, but I would be afraid of storms and pirates.

Dr. Ron Paul doesn't accept evolution? Boo!

2007-12-29T12:03:00.000-05:00

Apparently Dr. Ron Paul doesn't accept the theory of evolution. Boo.
http://www.reason.tv/roughcut/show/215.html

This is not as bad as it would be for other candidates (Huckabee, for example), as Dr Paul is unlikely to establish any federal "faith-based" agencies, or dictate via the Department of Education how science should be taught in classrooms, etc. However, it's unfortunate that he turns out to be anti-intellectual regarding science.

It's true, as he says, that it's not the case that "anybody has absolute proof", however, science isn't based on absolute proof. That's a bad standard. Science is based on the best theory available at the time. An idea is considered "scientific" only if it is possible to disprove it. Science as a discipline seeks better and better explanations for physical phenomena over time, revising and discarding theories as necessary. A religion already has a set explanation of the universe and revises or discards facts to fit that explanation. Truly, if the universe is God's creation, then studying that creation scientifically is a way to better know "the mind of God" and poses no threat to religion. It may pose a threat to particular dogmas or political power structures, but not to religion itself.

It would have been nice for Dr. Paul to have given an explanation like the above, perhaps even mentioning that the Vatican recognizes evolution, rather than saying "I don't accept it" and giving a muddled endorsement of Creationism.

IMAP-IDLE version 1.07

2007-11-25T10:40:00.001-05:00

Version 1.07 of the IMAP-IDLE plugin for Tiger's Mail.app has been released.

This version asks Mail to fetch (not sync), due to user reports that sync caused excessive server load. I've received a request to optionally enable "sync", but have not (yet) implemented that feature. It also fixes a memory management issue that caused occasional crashes (unfortunately, not on my test machines -- but thanks for the crash reports!)

Windows mobile 5 "smartphone" is the worst phone software ever made

2007-11-23T21:25:00.001-05:00

TSIA.

p.s. "Invalid Message Recipients".

POS.

Why does infoworld need this?

2007-11-17T20:26:00.001-05:00

Infoworld's website is requesting "enhanced abilities that are UNSAFE".

Uh, no.

Boxtopia.

2007-11-17T18:39:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, the moving van arrived at my new house in Lenoir, NC. I recently got a job with Google (yay!), and I'll be working in the datacenter there.

John Scalzi's review of the Creation Museum is quite entertaining.

2007-11-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

John Scalzi's review of the Creation Museum is quite entertaining.

Here’s how to understand the Creation Museum:
Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horseshit.

Easy image and movie capture

2007-09-12T22:09:00.000-04:00

Jing makes screenshots and screen movies very easy to make. It exports screen movies to SWF (flash video), ready for hosting on a website.

It's Hillary's turn next, then Jeb's

2007-09-11T04:38:00.000-04:00

So you know who to vote for.

The iCache -- a pocket credit card reader/writer

2007-09-07T12:49:00.000-04:00

A company named iCache is developing an eponymously named product to store your credit cards. It has a magstripe reader/writer in it, which it uses to produce single-use credit cards.

It's an obvious idea, in retrospect, and certainly better than carrying a Costanza-wallet of various cards around. Instead, you just need the iCache and one magstripe card, which gets reprogrammed for each use.

IMAP-IDLE 1.07-PRE-5

2007-09-06T07:12:00.000-04:00

Release 1.07-PRE-5 of IMAP-IDLE, a plugin that provides "push-mail" support for Apple's email client, is available for download.

This version asks Mail to sync and fetch, due to user reports that just a sync doesn't always catch new mail. It also fixes a memory management issue that caused occasional crashes (unfortunately, not on my test machines -- but thanks for the crash reports!).

An interesting community

2007-09-04T14:15:00.000-04:00

Bradburn Village in Westminster, Colorado looks like a great place to live.

Every home in Bradburn includes a large front porch—not just a token 2 foot concrete stoop. Garages are all in the back, and homes here also have very small setbacks (the distance between the house and the sidewalk, or front yard), meaning the porches sit right above the sidewalks. This means people sitting on their front porches easily see neighbors walking by, and they stop to talk, creating a community bond that is so elusive in most traditional suburban neighborhoods.

(from Fermentarium).

Hi Ryan

2007-09-04T12:47:00.001-04:00

Woof. Woof.

Theresa's "dark night of the soul"

2007-09-03T17:01:00.000-04:00

Daniel Dennett wrote down his thoughts on Mother Theresa's doubts -- her "dark night of the soul".

(excerpt) Mother Teresa’s agonies of doubt are surely not all that unusual. [...] I get mail all the time from religious leaders who admit to me in private that they do not believe in God but think that the best way to continue their lives is to swallow hard and get on with their ministries, concentrating on bringing more good than evil into the lives of their parishioners and those for whom their churches provide care. [...] How many millions of priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, nuns and monks around the world are living lives of similar duplicity? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the outing of Mother Teresa inspired a few thousand of them to come out of the closet and acknowledge their atheism! Then it might start being obvious not only that faith in God is not a requirement for morality, but that the loss of faith in God often goads people into living more strenuously helpful lives, as seems to be the case with Mother Teresa. Of course, such honesty carries a price: you have to change your mission in a way Mother Teresa never did. She could have devoted herself more single-mindedly to helping the poor instead of trying to convert them. Perhaps it was her guilt at being unable to convert herself that drove her to work so hard to convert others to take her place among the believers.

That reminds me of Penn Gillette's "This I Believe" segment on NPR.

This "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God." Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

"Goodbye, cruel Word" -- Amen!

2007-09-02T18:41:00.000-04:00

Steven Poole says, "Goodbye, cruel Word". Creating text on a computer doesn't have to be an exercise in frustration. I agree with his assessment that Word 5.1 for the Mac was the last good version of Word. Since then, it's become more and more unusable, and less and less fun to use. I should be able to use tools to do work, without having to be too aware of the tools themselves. Word seems to need attention, and believe me, I'd love to roll up a newspaper and give Word a few whacks every time I use it.

IMAP-IDLE 1.07-PRE-4

2007-08-31T19:29:00.000-04:00

Release 1.07-PRE-4 of IMAP-IDLE, a plugin that provides "push-mail" support for Apple's email client, is available for download.

This version asks Mail to sync, rather than simply check for new mail, and listens to additional types of notifications from the IMAP server. The result is that your IMAP mailbox stays in sync with the server better. This version also determines IDLE capability by trying to use it, rather than by depending on the server reporting IDLE support in its CAPABILITY response (as it turns out, some servers don't have accurate CAPABILITY responses). It supports SSL and clear-text connections (for security reasons, please avoid non-encrypted IMAP sessions).

It does not support TLS, Kerberos or NTLM. Be aware that Pair.com's IMAP servers advertise IDLE support and even accept IDLE mode requests, but never actually send notifications, making IMAP-IDLE useless.

UPDATE
I uploaded a new build, which reports itself as "IMAP-IDLE Version 1.07-PRE-4b (2007-09-01)" in the console log. If you downloaded your version before 2:10pm Eastern time on Sept 1, 2007 -- download it again. You can also quit and re-launch Mail, and look for "IMAP-IDLE Version 1.07-PRE-4b (2007-09-01)" in the console log, to be sure you've got the right version.

IMAP-IDLE plugin and Pair.com mail servers

2007-08-18T22:25:00.000-04:00

I think that Pair's servers advertise and accept IDLE mode, but don't actually send any notifications. I added extra debug output (see below), and it's obvious that pair's mail server is accepting IDLE mode. You can see "+ Waiting for DONE", which is the IMAP server sending me a continuation after I requested IDLE mode. You can then see periodic "heartbeat" messages from the server ("* OK Timeout in X minutes"), indicating that the server is still connected and in IDLE mode.

However, no messages are ever received from the server regarding availability of new messages. As a control, I also tried using Thunderbird with the Pair account, as it supports IDLE natively, rather than via a plugin. It also does not see new messages -- no IDLE-mode notifications are received.

It looks like pair's IMAP Servers are just dysfunctional, as far as IDLE mode is concerned.

2007-08-18 22:02:44.663 Mail[2165] [* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4REV1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN] XXXX.pair.com IMAP4rev1 2004.357-p2k server ready at Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:02:48 -0400 (EDT)]
2007-08-18 22:02:45.016 Mail[2165] [1692ea42 OK [READ-ONLY] EXAMINE completed]
2007-08-18 22:02:45.086 Mail[2165] [+ Waiting for DONE]
2007-08-18 22:02:45.086 Mail[2165] Account 'PAIR' has accepted IDLE mode
2007-08-18 22:03:45.086 Mail[2165] [* OK Timeout in 30 minutes]
2007-08-18 22:05:45.112 Mail[2165] [* OK Timeout in 28 minutes]
2007-08-18 22:07:45.111 Mail[2165] [* OK Timeout in 26 minutes]
2007-08-18 22:09:45.111 Mail[2165] [* OK Timeout in 24 minutes]
2007-08-18 22:11:45.274 Mail[2165] [* OK Timeout in 22 minutes]
2007-08-18 22:13:45.274 Mail[2165] [* OK Timeout in 20 minutes]

I just patched my AppleTV via USB boot

2007-07-04T13:43:00.001-04:00

I just booted my AppleTV from a USB flash drive and altered its configuration. I followed the instructions on the AwkwardTV wiki.

