Visio and Project Management

Project Management much like Network Management is akin to trying to nail jello to the wall. You can try, but in the end, the jello wins! In today's missive, I am writing about both Visio and project management. The Visio came about from the PM software and project which is the move of an entire datacenter while it online. Fun huh?

I looked at several packages of PM software for the Mac and decided none were as polished as MS Project but I did find one that had very good compatiblity with MS Project either as a .mpx file or a real project file. The software is called Intellisys and the one I bought was the Desktop version. It works pretty well, stable which is a good thing but hates all my printers except my default printer which is pretty annoying at times. The app is based on Java so there is a Windows version and a Linux version but the licensing is so complicated to prevent you from using the software on more than one system so dont get any ideas. I really hate the licensing even more so because when I move to an Intel Mac, I have to go and beg them to reissue the license. Guys, you are good but not that good to use this kind of restrictive licensing.

The Visio was an easier choice for me. I have used two different packages over the past few months, one is ConceptDraw and the other is OmniGraffle Pro. Conceptdraw is pricey to be sure but in the end, it works the best with Visio and is much more suited to the varity of drawings I do. Omni was always just too "light" and it really annoyed me that their network icons and stencils were just Macs. Ok.. ok.. it's Mac software but we all work in the real work and generic server icons etc are a good thing! Omni also failed on the Visio XML file import test I ran which pretty much killled it off in the running. Concept took my XML file and happily opened it correctly and let me work on just as if I were using Visio for the most part.

OmniGraffle was such a disappointment and not just from the price which is considerably cheaper than Conceptdraw. It comes from the fact that I love their outliner software and it would have been great to keep supporting a company that makes something I really enjoy using. But sadly, that was not to be.

I should point out that all the software I talk about is either freely available or I bought it. None is given to me by the vendor which hurts at times but lets me toss barbs around pretty freely :)

Postfix and Mail recovery

I love email, or at least I do when it works. For the past few weeks, I have been playing around setting up a Postfix server on my Mac Mini. Surprisingly, it works very well but with a few quirks. I was using the GUI frontend called "Postfix Enabler" but I have since moved to it's bigger brother called "Mailserve". Mailserve has the advantage of having a nice way to manage "fetchmail" instead of having to script it myself. But I did all my testing using fetchmail manually which helped to teach me alot of what goes behind the scenes of mail delivery. The man pages are good but something of a pain to follow along.

So now I have my mail being pulled using fetchmail from my ISP's POP server and the mail is delivered using MX records directly instead of relaying through my ISP. This gets around some of the hokey blacklists that my ISP ends up on at times. Mailserve will deliver mail to any local user account or relay to another server. In my case, I am having some issues with the 2nd user account. Mailserve delivers the mail but I can not get to the that mailbox. It appears to have something to do with the short name vs. the login name but I will figure it out.

All of this came about quicker that I had thought because my Microsoft SBS decided to self destruct on a saturday morning and never boot again. POS application, Exchange in it's own right is a decent enough application but Small Biz Server is the touchiest POS that I have had the misfortune to have to work with. Anyways.. when it died, I got to roll over straightaway to the half done Postfix server.

Adding to the fun was that AppleMail decided to "eat" all my messages saved at my dot mac account. Gone, poof, all gone. I found out that Apple is using IMAP for their dot mail and so none of the mail was local except for the cache which was wiped as soon as I started Mail up. Damn.. The good news is on the Mini I had created an email account as part of my testing it and so I thought I had a good cache. Sure enough, at :
MiniMac:~/Library/Mail/Mac-packetattack/INBOX.imapmbox/Messages

I found the cache of email in the stupid Apple specific format of XX.elmx which nobody else uses. OK.. So have I have email that I can read but as soon as I start Mail it will go away and I need to flip back into something that Mail can import..hmmm..

Enter stage left an application that I found called "emlx to mbox converter" at Cosmicsoft. This freebie converts from the Apple format to mbox which can be imported into Apple Mail or other mailers like Thunderbird etc. My mail is saved!! All you need to do is highlight the files in the Messages directory (in my case) and drop them onto the converter. Presto.. chango and then save the result.

Hex here and a Hex there

Everyone needs a hex editor now and then. So I found a freebie that works nicely at eX-cinder that is called, of course, HexEditor :) It's a nice interface and is a GUI based application. See the picture.
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Here little piggie

What sound does the pig make? SNORT!!! I've set up Snort on more than a few Linux boxes and I wanted to try it on my Mac. But I had visions of a terrible time in trying to compile down the binaries as I have had with a few other applications. But, I stumbled over a prepackaged Snort which also has a way cool front end to help configure it. And prepackaged means that I downloaded it, opened the DMG package and dragged it into a folder. How cool is that? See the pics below. Now I have a chance of dragging a Mini into the office which is MS-centic :) So if you want to play too with Snort on OSX, go to Nicks Software Page and grab "Henwen". So go there, download and go snorting!


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Lighting the way

Adobe has released their new beta of Lightroom which is way cool, even for a beta. Check out the screen shots. I will be posting more as I work with the beta in the near future.
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