itunes... NOT.. YAM this

I love my iPod.. but Apple has this nasty habit of trying to tell me what I can and can not do. So I found a cool piece of software called "Yamipod" which lets me use my iPod the way it SHOULD be used from my Mac, my Linux boxes and my Windows boxes. What this means is no longer will I get the nasty-ass message about my Windows formatted iPod on the Mac telling me I need to reformat it to work on my play lists etc. I just run Yamipod, turn off the autorun on itunes and whammo.. I can play music, delete sounds, move songs from the iPod to and fro and generally use it the way I want to use it, not the way Apple thinks I should use it. And it's a FREEBIE... but I did send a donation of a few Euros since it's so damn useful to me. And Apple, kiss my ass about trying to force me to use iTunes just to manage my own music. And yes, for those who care, all of my music is either mine that I ripped or I bought from Apple's own store. So who want to carrry on about "stealing companies blind", kiss my ass too. If I sound bitter, I am after being screwed by the music industry for so long on the CDs.

Pictures and Databases

Since I put about 500 gig of disk space online and since I finally got Tiger yakking to the Windows 2003 server, I have been putting all my digital images in one place. Fancy that, I'm getting organized :) But, at last count I have over 25 gig of pictures!! So just having them all sitting there is not going to work very well. Enter a Mac (and Windows) application called "Portfolio 7.0" from Extensis. This is a very cool piece of software for gathering up all these pictures and making nice groups and digging out the metadata and even adding custom fields. So far I have been impressed with it but the cost is a bit much at 200 bucks a copy. Ouch! But, I have yet to find anything else that works as well. I just used it to gather all of the past 6 months worth of baby pictures into a single place, add the date of the shoot, make a self running slideshow CDR and print out the contact sheet. All without having to pick up the directions once. I guess I should not complain too much about the cost.. but it still hurts. They have a product called the Photo Imaging Suite which looks nice but it's *only* 499.95.. come on people, say the truth, it's FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!! forget the lousy headgame of the 99 and 95s.

Now, in their favor, the added software does sound impressive. A app to scale up a print 1600 % and not lose quality? I knew I should have studied my math in school :) Photoshop plugins for frames and masking. And lets be honest, in PS, masks are your friends! So maybe Christmas will come early.

Yah know, this damn Mac is getting expensive with all the cool software I have to buy :) Still, I dont miss the crashes and AV/Spyware crap at all.

More on cache and wayback

In my last post, I used Google to bring up the cached version of a web page that Apple inisted to be removed. In today's Wall Street Journal (7-27-2005) there is a very good piece about lawyers using the internet "wayback machine" to find proof of "things" such as old websites, statements, articles etc. You do need to be a paying member or at least a temp user to read the piece. But, I find the WSJ to be worth the annual fee. So take a look at it and remember that anything you put on the web can come back to haunt you much later than you think. I keep trying to tell people this on the newsgroups and people just dont get it. I sat in a deposition with a legal case against a very large ISP and the legal beagles from the ISP's team had pulled up my own site from several years ago and had questions about it. The graphics were not there but all the text was. Not a problem in my world but it was interesting to watch the lawyers wave it around like they had dug up some gold.. not this time people ;)

Co-habitating OSX and Linux

Now, a disclaimer, I have not done this (yet). I do not have an Intel Dev box to try this on but Apple took it seriously enough to press the orginal author to take down his directions. But, through the magic of Google's cache, you too can read the directions. In my case, I printed off the pages as a PDF for future reference. Shame on Apple professional or not with the take down order.

Apple got where they are today by hacking in a garage. Hackers will take Apple to the next level when they finalize the move to Intel chips and they damn well better get used to the idea. The genie is out of the bottle, Elvis has left the building and he isnt coming back any time soon. Apple would do better to enlist the aid the hacker/maker community and see what cool ideas could come of it. Go to MAKE magazine and put out a challange, smallest OSX portable clocked at 3Ghz (just an idea!), run your boat off an Intel based OSX running embedded controller and so on. Sounds alot like Linux doesnt it? I use Windows as you may have guessed reading the blog and I use Linux of several types. I now use OSX on a daily basis. They each have good points and bad points but one of the best points to have is an OPEN system where people can tweak to their hearts desire. Linux wins that race hands down and some amazing things have come from it. Although the self-piloting SUV running OSX as the brains definitely makes the grade.