Under the AwkwardTV menu item, there's several options, including "install plugins" and "enable SSH server". I did both.

One of the plugins allows the "Backrow" media player to read files from the filesystem, rather than the iTunes database. That and Perian combined are very useful.

To ensure the NFS mount worked on boot, I sshed in, copied mount_nfs from my Macbook Pro into /sbin on the AppleTV, and created an /etc/rc.local (as follows)

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/mount_nfs -a 8 -obg,rsize=8192,ro SERVER_IP:/export/movies /Users/frontrow/Movies/NAS

The NitoTV plugin advertises that it can play VIDEO_TS folders (DVDs), complete with menus. However, it doesn't work very well. I got it to play Lilo and Stitch from the NFS server, but the menu didn't play right; it started in the wrong place, and the overlay graphics were not drawn correctly. NitoTV wouldn't play anything but the sound on subsequent attempts. I would be nice to be able to play VIDEO_TS folders directly, without transcoding to MP4, as it would save time and ensure the highest possible quality (although at the cost of disk space).

I intend to keep transcoding things to MP4 with handbrake, tagging them with Atomic Parsley, and using iTunes to serve them. The advantages of this approach are:

Chapter markers are usable from the AppleTV
Metadata in the MP4s is viewable in the AppleTV interface (box art, plot, actors, etc).

Still, the AwkwardTV plugins provide a way to deal with "legacy media" -- AVIs of TV shows, for example -- so they are useful.

TeeVee: Goodbye Stargate, Hello HEX

2007-06-24T18:06:00.000-04:00

Stargate SG-1 aired its final episode this past Friday. I'll miss it -- it was a fun show. It peaked a few seasons ago (wormhole extreme! -- I liked how the show never took itself too seriously), but was still enjoyable. The Stargate concept -- past civilizations, the gate network, aliens playing the roles of gods (they cleverly managed to defeat the Goa'uld without ever meeting Yahweh, part of the reason they lasted 10 seasons, I suppose) -- gave the writers a very interesting way to fictionalize myths and history into entertaining science fiction. And the thrum that the Daedalus made in the vacuum of space always provided a good a chuckle. Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson were the core of the show's personality.

General Hammond: You ever think of writing a book about your military exploits?
Jack O'Neill: I've thought about it. But then I'd have to shoot anybody that actually read it. That's a joke, sir.

Martin : A top-secret government program involving instantaneous travel to other solar systems by means of a device known as a stargate.
O'Neill: Sounds like a good idea for a TV show. If you're into that sort of thing.

Jackson: This tastes like chicken.
Carter: So what's wrong with it?
Jackson: It's macaroni and cheese.

Kershaw: I feel better just knowing there's an archaeologist watching our backs.
Jackson: Yeah, which end do the bullets go in again?

Hopefully the Stargate movies will be good.

Lately, I've been watching Hex on BBC. It's like a British version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but instead of vampires on the loose, it's fallen angels, and swap Ella for Buffy.

Weeds is a great show, but I canceled Showtime a while back. Ah, well. I watched through Season 2, and I'm not sure there will be a Season 3, anyway.

I wish they'd bring back Dead Like Me and Firefly. In the meantime, there's Dirty Jobs, Criminal Minds, and The Closer.

Harry Connick, Jr!

2007-06-24T18:01:00.001-04:00

I got to go see Harry Connick, Jr at the Koka Booth Amphitheater in Cary on the 22nd, thanks to Tim (thanks, Tim)! It was a great show!

Flash Lite, Moto Q

2007-06-24T17:51:00.000-04:00

I installed Adobe's Flash Lite player on my Moto Q this morning. I was hoping that Bloxorz would run on it, but it wouldn't. Bloxorz, like many flash games found on the web, requires Flash 8, while Flash Lite is based on Flash 7. However, I did get a few games written for the iRiver iClix or Nokia to run on it just fine -- Sudoku, Freecell, a Frogger clone. It's a nice addition to the phone. Kids love it while we're in the car.

It's all in the timing

2007-06-24T17:48:00.001-04:00

I happened to load the digg home page at just the right time. A story about the health care system killing people, with 666 digs. Perfect.

IMAP-IDLE News

2007-06-24T17:20:00.001-04:00

Leopard's mail will support IDLE... yay!

Version 1.07-pre-3 of my IMAP-IDLE plugin for Tiger's Mail.app is the most recent version. It was released on May 15, 2007.

I'll see if I can get another release out soon. Maybe even 1.07-final. The big issue with the 1.07 series is that I switched from using threading to using an event-driven state machine that utilizes Mail.app's runloop to process networking events. While it's lighter-weight, more deterministic and easier to control (and debug), it appears that there's still some bugs (see the comments here).

Erlang, me and the Web

2007-05-11T19:27:00.000-04:00

I want to learn a functional programming language this year. I was looking at Haskell and Erlang primarily. I chose Erlang. Technically, I already know a few functional languages: XSLT and SQL. Since some also consider Javascript to be a functional language, then perhaps I know three. So I want to learn a new functional language this year.

I'm making my way through the Pragmatic Programmers' book "Programming Erlang" (currently in beta). I was drawn to Erlang by the ability to hot-patch Erlang apps (no downtime!) and the massive-concurrency model of Erlang applications. The fact that it is demonstrably useful in the real world -- Ericcson uses the language in its phone switches -- was also a plus. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry on Erlang:

Erlang is a general-purpose concurrent programming language and runtime system. The sequential subset of Erlang is a functional language, with strict evaluation, single assignment, and dynamic typing. For concurrency it follows the Actor model. It was designed by Ericsson to support distributed, fault-tolerant, soft-real-time, non-stop applications. It supports hot swapping so code can be changed without stopping a system. Erlang was originally a proprietary language within Ericsson, but was released as open source in 1998.

You should watch the Erlang Movie when you get a chance. It's very entertaining -- imagine Monty Python making an instructional video.

I recently made a joke to a friend about writing a web app with "Erlang on Rails"... but these guys really did it (see also: "From Python to Ruby on Rails to Erlang").

Here's some other Erlang + Web references:

Erlang + YAWS vs Ruby on Rails
Twitter apparently uses ejabberd, a Jabber server written in Erlang

Hi, Alan (Allen? Allan?)

2007-05-03T19:05:00.000-04:00

I don't know how to spell your name, but you know who you are. :)

Update: "Alan".

What the...?

2007-04-23T17:29:00.000-04:00

A kernel thread crashing, perhaps?

Date/Time: 2007-04-23 17:27:05.258 -0400
OS Version: 10.4.9 (Build 8P2137)
Report Version: 4

Command: ???
Path: ???
Parent: ??? [0]

Version: ??? (???)

PID: -1
Thread: Unknown

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x21000080
(null)
Unknown thread crashed with i386 Thread State:
eax: 0x00000000 ebx: 0xb80f678c ecx:0xb831c7c0 edx: 0x21000080
edi: 0x82008064 esi: 0x3fffeb47 ebp:0xb0099c08 esp: 0xb0099bc0
ss: 0x0000001f efl: 0x00010246 eip:0xb80f6874 cs: 0x00000017
ds: 0x0000001f es: 0x0000001f fs:0x00000000 gs: 0x00000037

I heart Unix

2007-04-04T00:15:00.000-04:00

Doing a remote backup of a server across the internet over an encrypted channel is one of many things that are easy on Linux and the Mac with built-in tools, but either impossible or non-obvious on Windows with built-in tools. It's one line of shell code on Unix. I don't know how I'd do it on a standard Windows installation (any flavor), or if it's even possible.

It's accomplished using "tar over ssh" to dump a compressed backup of specified files and directories to a remote server:

tar jcvf - /target/directory | ssh user@remotehost "cat >backup.tar.bz2"

It says to tar: create a bzip2-compressed archive file of the specified items on standard output. That data is piped into an ssh command's standard input, which logs into a remote server (set up host keys to avoid the password prompt) and pipes the data into a remote command -- in this case, "cat", which redirects its output into a file named "backup.tar.bz2". Nice!

You can run it out of cron each day, even, and have nice named backup files by doing something like this:

tar jcvf - /target/directory | ssh user@remotehost "cat >backup-`date +%F`.bkp.tar.bz2"

That will produce files named "backup-2007-04-04.tar.bz2" and "backup-2007-04-05.tar.bz2", etc.

The reverse -- restoring a file from a remote backup -- is just as easy.

I <3 Unix!

Applications should never, ever, steal focus.

2007-04-03T22:38:00.000-04:00

No software is ever more important than the user. It should not ever, for any reason, steal focus from the user. It's especially stupid and counter-productive to steal focus while the user is typing to put up a dialog box with buttons that can be activated by keys the user is pressing. Windows is especially bad about this. I've seen many flashes of dialog boxes, with no idea what they said because I happened to hit Enter or the Space Bar or whatever when the dialog box flashed up.

Apple Mail is occasionally misbehaved in this way. Sometimes it has trouble writing a message to the "drafts" folder on my IMAP server (*shakes fist at dovecot*), so it helpfully interrupts my typing (sometimes once every minute or so) to tell me this. You know what? I don't care! Not right now, anyway. I was typing a message! Please be quiet and let me do the thing I'm trying to do. Let me know about the error in some more unobtrusive way and I'll deal with it later.

