tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-232818212024-02-28T17:43:18.428-06:00(in)Secure ITMy personal take on issues and concerns in the anti-malware and security field. More ramblings on technology as well, surely.Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.comBlogger159125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-91247151211176730022023-07-02T07:47:00.001-05:002023-07-02T07:47:19.236-05:00<p>I've come back to journaling my thoughts on the threat landscape as a whole. These past few years have been through <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwAsip7NvN6qNYR1PWwNakw">YouTube</a>; and more recently back to writing. But, I've had to move the text part of things and start fresh elsewhere as that was part of the discovery and reason I did start writing again. Follow me to the new blog over at the new domain <a href="https://blog.threatresearcher.com/">@ threatresearcher</a>.</p>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-1784090397130953932019-01-26T01:23:00.001-06:002019-01-26T01:33:34.981-06:00Blogging: Is it still relevant in 2019?No where have I found the question nor the answer.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And as such, I'm asking it. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As for the reason, perhaps its because it is really late at night (or early morning, if you will) and tomorrow looks to be a hopeful day. The government shutdown looks to be ending, there's a promise of really good seafood for brunch, a really crispy but potentially sunny morning, and so on.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's been may opinions, as early as when the social networks started to provide immediate platforms of self-expression, of blogging's relevance. Some of these social-nets and micro-blogging sites have even faded in time and obscurity (as it were, now, irrelevant) but I've been on them all, well -- almost. </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Geocities</li>
<li>Friendster</li>
<li>Multiply</li>
<li>MySpace</li>
<li>Classmates</li>
<li>MSN/Windows Live Spaces</li>
<li>Yahoo 360</li>
<li>Orkut</li>
<li>Plurk</li>
<li>Hi5</li>
<li>Raptr</li>
<li>Google Buzz</li>
<li>...?</li>
</ul>
<div>
By the end of the year my most favorite of all which was well integrated into many of the things we all do in terms of search and services will, likewise, be gone. Farewell,</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Google +</li>
</ul>
<div>
And so, what do we have left? A monoculture of Facebook with no other alternative seeing as they've taken over Instagram.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Don't get me wrong, I like FB and appreciate that (through its user-base) it still allows a small air-gap between IG. With the arrival of podcasting and the advent of vlogging, life getting busy, its definitely been easier to post photographs. After all, as they say, more words through visual.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
However, there are times, such as now, that one can't help to just express one's thoughts past 104 characters. That perhaps a captive audience of your friends, family, and peers are not enough.<br />
An opportunity to say, "Hello!" to posterity in writing just as I miss greeting my live audience during my short stint as a weekend radio broadcaster.<br />
<br />
For the aforementioned free form ability to just be. To go it alone on a quick solitary jaunt around the corner and appreciate the simplicity of text.<br />
<br />
That is relevant.<br />
<br />
To me.<br />
<br />
How about you?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Right then. That's it for now. Just as I said during my first post ... who knows? This could once again become a habit. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
'Til the next time!</div>
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<br /></div>
Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0United States37.09024 -95.712891000000013-36.4162205 99.052733999999987 90 69.521483999999987tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-14416835069205391012014-05-04T23:43:00.005-05:002014-05-04T23:43:56.868-05:00Domain Registration (transfer)While I'm still sorting out what to do with the router all traffic will redirect here until further notice.Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-58518385061379196682012-01-11T18:59:00.000-06:002012-01-11T18:59:37.011-06:00Blog Updates?I've recently been playing around with domains and self-hosting. Everything (almost) from this starter blog has been moved over but this will continue to stay up for now. All newer updates will be at:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://blog.threatresearcher.com/">http://blog.threatresearcher.com/</a><br />
<br />
See you there!Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-29932243839379176262010-11-29T02:39:00.000-06:002010-12-15T22:01:42.534-06:002010: Holiday Shopping and Cyber MondayLooking for some late deals? Shopping from that Christmas present? Already whipped-out your credit card? I've written a new post at the new blog on some pitfalls to avoid.<br />
<br />
<i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_2047409018">Cyber Monday deals are great for that gift you wanted but could not afford, for some it is one of the opportunities to get the stuff to fill their grand kid’s stockings come Christmas. With all the gadgets flying off the shelves right now I think its about time to pop the reminder of how things could historically go wrong and steps to avoid the pitfalls. Its never too late to educate. </a></i><br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_2047409016"></a></b><br />
<b>Follow the jump <a href="http://blog.threatresearcher.com/2010/11/29/holiday-shopping-cyber-monday/"><span style="color: red;">here</span></a></b>.Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-25928160291168652642010-11-23T04:07:00.000-06:002010-11-23T04:16:30.308-06:00Blogger Template Designer - bug!This is a chime-in for the <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Analytics/thread?tid=155b2bd6a4d18d11&hl=en">issue</a> reported by <a href="http://feldmanfile.blogspot.com/">LenFeldman</a> sometime last April. I recently started modifying my blogs after some time-off and noticed that <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.google.com/analytics" title="Google Analytics" rel="homepage">Google Analytics</a> suddenly flat-lined after updating to a newer template/theme. It seems all the code got lost during the process. That means, like him, I've lost months of tracking reports :-(<br /><br />I've put the codes back manually with help from <a href="http://www.eblogtemplates.com/how-to-install-google-analytics-on-blogger/">eBlog</a> and will be monitoring my sites this week. Hopefully everything goes back as well as the new site going live successfully.