Blog Fiasco

July 16, 2010

My TTYtter configuration

Filed under: Linux,The Internet,mac — Tags: , , — bcotton @ 8:07 am

It’s been many months since I found out about TTYtter, a command line Twitter client written in Perl.  Though some users might bemoan the lack of a snazzy graphical interface, it is that very lack which appeals to me.  TTYtter places only a very tiny load on system resources, which means my Twitter addiction won’t get in the way of running VMs to test various configurations and procedures.  Being command-line based, I can run it in a screen session which means that I can resume my Twittering from wherever I happen to be and not have to re-configure my client.

I don’t claim to be a TTYtter expert, but I thought I’d share my own configuration for other newbs.  TTYtter looks in $HOME/.ttytterrc by default, and here’s my default configuration:

#Check to see if I'm running the current version
vcheck=1
# What hash tags do I care about?
track='#Purdue #OSMacTalk #MarioMarathon'
# Colors, etc are good!
ansi=1
# I'm dumb. Prompt me before a tweet posts
verify=1
# Use some readline magic
readline=1
# Check for mentions from people I don't follow
mentions=1

Of course, there are certain times that the default configuration isn’t what I want.  When I was reading tweets in rapid-fire succession during the Mario Marathon, I didn’t want non-Mario tweets to get in the way, so I used a separate configuration file:

# Don't log in and burn up my rate limit
anonymous=1
# Find tweets related to the marathon
track=#MarioMarathon "Mario Marathon"
# Don't show my normal timeline
notimeline=1
# Colors, etc are awesome!
ansi=1
# Only update when I say so. This keeps the tweet I'm in the middle of reading
#      from being scrolled right off my screen
synch

There are a lot of other ways that TTYtter can be used, and I’m sure @doctorlinguist will tell me all of the ways I’m doing things wrong, but if you’re in the market for a new, multi-platform Twitter client, you should give this one a try.

March 3, 2010

Using Mac’s nvram(8) command

Filed under: mac — Tags: , — bcotton @ 9:26 am

I recently came across the nvram(8) command included in OS X.  nvram is used to manipulate the settings of non-volatile RAM, which persists after reboots and power off.  From what I’ve seen, there are about 50 variables that are meaningful to the system, but I haven’t found a comprehensive list so far.  So what is this command used for?  That’s a good question.

One thing you can do is set arbitrary asset tags.  If your organization uses a central asset-tagging system, you can write the asset tag to NVRAM.  You can also set contact information like your name and e-mail address. Of course, none of these options are a guarantee you’ll recover a lost or stolen system. Assuming someone even thinks to look at nvram, the variables could be changed or deleted, or the whole NVRAM could just be wiped.

I asked Twitter if anyone had uses for nvram(8) and no one seemed to.  I’ll leave it open to my readers to suggest uses for this command.

December 28, 2009

Filename extensions can cause problems

Filed under: Linux,Musings,mac — Tags: , , — bcotton @ 10:08 am

Most people don’t really give much thought to the idea of file extensions, although they’re nearly universally in the minds of modern computer users.  Users have come to understand that .pdf means a file is in the Portable Document Format, or that .ppt is a Microsoft PowerPoint file.  DOS users recall that files ending in .exe, .com, or .bat are executable. For those unknown extensions, there’s the very helpful filext.com website.  There’s no doubt that filename extensions can provide very helpful information, but here’s the issue: not all platforms care about them.  That’s not a problem in all cases, but there are times when it makes life miserable.

Filename extensions can be just another part of the filename, or they can be entirely separate namespace.  DOS first introduced the idea of extensions to the general public.  In those days, the file had a name of up to eight characters, and an extension of up to three.  This “8.3″  convention persisted into Windows, and is still commonly seen on Windows system files, even though it is no longer necessary.  Unix-based systems, such as Mac OS X and Linux, have no feelings about extensions — they’re certainly not required, but some applications make use of them.  The dominance of Windows in the desktop market has encouraged application writers to really care about extensions, and it does help in trying to find the right type of files.

Here’s where it becomes problematic.  Because some systems don’t care about extensions, it’s easy to not have extensions on your filename.  Then, when you go to a system that does care, things don’t work as you expected.  Here’s a fine example: my wife needed to have a few pictures printed, so she loaded them onto an SD card and took them to the store. When she got there, the photo system would not find any of the pictures.  As it turns out, she had saved them without the .jpg extension, so while they were valid JPEG files, the system didn’t try to load them.

Now, most photo software, cameras, etc. will add the extension out of tradition (and because that’s what people expect). However, a manual renaming of the files after the fact could result in absent extensions.  So what is the solution?  Well, we’ll never get all platforms to come to agreement on what filename extensions are, and how they should be defined and treated.  The only answer, then, is that applications should be written to not focus on extensions, but on the contents of the file.  If applications used methods similar to the Unix file command to determine file type, then such problems could be avoided.