Using cookies in Ruby on Rails

2007-03-28T22:15:00.000-04:00

The cookies object looks like a hash, but it isn't really.

# this sets a cookie
cookies[:key]="value"

# this does not retrieve a cookie
value = cookies[:key]

# but this does
value = cookies["key"]

MySQL 5 Replication and Rails: schweet!

2007-03-17T18:01:00.000-04:00

I just got master-master replication working between my Mac (OS 10.4.8, MySQL 5.0.19) and one of my Linux servers (Fedora Core 4, MySQL 5.0.37).

I created a database on the Mac for rails development, and it was automatically created on the Linux server as well. I did 'rake db:migrate' on the Mac, and the schema was created on the linux side as well. Then I used the Rails console (script/console) to create a record and save it. I started up the console on the Linux server and listed all of the records, and the new one was there. I created a record on the Linux server and looked on the Mac -- both had the same two records.

Sweet!

An important thing in master-master replication is to take measures to prevent key collision. Rails apps depend on each table having an auto-increment field named "id". If you don't change your MySQL servers' auto-increment behavior, you'll get collisions: one server will allocate id #1, then the second server will try to allocate id #1, then -- boom.

Here's a two-node circular replication setup. NodeA is nodeB's slave, and vice-versa.

Node A:

[mysqld]
server-id = 10 #this should be unique across servers

auto_increment_increment = 10 #an increment value >1 is needed. set this according to # of servers

auto_increment_offset = 1 # where to start autoincrement IDs

master-host = 10.2.3.3 #other machine's address>

master-user = repluser #pre-configured 'replication' user on other server

master-password = replpass # pre-configured 'replication' user's password on other server

log-slave-updates #you need this

replicate-same-server-id = 0 # prevent looping

report-host = nodeA # this should be unique across servers

log-bin = mysql-bin #you need this

Node B:

[mysqld]

server-id = 20 #this should be unique across servers

auto_increment_increment = 10 #an increment value >1 is needed. set this according to # of servers

auto_increment_offset = 2 # where to start autoincrement IDs

master-host = 10.2.3.4 #other machine's address>

master-user = repluser #pre-configured 'replication' user on other server

master-password = replpass # pre-configured 'replication' user's password on other server

log-slave-updates #you need this

replicate-same-server-id = 0 # prevent looping

report-host = nodeB # this should be unique across servers

log-bin = mysql-bin #you need this

I've highlighted the differences between the two configurations in blue, bold text. With this setup, nodeA will create auto-increment IDs of the form: 1, 11, 21, etc., while nodeB will create auto-increment IDs of the form: 2, 12, 22, etc. This prevents key collision. Notice further that I will be limited in the number of master nodes I can add to this setup before I begin to suffer from key collisions. Additionally, increasing the increment reduces the number of records you can store in the table. With a signed INT type for the auto-increment columns, you can store 2147483647/auto_increment_increment records.

Replication copies *everything* between the servers (all databases, etc), so it is easier to start with two empty mysql configurations. You can also zero out both servers if they have been used before: delete master.info, the bin and log files, etc. The file "master.info" keeps track of where the replication has progressed, so it's important to delete it to reset replication. Keep in mind that you'll lose *all* of your data when you do this kind of "reset"!

Check your Linux machines for correct DST info

2007-03-08T14:48:00.000-05:00

Use the zdump command, like so:

/usr/sbin/zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

You should see lines containing "Sun Mar 11". Here's what I get on one of my FC4 servers:

/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 05:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 06:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000

If you see something other than Mar 11, then you still need to fix your timezone info.

One day I should finish this...

2007-03-03T14:53:00.000-05:00

I never finished version 2 of my ReplayTV client for the Mac. It was coming together nicely, until my ReplayTV died and the company that makes it went bankrupt. A friend of mine has a ReplayTV. I fired up the last build of mReplay2 and pointed it as his machine, and it worked.

Does anyone still have a ReplayTV and a Mac?

Rails 1.22, RubyGems 0.9.1 fix

2007-02-24T22:03:00.000-05:00

The problem: RubyGems seems to be broken after updating to 0.9.1.

$ sudo gem update
Updating installed gems...
ERROR: While executing gem ... (NoMethodError)
undefined method `refresh' for #

The fix: Remove the source cache.

$ sudo rm /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/source_cache

Cory Doctorow at UNC, Duke this evening

2007-02-22T19:44:00.000-05:00

Today, I went to UNC to see Cory Doctorow speak on copyrights and DRM at 2pm, and then to Duke to see him speak on privacy. He gives a nice lecture. He also has a cookie-monster laptop sleeve.

IMAP-IDLE 1.07 pre 2

2007-02-19T18:45:00.000-05:00

IMAP-IDLE 1.07 pre 2 is available here. This version builds on 1.07 pre 1, providing:

bug fixes (more stability)
better recovery from loss of network
better wake-from-sleep behavior

It also has a currently-useless preference for "periodic mailbox sync". The idea is to make mail do a sync of each account's mailboxes on a custom schedule determined by you, the user. At the moment, poking mail to sync causes it to beachball, so I''ve not yet figured out how to properly use that part of the API. Thus, you can set the "sync" preference all you want, but it doesn't do anything.

I've been running this version on two Intel macs for a couple of days without incident.

Post issues in the comments!

Hex Fiend: Yay!

2007-02-16T10:18:00.000-05:00

I have been using HexEdit for years. Until today, when I discovered Hex Fiend.

Work with huge files. Hex Fiend can handle as big a file as you're able to create. It's been tested on files as large as 118 GB.

Back to the future!

2007-02-13T06:45:00.000-05:00

Claudio Procida emailed me about version 1.6.3 of MiniBatteryLogger, which fixes the "5 million years ago" bug. Go get it!

IMAP-IDLE 1.07-pre-1

2007-02-12T16:30:00.000-05:00

I've uploaded version 1.07-pre-1. It is, as its name might imply, a pre-release version of what will be 1.07. It has a more-functional preference pane, and hopefully will work better for folks having a problem with 1.06.

Between 1.05 and 1.06, I completely rewrote the IMAP protocol and connection handler code. Obviously, there were some bugs in it that I didn't find while testing on my home Macs.

Give 1.07-pre-1 a shot (available here), and either comment on this thread about issues you're having with it, or email me.

My battery died 5.8 million years ago...

2007-02-11T20:23:00.000-05:00

I am using the utility (Mini Battery Logger) mentioned in the Macinhack article "Getting the most out of your battery". My battery has been through only 37 cycles, but my MBP seems to have a lower on-battery lifetime than I would expect -- only a little over an hour.

According to Mini Battery Logger, I have a capacity of 24% of new, and the estimated date of death is (was?)June 23 5,877,610 years ago, but the overall rating is "good". *cough*

I ordered one of the FastMac "High Capacity" batteries.

IMAP-IDLE 1.06

2007-02-08T22:20:00.000-05:00

I've released IMAP-IDLE 1.06. It's really an interim to the next version, to get bugfixes out to people using it. It has a Preference pane, but it doesn't do anything yet.

You can get it here:
http://www.rothwell.us/imap-idle

Changes:

Bugfixes!
New icon!
Nascent preference pane!

Enjoy!

Welcome to the So-So

2007-01-31T18:50:00.000-05:00

Ballmer in an iPod video... sorta

Welcome To The So-So - video powered by Metacafe

Catalog Card Generator

2007-01-16T15:42:00.000-05:00

Fun! Make your own here:

http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/

IMAP-IDLE begins to get a UI

2007-01-15T21:44:00.000-05:00

I'm adding a preference pane to the IMAP-IDLE plugin. To the right is a screenshot of it in its currently "woohoo it's loading my nib but it doesn't really do anything yet" state. And yes, that's a piece of toast with a postmark on it. IMAP-IDLE: your Mail Toaster™ -- or something like that (apparently I'm feeling a little silly at the moment). The URL in the screenshot doesn't work yet. But ask, and ye shall receive -- that will be the "permanent URL" for information about IMAP-IDLE for Mail.app.

IMAP-IDLE: development status

2006-12-19T20:58:00.000-05:00

My last release was version 1.05, in November. I'm still working on the next version. I've gotten a number of helpful bug reports from people, some feature requests, and a suggestion that I make a fixed web page for IMAP-IDLE, rather than doing releases on my blog.

Lockups with "kernel: shared_region: lsf_map: unable to allocate mapping"

2006-12-19T20:43:00.000-05:00

My Macbook Pro locked up twice today. Lines like the following appeared repeatedly in the system log.

Dec 19 16:10:35 Foamy kernel[0]: shared_region: 0x50b6894: lsf_map: unable to allocate mapping

I had installed ShapeShifter (MacHeist bundle!) recently. I disabled it in the APE preference pane. Hopefully the lockups stop.

I could ping the machine. I could even partially ssh in:

kernel[0]: shared_region: 0x707ecec: lsf_map: unable to allocate mapping
Foamy sshd[4215]: fatal: Timeout before authentication for 172.17.23.7
kernel[0]: shared_region: 0x56659a4: lsf_map: unable to allocate mapping

But it was effectively dead.