With the migration to Intel chips, Apple is at the tipping point of it's life. It will tip over one way and take over the world (Thanks Pinky and the Brain) and if Apple tips the other way, it will go the way of Kaypro, Osborne and many other "coulda-beens". I understand that Apple is trying very hard to maintain control of the software/hardware to keep up the famous quality of Apple, but with that said, we are talking about Intel chips and there are billions of them waiting for a copy of OSX. There are many, many people who would sacrifice some stablity to have OSX running on their Dell, HP, Compaq, E-Machine(well, maybe not an E-Machine) and others. The chance to dump Windows and all the daily crap that goes with it. In many cases, if the video worked well enough, they had sound and the damn thing booted up each day with a bluescreen or lockup, they would be happy campers. These folks do not need nor do they want perfection, they just want the damn PC to work 95% of the time with the understanding that very little is perfect (my wife excepted :) ). I know my in-laws just want to use the word processor and get their email and yet, they are being force into becoming virus and spyware experts due to the constant barrage of crap hitting their Windows box. I personally dumped my Windows box for the Mac after spending HOURS and HOURS trying to stay on top of the AV, the spyware, the registry cleaning etc..etc..etc. I resented Apple in way for making me have to buy yet another box (the iMac) when I have perfectly good hardware already in the form of a Dell intel based system. I really did think about stuffing Darwin on it but I have already played the Linux game and I did not have time for a repeat with Darwin.

Maybe Apple will get the message but I dont have high hopes. I lived through the dark days with Apple when they killed off the clones and almost went under themselves. Closed systems never prosper and I pray they do not repeat history.

Recovery

Some of you might have noticed that my entire site was offline for the better part of three days last week. And that some files are now missing :( The hosting service I use took a really, really bad power hit at a really, really bad time. I know this since I actually went down to the shop and inspected the site before I started using them and meet with the crew. OC Hosting is a great shop and the staff is helpful but the important part was that the building is on the same circuit as COX cable and the local firestation. Pretty safe yah? Well, it was until a contractor put their backhoe through the grid feed line. Twice..

The admins said they were down the first time for a few hours and it cost them a drive in one of the mega-arrays they use. Several hours later when the array was rebuilding, the contractor who had so much fun the first time, repeated the act of stupidity. This time the array did not bounce back. Something like 86 percent of the data was lost which included alot of my site. So after 3 days of no email and no site, I was told to start uploading any backups I had.. great.. just f**king great. Well, I did have backups for the site itself and I had most of the extra files. I did not have a backup of the forum database and some of the site I did not have documented. Things like the various paths I had set up for things like this blog. So it took a few days to work out most of the details and get things back. The blog should be working fine now including the archives. The funny thing is that 90% of my site I re-uploaded using my Mac and Fetch :)

Now.. on to Mac stuff :) The next project now that Apple got the wireless straighted out is to install and confgure Open Door Networks two applications, "Who's There" and "DoorStop" which is a Mac firewall and firewall management tool. I was going to do this installation this weekend but with all the "fun" of this week, I decided to hold off for a few weeks and let this dust settle.

God loves Patches!

Good news on the wireless front!!! There is a new 12 meg patch available for the Airport card and after installing the new patch, keying in my 128 bit key... VOILA! Connection to the hacked Linksys just like everyone else :) in fact, this post comes to you over the 54Mbs link between my Linksys and iMac. About damn time... I am glad to see Apple is ontop of things in a timely manner. Now I need to reconfigure my DMZ to allow SMB traffic back to my server. It never ends.. and dont ask me about my Small Biz server from MS.. I like the idea but what a pain in the ass. It's just different enough to give an admin serious heartburn. The bigger issue is that it's too easier to screw it up and good documentation is non-existant. There is a cadre of hard core users of SBS with blogs and that has saved my butt a few times in the last two weeks.

I'm off to enjoy the fruits of my patching labors :)

Media center? Maybe? hopefully?

