steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

    This may not be of much interest to people who aren't on a Mac, but it should be anyway simply due to the concept. Check out NetNewsWire from Ranchero Software. I have been well aware of the concept for quite some time, but have not found a suitable client until now. This essentially allows me to check on the latest status of all of the different sites that offer some type of RSS feed - at any time! The crazy thing is that until I actually had this app in my hands, I had no idea of its potential! Anyway, I would highly recommend taking a look at it if you have a Mac...

Design and Performance of the OpenBSD Stateful Packet Filter (pf)

OpenBSD Journal

Title make sense? Probably not. If you are interested in making your linux machine usable for two physical users, I came across the following link:
Multiple local XFree users under Linux
I wanted to bookmark this for myself and thought there might be others interested...

    I don't necessarily like linking to another page unless I have input of my own about whatever it is discussing, but I thought I would help with *BSD evangelism by pointing people to a NetBSD-on-an-iBook HOWTO written by a gentleman named Anselm R. Garbe. Link: port-macppc: Howto install NetBSD 1.6.1 stable on an iBook
(via: OSNews)
I agree with Anselm about a few quirky directory layout and naming conventions that OS X uses that makes it very BSD unlike. While I find it irritating at times, it is just as frustrating as the differences between Linux and other *nix-type OS's. I'll never forget reading Dr. Dan Bernstein's rant on his Cross-platform Compatibility page:

My initial impression of the concept of Podcasting was, “great, now instead of not only inundating my mind with reading material provided to me by the blog and old media world, now I have to get used to another form of media... podcasting. Ugh... the last thing I want is for someone to have to listen to my voice, too...”
Well, two podcasts have proven me completely and utterly wrong: TWiT.tv's podcast with the gang from the real Screen Savers and an unbelievably kick-ass podcast from Vinylpodcast.com. Vinylpodcast.com had a funky fair use song called Lemuria that was simply great - not an everyday song for me, but nonetheless fun to listen to. One of the things you most often hear Larry Lessig point out on his blog and in his books is how media (songs, shows, movies) will eventually fade into the background of culture - making it lost culture - because no one has the rights to provide people access to it. It is great to see that the twit gang is also paying attention to such issues by releasing their content under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike copyright. It also looks like many others offering up their own podcasts are following along in the same grain. It really is amazing what the technology of the internet is bringing to our culture. It lightens my heart to think that there remains an avenue to defeat the inevitableness of government oppression vis a vis micromanagement laws.
While I don't see myself subscribing to too many podcasts, there are certainly those which will have caught my attention. (Also, if you are looking for a good podcast client for the Mac, take a look at ipodderx.com.)

For any of you following the debate, I searched and searched and finally found:
Don't Stop Grokkin' @ Reason Magazine
I am thoroughly disgusted by the hollow reporting on this matter. Even the Wall Street Journal did a horrible job in discussing the ruling (in High Court Sides With Studios in Grokster Case).
I myself am not sure where I stand on some of these issues. I believe content creators should have a right to copyright their works and keep others from blatantly stealing their work, but on the other side (and as mentioned in the Reason article), content providers like MGM have yet to really come up with a viable and convenient model for distributing content and yet protecting the creator's rights. They also continually push the envelope in their quest for eternal copyrights, which do nothing but harm knowledge that ought eventually reside in the *free* public domain. Let that issue not cloud the current one at hand, though. It looks like the victory was, indeed, somewhat hollow. Too bad, though, it will scare enough hobby/garage inventors away from bringing ideas to market which may cause or be a gateway for infringing activities.

