Sexing Up Your Boring Hardy Desktop to thwart Mac-Envy

So image is important. I get that. That is why so many security folks like Mac's these days. It certainly isn't because they are more reliable, but I digress.

Karmic has decent themes and wallpapers, but 8.04LTS is bloody awful. And you can't go onsite somewhere with a bunch of non-IT folks that will already be looking over you shoulder with ugly Ubuntu brown. It is bad enough that I have to use an older Dell D630, which of course runs faster than my E6400 with XP.

So the Bisigi Project has some pretty cool themes. I picked Showtime, a nice monochrome, almost but no completely OSX like theme. Next you need a simple monochrome theme for Firefox. If you have to use Firefox, Full Flat kicks ass, especially on Netbooks with limited resolution, but I swear it is faster. Lastly you need a nice monochrome wallpaper like Dark Times (after all it is Advent remember) from gnome-look.org.

And this just in, a monochrome Chrome theme to match.

AppleCare has been great, well, except...

So I finally wiped my 12" G4 last week and decided to finally get it looked at. Wednesday, less than a 5 minute wait with tech support, who spoke English (obviously one of of those hard working white Americans) and didn't even seem like she was reading off a script. Friday, brought into the Genius Bar. She (notice a pattern here, kind of like when mid year of my 2nd year of teaching, I realized the class that I had the best discussions with was 70% girls) ran some diagnostics could reproduce the problem, but shipped it out anyway and I got it back today by Fedex. They replaced the hard drive. Great! Should have done this a long time.

Except the the awful grinding noise is back again there (obviously a fan) and I've already started populating my PowerBook with apps.

Repeat the process or live with it?

MacBook Air Wins Michigan!

I'm not sure who the creepy guy (who I sort of resemble If I'd get a haircut) standing next to Romney, but I bet he's not thinking about the the new MacBook Air he just pre-ordered.

Of course neither am I, since I believe in ultraportables that weigh nearly 5 pounds.

But of course they are seductive, although if they are really the same footprint as the MacBooks that is just too big, no matter how thin.

But watching the guided tour was a hell of lot more interesting than the way things have been going in the campaign for the last week and the prospect of a Hillary vs. Mitt matchup is so depressing I won't even go there.

The only comfort is the knowing that we get what we deserve.

Best Small Case for 14" T-61/MacBook

A month ago I lamented the lack of a perfect case for my Thinkpad. Basically I wanted something small, very snug that I could fit the power supply, some tiny crap (like cell phone, secureid, or keys or whatever) when I didn't want to carry a backpack. I was hoping for something under $75 but I didn't find it, plus I just trust Booq for good gear so I ended up going with the Boa Slimcase M even if I though it might be a bit smug. The rep online suggested a bigger XL, and that would have been a mistake. Oh and it also fit MacBooks just fine.

End of Festung Mac (or the curse of Liberal Arts majors turned security pundits)

Lisa Vaas's article "Fortress Mac is Gone" is typical of the vacuous shit that is out there in response to whatever the name the new trojan is. DaveG provided a much needed corrective to this nonsense.

The subtitle? While I don't know if Ms. Vaas has a BA, I certainly do, but from a decent engineering school, damnit!

And yes I'm still pissed about this blogger captcha.

Who cares about the iPhone/iTouch Web Apps

So this email for the iPhone Development Center just showed up in my Inbox and I'm not sure it was meant to placate folks that want an Open OSX "Mobile" platform, but I found it more infuriating:

1. I don't want an iPhone, I want an iTouch. Expensive cell phones are for hip 20-somethings that don't have big dogs that eat cell phones (or destroy laptops) or kids that drop your cell phone in the bath tub.
2. I want offline apps. I want console apps. I want GUI apps. I want apps that don't run in Safari.
   

Itouch and Google-Blogger Collusion

And I wondered why I was getting all those hits, but #2?

Crazy.

Best Vertical Case for 14.1" T-61?

I'm ashamed to say I'm a bit laptop bag snob, so finding a small, sturdy case for my T-61 is proving to be difficult due to its weird dimensions: 9 1/4 x 13 1/8 x 1 3/8 (my measurements, not the official one).