I read a post where there is a new Apple announcement in the wind. Rumors have it that it could be a media center. Hot Damn!! I will be one of the first in line. Right now I have a tivo clone I built using XP and Snapstream software. While it works pretty well, it is running Windows and needs to be rebooted once a month or so. The most damning evidence of Windows inablity to run something as simple as a PVR is from Snapstream themselves where they tried to use dot net for the database and after a year, gave up and stripped it out of the current release of software. Between patch issues, system lockups, corruption and so on, Snapstream gave up and went with a more conventinal database. It has to make you wonder how is it that something like dot net which has had millions of dollars thrown at it can not run a PVR without puking on itself.

I just read another piece where people are so mad at their systems (PC) because of viruses, spyware, etc.. that they are tossing them into the rubbish bin and buying a new one at three hundred bucks or so. Now, this brings up a security problem, are these people taking the time to wipe the disk before they toss the PC? Probably not.. One person interviewed by the NY Times reporter was showing off her new Apple notebook which replaced the normal ugly ivory colored PC.

Yesterday I went back to Entourage instead of using Mail. I really need an intergrated mail application and Mail was not doing it for me. I'm not sure Entourage is it either but it has some features which work better for me. It's certainly not as configuration friendly as it could be but it is working so I guess I cant complain. I use IMAP here in the office so I can switch between several mail clients and keep all my mail right where I left it without any issues so that helps alot with this "testing" of mail clients.

Nutz and Boltz

Well.. I had to take a breather and go get my copy of Harry Potter at midnight. It was alot of fun and to be honest, there were some not so balanced people wandering around there. But I digress...

So, I installed the newest developement kit (XCode) from Apple to get fun things like gcc so I can compile some non-apple approved software :) Like Ettercap, just as an example of course. So I get the SDK installed and I find a site called "Darwinports" which gives the tools to use the BSD port ability to install packages(ports)

I used the binary installation for Tiger but I did have to use this :

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/bin

This was all I need to configure for port to work as you can see here:

sudo port install ettercap-ng 0.7.1

And Port was off and running downloading the various requirements that ettercap needed.

MAC-G5:~ mikesweeney$ sudo port install ettercap-ng 0.7.1

---> Fetching libnet11
---> Attempting to fetch libnet-1.1.2.1.tar.gz from http://www.packetfactory.net/libnet/dist/

---> Verifying checksum(s) for libnet11

---> Extracting libnet11

---> Configuring libnet11
---> Building libnet11 with target all
---> Staging libnet11 into destroot
---> Packaging tgz archive for libnet11 1.1.2.1_0
---> Installing libnet11 1.1.2.1_0
---> Activating libnet11 1.1.2.1_0
---> Cleaning libnet11
---> Fetching libpcap
---> Attempting to fetch libpcap-0.8.3.tar.gz from http://www.tcpdump.org/release/

Upgrade Mania

Good News!!! The newest patch for OSX is out, 10.4.2 and it really did help on response times using SMB. My wireless is still broken trying to talk to te Linksys that hope died. There was also a 40 meg "patch" for iPhoto which I have installed but not tried yet.

The reg tweak and GPO for domain controllers really worked well. The bit stayed flipped over night and I was able to access my share points without any issues. I might play with active directory just because I can right now. I just moved over 20 gig of photos to my new share points and another 200 gig of PDFs, applications and crap. Time for some clean up :)

My 500 sheets of microceramic photopaper arrived today. 500 sheets at 4 cents a sheet. Pretty damn cheap for those quick and dirty prints I always seem to need.

We plan to start a loft room addition in a few weeks.. and hopefully get it done before the new baby arrives. This will be number 3 for the girls and I'm soooo done with girls. I'm badly outnumbered now so I'll quite while I'm not too far behind. With the loft comes a new home office in a cooler section of the house AND MORE BOOK SHELVES. A geek just can not have too many book shelves!

Open Windows

Damn, it actually works now!! Whats that? what works? Oh thats right, you were not here :) I FINALLY got the G5 to login to the new Windows 2003 SBS server and mount a share point. What a total pain in the ass in no small part to Microsoft being Microsoft.