OpenSSH is the reason I started to use BSD *nix - particularly FreeBSD (and now OpenBSD) - back in the days of my first experimentation with qmail. But, I never knew that using ssh with the -D switch allowed you to use the port forwarding mechanism as a SOCKS proxy... This is an example of link stumbling: I was on the road at the end of last week and I'm forcing myself to be more secure about my surfing habits and transmit most anything I do (i.e. email and web browsing) through my own servers. In order to do this, I had to set up a minimum of four tunnels for the traffic, one to my squid server, one to my smtp server and two to the two different mail servers I access. So, I remember seeing a program for OS X for which you could set up profiles to automatically start up x number of ssh tunnels (because I'm too lazy to write the script to do so myself) and I googled "os x set up ssh tunnels" and happened across Marc's Combining ipfw/natd and SSH Tunnels which then pointed me to SSH as a SOCKS Proxy. Sometimes it is truly amazing what one can stumble across. I was so excited to write about this (kind of a note to myself), that I still haven't found the program for which I started looking in the first place. OpenSSH really does rock... and by the way, next time read the friggin' man page! (note to self)

Somehow I missed this little gadget, the Pepper Pad (and now Pepper Pad 3) from Pepper Computing. Currently, I'm waiting for v. 1/2 of the Pepper Pad from Amazon/Target to test, as the 3 series isn't yet available. I've been looking for a non-laptop, but close to a laptop device for reading the massive amount of eBooks I've downloaded and bought over the years. For years, I've tried to do with Palm or Palm-like devices (whether the Treo or LifeDrive) and never find them completely comfortable for reading mainly because the screen is too small. I also have a need/want that I can't live without on a computing device: OpenSSH. Yes, that's right, if I'm going to get a PDA or anything between a PDA or laptop, it has to have the capability of running OpenSSH (or a derivative thereof). It is the only program that is able to keep me in touch with the world under any and all conditions (even on a slow 9.6kbps link). (The excuse used to be needing the ability to get into the network gear for Anywhere Technology, but these days it has to do with every connected device I own, including the server farm that now sits in DLS's facilities.) If I have a device that can be considered a computer and it can't run OpenSSH, then it simply isn't worth it.
Well, considering the two needs listed above (i.e. reading eBooks and running OpenSSH) and the fact that I can check facts, lookup ideas and write some basic notes (vis a vis the keyboard), I really like the device (in concept). What I want to find out is whether or not the Pepper Pad (original or 3) is as much of a disappointment in the area of battery life as the OQO +01 I picked up last year (which I've written about before). CrunchGear has a YouTube video that gives a brief, brief overview of the newer of the devices.
(For a written [quick] review, see: PepperPad 3 Hands-On - by the way, it is Pepper Pad, not PepperPad per Pepper Computer's site)

Whoa, was I wrong. The Pepper Pad couldn't have been a worse experience right out of the box. I don't know if I am slowly developing unrealistic expectations when new gadgets arrive at my office, but even if they were/are, I haven't had an experience where only one expectation was met to some degree of satisfaction. Here is the list of items I wanted out of the Pepper Pad (please note, I didn't purchase version number 3 - the website and specific details I have found on other websites do not show that there is really any difference between the two in regards to what I am about to make remarks upon):

Wants:
- crossover pda/laptop - i.e. not a pda and not a laptop
- wireless network access
- a qwerty keyboard (I'll take a non-standard type - I just want one for input, as hand writing is too slow and speech recognition wouldn't even be an option for most times when I want to use the device)
- a web browser that was similar enough to Firefox
- an email client
- decent battery life (nothing less than 2 1/2 hours with moderate or little wifi usage)
- some documentation
- a book reader that was capable of reading Mobipocket's or eReader's eBooks

Successes:
- it is a viable crossover. Some may debate that the size is too large (and it was larger than I was expecting), but it had good heft, felt good in two hands and had a very readable screen.
- qwerty keyboard. It is odd to get used to, but I can see it working well in the long-run.
- wireless network access. It hopped on to a few wireless networks I frequent without any issues.
- web browser. It just so happens to run Firefox.