November 23, 2009

Using bookmark synchronization on Google Chrome for Linux and Mac

Filed under: Linux,The Internet,mac — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — bcotton @ 8:18 am

For a long time, I blamed the sluggish performance of the web browser on my Linux machine at home on the ancientness of the hardware.  However, when my much nicer Linux machine at work showed the same problem, I began to think maybe it was just Firefox.  I’ve been an avid Firefox user for many years, but my loyalty wavers when my browser can’t keep up with my keyboard.  Based on the advice of strangers on the Internet, I decided to give Google’s Chrome browser a try.

Chrome is still a maturing browser, but it is fast and capable.  There’s only one real drawback: bookmark synchronization.  With Firefox, I had been using Xmarks to synchronize my bookmarks, but that’s not currently available for Chrome.  In the “Early Access” builds of the Linux and Mac versions of Chrome, the bookmark sync that the Windows version has is available.  This syncs the bookmarks to your Google Docs account, which makes it rather handy.  However, synchronization is not enabled by default.  To enable it, you have to pass the –enable-sync option at launch time, which is easier said than done.  Fortunately, it’s not too terribly difficult.

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November 17, 2009

Setting up a new Mac

Filed under: mac — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — bcotton @ 5:52 am

As part of my new job, I got a shiny new 13″ MacBook Pro.  Even though I’m quite a Linux fanboy, I really enjoy the quality of the hardware and OS X. However, it isn’t perfect.  There are a lot of applications that I like to have available.  Since I have nothing better to talk about, I figured I’d list them here:

  • Adium — one of the best instant messenger clients I’ve ever used.  It has support for just about every major IM protocol except…
  • Skype — I don’t really use it for IM, but it’s great for audio and video calls.
  • Firefox — I prefer it to the Safari browser that ships with OS X.  It happens.  And with that comes…
  • Xmarks — a browser plug-in that syncs bookmarks.  It comes in very handy when you use multiple computers.  So does…
  • Dropbox — allows you to synchronize arbitrary files between multiple computers.  I mostly use it for configuration files (e.g. .bashrc, .screenrc)
  • VirtualBox — sometimes you actually need to use another OS to do some important task (like play Sim City)
  • DOSBox — is good for playing some of the older games that I like
  • Chicken of the VNC — I’ve played with several VNC clients for Mac, and this one is the best.
  • iTerm — hands-down better than the default Terminal.app
  • ZTerm — a program to make serial connections.  I used it a fair bit in my old job, I don’t anticipate needing it much in my new job.
  • Colloquy — an Internet Relay Chat client
  • VLC — a media player that will play just about anything
  • Grand Perspective — a program that shows a graphical representation of disk usage, allowing you to find the files that are chewing up all the space on your hard drive.

November 9, 2009

Accessing Taleo from Mac or Linux

Filed under: Linux,The Internet,mac — Tags: , , , , , — bcotton @ 12:47 pm

Some companies (including my own employer) use a company called Taleo to manage the hiring and recruitment process.  As an applicant, I’ve not been very impressed with it, but that’s neither here nor there.  From the applicant side, you can use just about any browser to fill out the forms and submit your application.  However, if you’re a hiring manager, Taleo expects that you’ll be using the Internet Explorer browser.  If you’re on a Windows machine, that’s probably available to you.  For Mac and Linux users, it’s not an option.

So what can you do?  You can either go find a Windows machine to use, or you can try to run Internet Explorer using Wine.  Neither of those are necessarily that appealing.  Fortunately, there’s a third option, which is to use the (closed-source but free-as-in-beer) Opera browser.  Once you’ve got that installed, it’s a quick process to get Taleo workin* In Preferences, click on the “Advanced” tab and select “Content”

  • Click the “Manage Site Preferences…” button
  • Click the “Add…” button
  • Enter your Taleo site (e.g. “company.taleo.net” or “taleo.com”) in the “Site” field
  • Choose “Open all pop-ups” in the “Pop-ups” drop-down menu
  • Click the “Network tab”
  • Select “Mask as Internet Explorer” in the “Browser identification” drop-down menu (note that “Identify as Internet Explorer” will NOT work)
  • Click “OK”
  • Click “Close”
  • Click “OK”

That’s all it takes.  As a bonus, you now have the very capable, stable, and secure Opera browser installed.