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=cda4b263-1227-4a12-991b-450212a30ea1" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-5002397379814019922010-11-20T22:06:00.000-06:002010-11-22T03:32:26.904-06:00QNAP: WordPress Themes Not Displaying ErrorSo far I have been successful in <a href="http://areyousecure.blogspot.com/2009/05/blog-confusion-how-to-convert-and.html">exporting and importing</a> my <a class="zem_slink" href="http://blogger.com/" title="Blogger" rel="homepage">Blogger</a>/<a class="zem_slink" href="http://blogger.com/" title="Blogger" rel="homepage">Blogspot</a> content to WordPress self-hosted. The nice thing to note is that this functionality is now built-in to WordPress and it will work after the initial authentication. After which I used the Category to Tags Coverter plugin which nicely sorted through the various import mismatch. Voila! <div><br /></div><div>There is however one nasty issue. Although my newly converted Blogger-to-<a class="zem_slink" href="http://wordpress.org/" title="WordPress" rel="homepage">WordPress blog</a> displays correctly in my internal network the view from the outside looking-in (external viewers) is largely flawed, to say the least. The WordPress themes, no matter what I change them to, are broken!</div><div><br /></div><div>I found out the hard way and ticking off several theories.</div><div><br /></div><div>1. Theme error? </div><div><br /></div><div>I switched to the most basic theme and to my preferred ones, no game.</div><div><br /></div><div>2. WordPress file and folder permissions? </div><div><br /></div><div>Not sure what was up I re-installed several times and even updated to the latest 3.0.1 (which is another horror story altogether for another time). Still no juice, but that doesn't mean it isn't a particular file/folder permission setting.</div><div><br /></div><div>3. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://httpd.apache.org/" title="Apache HTTP Server" rel="homepage">Apache webserver</a> and .htaccess rules?</div><div><br /></div><div>I disabled, commented-out, deleted, created several .htaccess files in various folders but to no avail. It could be a general error under the main rules file that prevents serving images under the WordPress subfolder and yet why does it allow images on my <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.phpbb.com/" title="PhpBB" rel="homepage">phpBB</a> and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.joomla.org/" title="Joomla" rel="homepage">Joomla</a> sites?</div><div><br /></div><div> This is a mystery that needs to be solved and damn if I don't figure it out, soon.</div><div><br /></div><div>For now I'm going through the official WordPress <a class="zem_slink" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/" title="WordPress Codex" rel="homepage">Codex</a> notes on changing <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions">file permissions</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">Update: 2010/November/22 @ 1:09AM</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">After ranting to my friends over dinner and swearing to move onto Joomla!, I simmered down and re-forwarded all my domains back to <a class="zem_slink" href="http://blogger.com" title="Blogger" rel="homepage">BlogSpot</a> temporarily. After which I re-read the </span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/">Codex</a> and read through <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL">changing the site URL</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"> portion. The shortest path for me without messing with too many entries was to use the </span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL#Relocate_method">Relocate method</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">, and it works. Eureka!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Here is how to do it:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Switch to editing mode (or followed the first 3 steps from my </span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://areyousecure.blogspot.com/2010/11/qnap-wordpress-and-connection.html">previous post</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Edit the wp-config.php file</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Go to the end of the file and add the new temporary line:</span><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">define('RELOCATE',true);</span><br /><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. Open your browser to your apparently-broken-to-external-wordpress-page and log-in:</span><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">ex. <span style="font-style: italic;">http://my-broken-wordpress-page.com/wordpress/wp-login.php</span><br /><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. Log-in as normal</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Since the RELOCATE flag set to true, your siteurl (</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">General Settings -> WordPress address</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">) will be auto-magically updated to whatever path you used to access the log-in screen. This will generally get the admin section functional but will not necessarily fix all the sections of your setup. You'll have to go through the rest of the blog and comb through the kinks if you find them. For now, my external viewers can now see this blog in its intended glory. Hooah!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">Security tip:</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Remove the added line once you get your site up and running. Leaving it there may break it (or leave your WordPress blog open to one).</span><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=86d59050-ecac-4ba1-98f0-72729ff11b1f" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-1879137617568445882010-11-20T18:09:00.000-06:002010-11-20T22:05:18.690-06:00QNAP: Apache and Needed Information<div align="left">So you're setting up various things like your <a class="zem_slink" href="http://wordpress.org/" title="WordPress" rel="homepage">WordPress</a> or perhaps messing around with some internals based on tips you get across the web. You type them in then doesn't work and says you have invalid or the wrong user permissions. What gives?<br /><br />Don't forget you are working on a semi-embedded environment and not all things follow what is on <a class="zem_slink" href="http://httpd.apache.org/" title="Apache HTTP Server" rel="homepage">Apache</a> spec all the time. So how do you find out more about your installation without having to be able to read all these script lines? Let the installed system work for you of course. Everything is working on the basic that means you just need to know what the settings are.