Is your lookupd crashing? It's years-old bug #3632865

2006-11-27T07:28:00.000-05:00

If your Mac beachballs when, for example, you're trying to unlock the screensaver, and comes back after a few minutes, "lookupd" could be the culprit. Look in your console log (/Applications/Utilities/Console) for lines like the following.

lookupd[283]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
lookupd[283]: ni_statistics: Communication failure
DirectoryService[82]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
DirectoryService[82]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
DirectoryService[82]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
DirectoryService[82]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
DirectoryService[82]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
lookupd[283]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
lookupd[283]: ni_statistics: Communication failure
DirectoryService[82]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
lookupd[283]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
DirectoryService[82]: NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local

This is not a new problem. In fact, it's been around for years. John Bafford released unlockupd, in 2004, to work around the bug in lookupd that causes this problem. Here is his explanation of the issue:

Lookupd is the lookup and caching daemon responsible for handling NetInfo, DNS, and other such requests. Applications typically do not access lookupd directly, but rather, use standardized library functions (such as gethostbyname for DNS) which access lookupd on the application's behalf.

Lookupd has a bug (rdar://3632865) in its cache cleanup code that causes it to randomly crash. CrashReporter, the system crash log agent, does not properly handle lookupd crashes, and as a result, when lookupd crashes, the process is not terminated. Since lookupd has not terminated, mach_init does not respawn lookupd. From this point, any application that attempts to access lookupd, either directly or indirectly, will hang.

Once lookupd stops responding, it becomes difficult, but not impossible, to recover the system to a usable state. One technique which works, but is not recommended (for obvious reasons), is to leave a root shell running and `killall -9 lookupd` when it becomes obvious that lookupd has died (sudo does not work, since it requires lookupd's services, as does opening a new terminal window).

The bug number is apparently 3632865 in Apple's bug-tracking system, "radar". The rdar url above is usable by Apple folks, only. There's no way for the public to see the details of that bug number. Joel wrote a little article about this problem as well.

TFMonitor: graph your Mac's fan speeds and temperatures

2006-11-23T13:14:00.000-05:00

TFmonitor is a piece of software written by K. Seki that monitors your Intel Mac's fan speeds and temperature sensors. To the right is a screenshot of it in action on my MBP (core duo).

I like to bump the minimum fan speed on my Mac up to 2500 RPM to keep it cooler. Currently I'm just using the "smc" command-line program, although I've tried the various GUIs available now. I use the following:

/usr/bin/smc -k F0Mn -w 2710
/usr/bin/smc -k F1Mn -w 2710

Note that 2710 is the hexadecimal representation of 10000, which is 2500*4 (or 2500 left-shifted by 2). The primary problem with this method is that it doesn't stick past reboots or sleep/wake cycles, and has to be run again.

So I'm writing a little program to run idle in the background, wait for "I woke up" events, and re-set the minimum fan speed. Then I just need a prefpane to set the minimum speed and I'll be good to go.

        [[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] notificationCenter]
          addObserver:self
             selector:@selector(workspaceDidWake:)
                 name:NSWorkspaceDidWakeNotification
               object:nil];

I know that FanControl does this already, but it seems to have the side effect of making my cpus run at full speed (2.17GHz) all of the time. If I just set the minimum fan speed using "smc" as needed, the CPU speed can still vary. For example, while typing this, I'm running at 1.67GHz.

$ sysctl kern.cpu_currentfreq
kern.cpu_currentfreq: 1667

Plus, it's a fun little project.

UPDATE: a fun little *abandoned* project. FanControl 1.1 doesn't peg my CPUs at full speed. CoreDuoTemp does mis-read the CPU speed, though. I'm happily using FanControl and running at 118ºF.

IMAP-IDLE Plugin for Mail.app, version 1.05

2006-11-09T07:18:00.000-05:00

Version 1.05 of my plugin for Apple's mail client is available here.

Changes:

Does not prompt mail check when it's told "0 recent" by the mail server (more reliably handles IDLE status messages)
Handles erroneous CAPABILITY responses better (more reliably detects IDLE support)

IMAP IDLE Plugin version 1.04

2006-10-11T01:52:00.000-04:00

UPDATE: For he latest version. always go here.
--
Version 1.04

Changes this release:

Improved Exchange compatibility
Less chatty in the console log
Improved handling of mail checks when you set mail to check "Manually".

To-do list:

Make a proper installer that doesn't require a user to type commands in Terminal.
Add a preference pane in Mail to enable or disable the plugin globally.
Add a preference pane in Mail to enable or disable the plugin by account.

IMAP-IDLE 1.03 for Apple's Mail.app

2006-09-30T13:20:00.000-04:00

Version 1.03 of the IDLE-support plugin for Apple's Mail program is available here (link disabled; see version 1.04 link, below) To whoever listed version 1.02 on MacUpdate, could you please update the entry? :)

The changes in this release:

Reliance on Applescript for certain functions has been completely removed. The plugin now uses the Mail API exclusively.
Handling of online/offline, active/inactive much improved
Threading bug fixed (caused crash in certain situations).
It is much slimmer: the ZIP file for this version is only 40k rather than the megabyte or so of previous versions.

In France, what revolves around the Earth?

2006-09-24T10:40:00.000-04:00

From YouTube.

HR 5295 ("warrantless searches of students") passes, goes to the Senate

2006-09-23T17:16:00.000-04:00

HR 5295 is several things.

An election-year tough-on-crime stunt.
One more step down the road of turning our schools into prisons.
Obedience training for future citizens. Getting kids used to random, warrantless searches will make them more compliant to government authority in the future. Plus, when whackos complain about violations of the 4th Amendment and government abuse of power, these folks will think and say, "but I've been searched all my life; it's no big deal".
Asymmetric. Are the teachers, administrators and other staff also subject to random warrantless searches? How about the politicians? What do they have to hide?

It must be stopped. Anyone performing such a search on my kids is going to receive an unpleasant visit.

Call, write and/or visit your congresscritter. It was a voice vote, so assume they are all guilty (voted for the bill) until proven innocent (can prove they didn't, or that they opposed it). Call your representative's office and request to know how they voted. Make your opposition known. Do the same for your sentator.

** UPDATE
This bill doesn't appear to do much on top of NEW JERSEY v. T. L. O., the 1985 case that established limits to 4th Amendment protections for minors on school grounds. HR 5295 cites that case, and adds the requirement that schools must have a policy that reflects more or less what New Jersey vs TLO says is acceptable anyway. The point appears to be to make it clearer to everyone that certain kinds of searches at schools are acceptable, and have been since 1985. I am uncertain whether this policy has been law before now, or just a court ruling. After the Senate passes this will, it will be law, of course.

H.R. 5295: Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006

2006-09-21T18:28:00.000-04:00

Representative Price,

I'll get straight to the point. I'm the father of two children currently in elementary school. I find H.R. 5295 ("Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006") to be reprehensible. It seems to be little more than obedience training for the citizens of tomorrow. Teaching them that random searches are normal is not a good way to educate citizens about living in a free country.

-Michael Rothwell

IDLE support for IMAP accounts in Apple's Mail.app

2006-09-18T23:18:00.000-04:00

Apple's mail client (Mail.app) supports IMAP accounts, but does not support the IDLE extension (RFC 2177). IDLE is good, because it lets the server notify clients when new mail arrives, meaning that clients don't have to poll. Or at least, will get new mail more often than $POLL_INTERVAL.

I'm writing a plugin (a "mailbundle") for Mail.app that implements support for IDLE. It opens a connection for each IMAP account, selects the INBOX, enters IDLE mode, and waits for messages. When it gets a message from the server indicating that new mail has arrived, it causes Mail.app to check for new mail in that account.

The first working version is running in debug mode on my Mac right now, monitoring mail over an SSL connection to my IMAP server. It won't reconnect if disconnected, currently, and ignores network state. Those are to-do items.

I'll release it on VersionTracker when it's ready for public consumption.

** UPDATE
The first release version can be downloaded here (link disabled). It's a Universal Binary, reconnects when disconnected, and is working well on my MBP and my wife's Powerbook. You must be running Tiger (10.4.x) to use this.

** UPDATE
Not all IMAP servers support IDLE. As a future update to the IDLE plugin, I'll have it report back about your server's capabilities. Until then, here's a page describing how to tell if your server supports IDLE. Long story short: iPlanet and DotMac do not! Exchange does, as does cyrus and dovecot.

** UPDATE
Version 1.01 is available here: IMAP-IDLE-1.01.zip (link disabled). It is a minor update to fix problems some folks were having with particular IMAP servers; the plugin was failing to recognize that the server was in IDLE mode due to the server giving a response unexpected by my code. If version 1.0 is working for you, there's no reason to update to 1.01.

** UPDATE
I've gotten a number of great bug and usage reports. Thanks, everyone! I'm working on the following issues:

Observing the "enabled/disabled" status of individual mail accounts
Observing the "online/offline" status of Mail.

I'll have an update out in the next day or two, probably!

** UPDATE 2006-09-26
Version 1.02 (link disabled) is available. It respects the "enabled" setting for individual accounts, and handles accounts being taken "offline". It also checks for your server's capability to support the IDLE extension and reports yea or nay back in the console log (see /Applications/Utilities/Console.app). This version is working for my very small group of testers (me, my wife). Give it a shot!

** UPDATE 2006-09-30
Version 1.03 is available here.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client on an Intel Mac

2006-09-15T15:19:00.000-04:00

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client for the Mac, which is PPC-only (not a universal binary), occasionally fails to launch on an Intel machine. The dock icon bounces forever, and CPU usage is high. To get it launching again, delete the folder ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/RDC Client -- apparently its preferences or default settings get corrupted over time.