I followed the directions for turning off the SMB encryption using a GPO and no joy. I reboot, no joy. I get no error on the Mac side, just a bad password or username. POS!!! So I'm screwing around tonight and I decide to work on it some more. Given that the remote Outlook doesnt want to play with the NAT on the firewall but thats a different story. I do some googling and I find it.. the one tip that MIGHT work..

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSetServicesLanManServer\Parameters

The value of RequireSecuritySignature needs to be changed from '1' to '0'.

I did not even need to reboot!!! OMG.. I have a share mounted on the Mac from the new server. Notice I did not say anything about Active Directory :) Who needs it when all you want is a share point. So much for the vaunted Microsoft GPO way of handling security. Bunch of crap.. this is twice today that a system policy did not filter down like it should have.

Anyways... now it's off to copycity to move files to my 500 gig share point :)

More! I found that my 2003 server had rewritten the reg hack this morning. A quick dig around shows that the directions I had tried in the very beginning were not for a BDC which my 2003 SBS server is. I needed to go to the Domain Controller Security Policy Editor and then go to: Security Settings, Local Policies, Security Options and set the "Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications" to disabled. Now we should be golden, I'll find out tomorrow AM :)

Captured

I found a nice list today of hints for screen captures with OSX, the blog gave credit but the site doesnt exist anymore so here they are, creditless and unloved:

Command +Shift+3 = grab screen to pdf file on desktop

Command + Control + Shift + 3 = grab entire screen and place on clipboard.

Command+Shift+4 = grab region of screen to pdf file on desktop

Command + Control + Shift + 4 = grab a region and place it on the clipboard
I this one pretty useful, it allows you (for example) to grab a screen area and paste it into an email message...

Note when pasting into a program creates tiff format image - this is often more convenient than grabbing a pdf and converting it to whatever format you need. You can also tap the spacebar to invoke the camera cursor. As you move the camera cursor around the screen windows will highlight - click to capture, places grabbed window on clipboard.

X Redux

It's so nice to see x apps running on my Mac desktop. I found out that the Mac handles things a bit differently then Linux but close enough to where I can muddle through it. Using the console I can push out a Linux X app using the normal ssh connection and then setting the DISPLAY parameter. With starting with an xconsole, I just use the ssh -X and I'm off and running without using the DISPLAY parameter. And it works pretty damn good since my email connection has been up for over 24 hours now. My Windows PCs were not this stable, not bad but not this good.

I found this link at Apple's site for developers which gives a good tutorial on X Windows with OSX.

My command of the day is scutil. In learning that the Mac does use certain parameter files (DNS comes to mind) the way I'm use to, I found that the hot ticket is to use this command along with configd. So I'm getting into the nuts and bolts now. And like Linux, documentation is sparse and incomplete. For example, here is the output of using scutil to see the DHCP config:

> get State:/Network/Service/0/DHCP
> d.show
{
Option_6 : 0xc0a832eb424ba029424ba02a
Option_58 : 0x00054600
Option_1 : 0xffffff00
Option_59 : 0x00093a80
Option_3 : 0xc0a83266
Option_53 : 0x05
Option_54 : 0xc0a832eb
LeaseStartTime : 07/07/2005 19:41:39 US/Pacific
Option_51 : 0x000a8c00
}
>

Makes a lot of sense right away doesnt it? So I'm digging around trying to find good info on this and a few other commands.

I did find this site for useful userland ports for Darwin. I also came across a site for crafting packets using a app called "Nemsis" (do you know where the nhame comes from? think Greek goddess) What does it do? Why this:
To quote "Nemesis can natively craft and inject ARP, DNS, ETHERNET, ICMP, IGMP, IP, OSPF, RIP, TCP and UDP packets. Using the IP and the Ethernet injection modes, almost any custom packet can be crafted and injected."

cool stuff to be sure!! and it's ported to the Mac!

Not to be forgotten is an old friend, Ettercap.

And for the record, the VMware session of my Fedora C2 test box has been up for over 48 hours non-stop. So far so good running VMware 5. workstation on my new server. The mac will happily talk to it so life is good

X Marks the Spot

Hey..hey.. the Mac can speak X Windows very nicely using SSH as the tunnel, blowfish as the protocol and a few tweaks of permissions. I have right now, my Linux email client, Evolution happily running on my tiger desktop. I used SSH with Blowfish as the protocol.

ssh -c blowfish -l root 192.168.50.248

this line opened the ssh session with blowfish to my Fedora Core 2 box running as a guest on VMware.