Failures:
- Battery life was never more than 1 1/2 hours with moderate wifi usage. I know what moderate usage is and I'm being generous by saying my usage was moderate because it was more along the lines of little. I surfed to websites where I spent good amounts of time reading long pages, so I wasn't technically using wifi a lot. To be considered a mobile device these days, one should be able to say that the battery lasts at least 2 1/2 hours. I don't get anything done in less than that time.
- The Email client is a complete failure on two fronts. One, it doesn't handle more than one email account in any easily discernible way. It also doesn't support SSL connections to the server. Shame on whoever left that one out. If this is supposed to be a mobile device that I would use to supplant my laptop for short trips or quick trips to the local cafe, I need some type of security and it doesn't offer any. I can't stress how worthless this makes the device. Of the two most important technical items that a device like this must support, email and web, one failing is not an option. Let us say that I am a normal person and have one email address. Fine, but how is my wife or significant other supposed to use the device, too? I had envisioned getting a few of these to spread around the house for a quick trip on the internet and to check email - for my wife and I. Even one of my original Palm's supported more than one email account.
- The documentation is worthless. I have had it with devices that don't come with or offer access to decent documentation. The support page at pepper.com is an email form to their technical support person/staff (see link). What?
- The last fault is not necessarily Pepper's fault, but when one of the short list of advertised functionalities does not work, then it is a failing. MobiPocket does not work. Without getting into the strange and gory details of how MobiPocket's DRM works, it suffices to say: your device gives you a key (PID) that you use to register said device on MobiPocket's website and then you can open books on said device that you have bought. My key didn't work and still doesn't. I wrote MobiPocket through their forum about this and they thought my key had an i/l/o in it that can easily be confused with a 1/1/0. I wrote back to explain that the key is 2945955ZW and I tried registering it using a few different methods on a few different web browsers on a few different computers and it never worked. I responded in the following post to the suggestion that I was entering it in wrong, but haven't heard back to date.

So, to wrap up, the fact is that there are far too many compromises I would have to make in order to make the device usable. The fact that one does not have easy access to software that is not pre-provided by Pepper doesn't make the list because from the wants list above, it really boils down to three things: battery life, web access and email access. The Pepper Pad fails on two of the three for the reasons given above. Even the market of simple users out there wouldn't be happy with the above limitations and I can't see why anyone would go to the trouble to make it work by compiling needed software for the device. I guess a lot of my complaints are colored by the knowledge that Pepper could have resolved any or all of the worst problems with relative ease: put a higher capacity battery in the device, use a real email client and give us some basic documentation on how things are supposed to work - beyond the pictures of how to turn it on, off, etc.
If you wish to comment or provide feedback to my posting, please email me using the address listed on this website.

(I always say this:) I don't care much for advertising products I don't own here, but I came across this somehow last night and am smitten: BlueEye Bluetooth interface for iPods

This is the bridge-gap solution for those of us waiting for Apple's much awaited, but potentially never-to-be-released cell/mobile phone with iTunes/iPod integration. I don't use my iPod much unless I'm traveling, so I don't really know how much I would use something like this, but if you look at the details, they really seem to have thought of the whole package. Considering a good bluetooth headset runs in the $60 range, I don't think $100 is too much to ask. If anyone comes across this post and has one, I'd like to know what you think (email me at the address given on my site).

Last night, I logged onto my Netflix account to update some movie queues that I hadn't looked at for over a month. I have the habit of queuing up and watching over couple dozen movies at a time and then leave the last batch on my home office desk for weeks, if not months, before returning them. (The ridiculous part is that had I simply returned the already watched movies, my new batch would have been waiting for me and my latest movie watching mania.) Whadayaknow, but I found that Netflix's Watch Now feature had been added to my account! I was a bit excited because, unlike the other online, on-demand ventures, Netflix's interface has always been straight-forward and user friendly. I knew up front that Macs/OS X wouldn't be supported. Rather, I assumed it wouldn't be supported. Since I am forced to use Windows for a number of other programs that we use at work, I always have a machine handy (my Parallels Windows XP installation didn't work because I didn't have enough swap space available on the virtual hard drive - I'll be testing that today or tomorrow) and pulled out the UX/90, loaded Internet Explorer and logged into Netflix.