I use rdesktop (compiled myself) under Apple's X11 more often, as it's much faster, and more configurable. For example, I have the display resolution with rdesktop set to 1600x1100 (command-line options in use: rdesktop -g 1600x1100 -z -xm -a16), so that it's max size on my 1600x1200 display, but does not overlay my dock.

Some kind soul packaged TSClient as in intel-mac .app. It's an X11 app, and probably rdesktop under the covers, but has a GUI.

** UPDATE: New/better link for TSClientX is http://desktopecho.com/tsclientx/
. And yes, it's redesktop and some other stuff (listed on that site) under the covers. It works!

Rails + Laszlo? Flex?

2006-09-14T01:06:00.000-04:00

The Laszlo folks have a new thing called "Legals" (announcement). Laszlo/OpenLaszlo is a "Rich Internet Application" thing that generates Flash (SWF) files as the UI for web applications. "Legals" targets more than just Flash, though, and can render a "Laszlo" UI as DHTML, which is pretty neat. Apparently the Legals team intends to support "other targets" in the future, presumably SVG and WPF/E. I hope they support Rails.

The older OpenLaszlo has support available for Rails. The OpenLaszlo Project Blog talks about it. A guy named Rodney got it working on the Mac, and through the magic of google, I became aware of this feat.

Adobe has released a Rails SDK for Flex, which is their RIA-generates-SWF solution.

Treo 650 and the dreaded "AirSAMStateMachine" error

2006-09-14T00:55:00.000-04:00

My Treo 650 quit syncing calendar events a while back. It would reliably generate an "AirSAMStateMachine.c" error.

I found the secret decoder ring for these messages. "1509" means "Sync interface: Sync protocol has encountered an error. It is usually followed by status code to indicate its particular definition." Sure enough, it's followed by "Status: 5", which means, simply, "Server error.".

The Exchange server wass not logging an error, though. Nothing in the event log. Nothing in the IIS log. I applied the standard exchange ritual voodoo: checked information store for errors using eseutil, etc; ensured IIS was bound to all IP addresses (the server is multihomed), verified Exchange 2003 SP2 was installed, ensured "basic" and "integrated" auth were enabled and that SSL was not required. Nothing helped.

But I did, in the end, get my Palm syncing again. I simply deleted the mail account on the Treo and re-created it. Apparently the "server error" was really an internal Versamail error.

Endian Firewall!

2006-09-12T11:35:00.000-04:00

Well, I dumped FC4 on my home firewall. The problems I was having with IPSec were due to kame/racoon/ipsec-tools.

IKE is the devil.

I'm now running Endian Firewall, which uses OpenSwan (Pluto, et al). Literally minutes of work to get three VPN tunnels up and working!

IPSec between FC4 and IOS

2006-09-02T18:34:00.000-04:00

Does anyone know what this means?

ERROR: proto_id mismathed: my:2 peer:3
ERROR: proposal mismathed.
ERROR: failed to pre-process packet.
ERROR: phase2 negotiation failed.

What's "2"? What's "3"?

Run vmware server console on a Mac

2006-09-02T09:39:00.000-04:00

Ok, it's not really running *on* the Mac, but keep reading. I tried running the Windows version using Crossover Office (e.g., Wine for Mac), and although it installed, it would never run. So I tried running the Linux version, from a Linux machine, using Apple's X11. It worked! TAO of Mac has some instructions.

Long story short:

ssh -Y to a linux machine with vmware-server-console installed.
edit ~/.vmware/preferences to add a line like xkeymap.language="pt104"
run vmware-server-console

Ta-da, you're managing virtual machines from your Mac.

Steady as she goes

2006-08-30T19:08:00.000-04:00

The Macbook Pro has been working Just Fine™ for the last month. Yay.

I've gotten a few emails about my Rails replacement for the eyehome software. It's not releasable, yet, folks! Sorry!

Applecare phone support is useless

2006-07-28T14:17:00.000-04:00

The know-nothing "product specialists" at Applecare are useless. My Macbook Pro continues to "beachball" after coming out of a lower-power condition: not sleep, but display off and (presumably) the hard drive spun down. It happened twice this morning.

The first time, everything froze shortly after I 'woke up' the machine by touching the trackpad. Application windows could be selected, but they all beachballed. The seconds in the menu bar clock stopped advancing for thirty seconds. Then everything came back. It was as if (and this is speculation on my part) the hard drive was taking a long time to spin up.

The second time, I let it sit in the beachballed state for several minutes, before closing the lid and stuffing into my travel bag. It went to sleep -- I could tell because of the "breathing" white LED on the latch release button. I opened the lid back up on the commute in, and hte machine wole up unfrozen.

The local apple store replaced the hard drive on July 11 because the machine was logging a lot of hardware disk errors. Since then, it has not logged any errors.

I just spoke with an "advanced product specialist" who advised me to try using the machine without running any applications or periherals, and perhaps setting up a different user account to switch to when I want to let the machine sleep (the machine isn't sleeping; sleep is turned off in the energy settings, as I told him, but whatever). He suggested that when the Finder hangs, I would not be able to use any of the applications. We had a little argument about this, with me saying that I can kill the finder completely and all the other applications till work (pathfinder users do this all the time); so it can't be the finder beachballing everything. He said that perhaps it's one application hanging waiting for the disk when it sleeps, which causes the whole OS to hang. I reminded him that I'm not running OS9, and would Mail hanging really cause the menu bar clock to stop? He said "we'll need to reproduce the problem". This is the same problem I've been reporting for a couple of months now, by the way. And it happened twice today ebfore I called. I ask, "so how many timed do I need to reproduce it? It's done it twice in the exact same conditions today."

So I have to go through the stupid little dance. Yes, Mr. Tech Support Sir, I was running: Finder, Mail, Adium, Firefox, Terminal, Subethaedit and Textmate. No, there were not any peripherals attached. Yes, it hung up.

Guh.

UPDATE: The guys at the Genius Bar in Raleigh are great.

Macbook Pro disk problems

2006-07-10T19:09:00.000-04:00

My Macbook Pro was recently in for repair. They replaced the motherboard, memory and battery. Prior to the service, the MBP was locking up and had no battery life -- it would go dead in minutes.

I'm still getting occasional "pauses" (beachballing) and Azeureus is logging disk errors. The MBP's system.log contains entries like this:

Jul 10 07:29:35 Foamy kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Jul 10 07:29:50 Foamy kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Jul 10 18:04:02 Foamy kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Jul 10 18:04:17 Foamy kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Jul 10 18:44:05 Foamy kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Jul 10 18:50:13 Foamy kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Jul 10 19:01:12 Foamy kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).

Argh

North Carolina and Tobacco

2006-07-09T18:20:00.000-04:00

In this picture (click to enlarge), you can see a new school being built in the town where I live. It borders a large, very healthy-looking tobacco field (see inset). My wife and I both thought that people from "up north" would find this rather peculiar.

Dogs love trucks

2006-06-26T21:17:00.000-04:00

Here's a picture of my dog, as seen in the rear view mirror.

Replacement Eyehome software using Ruby on Rails

2006-06-26T20:34:00.000-04:00

I am writing replacement server software for my Eyehome video-on-demand system. The included Java software didn't do a number of things that I wanted it to do. So, I whipped out Ethereal and began sniffing the eyehome<->server communications. It's HTTP/1.1 with a special USER-AGENT string and what we'll call an "Extended subset" of HTML.

Hmmm. HTTP. HTML. Sounds like a job for... Ruby on Rails! I developed on my Macbook Pro, and deployed to the Fedora Core 4 system that is my terabyte fileserver. As it turns out, Apache on FC4 cannot serve "large files" (more than 2GB or so), so I'm running my Eyehome server (cleverly named "MyHome") under lighttpd, which can serve large files. Since the AVI files for long movies done at high quality can exceed Apache's file-size limitations, lighty is the best choice for now. Plus, Rails runs great under lighty.

This is how an earlier version of the MyHome looks on my TV downstairs (you can see that this picture was taken around Mothers Day):

I'll sum up a few of the new features that are visible in this next screenshot (which is of the current, uh, "release"). Note that the text doesn't fill the screen on this Firefox-prodced screen shot, but it does on the actual Eyehome.

There's a "breadcrumb" UI element in the left pane, where it says "Location". This allows jumping back up the directory tree quickly from the remote.
There's a "Categories" section on the left hand side as well. This is a listing of all the genres of all the movies in the current folder. Selecting a genre will display only the movies tagged with that genre. So if I want to watch a "Western", I'll get a shorter list with Tombstone and Blazing Saddles in it.
The current folder is displayed as "Movies for Adults" in this screenshot, but the actual folder name on disk is "Parents" (vs the "Kids") folder. This is accomplished via metadata sotred with each folder (in a YAML file; Ruby likes yaml), as is the next feature: access control.
The lock in the upper-right indicates that an access code has been entered, as the "Parents" folder is restricted.
Note that "The Aviator" is appearing with movies whose titles begin with "A". The MyHome software generates a "sortable title" for each item that does things such as move "The" to the end.
The item names are not just the filenames minus the ".avi" -- although it falls back to that in the absence of available metadata. It's the full title of the movie plus the year it was released (or the date in the case of TV series, plus season and episode).

