Jambo Journal

Quick notes on Leopard LAMP

2008-01-03T19:00:00.000-05:00

Leopard ships with Apache2, MySQL, and PHP5. Follow the link for notes on getting it up and running.

Printing Return Mailing Labels in OS X

2008-01-03T12:51:00.000-05:00

1) Create a new document from a Template.
2) Select the 'Labels' template.
3) Check the Address box;
Type your return address;
Select 'Sheet';
Select your type of Label.
4) Select 'Entire page' in the Options tab; click New Document.
5) Print your labels.

Alternatively you can print labels from the AddressBook program. However, there is no way to repeat a single address. So you will need to create a while bunch of contacts with the same address and select them all to print.

Put that old laptop to good use

2008-01-01T02:24:00.000-05:00

What happens when a geek gets some vacation time and has an old laptop sitting around? Hmmmm.

Some time ago I bought an Apple PowerBook "Pismo" off eBay and actually spent some additionally money on it to beef up the CPU (to a G4), a combo drive, and new batteries. It ran MacOS X Tiger just fine for the past year or so, but I finally decided to gut it and install Linux on it. Oh what fun...

First, Linux has really matured into a stable desktop environment with notable distributions ("distro") such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Yellow Dog. Of course, the Pismo is a PowerPC machine so that limited the choices out there. I finally decided on Ubuntu as I've heard many good things about it (plus it has cool version names, e.g. Gutsy Gibbon).

The installation process wasn't too bad. I downloaded the .iso image, burned it onto CD, and booted with it. It detected just about all the hardware, but there was a problem with the display. A few searches on ubuntuforums.org revealed the fix (includes Linux shell commands) and the next step was getting the wireless connectivity going.

Be warned! Ubuntu does NOT like WPA-enabled WLANs. After hours of trying to get WPA to work, I gave up and "downgraded" my WLAN to WEP encryption plus MAC filtering. Once I configured Ubuntu for WEP, everything was great!

The other complaint I have is Adobe Flash support, but that's Adobe's fault for not respecting PowerPC systems. Thankfully there's an open source player called Gnash which sorta-kinda works. If all you need is a Web browser, word processor, simple games, IM client, etc. then have no fear in making the Linux move, especially when you have an old system lying around...

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T02:22:00.000-05:00

Welcome to 2008, everyone! It has been a good year and all of us look forward to another great year.

Daisy Chain Airport WDS

2007-12-22T11:26:00.000-05:00

Old but good article on Daisy Chaining Airport base stations together to extend your wireless network. The article describes the process to setup a fairly elaborate Wireless network:


           relay1 - relay2 - relay3
           /                         \         
router = main                        remote1
           \      
           remote2

Leopard Complaints: iCal

2007-12-21T23:48:00.000-05:00

iCal has an annoying bug with switching back to "Today". After viewing a future or past date, iCal isn't able to display the current day anymore when clicking the "Today" button. The mini calendar shows the current date, but the main window goes haywire.

This might not be an issue anymore, as I haven't noticed it lately.

ODF / PDF Adopted by Norwegian Government

2007-12-21T23:34:00.000-05:00

Good deal, hopefully more governments adopt more open formats.

Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Documentation

2007-12-21T22:56:00.000-05:00

Great news for Samba! More accurately Microsoft was forced by the European Commission to provide the documentation.

Interview with Nicholas Jitkoff ( Quicksilver )

2007-12-13T19:23:00.000-05:00

Nice interview with Nicholas Jitkoff who wrote Quicksilver. There's a very interesting Google Tech Talk presentation by Nicholas in the article as well.

Quicksilver is one of my favorite Mac applications. It is hard to describe what it does because it can do so much but at the same time stay completely out of your way. It in short acts like a better Spotlight. The plugin system allows you to extend it's functionality to almost search for and do anything you want.

Reset XP Password

2007-12-13T16:26:00.000-05:00

Security people want you to change your password regularly. But inevitably, you change it one too many times and selected an extremely 'good' password. Now your security is so good that even you can't remember what the password is.

Here is a Windows XP tip to reset your password. You will need the Windows XP Install CD.

If you're lucky enough to be already logged in as the admin user, but forgot what the original password is you can do the following:

Open the Command Prompt Start > Run > command
Enter this command:

net user USERNAME PASSWORD

Of course, replacing USERNAME and PASSWORD with your actual username and the new password. This lets you change the password without knowing the old one.

Here's more methods of dealing with a lost password in Windows from petri.co.il:

Windows Password recovery - Can retrieve forgotten admin and users' passwords in minutes. Safest possible option, does not write anything to hard drive.

Petter Nordahl-Hagen's Offline NT Password & Registry Editor - A great boot CD/Floppy that can reset the local administrator's password.

Openwall's John the Ripper - Good boot floppy with cracking capabilities.

EBCD – Emergency Boot CD - Bootable CD, intended for system recovery in the case of software or hardware faults.