I have a crappy 15.4" Targus sleeve I use when putting it in the laptop compartment of my Boa XM but I want something small for only the laptop like the Booq PowerSleeve XS I have for my 12" PowerBook, when I don't need to carry a backpack.

So far the candidates are the McKlein S Series Transporter (Nylon) Trager Vertical Transporter, Higher Ground 14" Shuttle or the Tom Bihn Vertical Brain Cell (Size 4) or maybe the Booq Natrix SlimCase but that's probably bigger than I want. None of these are cheap, some I'm sure they are all good quality. I'd like to be able to fit the small power adapter somewhere. and have a decent shoulder strap.

Any experiences with these? Or anyone find the perfect case for their 14.1" T-61?

Update on iTouch Hacks

So I previously pondered the feasibility of running non-Apple/webapps on the iTouch (which I looked at again at the Northbrook Apple store last week, and I really like this little devices) and it looks iPhone hacking community is making progress:

Very late tonight (or early, depending on your timezone), we were able to decrypt the iPod Touch/iPhone 1.1.x ramdisks. We are proud to announce the md5 of the asr binary from the 1.1.1 iPhone image, as proof that we do indeed have access to it: 358bf0bd1f1024ed25fa69ced23dab90

As for the actual key, it's sure to pop up in the next few days, keep your eyes peeled.

It's been a long month with many distractions, but we are finally breathing a sigh of relief as we work towards the release our own iPod Touch jailbreak solution, as well as expediting the process of unbricking 1.1.1 phones that were renedered unable use their SIMs after running AnySIM on mobileOSX 1.0.2. Contrary to claims made by the so-called "elite" iPhone development group, we are indeed very dedicated to getting a free and workable solution out to the general public. At the very least, a baseband downgrader should be possible. We understand your frustration, and please don't think for a second that we've forgotten you.

We have been able to install many of the third-party iPhone applications working on the iPod Touch, and can confirm that Mail and Maps work great. Stay tuned for more info on how to add more Apple apps.

Here is the RSS Feed for the wiki so you can track progress..

So which mods which brick the iPhone/iTouch?

So between Steve Jobs threats to combat hackers and the "genius" (who had this annoying cocky swagger) at the local Apple store in Skokie gloating about how users that hack their iPhones won't get support and others will automatically be "bricked" when then run iTunes, it will be interesting to see what happens and how Open the platform? For me running arbitrary apps is the whole point of even buying one of these devices.

iPhone Never, iTouch Maybe -- it all depends on the Apps

So even after the price drop, the iPhone is not tempting, but my [almost four year old] daughter couldn't keep her hands of the iTouch at the local Apple store and I'm intrigued if you can run the same apps as on the iPhone such as Dropbear and of course Ruby, Python, etc. It might be even worth $299. The idea of having a decently powered, 802.11 capable *BSD box, that you can easily move files to and from using standard tools (ssh, rsync, etc.) that fits in your pocket seems really cool.

This NerveGas character seems to be doing some cool stuff and there is a growing list of cool iphone hacks available and of course the iPhone Dev Wiki is definitely show promise.

But has anyone confirmed these growing number of apps and hacks run on the on the iTouch? If Colloquy runs on both I assume its the case, but there isn't much out there yet in on the iTouch.

Sunbird as an iCal Replacement

Although orage is more useful than it appears at first, I discovered Mozilla Sunbird today when looking for a decent standalone calendaring program for Linux.

Now my primary use for calendaring is tracking my hours on projects, and iCal ended up to be the easiest way to do this on the Mac although I did try out some time tracking software. Now folks can pry my 12" Powerbook out of my cold dead hands, but I'm trying to ensure I'm using cross platform tools in case my Powerbook dies, I have to send it in for service, etc.

BTW, Sunbird easily handled 18 months of timesheets I exported from iCal so it looks like a keeper.