<br /><br />First things first, get your tools and be where you should:<br /><br /><strong>Step #1</strong>: Download <em><a class="zem_slink" href="http://winscp.net/" title="WinSCP" rel="homepage">WinSCP</a></em> (or if you're further advanced feel free to use ssh).<br /><br /><strong>Step #2</strong>: Log-in to the NAS as <em>admin</em></div><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>Using username "admin".</em></span></strong></div><div align="left"><br /></div><div align="left">Step #3: Change directories to Qweb</div><div align="center"><strong><em><span style="font-size:85%;">[~] # cd /share/Qweb/</span></em></strong></div><div align="center"><br /></div><div align="left">You are now at the root of your <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_server" title="Web server" rel="wikipedia">web server</a>, you have the following options:<br /><br /><strong>Step #4a</strong>: To find out what user your instance (Apache default is <i>httpd</i>) is running as (QNAP default is <i>httpdusr</i>), create a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_file" title="Temporary file" rel="wikipedia">temporary file</a>, mine is called phpinfo1.php, and it only contains one line:</div><div align="center"><br /><strong><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong>Step #4b</strong>: To dump all that is known from the system, create a temporary file, mine is called phpinfo2.php, and it only contains one line:</div><div align="center"><br /><strong><em><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></em></strong></div><div align="left"><br /><strong>Step #5</strong>: Whatever your choice is from either of the last two-(2) steps above, open a browser instance and run the relative <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.php.net/" title="PHP" rel="homepage">PHP</a> file.</div><div align="center"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><em><strong>http://(your-ip-address)<your-ip-address>/phpinfo1.php<br />http://(your-ip-address)<your-ip-address>/phpinfo2.php</your-ip-address></your-ip-address></strong></em></span><br /></div><div align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><em><strong><br /></strong></em></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><em><strong><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Security tip:</span> </strong></em></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><em><strong>Once you are done with the scripts above, DELETE them. You risk divulging critical information about your installation if you leave these files lying around.</strong></em></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=bf8ff366-8f09-4078-a1e4-39ef0ce74558" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-4941895445290660612010-11-20T17:25:00.000-06:002010-11-20T22:02:05.625-06:00QNAP: WordPress and Connection Information<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEb-_VhE5ZszLLx7f67wbg5ebr28I9937YYSMiaSuHt1ZPxRNtml4JkCVVV4jfNOOD-cb0a0XVXykGDpdWATUcXR1PaKI-QOgCKBtL0b4B2ADTdM13N70ubu-2wvdvotJoVST7Mw/s1600/connection_info_needed.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 112px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEb-_VhE5ZszLLx7f67wbg5ebr28I9937YYSMiaSuHt1ZPxRNtml4JkCVVV4jfNOOD-cb0a0XVXykGDpdWATUcXR1PaKI-QOgCKBtL0b4B2ADTdM13N70ubu-2wvdvotJoVST7Mw/s200/connection_info_needed.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5541778669973465666" border="0" /></a>Newbie users like me will probably be <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump_%28cricket%29" title="Stump (cricket)" rel="wikipedia">stumped</a> when faced with this ftp <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Login" title="Login" rel="wikipedia">log-in</a> screen when trying to update/upgrade/patch WordPress and/or <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_%28computing%29" title="Plug-in (computing)" rel="wikipedia">plugins</a>. You can attempt to guess and enter your details but there's a fair chance the whole process will fail midway through the next steps. Why? What to do?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.chrisabernethy.com/why-wordpress-asks-connection-info/">Chris</a> was quite helpful to get me on the right path. I have outlined the steps below for us QNAP users:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step #1</span>: Download <a class="zem_slink" href="http://winscp.net/" title="WinSCP" rel="homepage">WinSCP</a> (or if you're further advanced feel free to use ssh).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step #2</span>: Log-in to the NAS as <span style="font-style: italic;">admin</span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;">Using username "admin".</span><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Step #3</span>: Change <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folder_%28computing%29" title="Folder (computing)" rel="wikipedia">directories</a> to <span style="font-style: italic;">wordpress</span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;">[~] # cd /share/Qweb/wordpress/</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step #4</span>: Change the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_permissions" title="Filesystem permissions" rel="wikipedia">file permissions</a> of the current folder and sub-folder contents<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;">[/share/Qweb/wordpress] # chown -R httpdusr:administrators ./</span><br /><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step #5</span>: Exit the console<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;">[/share/Qweb/wordpress] # exit</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step #6</span>: Open your browser, get back to your <a class="zem_slink" href="http://wordpress.org/" title="WordPress" rel="homepage">WordPress</a> admin console<div style="text-align: center; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://(your-ip-address)<your-ip-address><your-ip-address><your-ip-address>/wp-login.php<br /></your-ip-address></your-ip-address></your-ip-address></span></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step #7</span>: Pour yourself a nice beverage<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step #8</span>: Enjoy!<br /><br />As soon as you're done, make sure to start updating everything.<br /><br /><a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Security tip: Outdated WordPress installations and plugins are bad.</span></a><br /><br /> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=4babe415-6ba7-4479-a006-1a2ca147b56c" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-49264193678784413552010-11-11T00:11:00.000-06:002010-11-16T00:43:18.341-06:00Mac Update 10.6.5: the Borked Mysteries<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-n4LSpZqQxHzvdzOHCsnqM4qvDxT5WnwWGEO81m-kP9YBY_9BG-8QkY1pC2HvhZSYMGOI3e_UaZeamzc2WGWn5CjoDEm-lz_0KHzVbIWG6ZAau3b3IoF-OcvvptRezLBCnBDulQ/s1600/updated.