November 4, 2009

My future with Apple products

Filed under: Musings,mac — Tags: , , , — bcotton @ 6:33 am

Despite having been given the “Mac Guy” appellation by Mario Marathon viewers, I am not an Apple fanboy.  Don’t get me wrong, I really like my current and previous Mac Book Pros.  The hardware has been solid (as a few encounters with gravity can attest to) and OS X is a great mix of power, reliability, and ease of use.  There’s no doubt that Apple turns out quality products, I don’t have an issues with their offerings.  It is a philosophical problem that I have.  As an advocate of openness, can I continue to support a company like Apple?

Apple has shown a willingness to support open source software on some occasions (as one would expect, those occasions are the ones where it suits Apple’s interests to be supportive), but at times the Apple model stands in opposition to the ideals of freedom that open source (and open standards) movements are based on.  The most recent example was reported by Wired earlier this week saying that the next minor release of Snow Leopard would “break” some “Hackintoshed” machines, specifically those using Intel’s Atom processor.  I get it, Apple is foremost a hardware company.  The software exists to promote the sales of the hardware, so allowing the software to be used on non-Apple hardware doesn’t serve Apple’s interests.

I don’t deny that Apple has the right to do what they’re doing, although if they had a larger market share, the Department of Justice might start taking notice.  No, to me, it’s not about whether or not they can do this, but whether or not they should.  The interests of Apple’s shareholders say “no”, the interests of the Apple community say “yes.”  Apple certainly has no legal obligation to do what’s in the best interests of users, but if they want to differentiate themselves from Microsoft, then perhaps they should.

What it really comes down to, then, is the question of “how closed can Apple (or any other company) become before I am no longer willing to give them my business?”  Or should it even matter?  If I give up Apple, should I also give up Skype, Flash, video drivers, and many other things that restrict my ability to use a product how I see fit?  These are not easy questions to answer, and the answer is different for each person.  For myself, I will wait and let my thoughts on the matter evolve for a while.  Hopefully by the time I’m ready to replace my current Mac Book Pro, I’ll have figured it out.

October 28, 2009

Cyber security awareness month: Other uses for SSH

Filed under: Linux,The Internet,mac — Tags: , , , , , — bcotton @ 6:05 am

As I noted a few weeks ago, October is cyber security awareness month.  I’d planned on writing a big how-to for remotely and securely connecting to another computer, but time has escaped me, so what I’ll give here is the quick and dirty version, and trust that my readers can use Google to fill in the backstory.

Back in May, I wrote an article about using SSH as a proxy to help secure your web browsing when away from home.  SSH was designed primarily to provide shell (command line) access to remote machines using encryption and other features to prevent someone from eavesdropping, but it can be used to tunnel all kinds of other traffic.  For example, you can tunnel your Subversion version control over SSH, using the svn+ssh argument (e.g. svn co svn+ssh my_svn_files). Or you could tunnel your VNC (a remote desktop protocol) over an SSH connection.

Why would you want to tunnel VNC?  The first reason is that VNC by default passes all traffic in plain text, which means all of your keystrokes (read: passwords) are exposed.  By using an SSH tunnel, your session is encrypted. The second reason is that by using an SSH tunnel, you don’t have to open the firewall for the VNC port(s).

So how do you tunnel VNC, or another protocol?  The -L argument to SSH (or LocalForward in the config file) tells SSH to forward locally.  To tunnel to a VNC server running on display :1, you’d do something like:  ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 username@my.server.org   and then point your VNC viewer to localhost:1.

In addition to interactive-type uses, SSH can be used for file transport as well.  The scp command copies files to and from a remote server in the same manner that the cp command works locally.  sftp can be used as a secure replacement for the FTP protocol (but there’s no provision for anonymous access).  And most importantly, the venerable rsync command can be used with SSH by specifying it as the argument to the -e flag (e.g. rsync -e “ssh” -av /some/local/directory username@my.server.org:/the/remote/directory).

So the moral of the story is: SSH can help keep you secure.

July 8, 2009

Which free virtual machine program to use?

Filed under: Linux,mac — Tags: , , — bcotton @ 9:07 am

For a while I’ve been debating whether I should buy a copy of VMWare Fusion for my Mac or to stick with the free version of VirtualBox.  For my needs, they compare nearly identically.  The deciding factor ended up being the KVM switch I use on my Linux and Windows machines.  Crazy, right?

For all platforms except Mac OS X, VMWare provides VMWare Server for free.  Server is a pretty solid VM platform for lightweight purposes.  Version 2 switched to a web-based interface which has advantages and disadvantages.  The main advantage is that it is very easy to connect to a VMWare server instance running on a different machine just by connecting to the address in a web browser.  The big problem I had with Server is that every time my mouse would leave the VM window, it would trigger my KVM switch (TrendNet TK-407K if you’re interested) to switch to the next computer.