10.4.10: Another Nail Biter

Just like the last update, this one took forever and was a double-boing. My ignorance of what is going on under the scenes (while the little circular progress disc spins round and round) with OSX is thing driving me back to Linux. Fortunately, my wife is putting my Macbook to good use during the day finding Youtube gems such as William Shed and Russian Ninjas both of which were more interesting than the Purdue 9/11 Simulation which I thought was a bit of a let down.

Breaking and Fixing Flash 9 on OSX

Late last week (maybe the Security Updates, or was it the Firefox upgrade?!) something broke Flash in both Safari and Firefox. On Both Intel and PPC. From the version tracker page on the subject someone suggested logging in as the root user. And doing the manual install.

This worked.

Macbook Strike One: Keyboard Failures During Bootloader

Bootloader keyboard issues (GRUB in particular) are an Apple Bug according to the the Refit folks back in March. Dual booting is pretty painful, if not impossible. Workarounds, create a custom isolinux image while you are testing kernels or just keep rebooting until probability catches up with you and you can actually use grub to select a kernel/os. No thanks, I'll pass.

Labradoodle vs. Latitude

Labradoodle's are awesome dog's. We rescued ours (mis-use of the term "adoption" for animals is a pet peeve of mine) from the Town Lake Animal Shelter back in Austin last Fall and he is now up to 80 pounds--but looks like 120 due to the haircut. Also has a scary deep bark. Most importantly (as illustrated in the snapshot above), He also hates Dell laptops.

Last week, I came home last week to find keys from my wife's D-510 spread across the floor as result of a tussle with our 24 pound female Boston Terrier. But there is a bright side to the story. The degradation of service against the Dell means and the ThinkPad Memorial Day Sale means I can give my MacBook (which I'm growing weary of) to my wife. The only thing holding me back is I'm torn between the bleeding edge 14.1" T-61 (7658CTO) which might result in a rough couple of months because this is going to be 90% Linux laptop. Or the underpowered, but more portable (and expensive) X-60 (1709CTO)

But no more Dells.

OSX Safe Boot is your Friend (SHIFT!)

There I was (after weird wireless issues and a Finder that hung with only the spotlight icon the upper right hand corner after login) booting from the install CD (learning that boot from the CD that came with my MacBook indeed causes a kernel panic) and net-catting mdfranz.sparseimage over to another box and racking my brain for the master password I used with Folder Vault and wondering if I managed to copy this 30 gig file over to my MacBook would I be able to open it? And with only my userid? And so an rsync of 363,250 files begins so tha I can finally go to sleep tonight and end my Thinkpad envy.

But hey I learned that I can push 7MB/sec from a Powerbook G4 - 1.5ghz to a PIII-500 with netcat. And average about 4-5 MB/sec with rsync+ssh. Yes, bwm-ng is your friend, too. All through the switched ports on Cisco 851. Which is 3 times what I was able to do over wireless (routing on the router, though a Linksys (natting), then routing through another Linux box)

Compiling Flow-tools on OSX/gcc4

Recent (at least 4.0.x) versions of gcc don't like flow-tools but there is a patch

franz-g4:~/Desktop/flow-tools-0.68 mdfranz$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/local
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c

SNIP

franz-g4:~/Desktop/flow-tools-0.68 mdfranz$ make
Making all in lib
make all-am
source='ftio.c' object='ftio.o' libtool=no \
depfile='.deps/ftio.Po' tmpdepfile='.deps/ftio.TPo' \
depmode=gcc3 /bin/sh ../depcomp \
gcc -I. -I./lib -I. -I. -I. -g -Wall -g -Wall -c `test -f 'ftio.c' || echo './'`ftio.c
ftio.c: In function 'readn':
ftio.c:2270: error: address of register variable 'ptr' requested
ftio.c:2270: warning: target of assignment not really an lvalue; this will be a hard error in the future
ftio.c:2270: confused by earlier errors, bailing out
make[2]: *** [ftio.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
franz-g4:~/Desktop/flow-tools-0.68 mdfranz$ patch -p1 <>

VMWare Fusion Beta 3 Out!