Here's a similar display in a folder full of Stargate SG-1 episodes (go go ReplayTV).

The items are sorted by season and episode, rather than title or filename. The title also includes an abbreviated display of season and episode.

Choosing an item displays details for the item. As seen in the next screenshot, it displays a boxshot/cover art, the title, a plot synopsis, IMDB rating, genres, MPAA rating and other details.

When viewing the details page with a browser that's not the Eyehome, "edit" and "listing" links appear. Clicking edit allows me to enter the metadata for an item using a browser. The metadata is saved as a YAML file with the same name as the movie file.

To help me obtain the metadata, I have also written a Cocoa (Mac OS X) application that does the following:

accepts a drag-and-drop of a video file
looks it up by title in IMDB
renames the file with the "canonical IMDB name" (title plus year)
saves a plist containing the IMDB info.

I then convert the plist file to a YAML file using a Ruby script. An earlier version of my software used plist files. I'll be updating the Mac app to read and write YAML instead.

By storing the metadata in text files alongside the real movie files, I can realize a few advantages.

I can edit the metadata using a text editor if I want to. This isn't a big advantage, but it's a small one. For most things, the editing built into the rails app keeps me from having to.
I don't depend on any special access to manage the movie files. I can zip into the fileserver via nfs, smb or afp and rearrange, copy or delete stuff as I see fit. I can also ssh into the fileserver and use cli tools.
The deployment footprint of the rails app is small. It doesn't require a database.

When I have the software fixed up so that I'm ready to let the world use it, I'll make a release on this blog.

CoreDuoTemp

2006-05-19T20:05:00.000-04:00

You can use an application called CoreDuoTemp to monitor your Intel-Mac's processor speed and temperature. My Macbook Pro measures up thusly:

17" Powerbook is Rehabilitated

2006-05-06T14:14:00.000-04:00

I took my 17" powerbook to the local Apple Store, where they let me test a new battery before buying it. I wanted to see if the battery (replaceable) was dead, or if the charging circuitry (not replaceable) was dead; thankfully, it turns out it was the battery. I bought the tester battery (new, but returned because it was the "wrong size" -- it pays to read the labelling, people!) at a $50 discount. Not bad -- free help at the Genius Bar plus a discount on a new battery. My wife has the laptop now, and just loves it. It's an upgrade from her G3 iBook. It is, in her words, "lighter, faster, bigger!"

The "d" key still double-types sometimes, but she's not complained about it. I don't have a solution, yet, but I'm still looking for one.

Macbook Pro 2.16GHz CPU temps

2006-05-06T13:53:00.000-04:00

I've been following the Something Awful thread on thermal grease and the Macbook Pro CPU temperatures. I installed the speedit kernel extension and Temperature Monitor, which reads the data from the kext and graphs it.

My CPU seems to be floating around 63° C (145° F) when the machine is mostly idle. When running Handbrake, which does a pretty good job of banging both CPUs at 100%, the temperature rises as high as 78° C (172° F). The graph here shows the CPU temp during the handbrake run, and after.

I seem to be doing better than the guy who's getting 97° C at load! The Macbook doesn't seem any hotter than my 17" 1GHz G4 Powerbook was.

DIY Canon Powershot SD550 LCD Repair

2006-05-02T19:58:00.000-04:00

I have a Canon "digital elph" model SD550 digital camera. I had it in my pocket when I rode the SheiKra roller-coaster at Busch Gardens in Tampa. The ride cracked the LCD display on the back of the camera, making it more or less impossible to change any of the settings, review pictures, etc. Luckily, I hadn't put it in any wierd sepia/black and white type of mode, and could continue taking pictures using the optical viewfinder.

Canon wnted $150 to repair the camera. Cracked LCDs are not covered under regular warranty work. That seemed a little steep to me. I called the Canon parts department (open M-F 8-5; 732-521-7230) and ordered the replacement part for $50. I bought a set of Kronus screwdrivers drivers at Radio Shack to work with the small philips screws on the camera.

Repair instructions, as I did it (warning: no warranty, try this at your own risk ,etc).
Remove the battery. Remove all of the external screws and put them someplace safe. Keep track of which screw goes in which hole. Carefully separate the two halves of the camera shell. Remove the metal bar (held in with one screw on the left and a nub at the right) along the top of the LCD. Release the LCD's four small metal/plastic tabs and lift it away. The backlight is underneath. The cable from the LCD runs beneath it, so it must be carefully lifted away as well. The cable for the LCD is taped to the back of the backlight. Carefully remove the cable and cover up the sticky spot with a slip of paper. Remove the two screws holding in the metal harness for the control buttons. Lift it away to reveal the socket into which the LCD cable goes. Lift the black hinged tab, carefully, and slide out the ribbon cable. Put the broken LCD away. Insert the ribbon cable for the new LCD in the same orientation, and push down the hinged tab. Replace the buttons and screws. Replace the backlight. Mount the LCD back into its tabs. Replace the metal bar. Reassemble the case, and screw everything back together.

It's not hard, Just be careful and work in a place with a lot of light and no breeze.

Fedora Core 4, Apache2, Ruby on Rails and FastCGI

2006-04-27T22:33:00.000-04:00

FastCGI (or in my case, mod_fcgid plus the FastCGI dev kit) runs the script public/dispatch.fcgi in your Rails application. If you're having problems getting it to run right, try this.

The dispatch.fcgi script normally looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../config/environment"
require 'fcgi_handler'

RailsFCGIHandler.process!

Edit it so that it looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../config/environment"
FCGI_PURE_RUBY = true
require 'fcgi_handler'

RailsFCGIHandler.process!

That one change might make it work right for you.

Macbook Pro heat

2006-04-23T09:05:00.000-04:00

Dad and I both have the 2.16GHz version of the Macbook Pro. It gets really hot, both on the bottom and on the top above the function keys. The fans never seem to kick on noticeably, but I've heard of a "jet engine mode" that they can go into occasionally. It would be nice to knock the fan speed up just a little to cool off the Macbook, so it'll be comfortable while on a lap. Alternatively, perhaps there's some sort of add-on I could use, like adhering a custom-fit rubber mat to the bottom side to shield flesh from the heat dissipated by the aluminum case. If you have any ideas, let me know.

UPDATE: follow-up post.

Ringtones

2006-04-22T20:10:00.000-04:00

I am using two custom ringtones on my Treo:

This Foamy ringtone ("follow the sound of my voice and kill whoever's holding the phone", wav and mp3) plays when Sal calls me.
This ringtone ("core meltdown in 10 seconds", wav file) plays when someone calls me from work.

www.rothwell.us is moving

2006-04-22T20:02:00.000-04:00

The existing rothwell.us hosting situation is getting to be slower and slower:

$ ping www.rothwell.us
PING www.rothwell.us (72.236.213.43): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 72.236.213.43: icmp_seq=0 ttl=42 time=1515.968 ms
64 bytes from 72.236.213.43: icmp_seq=1 ttl=42 time=1455.347 ms
64 bytes from 72.236.213.43: icmp_seq=2 ttl=42 time=1207.031 ms
64 bytes from 72.236.213.43: icmp_seq=3 ttl=42 time=1288.661 ms

I just signed up for a new dedicated server at ServerPronto, which is also the new home of zappe.us. In fact, it was Zappe who referred me there.

$ ping www.zappe.us
PING www.zappe.us (64.251.25.46): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 64.251.25.46: icmp_seq=0 ttl=42 time=65.153 ms
64 bytes from 64.251.25.46: icmp_seq=1 ttl=42 time=64.955 ms
64 bytes from 64.251.25.46: icmp_seq=2 ttl=42 time=47.836 ms
64 bytes from 64.251.25.46: icmp_seq=3 ttl=42 time=52.610 ms

... performance is a little better at ServerPronto, it seems. They indicate that each server is connected via 100MBit ethernet to their redundant peered internet connections. That's certainly a step up from a 10mbit hub and two pigeons.

Photobooth is fun

2006-04-22T20:00:00.000-04:00

My enormous cranium and I showing off the new Macbook at work:

AppWatch vs the Apple Menu

2006-04-19T22:40:00.000-04:00

Appwatch offers a menu of "recent applications".

As it turns out, so does the Apple Menu:

At the moment, I cannot explain the differences in the two lists of "recent applications".

Update on "optimum settings" for Eyehome use

2006-04-19T22:23:00.000-04:00

As an interim follow-up to Part 1, here is some information about producing good-quality, Eyehome-compatible video files.

"Actual Size" is the best "video scaling" option on the Eyehome. It avoids unnecessary scaling and distortion of the video. For video that's not a "perfect" aspect ratio, the Eyehome will produce fat or thin people in the "fit" and "16x9" settings.
AVI (MPEG4/DivX video + MP3 audio) is the best format for the Eyehome. It will play MPEG4 (MPEG4 video + AAC audio) files, but the sound will eventually get out of sync and attempting to fast forward will often crash the eyehome box.
Handbrake does a great job encoding video. I like that it gives me control over cropping, scaling and de-interlacing. The settings I am currently using are:

Average bitrate option set at 2048
ffmpeg encoder
AVI (MPEG4/DivX video + MP3 audio)
2-pass
cropping and scaling "to taste". I like to end up with a frame size in the neighborhood of 704x400, 720x400, or 688x384. "Anamorphic" and 4:3 (NTSC) sources don't always fit in that mold. Encode, and test on the Eyehome to ensure that you get no funny scaling. You may need to leave on some "black bars" (e.g., ease up on the cropping some) to get a desired playback result with some source material.
It is generally best to crop off all black borders, including "half-black" border regions. This produces a lower final file size and fewer artifacts. See previous bullet.
De-interlacing as needed.