[root@Fedora-Core2 root]# export DISPLAY=192.168.50.10:0

Now I've pushed out my DISPLAY from Linux to the iMac. I did have to use the xhost + command to get the Mac to accept the connection. I know it's not very elegant but I'm tired! So sue me :)
Finally, within the ssh session, we type in

evolution &

and rock and roll.. Linux email on the Mac desktop.. weeeeeeeee...

Now I have to play with X some more.

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

I found a cool itty bitty application that can really help you clean up email or any document with all the crap from being quoted with all those nasty quote marks or invisible characters. It's called textsoap from Unmarked Software.

I found this while working with what used to be called BBEdit Lite which is now TextWrangler and is a FREEBIE download from the good folks at BareBones Software. TextWrangler is way cool and seems to be exactly what I was looking for in spite of how good BBEdit is. I needed something alot cheaper that I could script and this fits the bill. Now I just need to learn how to script in AppleScript :)

I found a good paper at HP's site on configuring LPD and LPR printing with the HP JetDirect. I wish I had found this earlier this month when I was fighting with my own printers. The paper is found here.

Mickysoft and their games

Man oh man... trying to get the iMac to use Active Directory is a chore. I did find a decent site at "Things I wish I had Known" where directions are given in detail. the fact that MS decided to encrypt the SMB (server messaging block) which just messes with everyone. And of course, the way to turn it off is so straightforward.. not! And just to make matters better, I'm using the dot local domain for my subnet here just to really mess with my head. Why not?

On a happier note, I'm shopping for a good text/code editor right now. I have BBedit installed and I like it alot but the price is a killer for a hohum and sometime programmer like me. So I need to find something as good or close and cheaper. I see that BareBones has a freebie, I guess I'll grab that and see how it works.

Log this

I just found the System Profiler tool. This is a handy tool to be sure. Everything I wanted to know about my Mac and the software installed on it in one handy place. I was happy to see a place where I can easily pull up the log files without having to terminal to /var/log/ to read them but I also see that some housekeeping is in order as my older logs are not being deleted. Time for a script :) I suspect Apple has something somewhere to do this but I dont feel like waiting 3 months to find out. I also need to find where I can turn on some custom logging for better details of a few things. I plan to revist the whole subject of wireless and my Linksys in a few weeks so I need to be a logging fool by then.

It's time for some more RAM. I have 512 but I plan to take this iMac to a gig for now. I'm taking my new server to 2 gig and load on VMware to replace a couple of my physical boxes. I need to get the iMac yaking to Active Directory.. this ought to be a trick. I know that it can be done, but I dont have the details just yet. More googling!

Retro Days and Ink Jet Printing

My bro sent me a cool link for a PacMan widget. Needless to say, that was worth a few hours of my time :) Just what everyone needs to spend their holiday time... maybe not.. Dont try this while cooking the burgers, you will end up with ash since PacMan is very, very addictive.

My Epson 1280 had a near miss the other day. I use a Continous Ink System (CIS) and in the printing of a small picture, the tubes managed to jammed under the print head with a horrible grinding of the gears. With a gentle yank and a small prayer, the tubes were freed and the printer seems to be OK after running through the re-alignment of the printer. I'll say this, the 1280 is a real workhorse of a printer. It's over 2 years old and I've run over 2,000 8x10 sheets through it and it still keeps going. A few times the printer ran 24x7 and never missed a beat. I wonder if it's replacement is just as durable. I may have to buy a second just to have on hand when I wear this one out.

I just bought a box of Photopaper (125 sheets) branded as "Kirkland" at my local Costco. You know, for the price of 15 cents a sheet, it's pretty good stuff. High gloss and 10mils thick, it prints nicely and doesnt have that nasty bronzing that some gloss papers have. It's not as "high gloss" as some of the Epson papers but it's very usable. I normally use a paper I get from Inkjet art called "micro-ceramic lite" which I can buy 500 sheets at 4.5 cents per sheet. This is good enough for the throw-away family shots or handouts and is about 9mil thick. They offer a thicker 10 mil paper which is very good.