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 162px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-n4LSpZqQxHzvdzOHCsnqM4qvDxT5WnwWGEO81m-kP9YBY_9BG-8QkY1pC2HvhZSYMGOI3e_UaZeamzc2WGWn5CjoDEm-lz_0KHzVbIWG6ZAau3b3IoF-OcvvptRezLBCnBDulQ/s200/updated.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538207938384021362" border="0" /></a>So the most recent update was released today and I waited a fair amount of time before taking the plunge -- approximately half a day. No, really, it just so happens I was poking around the news and found out about it. There was no official System Update notification at all. Strange? Nah, its Apple holding off for fixing feedback most probably.<div><br /></div><div><b>Step #1</b>. First things first was to run a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html" title="Time Machine (Apple software)" rel="homepage">Time Machine</a> backup as instructed by the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_base" title="Knowledge base" rel="wikipedia">Knowledge Base</a> (KB) <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4250">article</a>. That took about 30-minutes for me including connecting my external hard drive and backing up somewhere around 500-MB of data.</div><div><br /></div><div>Step #2. Next was to say farewell to the world and update everyone about the attempt through the usual social media like Twitter and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://facebook.com" title="Facebook" rel="homepage">FaceBook</a> -- this was of course easily done via a single post on <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.plurk.com/" title="Plurk" rel="homepage">Plurk</a>. <i>This is an optional step</i>, but for those of you who only have one way to be online apart from your mobile device (ie. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.apple.com/iphone" title="iPhone" rel="homepage">iPhone</a>) it at least notifies everyone why you could be unreachable for a while. :-)</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Step #3</b>. Just to be sure in case the update would actually cause drivers to fail, I downloaded the standalone combo update package from <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.apple.com" title="Apple" rel="homepage">Apple's</a> Support <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uploading_and_downloading" title="Uploading and downloading" rel="wikipedia">Downloads</a> <a href="http://support.apple.com/downloads/#macosx106">site</a> (approximately 977.21-MB).</div><div><br /></div><div>Step #4. My wife was previously badgering me to try out <a href="http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/">FaceTime for Mac</a>, so I did that too. <i>Another optional step</i>, but just in case the update includes an official release then why not?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Step #5</b>. Finally, I clicked on <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.apple.com/softwareupdate/" title="Apple Software Update" rel="homepage">Software Update</a> ... This then asked for my Administrative password for system changes and proceeded to pre-update the initial components. It then logged-off the system and updated the core components (this flow prevents interruption by running applications). Once done, it did a system reboot. </div><div><br /></div><div>I logged-in and everything seemed the same, except ....</div><div><br /></div><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 94px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHJf3Un83L9ZLf0LfI5zciiWkZ6nYt2ekJjArYG2Nhw4XHSfUPhXImdac5tCxRlBvmla31miOC-HldYHzpEqeG2OhYANH7fmBK6lntEV_neZSH6U6oJ2wPuQAVDXcow69BXLEWAA/s200/growlmail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538209564754089282" border="0" /><div><b>Borked #1</b>. GrowlMail bundle gets disabled. Those of you who use Growl for Mail.app simply have to <a href="http://cdn.langui.sh/2010/10/GrowlMail-10.6.5.mailbundle.zip">download</a> the <a href="http://langui.sh/2010/10/14/fixing-growlmail-in-10-6-5-mail-4-4/">unoffical update</a> or follow the manual instructions from <i>reaperhulk</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>So far nothing else looks amiss, but these issues will slowly be teased out eventually and I will update this blog entry as I come across them. One of the most probable issues would be headers needed by <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.macports.org/" title="MacPorts" rel="homepage">MacPorts</a>, but thats just in theory and for later. </div><div><br /></div><div>Until then.</div><div><br /></div> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=8786de2b-def7-41ee-b0c7-b833115b339a" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-28723032630754197692010-06-21T15:49:00.000-05:002010-11-16T00:44:27.174-06:00Apple iPhone: iOS 4 now available via iTunes!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxsVYv2IajtQamPtrb0hCEn06clarFCcySCfyoEGt8P7h10y59XwvtN91YhtcmBg4DuhAGRl5HWcbxAEaFPOJFi5X07RRb8xBd5yVJ5p6ImoPGvQmtXmq_xw4yeCCLpxVa3FIOhg/s1600/ios42.jpg" imageanchor="1" linkindex="20" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxsVYv2IajtQamPtrb0hCEn06clarFCcySCfyoEGt8P7h10y59XwvtN91YhtcmBg4DuhAGRl5HWcbxAEaFPOJFi5X07RRb8xBd5yVJ5p6ImoPGvQmtXmq_xw4yeCCLpxVa3FIOhg/s200/ios42.jpg" border="0" height="75" width="200" /></a></div>Get it while its hot (or while the servers are still churning smoothly!).<br /><br />The update on my iPhone <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/3G" title="3G" rel="wikinvest">3G</a> just finished right now several hours from when it started around 10:30am. Why?<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXMKZTBcxa7nhWv0N5qRBSNkMyz-hMY5vshidtucnrKY448sqaLBZtfcKhCYQOtXpOAzXobBQBSZSz1CVxVvyw1W8RqYCbg7eJTXqYU9LgEo8ZUPjZACzle410cixjRQ2q9kgNTg/s1600/ios41.jpg" imageanchor="1" linkindex="21" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXMKZTBcxa7nhWv0N5qRBSNkMyz-hMY5vshidtucnrKY448sqaLBZtfcKhCYQOtXpOAzXobBQBSZSz1CVxVvyw1W8RqYCbg7eJTXqYU9LgEo8ZUPjZACzle410cixjRQ2q9kgNTg/s200/ios41.jpg" border="0" height="75" width="200" /></a>It requires an <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/" title="ITunes" rel="homepage">iTunes</a> update and for some several other <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_%28computing%29" title="Patch (computing)" rel="wikipedia">security patches</a> on their <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh" title="Macintosh" rel="wikipedia">Apple Mac</a>'s.