If you have audio equipment with optical in, pass through the original AC3 audio if possible: you'll end up with better audio and retain the surround channels. I do not have any optical-capable audio equipment, so I re-encode all of the audio as MP3 or AAC. Unfortunately, the Eyehome cannot (or will not) decode AC3, but it will pass it out the optical port.

For a good discussion of how to create high-quality MPEG4 video files (and what all the knobs and dials are), read this article.

17" powerbook issues - timing is everything

2006-04-18T20:30:00.000-04:00

I have a 1st generation 17" G4 Powerbook that has developed two issues.

Problem one:
There seems to be a loose connection somewhere that prevents proper charging of the battery. It's currently reporting that a full charge will be achieved in 1014 hours, which seems a little long. Moving the powerbook around results in the green/orange ring around the power connector plug flickering between orange and green, as if the connection is being made and then broken. Pressing the button on the battery causes the lowest LED indicator to flicker. Sometimes, I can get a full charge and use the powerbook away from the AC, but not always -- not even more than half the time.

Problem two:
The "d" key occasionally "sticks", although not physically, and produces multiple "d"s when typing. The apple support guy on the phone tonight suggested this might be "a software problem". He said the battery funkiness might be as well.

According to Apple, my Applecare support expired a month ago. Doh! I thought waiting until the 11th months would result in an extended warranty, but I was wrong. I probably just didn't read something carefully enough.

If you have any suggestions about how to fix these issues, email me or post in the comments.

This blog needs a new design

2006-04-16T15:29:00.000-04:00

The title says it all. I've been meaning to do it, just as I've been meaning to blog more. Well, no more excuses. I'm going to put my new MacBook Pro to work today.

Ugly old design:

"Algae". Ick.

UPDATE: Part-way there. It's blue, and flax-based. The layout works ok in Firefox and Safari. Internet Explorer is, as usual, causing problems.

AppWatch 1.01

2006-04-08T16:53:00.000-04:00

AppWatch 1.01 is a Universal Binary.

For a description, see the previous post; there are no new features other than the hotkey, which is now shift-command-escape, because Front Row uses command-escape.

Download version 1.01

Fixing "tearing" and slow or jerky video on Mac OS X

2006-03-31T21:41:00.000-05:00

I have a 17" Powerbook and a 24" Dell flat-panel display. Tiger (10.4) includes a feature called "beam sync" which tries to defer screen updates so that they are synchronized with the monitor refresh rate. Essentially, beam sync limits the "frames per second" of the display to whatever your monitor can really support. This feature seems to make more sense for CRTs than for all-digital displays like LCDs.

When I used only the Powerbook's internal display, and then connected the Dell external display via DVI, the video on the Dell exhibited jerky and slow(er) updates (especially with Expose) and some "tearing", by which I mean that moving a window around the screen seemed to cause the window to "drift" in the direction of the movement, with the top leading the bottom. It's like the window was skewed while it was in motion. This behavior, I'm guessing, is caused by the difference in "refresh rates" between the internal display and the Dell; the Mac was attempting to use the rate for the internal display with the Dell, and not having a lot of success. Rebooting always fixed the problem, presumably because the Mac re-probed the display and thereafter used the correct refresh rate.

I discovered another way to fix the problem, however, that doesn't require a reboot: using Quartz Debug to disable beam sync. Unfortunately, quitting Quartz Debug re-enables beam sync and the problem immediately re-surfaces. There's no switch to flip in any preference pane to disable beam sync for good, but there is a command that can be run from Terminal that makes the setting sticky. Type it all on one line, or copy/paste it from here into Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver Compositor -dict deferredUpdates 0

Running that command fixed the video problem permanently. I should write a mini prefpane to do that...

UPDATE: My new Macbook Pro doesn't seem to have this issue. I also do not have DisplayConfigX installed on it, which may or may not be a contributing factor.

DumbDialog 1.0: a simple "progress bar" dialog box for applescripters

2006-02-19T15:46:00.000-05:00

DumbDialog 1.0 (20kb) is a small, faceless Cocoa application that does nothing but display a panel containing a progress bar and a text field. It does not have a menu bar or dock icon. It is intended for use by AppleScript programs that need to display an Aqua-looking progress bar. It was developed and tested on Tiger (10.4). It may work on older versions of OSX, but I don't know. Email me if you have any success on 10.3.

DumbDialog has three properties of interest:

paneltitle (text)
displaytext (text)
panelvisible (boolean)

You probably want to "activate" it early and leave it running, sending it different text to display and showing/hiding it as needed. This will make it pop open faster than restarting it and quitting it every time you want to show it.

Example usage:

tell application "DumbDialog"
  activate
  set paneltitle to "This is the progress panel title"
  set displaytext to "Hello, world!"
  set panelvisible to true
  --set panelvisible to false
   --quit
end tell

You can put the panel through as many "panelvisible=true","panelvisible="false" cycles as needed before finally quitting it altogether.

Farewell party

2006-02-11T22:21:00.000-05:00

Some of us at work had a little "goodbye" party for Melissa last night.

I didn't drink all of that. I had help.

My super-fast network

2006-02-02T22:53:00.000-05:00

I decided to upgrade to exabit ethernet. It's pretty sweet.

DIY Video On Demand - Part 1

2006-01-28T14:53:00.000-05:00

I have recently set up a Video On Demand (VOD) system in my house.

The core is a terabyte-capacity fileserver based on Fedora Core 4. It has five 320GB USB2 drives configured as a RAID5 volume. An LVM2 volume is built on top of that, allowing future expansion of the volume. The filesystem is Ext3 with an external ordered-data journal and ACLs enabled. Files are served using Samba and the Eyehome software (which is just Tomcat, really; it turns out the Eyehome is mostly a web browser). USB raid array?!? Yeah. It works! I get about 15-20 MB/sec to the array over the network, and up to 24 MB/sec off the array, also over the network. All the Fast Ethernet network can handle is around 9-10MB/sec before it saturates. That's still more than plenty to play any video file on the array. Even straight DVD video fits down that pipe.

The fileserver and my Powerbook (which transcodes all of the video) are connected via Gigabit ethernet. I want the better transfer rates when transcoding and copying multi-gigabyte files.

Until recently I had a ReplayTV in the mix, recording shows from DirecTV and/or cable. The MPEGs were transferred to the storage array using mReplay and DVArchive.

The Eyehome uses 10/100 ethernet, S-Video and Component video outputand RCA and optical audio outputs. I have it connected to my Samsung DLP HDTV via component video, operating at 480p. The Eyehome supports higher resolution output, but its native resolution is 480p. Rather than have it scale video down to 480p and then back up to 720p, I just stick with 480p and let the HDTV monitor do the scaling. If your video file has AC3 audio, it can be played back using only the optical output, as the Eyehome does not have any AC3 decoder capability, and just passes it through. Since none of my equipment has optical in, I transcode the audio to MP3 or AAC for this reason. Silent movies were great in ther day and all... but I want noise. The Eyehome decodes DivX, MPEG4, MPEG2, MP3, AAC and MP2.

For the archiving and transcoding, I use four programs.

Mac the Ripper (MtR) to backup DVDs to the array. The transcode step works faster from a VIDEO_TS folder than it does from the disc itself. Also, I like to leave my DVDs in the cases when possible, to avoid scratching and other damage.

Yade X is a nice utility for dumping portions of a DVD to a single VOB file. I can then post-process the VOB file with other tools, such as mencoder, ffmpeg or DVD42.

Handbrake is a good DVD-to-MPEG4 transcoder. It use it to make MPEG4 video with H.264 video and AAC audio. Its queueing system is primitive, but functional.

Forty-TwoDVD-VXPlus is a wrapper for mencoder, mplayer and some other GPL-type tools. It's pretty basic, and the end result is that it just invokes the command-line mencoder with certain options. The new version (3.0) says it's a universal binary, but all the tools that do the work are PPC only. Expect it to not be that great on an Intel mac. For some reason, the authors are using old builds of mencoder, still. The setting I use is "QDVD" (DivX with Mp3 audio in a quicktime-compatible wrapper), with a custom bitrate of 2400 and the volume adjusted manually (Stargate tends to have low-level audio). Its queue system is its killer feature.

These tools produce AVI files (DVD42) or MP4 files (Handbrake). I think that the MP4 files are the best, in terms of video quality and file size. However, Handbrake has a problem with audio sync on some DVDs (such as Stargate discs). I use Handbrake or DVD42 as appropriate. Handbrake will de-interlace the video and does H.264 encoding, so I prefer to use it, barring any sync problems.

The end result is that we can sit on the couch and select movies and TV shows to watch using a regular remote control.

There needs to be a better toolchain for doing this work, and Sal and Keith and I have started working on one. It, too, will be mencoder-based. But we'll use recent source, build it ourselves, and add the features that we want to use.

Stay tuned!
In Part 2, I will detail the specifics of the setup. Drive enclosures, kernel parameters, samba config, the eyehome software, etc.

RHCE, Baby!