You can see the release notes for yourself, but there are some big improvements such as the ability to edit more hardware (like add drives, which I needed last night, and the presence of a floppy drive), host only networking, as well as other cosmetic changes, like the ability to remove the big ugly toolbar. So all in all, things are coming along nicely with the product. I guess the big question will be the price, which for me would be the only reason for switching to Parallels.

vmnet8: flags=8863 mtu 1500
      inet 172.16.184.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.184.255
      ether 00:50:56:c0:00:08
vmnet1: flags=8863 mtu 1500
      inet 192.168.85.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.85.255
      ether 00:50:56:c0:00:01

Dual Headed MacBook (Ubuntu)

I'm ashamed to say that although I've been using X since about 1995 (Slackware something or other) I have never tried to get it to work with two monitors. Since I find myself using Linux more lately on my MacBook it was time to get it working. Caveat: the trackpad is kind of flaky so I only recommend using Linux on the MacBooks if you are using and external keypad and mouse. There may be workaround but I haven't tried them and I only boot into Ubuntu like when I'm analyzing a 200-300MB dump in Ethereal or something.

Fortunately the Ubuntu Macbook wiki community documentation provides a solid page on how to Install Ubuntu (edgy) on Core 2 Duo MacBooks, it required a bit of tweaking and gdm [re]starting to get it working.

I created a wiki page for it containing the complete config (see the attachments link on the bottom if you want to download it) but the key step was to append the following to the existing xorg.conf file

Section "Device"
      Identifier      "MonitorLayout Device"
      Driver          "i810"
      BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
      Option          "MonitorLayout" "NONE,CRT+LFP"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
      Identifier      "MonitorLayout Screen"
      Device          "MonitorLayout Device"
      #Monitor         "Color LCD"
      Monitor         "Generic Monitor"

      DefaultDepth    24
      SubSection "Display"
              Depth           24
              Modes           "1280x800"
      EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
      Identifier      "MonitorLayout Layout"
      Screen          "MonitorLayout Screen"
      InputDevice     "Generic Keyboard"
      InputDevice     "Configured Mouse"
      InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
      InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
      InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "Device"
      Identifier      "Clone Device"
      Driver          "i810"
      BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
      Option          "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
      Option          "Clone"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
      Identifier      "Clone Screen"
      Device          "Clone Device"
      #Monitor         "Color LCD"
      Monitor         "Generic Monitor"

      DefaultDepth    24
      SubSection "Display"
              Depth           24
              Modes           "1280x800"
      EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
      Identifier      "Clone Layout"
      Screen          "Clone Screen"
      InputDevice     "Generic Keyboard"
      InputDevice     "Configured Mouse"
      InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
      InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
      InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "Device"
      Identifier      "Xinerama Device"
      Driver          "i810"
      BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
      Screen          0
      Option          "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
EndSection

Section "Device"
      Identifier      "Xinerama Device (2)"
      Driver          "i810"
      BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
      Screen          1
      Option          "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
      Identifier      "Xinerama Screen"
      Device          "Xinerama Device"
Monitor  "Generic Monitor"

      #Monitor         "Color LCD"
      DefaultDepth    24
      SubSection "Display"
              Depth           24
              Modes           "1280x800"
      EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
      Identifier      "Xinerama Screen (2)"
      Device          "Xinerama Device (2)"
Monitor  "Generic Monitor"
      #Monitor         "Color LCD"
      DefaultDepth    24
      SubSection "Display"
              Depth           24
              Modes           "1280x1024"
      EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
      Identifier      "Xinerama Layout"
      Screen          "Xinerama Screen"
      InputDevice     "Generic Keyboard"
      InputDevice     "Configured Mouse"
      InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
      InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
      InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
      # RightOf LeftOf Above Below
      Screen          "Xinerama Screen (2)" RightOf "Xinerama Screen"
      Option          "Xinerama"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
#       Option          "DefaultServerLayout" "Default Layout"
#       Option          "DefaultServerLayout" "MonitorLayout Layout"
#       Option          "DefaultServerLayout" "Clone Layout"
      Option          "DefaultServerLayout" "Xinerama Layout"
EndSection