OS X 10.4 - Set Airport MTU based on Network Location

2007-12-06T19:21:00.000-05:00

This is the script I used to set the Airport MTU in OS 10.4. In Leopard there doesn't seem to be a need to tweak your MTU settings for those finicky PPPoE DSL connections anymore.

The script is based on a post from Mac OSX Hints and TECH.inhelsinki.nl.

~/Library/LaunchAgents/LocationChanger.plist:

"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

Label
tech.inhelsinki.nl.locationchanger
ProgramArguments

/Users/Applications/airport-mtu

WatchPaths

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration

airport-mtu:

#!/bin/bash

echo "***Setting airport mtu 1492" >> /var/log/system.log
/sbin/ifconfig en1 mtu 1492
echo "***Airport mtu set" >> /var/log/system.log
echo "***Unloading mtu.plist" >> /var/log/system.log
/bin/launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/mtu.plist
exit 0

Tech: Broken .Net 1.1 Update

2007-12-06T14:27:00.000-05:00

Windows Update / XP has a very annoying bug with a .NET Framework service packs or hotfixes such as MS05-004. For some unknown combination of factors some the updates will either refuse to install, OR more annoyingly install with no errors but show up again as 'uninstalled'. There are a whole bunch of tricks and black magic you can use to fix the problems. However, the only sure fire way I have found was to use Aaron Stebner's .NET Frameworks Cleanup Tool:

Download all the .NET Redistributable packages and Updates you need

Download and run the .Net Cleanup Tool

Uninstall ALL .Net versions ( you can try to uninstall only the offending .NET version, but don't say I didn't warn you )

Restart

Reinstall each of the .NET Frameworks you need

Microsoft .NET Framework Redistributable 1.0
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86)
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x64)
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package

Leopard Compatible Skype Released

2007-12-04T17:11:00.000-05:00

Skype released a new version of Skype that better works with OS X Leopard.

PC World: 2007 Fastest Vista Laptop - MacBook Pro

2007-12-04T17:03:00.000-05:00

Whether or not you like Macs or even Windows Vista, this is still quite interesting. PC World says that among the laptops they've tested throughout 2007, the MacBook Pro was the fastest:

The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year--or for that matter, ever--is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro's PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway's E-265M by a single point

iPhone browser market share higher than WindowsCE

2007-12-04T16:54:00.000-05:00

Wow, pretty amazing that iPhone / iPod web browser market share is at 0.9% already. The statistics was published by Net Applications.

Free & Quick Image Resize in Windows XP

2007-11-28T16:04:00.000-05:00

Image Resizer from Windows XP Power Toys collection is quick and dirty tool to resize many common image files. It's also Free :), and we like Free.

Google Maps - My Location without GPS

2007-11-28T12:40:00.000-05:00

via Gizmodo, Google Maps Mobile just added a new beta feature to display your current location on phones without GPS capabilities. It uses that fancy cell-tower-triangulation-thingofmajiggie you see on cop shows all the time. I wonder why this wasn't available before?

Lightspeed 2.5 Released for Leopard

2007-11-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

Lightspeed 2.5, the excellent Mac POS System from XSilva, was just released todat. The latest version brings full Leopard compatibility as well as some new features such as, Cover Flow and iPhone support to view vital store information.

BuinessWeek: Sorry, Steve: Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work

2007-11-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

via DaringFireball / John Siracusa, Doh!

Leopard complaints

2007-11-27T15:46:00.000-05:00

It seems that a lot of people are complaining about Leopard. Personally I've had pretty good luck with it. I wonder if some of these issues are actually hardware related or a configuration problem rather than a Leopard issue.

My advice as always, backup backup backup. And double check that your backup works.

Update: I take it back, I do have complaints about Leopard. The Leopard Firewall is a pain. It's nice to hide advanced details from the average user, but advanced users should be allowed to see exactly what's going on. TidBits got it right, Leopard's Firewall Blackbox is a PITA.

Leopard Perfect 10?

2007-11-27T14:17:00.000-05:00

Here's a long detailed review of Mac OS X Leopard from Info World.

Double Boil Hard Drive Fix

2007-11-27T00:23:00.000-05:00

Sounds somewhat remotely plausible... temporarily repairing a clicking hard drive just long enough to recover the data by double boiling it... It's really crazy, but might just work. I do have a dead clicking drive...

Security Issue with Leopard Mail

2007-11-26T18:43:00.000-05:00

via Daring Fireball, A security issue with opening malicious attachments in Leopard Mail has been reported by Heise Security.

The usual precautions remain, be careful opening attachments from unknown sources...

Disable Transparent Menu Bar in Leopard

2007-11-19T11:45:00.000-05:00

via Daring Fireball, MacOSXHints.com has a post about how to disable / adjust transparency for OS X Leopards menu bar:

Run: sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1

Then restart.

You can also enter values between 0 and 1.

NTFS for OS X

2007-11-15T15:06:00.000-05:00

via Uneasy Silence, Paragon Software Group has great solution if you need Read / Write access to a NTFS drive from your Mac:

Paragon NTFS for Mac