2006-01-28T14:20:00.000-05:00

I just received my RHCE certification. Sal and I were at RedHat all last week. Our instructor was Check Mead. Nice guy. Plays WoW.

Now I have one day of "business-skills" Professional Development left in my budget. I wonder if paintball counts?

"There Is No God"

2005-11-25T00:58:00.000-05:00

NPR has a "Morning Edition" segment called "This I Believe". Penn Jillette (pictured to the right) was the featured guest on November 21 in a segment titled "There Is No God". An excerpt:

This "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God." Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

I heard it as I was getting dressed to go to work, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

AppWatch: a simple Mac OS X application launcher

2005-11-25T00:37:00.000-05:00

Appwatch is a simple application launcher for Mac OS X. It observes the applications that you launch and quit, and builds a menu of "Recent", "Frequent" and "Long-Running" applications. The only UI is the Menu Bar Icon, and the menu itself (and some preferences dialogs).

You can use the mouse, or press ⌘-esc (apple-escape) to activate the menu.

It's Tiger (10.4)-only and won't work on older versions of OSX. It stores all of its collected information in a SQLite (the engine used by Core Data) database file located at ~/Library/Preferences/AppWatch.db

You can download version 1.0 at http://fbm.bentpixel.com/AppWatch-1.0.zip (68k).

Merry X-Mas!

2005-11-24T20:56:00.000-05:00

Now that the Thanksgiving turkey has been put back into the refrigerator, it's time turn our attention to the next holiday.

Remember to stock up on ammo and keep the blast doors closed!

What did I do this week?

2005-11-19T11:53:00.000-05:00

Well, I was enjoying myself!

I was at Redhat, getting my RHCT certificate! Scored 100% on the exam. Of course, I've been using Linux since before Redhat existed, so...

As soon as that professional development budget comes in, I'll go back for the RHCE. Maybe I can talk $15k or so out of my day job to get all the way to "Architect" level.

*rubs hands together*

How work feels many days

2005-11-12T17:09:00.000-05:00

I'm probably not unusual in feeling this way. I imagine other people feel this way about their weekdays as well. It seems a shame. But, perhaps it's normal.

Maybe it's just because I work in what seems to be an adult daycare center.

OsiriX - free DICOM (xray) image viewer for Mac OS X

2005-07-27T22:44:00.000-04:00

OsiriX is a free and open source DICOM Viewer for MacOS X.

My local urgent care gave me a DICOM CD of my shattered right ring finger. It came with a passable Windows viewer. OsiriX immediately recognized the disc and displayed the images. It exports to JPEG, movies, etc. In fact, the image below was exported from OsiriX. It will also creates DICOM-compatible CDs and DVDs, exports/imports to a variety of sources (including, interestingly, "iPod"). I've only just scratched the surface of this program, mainly because it quickly did exactly what I wanted -- exported the xrays of my hand to JPEG images.

Did I mention it's free and open source? It blows the proprietary Windows program out of the water!

If you work with DICOM images, and have a Mac, give OsiriX a spin. And recommend it to your patients.

Disable the dashboard on Mac OS X 10.4

2005-07-25T21:32:00.000-04:00

I disabled it. Yeah, I wrote SlashBot, a Dashboard widget. But you know what? I never used it.

Disable the Dashboard:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES killall Dock
Re-enable the Dashboard:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO killall Dock

Media Center Edition 2005 Theme for XP

2005-07-24T19:20:00.000-04:00

The Media Center "Royale" theme is an improvement over the stock Luna theme.

http://www.bentoll.com/%7Erjdohnert/

Updated the Royale theme so that it now installs directly into proper location, all users have to do now is just access it through the control panel Display applet, just choose appearance and choose the media Center theme. I also uploaded the default wallpaper for this theme. The install package is here the wallpaper is here

Firefox speedups

2005-07-24T19:18:00.000-04:00

This site has some good tips for speeding up firefox:

http://www.911networks.com/book/print/8

The quick and simple stuff is as follows:

Open firefox and in the address type type:

about:config

This will display the preference name, the status, the type and the value.

If the configuration setting already exist: double click on it and then change the value.

If the configuration setting does NOT exist: right click on the web page, New, the depensing on the preference it's either a string, an integer [number] or a boolean [true/false]

network.http.pipelining true network.http.pipelining.firstrequest true network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 8 nglayout.initialpaint.delay 0

Logitech MX900 Bluetooth mouse and Mac OS X 10.4 - jumpy!

2005-07-24T19:08:00.000-04:00

The Logitech MX900 optical bluetooth mouse is nice, but is unsupported on Mac OS X. It still works as a basic mouse, but the system prefs don't let you see the battery level, assign keys or anything like that. It seems to also have a rather jumpy cursor behavior. I plugged in a USB old-fashioned-rubber-ball mouse for comparison to the MX900. The USB mouse would track movement very accurately, keeping the pointer in a tight circle as I moved the mouse. When testing the MX900, however, the pointer would suddenly jump to another part of the screen, even though I was simply moving it in small circles as I was the USB mouse. This was driving me insane. I upgraded the bluetooth drivers in my powerbook. No fix. I threw the mouse across the room into the trashcan. Oddly, that didn't help either. I fished it out. I plugged its base into the Mac and paird the mouse with the base (still bluetooth, but not to the Mac). The Mac saw it as a USB mouse, then, and the jumpiness was quelled. So there must be an issue with the bluetooth in the Powerbook. Occasionally, I get odd key repeats and lag with my Apple bluetooth keyboard, as well. That's really annoying as well -- totally throws off my typing rhythm. I hope Apple fixes it soon.

** update: the MX900 is no more. I just couldn't take it.

Mac OS X "Tiger" and Samba

2005-05-19T20:19:00.000-04:00

If you've upgraded your Mac to 10.4 and can no longer access a samba server, it's probably because of one or two configuration options on the samba server. 10.4 assumes passwords are encrypted. This is a good thing. It also seems to not work with SHARE level security. Switch Samba to USER or DOMAIN. Look in your smb.conf file for options like these:
encrypt passwords = yes security = USER
Set them as above, create the smbpasswd file and set a password for your account, bounce samba, and try accessing it from the Mac again.

Five Pounds of Flax

Netgear WNR854T access point: comes with a bad power supply

Time Machine, ZFS and iSCSI

sparsebundle won't mount, "resource temporarily unavailable"

Seasteading

Dr. Ron Paul doesn't accept evolution? Boo!

IMAP-IDLE version 1.07

Windows mobile 5 "smartphone" is the worst phone software ever made

Why does infoworld need this?

Boxtopia.

John Scalzi's review of the Creation Museum is quite entertaining.

Easy image and movie capture

It's Hillary's turn next, then Jeb's

The iCache -- a pocket credit card reader/writer

IMAP-IDLE 1.07-PRE-5

An interesting community

Hi Ryan

Theresa's "dark night of the soul"

"Goodbye, cruel Word" -- Amen!

IMAP-IDLE 1.07-PRE-4

IMAP-IDLE plugin and Pair.com mail servers

I just patched my AppleTV via USB boot

TeeVee: Goodbye Stargate, Hello HEX

Harry Connick, Jr!

Flash Lite, Moto Q

It's all in the timing

IMAP-IDLE News

Erlang, me and the Web

Hi, Alan (Allen? Allan?)

What the...?

I *heart* Unix

Applications should never, *ever*, steal focus.

Using cookies in Ruby on Rails

MySQL 5 Replication and Rails: schweet!

Check your Linux machines for correct DST info

One day I should finish this...

Rails 1.22, RubyGems 0.9.1 fix

Cory Doctorow at UNC, Duke this evening

IMAP-IDLE 1.07 pre 2

Hex Fiend: Yay!

Back to the future!

IMAP-IDLE 1.07-pre-1

My battery died 5.8 million years ago...

IMAP-IDLE 1.06

Welcome to the So-So

Catalog Card Generator

IMAP-IDLE begins to get a UI

IMAP-IDLE: development status

Lockups with "kernel: shared_region: lsf_map: unable to allocate mapping"

Is your lookupd crashing? It's years-old bug #3632865

TFMonitor: graph your Mac's fan speeds and temperatures

IMAP-IDLE Plugin for Mail.app, version 1.05

IMAP IDLE Plugin version 1.04

IMAP-IDLE 1.03 for Apple's Mail.app

In France, what revolves around the Earth?

HR 5295 ("warrantless searches of students") passes, goes to the Senate

H.R. 5295: Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006

IDLE support for IMAP accounts in Apple's Mail.app

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client on an Intel Mac

Rails + Laszlo? Flex?

Treo 650 and the dreaded "AirSAMStateMachine" error

Endian Firewall!

IPSec between FC4 and IOS

Run vmware server console on a Mac

Steady as she goes

Applecare phone support is useless

Macbook Pro disk problems

North Carolina and Tobacco

Dogs love trucks

Replacement Eyehome software using Ruby on Rails

CoreDuoTemp

17" Powerbook is Rehabilitated

Macbook Pro 2.16GHz CPU temps

DIY Canon Powershot SD550 LCD Repair

Fedora Core 4, Apache2, Ruby on Rails and FastCGI

Macbook Pro heat

Ringtones

www.rothwell.us is moving

Photobooth is fun

AppWatch vs the Apple Menu

I heart Unix

Applications should never, ever, steal focus.