You are first greeted with a request to allow software to be installed on your machine and I clicked OK. As the film I selected was loading, the browser showed a cryptic error that I translated to mean there were issues with the Windows Media Player DRM plugin. (By the way, I love how Microsoft sells their DRM technology to the consumer by claiming it's for your protection. I know that this is partially due to the movie companies, but if software and hardware manufacturers would stand their grounds as the conduit to consumers and resist DRM implementation, life would be a lot easier for all of us.) So, I took the 30 minutes to run the latest Windows Update (this is the only part that really bothers me about the Netflix implementation - one that I realize they have little choice on, except that they could play a PR game and enlist the consumer to get the movie studios and DRM designers to relinquish control to the consumer - the DRM hooks required by the player are pervasive enough that it requires a system restart vis a vis a Windows Media Player update) and restarted.
The next time I went to pull up the movie, it started without any problems. I'm excited about two things: speed/time it takes to start and the quality of the video. (If you want to see how the player really acts, there are videos floating around the net showing functionality - search google.) I have a 3.5mbps/384kbps connection at the house and it took around 10 seconds for the movie to start. The navigation functionality is limited to a player slidebar, volume and a stop and start button. In full screen mode, the playback was flawless. After having dabbled and worked with the guts of transcoding codecs, whatever they are using to produce the image quality I saw is impressive. Either they are depending on raw processing power of a lot of machines to transcode the video or they have a technique that even those of us in the video distribution business (which I became part of last year) don't know about.
Notwithstanding the issue I have with it being a Windows only player, I highly recommend using the service to those who have the bandwidth and the machines on which to use it. My favorite part about it is that I didn't have to do anything extra with my current Netflix account to take advantage of the service - e.g. pay more. So, those of you with Netflix who don't yet have access to the service, hold on to your accounts if you're thinking of canceling or switching to Blockbuster's competing service. If Netflix is true to form, we'll see improvements to the service that will make it even better.

Technorati Tags: internet, netflix, video

There are so many web applications out there that I have resisted at first glance. A prime example are all of the Google applications that don't have to do with searching. (The exception being that I have a Gmail account that anyone can write to, but only because storage isn't an issue with Gmail and I don't want to deal with that on my personal server.) I like desktop applications for a number of reasons. The biggest of which, although my friends and family may not agree, is because I am not always connected to the net and like the opportunity to work independent of that connection. The other part is functionality; I like stand-alone applications because they are consistent in functionality and do not necessarily rely on browser API's or hooks that may not be available on my latest favorite browser.
Lately, though, two web services/applications have become favorites of mine, because one solves a very simple problem and the other is simply fun to use - and accents my current use of weblogs. I started using del.icio.us a month ago because I finally outgrew my own personal bookmarking system that had resided at Cogito Ergo Sum (rescogitans.net/blog/bookmarks/) for years. I had so many bookmarks that I was finding it difficult to find old ones that I rarely used and couldn't edit the system such to handle "fluid" and changing needs. The relatively new concept of tagging hit a cord with me (i.e. take a term or URL and tag it with various words to define what the URL is for and/or about) and I watched on the sidelines as del.icio.us grew and I saw more and more people I tracked use it. With some extra insomniac time one weekend, I decided to take the plunge and try it. I haven't looked back since. Tagging is über convenient for me and the search utility works well for all of my needs. Since moving to del.icio.us's system, I've found myself tagging more and more content, making it easy to find later on and keeping track of some of my changing interests.
The second service I just started using is Twitter. The service is ridiculously voyeuristic, but at the same time, a fantastic compliment to my blogging habits. I go for days and weeks without posting anything to my weblogs. Often this is because of lack of time, not for lack of ideas and/or want. With Twitter, I can create a trace of the ongoings (for my own good) in my life and yet, because the service is intended to be short twitters of what is happening, it never becomes the burden I sometimes feel when I sit down to actually write a post for one of the blogs.
Technology ought compliment your lifestyle. For those addicts like myself, it is difficult to find pieces that actually fit together well and in the case of those things I need/want, del.icio.us and twitter have filled a nice void.