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMB9Cpd6iFesdN32_2oGVt2CHywSqLUHbxs3HAkJKFG85gyN4fS5S3w_CNDqYL-VKcBqwqiT967-Ag-As_mWhQ4A8IoaI5NaHtGk3UqoIrd-GofI9Jwa0Q-6Fekn0cUzwIQrTTWA/s1600/ios43.jpg" imageanchor="1" linkindex="22" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMB9Cpd6iFesdN32_2oGVt2CHywSqLUHbxs3HAkJKFG85gyN4fS5S3w_CNDqYL-VKcBqwqiT967-Ag-As_mWhQ4A8IoaI5NaHtGk3UqoIrd-GofI9Jwa0Q-6Fekn0cUzwIQrTTWA/s200/ios43.jpg" border="0" height="137" width="200" /></a>Afterward, you'll have to deal with a full phone backup (still via iTunes, of course).<br /><br />Eventually, you'll get to the firmware flashing part. You'll notice a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_bar" title="Progress bar" rel="wikipedia">progress bar</a> on your iPhone itself and this is totally different from the progress bar displayed on iTunes.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTrhVkQ9wvKRNq66DXpBK9iGlYpm7ViKKqfNQh11sxH_sEDwEBPs0Fvb0-FLJY9JCCV9ZN3E311dQX9KMBXk3qj465avOnRAfxP4L0r8MVuNZQr8VrYt09Y10Xl2x-R3_RrFPXOg/s1600/ios44.jpg" imageanchor="1" linkindex="23" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTrhVkQ9wvKRNq66DXpBK9iGlYpm7ViKKqfNQh11sxH_sEDwEBPs0Fvb0-FLJY9JCCV9ZN3E311dQX9KMBXk3qj465avOnRAfxP4L0r8MVuNZQr8VrYt09Y10Xl2x-R3_RrFPXOg/s200/ios44.jpg" border="0" height="137" width="200" /></a><br />Be patient!<br /><br />Some field reports say the updates get stuck during the initial backup or just along the way. What to do?<br /><br />I can only suggest what I did before hand last night which was to backup then reset the whole device. Afterward do back to the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.tipb.com/ios-4/" title="iOS 4" rel="homepage">iOS 4</a> update steps again. Make sure you have enough hard drive space for the backups or you will run into other kinds of trouble.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlkdy-GskoJsm26olFmaCeXCPHzDtpqOeMJGqtkx9QeIskL1wYCd2hgomALcol_vBBz8IRr-E8fwKzgJq-89dGgJJBv16WYuM0Tbp1aCH63j3a366nsaKUyzyBzmaVD19-Y20KxA/s1600/ios45.jpg" imageanchor="1" linkindex="24" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlkdy-GskoJsm26olFmaCeXCPHzDtpqOeMJGqtkx9QeIskL1wYCd2hgomALcol_vBBz8IRr-E8fwKzgJq-89dGgJJBv16WYuM0Tbp1aCH63j3a366nsaKUyzyBzmaVD19-Y20KxA/s200/ios45.jpg" border="0" height="34" width="200" /></a>As you can see, part of my reset and clean slate state was to forgo syncing all my personal media and stick to the iPhone apps. That will make the backup and restore processes less of a drag.<br /><br />So, after a few minutes of the iPhone 3G with iOS 4, my comments?<br /><br />Better icons in mail, an <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet" title="Internet" rel="wikipedia">Internet</a> <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethering" title="Tethering" rel="wikipedia">Tethering</a> under Networks that requires you to give <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.att.com/" title="AT&T" rel="homepage">AT&T</a> a call for activation, signal indoors is no better but appears smarter to switch from 3G to Edge to allow for voice calls instead of default providing data quality above voice. Alas, its all makeup. To truly appreciate iOS 4 you need to match it with an iPhone 4G hardware.<br /><br />By the way, today's iOS 4 update is only compatible for the iPhone 3G, 3Gs, and built-in to the 4G. Sorry <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.apple.com/iphone" title="iPhone" rel="homepage">iPhone 2G</a>, you are now obsolete. <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=57b171a0-066b-49d9-9bb0-e07f90850b1f" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-24700075103273406242010-06-15T17:37:00.000-05:002010-06-15T17:40:32.851-05:00Ubuntu Tricks: Text File ManipulationYou've got a text file that is several million lines. Each line corresponds to a filename and each file needs to either be downloaded or uploaded somewhere.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Assuming you have a script that iterates and reads in serial from the input text file, what happens when the system kicks out an error? Start from the beginning? Thats what happened initially for me while I looked for solutions. Yeah, just letting it go this way exponentially meant waiting three(3) hours and more each time. Thats not very optimal.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Since at the point of error it was possible to see the lines of text corresponding to the filename already or currently being processed, these should be the resume point. Noted this down.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">What do we need to do? Trim the file from the top using sed and pipe out to a secondary file.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">How? </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">sed knows about line numbers, I haven't dug enough to make it do a string search in parallel, yet. The best way so far that worked for me is to use grep. Such that: c<i>at <text_file><text_file>| grep -n <search_string><text_to_search></text_to_search></search_string></text_file></text_file></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> Example: </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> $ cat files2009.txt | grep -n meatloaf.bin</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> 4236321:meatloaf.bin </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">So, we need to cut until line 4,236,321 (or perhaps a few lines before that, your choice). In case you haven't been tracking your percentage done that also tells us that we've just got less than 800K files to go before we're done.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Time to use sed which understands regular expressions. For our puposes we'll be using: <i>sed -e '<start_line>,<stop_line>d' <text_file_input> </text_file_input></stop_line></start_line></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> Example: </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> $ sed -e '1,4236321d' files2009.txt > new2009.txt</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The above means to start trimming at line "1" up to "4236321" from files2009.txt and pipe the rest of the original contents to new2009.txt</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">You can now imagine how to trim blocks of lines from the middle, just cat for the starting line of text and so on.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Easy enough, and there you have it.</div><br />