Speaking of paper and ink, I will strongly suggest using a clear "coat" for dye ink prints. This is the biggest improvement you can do to make your prints last in light that is brighter than the hallway. I shoot a coat of clear on ALL of my prints other than the cotton or rag papers which seem to be more resistance to fade then the typical gloss papers. I also found a wide variance with fade on the brand of paper. My experience with Illford is very good even without the coating and the matt finish seems to be the best.

Fourth of July

I cant believe a year is half gone. Damn.. where has it gone? I just finished installing Windows Small Business Server 2003 and would you believe that the iMac works very well with it? The new Outlook 2003 web interface is nice, very nice. Better than most others I've seen for the Mac. And it works under Firefox although, funny as it sounds, the IE for the Mac has problems. Real problems like massive popups after hitting ONE site and that was MSN. What a bump of crap.

My radioShark is fast becoming a favorite toy of mine. I use it almost daily to catch NPR (89.3 KPCC) and some tunes from a local blues station(88.1 ). I have had to move it around a bit to get the best reception. I really wish they had a jack for an external FM antenna. Maybe I'll take mine apart and see if I could give it a quick hack to make it right. How hard can it be?


I had Word for the Mac lock up on me today. Word is the ONLY app so far I have been able to break on the iMac. go figure..

I just broke down and bought the pro version of "Portraits and Prints". If you have been reading along, you know I hate iPicture when I compare it Picassa which is a much better application. The good folks at Econ have a decent product and I decided that it was worth the 50 bucks. It works and does a fair job of those quick but nice prints you always need for the family members. For the good stuff, I still use Photoshop CS.. never leave home with it :)

Hell Week

The military has nothing on me for this week at the office. While not Mac related, it certainly impacted my ablity to play with my Mac and explore the cool features. A client of mine had their Exchange server "go away" when the RAID controller decided it was done and didnt want to play anymore. All blank disks at 6pm on a Monday and end of quarter. Shit..shit..shit.. I had already been there 8 hours and this happens. And the server was NOT documented in anyway so we were flying by the seat of our pants. There were backups but I have been suspect of them for weeks now and they were not part of my contract and the Sysadmin didnt want to talk to me about them. So the sysadmin is out for vacation, no docs and marginal backups. Sounds like fun to me.

After spending 3 hours on the phone with Dell we decide there zero ways to recover the data in a timely manner so it's rebuild time. Reinstall Windows, get MS on the phone and reinstall Exchange with their help since I'm NOT an Exchange geek and then we watch our backups fail. Of course.. but we were able to get the stores off the tapes but none of the configuration. So after a 2 hour restore, we had the basic server up and running. Now webmail is broke, the Notes connector is broke (it just gets better) and people's cached outlook is not picking up any new mail even though it's there.

Webmail needed a new SSL certificate since the original was lost and who knows if the sysadmin had a copy. He would not answer his phone nor call in so it's as good as lost. So webmail is up now. Then it's getting the 5.5 server with Notes talking to 2000. We find that MS forget to tell us to install the Active Directory Connector so the 5.5 box can use and be seen by the AD. Coolness.. Notes is alive and well. The outlook issue is a bug in outlook but the fix of whacking the profiles is nasty and prone to biting us due to all kinds of personal folder shit. So we figure that a simple move of the mail box to a different store and back fixes all the Outlook problems. And we have a backup of sorts running using NTbackup while we get Veritas back online with Exchange in the correct manner.

Sum total was 8am to 11am the next day and then another 14 hours the day after. Over 56 hours so far to recover this server due to faulty backups and not a shred of documentation. When admin gets in on Monday, he's gonna be hating life..

On the Mac side of life, I just got the WORX book called "Basic Applescript" to start learning about Applescript and how it might help me. So it looks pretty straight forward and pretty flexible. The best part, 40 % off the list price... score!!!

I just fired up my new server for email (Kerio) and storage. P4 3Ghz with 2 SATA drives in RAID1 for now for a total of 500gig and my recycled 80 gig SATA from my iMac as the boot drive. I wonder if I can get Darwin running in this??? hmmmmm... I have the CDs here :) Looks like it's gonna be a long weekend of the GOOD kind!