me @ del.icio.us
me @ twitter

Technorati Tags: web applications, technology

For the past few months, I've been going nuts (collectively with my brother, Dave) on buying books. We've been buying everything from books on oil to wiring diagram design to politics and to photography (me). The obsession with photography continues and there is a photographer on flickr whose photos I really enjoy. Ying Tang put together a book of her photos from San Francisco that can be bought at blurb.com. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Her photography is a perfect example of telling a story that can carry meaning for any person viewing them. (Nothing is too avant garde, nothing too simple. For my sensibilities, she delivers a perfect mix.)

I happened across this device on some tech related weblog (whose name and url I can't remember) and had to give my opinion. I've been using WiebeTech usb/firewire "raw" drive connectors for a few years, but the solution was always a little cumbersome; unless using it in situations where portability is key. Most of the time, I'm not in one of those situations and I have popped a drive out of a machine whose power supply has gone (or some other relatively minor problem has occurred). Now that most of the machines I deal with are SATA, I was looking for a device that made quick, raw hard drive backups (or reads) easy, yet don't clutter my desk like the WiebeTech solutions do. Like I said, I happened across mention of this device and ordered two. The shipping is ridiculous; $50 because it is being shipped from Japan, but I because the cradle is $50, I figured $75 for each cradle wasn't half bad, as long as they worked as promised. (I've found that some caddies/adapters do not perform even close to USB 2.0 specs. One transfered data from a good drive at about 4mbps. Definitely not 480mbps or close to the expected rates of around 350mbps.)
Today is the umpteenth time I've used the cradle, but the first time for an "emergency." I arrived at work this morning with my Mac Pro turned off (I leave it on 24/7 because I access it remotely quite often). I figured the power went out last evening and I went to restart it. Nothing. I fiddled with the power button, unplugged the machine, plugged it into a different electrical outlet, used a different power cord, and ran through a few procedures you use for getting Mac Pros to start if it is a simple memory board problem. Nada. I do regular backups of my two main machines now (a MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro), so I wasn't all that worried... except I had written two letters last night that I needed for work today. I spent quite a bit of time composing them, so I didn't want to go through the trouble all over. After AppleCare Phone support provided more aggravation than help (buy the AppleCare plan and find out you still have to hand deliver a Mac Pro for service and deal with an agent who obviously hasn't listened to any of the attempts I made before calling to revive the machine), I popped open the case, pulled the main drive and plopped it in the cradle. I navigated to my home directory and mounted my FileVault image ('hdid ./.snfettig.sparseimage'; enter password; access files through finder...) and grabbed the two files I needed. Done.
I can say that from the numerous backups I've pulled off drives with this cradle, I'm extremely happy with the performance and size. The fact that it will accept both 3.5" and 2.5" drives makes it all the more convenient. If you're a tech who uses drive caddies for any reason - and find that you have a lot of SATA drives you connect to - I highly recommend the cradle. Despite the relatively high price, the cradle is solid and makes life oh' so easy on days like today.