<div><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-36882728125367436842010-05-13T00:17:00.000-05:002010-11-16T00:45:06.627-06:00Mobile Arena: the Race is "ON" for 4GRecently <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/24/4g.phone/index.html">Sprint</a> announced its first <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G" title="4G" rel="wikipedia">4G</a> phone, the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Evo_4G" title="HTC Evo 4G" rel="wikipedia">HTC Evo 4G</a>, offering during <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.ctia.org" title="CTIA" rel="homepage">CTIA</a> in Vegas (probably in preparation for my birthday?). If you've been watching the telly recently you'll also probably have noticed the <a href="http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_sprint_overdrive">Overdrive</a>, a 4G enabled mobile access point (announcement of which went out the day before CTIA). Kidding aside, this should be considered "first blood" given how the race is on for phone networks to provide the dreamed 4G network coverage as well compatible devices that would take advantage the upgrade provides.<br /><br /><i>Update: HTC Evo 4G phone <a href="http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-brief/49745-htc-evo-4g-coming-june-4-for-199">pricing</a> was just announced hours ago. </i><br /><br />Lets get some basics right, <b>what is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G">4G</a> and how did we get here, and why?</b> Well, 4G means its the fourth-generation of cellular wireless standards with the previous generations having to do with moving from analog (1G) to digital (2G). Next up and everything else so far is increasing speed and reach such as 200 kb/s (3G) and then we get 10 Mb/s speeds and an all-<a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_network" title="IP network" rel="wikipedia">IP based network</a> (4G).<br /><br /><b>What does it mean for businesses and consumers?</b> In a very basic nutshell the results would be increased download (and upload) speeds that will rival that of dial-up POTS connections. Think of it, for those still tethered to wi-fi access points this would mean you could use your phone (or any compatible device) in a gigabit network. Think of all the surfing, ehem, work that could be done?!<br /><br /><b>Will I get better call coverage?</b> I called up <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.att.com" title="AT&T" rel="homepage">AT&T</a> complaining about the network coverage my <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.apple.com/iphone" title="iPhone" rel="homepage">iPhone</a> had inside the house versus outside in the open. <i>The nice lady said a roll-out of more cell-towers in my area was eminent around the fourth quarter of this year with completion next year. The company should be 4G ready by 2012. I should turn-off 3G if I wanted to stop all the dropped-calls to my meetings. Its possible that the 3G connection (and apps that were apparently guzzling, not sipping) data were the culprit and interfering with the connection.</i><br /><br /><b>What voice call improvements does it provide?</b> And so, the relevant part in the above story is that all these "G's" do nothing in terms of call coverage. Without a cell-tower nearby you're out of luck. Geeeeeez!<br /><br /><b>Are my current devices compatible?</b> <i>Road and wi-fi warriors like me are already using components or considered 4G. Users of the Verizon network see it in <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution-Data_Optimized" title="Evolution-Data Optimized" rel="wikipedia">EV-DO</a> (based on the CDMA2000 standard) devices they plug-in to laptops; routers and access points are using <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIMO" title="MIMO" rel="wikipedia">MIMO</a> (based on the 802.1xx standard). You'll have to mishmash these all together to come up with <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Term_Evolution" title="3GPP Long Term Evolution" rel="wikipedia">LTE</a> which is another competing standard.</i> I tried to prolong telliling you the awful truth, which is "no". You will need to get new phones to make full native use of 4G. But, this is not going to happen overnight. It will be a gradual roll-out in parallel where networks will be upgraded yet keeping some of the old stuff alive to be backward compatible. Yes, your current phone is now a "legacy product". So if you're not at least using a smartphone by now, think of it as the silver lining to what savings holding back upgrading now has given you. Think of it, in two years you'll have finally "arrived" :-)<br /><br /><b>Does it have security implications?</b> Hah! You betcha. But it doesn't necessarily have to be something new. In fact the best laid scams and cons are probably as old as Abraham. Think of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone" title="Mobile phone" rel="wikipedia">mobile phones</a> as mini-computers that fit in the palm of your hand. Miniaturization of existing technology is but a natural step in the gadget evolution. This is really mind blowing stuff if you consider that the first electronic computers were the size of baseball fields and filled with vacuum tubes. But, I digress slightly ... its safe to say that all the things you used to see on your desktop will now fit in your mobile device -- including all the existing threats and annoyances like social engineered spam, 419 scams, malware, phishing sites, the whole lot. And we're not even talking about threats that could be posed by the use of mobile phones (and other wireless gadgets) given the pervasive use of radio waves in the various spectrums. Do you remember back in the day when the advice was not to place phones near your headboard? Guess what, who doesn't feel lost in these social networking days without that last Facebook profile check or Twitter message -- all from the convenience of your mobile phone.<br /><br />Looking forward <b>what is, or could be, 5G?</b> For you hold-outs, even for 4G, wondering how soon will this technology be replaced: I'd give it another decade at least from now if not more. Take note that the ultimate communications technology has already been envisioned in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicator_%28Star_Trek%29">Star Trek</a>, all we're doing now is just <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lbz2uBbbnU">trying</a> to make it reality. <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=9a022428-dd30-42f4-b7e0-e6d8b70fb40c" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-53648779569594321602010-05-09T18:00:00.000-05:002010-05-13T00:19:41.218-05:00PS3: Battlefield Bad Company 2Done.Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-22339240860067721422010-04-29T10:18:00.000-05:002010-04-29T10:20:36.504-05:00Temporary Post<span class="status action"><b>YEGVCZTJ7TW5</b></span>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-17313149347564699162010-04-23T01:02:00.000-05:002010-04-23T01:08:52.473-05:00Ubuntu Tricks: Use Static DNS with DHCPThis re-post from <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3320083&postcount=2">noob12 </a>works perfect.