Now the main reason I bought this particular switch was because it was very cheap.  It doesn’t have a whole lot of fancy features, it just lets me share a single set of interfaces across 4 machines, which is all I really need it to do.  The problem is, there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn off this automatic changing of machine.  Since I want to use my VM for actual work, having my keyboard mouse and monitor switch to a different computer every time I leave the VM is quite a hassle.  I found a few suggestions via Google, but none of them seemed to help.

After installing VirtualBox, I tried to get it to reproduce this problem.  It could not.  Since VirtualBox is free and available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, it really became an easy decision.  All thanks to a $60 KVM.

July 6, 2009

Microsoft’s Mac products

Filed under: mac — Tags: , , , , , , , — bcotton @ 9:17 am

There’s a lot of hate out there for Microsoft.  Some of it is deserved, some is mere fanboyism.  For my own part, I generally avoid Microsoft products where I can.  It’s not that I absolutely refuse to touch anything that comes out of Redmond, but there are generally free-er and better tools available to accomplish the same ends.  Still, there are some things Mircosoft does very well.  Apple support is not one of them.

Now, I understand that Microsoft and Apple are competitors in some sense.  (I would argue that Microsoft is a software vendor and Apple is a hardware/ecosystem vendor, but that’s another discussion).  To some, it might be surprising that Microsoft has any Apple offerings at all, but the reality is that it is in their best interests.  Macs, especially the laptops, are becoming more prevalent in enterprise settings (especially in education, where Apple has long enjoyed a higher-than-average market share).  In order for Microsoft to keep their death grip on the lucrative enterprise environment, they need to make sure their products can continue to be used.

Unfortunately for the user, Microsoft does not seem to have put much effort into their Apple offerings.  Whether this is by choice or by circumstance, the end result is the same: people can’t get work done.  At the risk of sounding like a cynical anti-Microsoft zealot, I’m going to guess that this is an intentional move.  It does make short-term sense, after all.  By making gestures, Microsoft can be seen as playing nicely, but when things don’t work as well as they do on Windows, people will have no choice but to abandon Apple.

Now, I can’t speak to the Office products very much.  Outside of Access, I’ve barely touched Office 2007, so I don’t know to what degree it is crippled compared to the Windows versions.  I do know that VBScript is not supported in Office 2008, which causes all kinds of problems for some Serious Business(tm) in Excel.  Check boxes in Excel sheets also seem to not print, which is a bit of a hassle when I go to turn in an absence form.  Of course, Access doesn’t even have a Mac counterpart, which wouldn’t bother me except I have yet to find the time to migrate our inventory database out of Access and into something more platform-independent.  This leaves me stuck with running a virtual machine or keeping a Windows box on my desktop any time I want to do something with the inventory.

My big gripe today, and in general, is with Entourage.  It is a pretty lousy e-mail client, although 2008 is an improvement over 2004.  Entourage is a little bit on the clunky side.   For IMAP accounts, Apple Mail would be my choice.  Exchange support is the one feature that give Entourage a raison d’etre in the first place, and it is lacking in a few key areas.  The worst failing is the lack of support for Exchange tasks and notes.  Because my Blackberry has great Exchange support, it would be really nice if I could make notes on my to-do list and have them show up in Entourage.  I can’t.  Since I’m primarily at my desk all day, I primarily use Entourage for my to-do list.  This means I’m stuck without it if I don’t have my laptop with me.  (Or I have to switch to a third-party app, which isn’t that appealing either).

The other complaint is the lack of support for Outlook .pst files.  I’m not that big a fan of .pst files in Outlook either, but I accept they’re a necessary evil.  Regardless of my feelings on .pst in general, it seems silly that Entourage only supports a different (non-Outlook compatible) file format.  Mail storage is a tricky business anyway, and I just prefer to use an IMAP account when I need extra storage space.  That way it is compatible with any modern mail client.

So now that I’ve complained about Entourage, here’s the whole point: the Evolution groupware client supports Microsoft Exchange better than some Microsoft products do.  Imagine my surprise when I was setting up Evolution on my Linux box only to discover that not only did my e-mail and calendar synch, but my to-do list did, too!  I about keeled over from the shock.  This is where Microsoft needs to pay close attention to what others are doing.  If other vendors support your products better than you do, that is a Bad Thing(tm).

Fortunately for Microsoft, getting Entourage working on the Mac isn’t as simple as the Linux side.  Using fink gets you caught in a web of dependencies that don’t seem to be resolvable as of this writing.  Novell issued a Mac build that installs okay, but I’ve had problems getting it to enable an Exchange account.  I’m not the only one with this problem, as the bug report indicates, but the solution that worked for others so far has not worked for me.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep hoping that Microsoft improves the next version of office, or that better competitiors will come forth.

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