For most, the issue with general warming of populated areas and the environment in general is a closed issue. You would think with all the scientific postulating going on, one would at least be open to debate. We debate everything except when people invoke think about future generations ad hoc arguments. Once I get permission, I'll post a graph I found intriguing. For now, here is a link of interest:

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

I really want to understand what is going on when I fiddle with f/stops, increasing depth of field, but further limiting the amount of light that hits the film or sensor. I also was having a difficult time understanding the concept of focal length considering that a lens labeled as 300mm, isn't necessarily 300mm long. Somehow, this afternoon, I stumbled across A Tedious Explanation of the f/stop. What a godsend. For issues with depth of field (which has been hitting below the belt on a lot of my pictures) and speed of the exposure (heavily impacting the clarity of my pictures), Matthew explains:

"You need to know the doubling/halving relationship and how it works with shutter speeds in exposure. This is key since the shutter speeds and f/stops you choose have implications in how your final photograph will look in ways other than purely the amount of light on the film. You need to know that as you stop down you get more depth of field. You do not need to go around calculating aperture areas for your lenses and f/stops. If you're like me, it's worth doing it once to see that it works, then forgetting about."

Thank you, Matthew, for taking the time to write down your notes. After a third read, I think I finally get what I'm doing wrong and now know how to clear up many of the problems I've had.

I cannot believe it has taken this long for me to figure this out:

Multiple identities in one account with Apple Mail.app (link)

I work with an average of five different email accounts to separate work from personal from junk. Essentially, all of the email addresses I use pour into one single account except for those associated with email lists (because of the sheer bulk of messages I would receive and can't process). The problem is that I thought Apple's Mail.app didn't have an easy way of sending from these "identities" unless you added the identity as another mail account. Not true. If you follow the instructions in the above link, all you have to do is take the one account you wish to change and add every email address (i.e. identity) you want to send from in a comma separated list in the Email Address field where you set up your account. I know this works on OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) and will test on 10.5 (aka Leopard) later. Props to Jonathan for finding this very simple solution.

I love little applications that just work™. Back in my Windows days, I remember coming across an application for network throughput monitoring at analogx.com (NetStat Live) and thought, "how awesome! I don't need anything complicated, just a small app that shows network throughput on my system... and here it is!" The same thing occurred today. Now that OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) supports bluetooth stereo audio via the A2DP BT profile, I purchased a BT dongle that I can hook my headphones up to so that I'm not tethered to my office desk. (See the IOGear Audio Transport.) Once I got the dongle paired up with my workstation, I couldn't seem to connect to the stereo side of the headset. I was getting monaural sound, but not stereo. (Which, by the way, worked previously in 10.4. You could connect to a bluetooth stereo headset, but it would only pass audio in mono to the headset, not stereo.) I'm very familiar with how OS X handles audio input and output vis a vis System Preferences, but for some reason, I couldn't get stereo output.

I did a quick search via Google of the A2DP profile in 10.5 and found mention of Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource in a forum (I can't find the forum right now). I downloaded the app and had my problem solved in 30 seconds - literally. SoundSource is very good at showing sources and outputs for audio (the headset I'm using doesn't show up as well on their menu as in the Sound menu in System Preferences, but it is more intuitive). Just select and change source or output on the fly. It is that simple. To top it off, since it is free, there isn't a reason not to try it.

Screenshot:

...or, said another way: sitting on your Windows Vista machine, if you want to access an SMB/Windows share on a Mac running Leopard (aka 10.5), then following the instructions found on a MacTalk Forum solved my problem:

I couldn't get the Vista (Business) machine to access an SMB/Windows share on my Mac Pro. For some reason, it simply wouldn't accept my username and password combination. The answer is actually quite simple. In the Username field of the dialogue box on the Vista machine, you need to type in DOMAIN\yourusername instead of simply yourusername. Leave DOMAIN as just that. Worked like a charm. Click on the image above for a higher resolution view or simply click on the link to the MacTalk Form thread where I found the solution. Thank you to MacTalk Babysitter.

Kottke always finds things that intrigue me... This is just plain 'ol good schtuff.

Had to update the link... Vimeo deleted the video for some or other reason that I ... I really don't care why. I can't stand the poor quality of YouTube videos, but I don't want to delete this post, so taking Kottke's lead - again - here it is on YouTube.