<br /><br />Edit <strong><em>/etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf</em></strong><br /><br />Add or replace a line<br /><em>prepend domain-name-servers your.name.server.ipaddr;</em><br /><br />where your.name.server.ipaddr is replaced by your desired name server. You can list multiple servers in sequence by using a comma-separated list. <strong>Don't forget the semi-colon at the end of the line. </strong><br /><br />This tells dhclient to prepend these servers to whatever list it gets from the DHCP service when writing the /etc/resolv.conf. You'll see them (listed before the others) in the <strong><em>/etc/resolv.conf</em></strong> after DHCP completes. Normal resolution semantics then apply to this list, namely these servers will be used first; if they fail to respond, the client will proceed to following ones, but subsequent servers are not used if any returns an actual result, even if it is NXDOMAIN (i.e. not found).<br /><br />You can entirely supersede the servers provided by the DHCP service using<br /><em>supersede domain-name-servers your.name.server.ipaddr;</em>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-85631011381459319342010-04-23T00:47:00.000-05:002010-04-23T01:09:29.253-05:00Ubuntu Tricks: Extract Attachments from GmailThis is a repost from <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5953038&postcount=6">lovinglinux</a>.<br /><br />After a lot of research I finally figure out a simple way of doing this using IMAP and a shell script.<br /><br />1. Install offlineimap and mpack<br /><em><em>sudo apt-get install offlineimap mpack</em><br /></em><em></em><br />2. Create a folder <em>~/mail</em> for storing the Gmail messages<br /><br />3. Create a text file and save it as <em>~/.offlineimaprc</em><br /><br />This is the configuration file for <strong>offlineimap </strong>which will sync your Gmail with local maildir files, using IMAP. Add the following code to it:<br /><br /><em>[general]<br />accounts = GMail</em><br /><em><br />ui = Noninteractive.Basic</em><br /><br /><em>[Account GMail]<br />localrepository = GMailLocalMaildirRepository<br />remoterepository = GMailServerRepository</em><br /><br /><em>[Repository GMailLocalMaildirRepository]<br />type = Maildir<br />localfolders = ~/mail/</em><br /><br />[Repository GMailServerRepository]<br />type = IMAP<br />remotehost = imap.gmail.com<br />remoteuser = <span style="color:#ff0000;">yourgmailaccount</span>@gmail.com<br />remotepass = <span style="color:#ff0000;">yourgmailpassword </span><br />ssl = yes<br /><br />Then run the following command on a terminal:<br /><br /><em>offlineimap && munpack /home/<span style="color:#ff0000;">yourusername</span>/mail/<span style="color:#ff0000;">LABEL</span>/new/*</em><br /><br />The <strong>offlineimap</strong> command will sync Gmail with local files and <strong>munpack</strong> will extract any new messages and attachments in the "LABEL" folder, where each folder (label) correspond to Gmail labels.Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-41809685578049711472010-04-08T12:22:00.000-05:002010-11-16T00:54:15.328-06:00WHS: Network DisabledAlright, its my fault. In the process of tweaking for <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo_frame" title="Jumbo frame" rel="wikipedia">Jumbo Frame</a> support I mistakenly right-clicked and chose the first option "Disable" instead of the second option "Status" (which would have taken me to the network configuration page) on the Network Connection icon. Dang!<br /><br />This is obviously a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_system" title="Headless system" rel="wikipedia">headless machine</a> and I am currently lost. Thankfully its not the first time something like this ever happened and tips from <a href="http://www.homeserverland.com/forums/f/110/t/344.aspx">HomeServerLand</a> gave me a clue.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">If you have a headless device like the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_MediaSmart_Server" title="HP MediaSmart Server" rel="wikipedia">HP MediaSmart Server</a> you can: </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">1. Connect an <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_%28computing%29" title="Keyboard (computing)" rel="wikipedia">USB keyboard</a> and wait about 30 seconds. </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">2. Next press <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control-Alt-Delete" title="Control-Alt-Delete" rel="wikipedia">CTRL + ALT + DELETE</a> and then enter your <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver/" title="Windows Home Server" rel="homepage">WHS</a> Administrator password and hit the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enter_key" title="Enter key" rel="wikipedia">ENTER key</a>.<br />3. Then enter "windows + R", (where windows is the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_key" title="Windows key" rel="wikipedia">windows key</a> on your keyboard) this will open the run dialog and then enter "ncpa.cpl" (without the quotes) this opens up network connections dialog.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">4. Press the DOWN <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_keys" title="Arrow keys" rel="wikipedia">ARROW key</a> (only once) and <strong>[Jamz: press the RIGHT ARROW key once]</strong> then press ENTER enter which will enable the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_interface_controller" title="Network interface controller" rel="wikipedia">NIC</a> card, </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">5. If you have multiple NIC adapters you can toggle using the right and left keys <strong>[Jamz: or up and down keys]</strong> and YES you have to do it blind so make sure every keystroke counts.</span></em><br /><br />I'm doing my darnest to get this working right now with fingers crossed.<br /><br />[Edit: 10:44am] It worked! Hooaah! <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=361d3de9-6b53-4dfa-94ed-2157424f9886" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-34978301635978396222010-03-12T11:12:00.000-06:002010-11-16T12:17:24.416-06:00Archos 5 Internet Tablet : Google MarketplaceAs previously mentioned [<a href="http://areyousecure.blogspot.com/2010/02/ipevo-so-20-skype-and-conferencing.html">here</a>], I returned the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.ipevo.com/" title="IPEVO" rel="homepage">IPEVO</a> S0-20 to Fry's yesterday after a brief test. Yes, it works as a nice <a class="zem_slink" href="http://skype.com/" title="Skype" rel="homepage">Skype</a> <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Phone" title="IP Phone" rel="wikipedia">wi-fi phone</a> but has some signal degradation issues due to being just 802.11 b/g. Thats what started my look for a device that is 802.11 N.<div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx1uNtZ4vT4_msPb2A5zfOdxZIrek5hGoFmetStF9YHxWTyqbw0egXDqJ2P7_EEdjIVkM7vbZsTzl9Y_Zz91N7KJDvMVMFGtH0ygt3lZLlAo_2flgZ2qAColb3eAHuqhFYgbWgIg/s1600/archos.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 114px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx1uNtZ4vT4_msPb2A5zfOdxZIrek5hGoFmetStF9YHxWTyqbw0egXDqJ2P7_EEdjIVkM7vbZsTzl9Y_Zz91N7KJDvMVMFGtH0ygt3lZLlAo_2flgZ2qAColb3eAHuqhFYgbWgIg/s200/archos.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5540209461223196706" border="0" /></a>Enter the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.archos.com/" title="Archos" rel="homepage">Archos</a> 5 <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Tablet" title="Internet Tablet" rel="wikipedia">Internet Tablet</a> with Android. </div><div><br /></div><div>I got this from <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.radioshack.com/" title="RadioShack" rel="homepage">RadioShack</a> as they were the lowest and quickest available selling at $249. I was supposed to stress test this first thing during my Thursday meeting only to realize that I'd missed the meeting start (time zone differences), gadget had very minimal charge, Archos needed a firmware update, gadget did not have <a class="zem_slink" href="http://code.google.com/android/" title="Android" rel="homepage">Google Android</a> Marketplace nor was there a Skype client available yet.</div><div><br /></div><div>What ......?!!!</div><div><br /></div><div>So first thing to do is enable <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home" title="Google Apps Marketplace" rel="homepage">Google Marketplace</a>. Thankfully Archos allows such discussions to live and there's a big enough community at ArchosFans you don't want to piss-off. Here's the latest <a href="http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=29833">guide</a> that works on FW 1.7.777 (which is what my gadget updated to as soon as I put it on the home network).</div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks to <i>m4rk3</i>t. Reposting the instructions below.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;font-family:'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;" >All you need to do is to:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;font-family:'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;" >-download the file: <a class="postlink" href="http://rapidshare.com/files/338777897/Market4Archos.apk" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(116, 116, 116); text-decoration: underline;">http://rapidshare.com/files/338777897/Market4Archos.apk</a><br />- put Market4Archos.apk file on your archos disk<br />- install it by selecting this file using the device file browser<br />- run the installed package and follow the installation steps</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-family:'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;font-size:12px;" ><br /></span></span></div><div>Having done all that you'll find Market added to your apps with several other <a class="zem_slink" href="http://google.com/" title="Google" rel="homepage">Google</a> items installed. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm still searching for that Skype client as I refuse (until the next 29 days) to give up hope and return. It just might get replaced with something like an <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.ooma.com/" title="Ooma" rel="homepage">Ooma Telo</a>. :-)</div><div><br /></div> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=f2b2b117-87f2-4b0c-a904-79f51f76d70d" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-77739913323091316962010-03-12T11:04:00.000-06:002010-11-16T00:54:26.511-06:00WHS: Reference Account Locked Out?Once in a while when I mistakenly log-on to the server shares I get the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_message" title="Error message" rel="wikipedia">error message</a>:<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">"The referenced account is currently locked and may not be logged on to."</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thats not too bad and easy enough to fix unless you have not clue how to <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol" title="Remote Desktop Protocol" rel="wikipedia">RDP</a> into your <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver/" title="Windows Home Server" rel="homepage">WHS</a>. There are various help suggestions across this blog and elsewhere if the latter is a secondary issue. :-)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Moving along.... Basically what happened is <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS" title="Windows" rel="homepage">Windows</a> has locked you out for security purposes. So all you have to do is <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_administration" title="Remote administration" rel="wikipedia">remote log-in</a> (or physically if you can) into the server and reset the "Account is Locked Out" <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_button" title="Radio button" rel="wikipedia">radio button</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">You'll find that particular option by navigating:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>My Computer --> Manager --> Local Users and Groups --> Users --> (<a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Login" title="Login" rel="wikipedia">login</a> account) --> Properties --> (uncheck) Account is Locked Out</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=c2ac8326-65f0-41d4-b9c6-f76aaa238dba" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-81115034577031830182010-02-16T12:13:00.000-06:002010-11-17T22:39:26.281-06:00IPEVO SO-20: Skype and Conferencing<a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2DttkUeU1Mo8E0ND2eXGti3nfRTQRfZo-oMiRnT8NbLjGNNvEMSWKmmMw08j6dck6q2aU7h63e0k97IiEZtzFedHxwGCfMCz1HlfsxXdPWyHuYpB8WiJbbE80TDemv5VCQlx3Cg/s1600/ipevo.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 93px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2DttkUeU1Mo8E0ND2eXGti3nfRTQRfZo-oMiRnT8NbLjGNNvEMSWKmmMw08j6dck6q2aU7h63e0k97IiEZtzFedHxwGCfMCz1HlfsxXdPWyHuYpB8WiJbbE80TDemv5VCQlx3Cg/s200/ipevo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5540212568287031346" border="0" /></a>I returned the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.ipevo.com/" title="IPEVO" rel="homepage">IPEVO</a> S0-20 to Fry's yesterday after a brief test. Yes, it works as a nice <a class="zem_slink" href="http://skype.com/" title="Skype" rel="homepage">Skype</a> wi-fi phone but has some signal degradation issues due to being just 802.11 b/g. That is what started my look for a device that is <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009" title="IEEE 802.11n-2009" rel="wikipedia">802.11 N</a> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=d90152fa-3557-4038-9bc8-a7469348d3de" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-12688662593088207092010-01-20T13:48:00.000-06:002010-01-26T14:06:04.133-06:00pfSense: Squid Proxy and Error 504Somehow through tweaking pfSense and configuring the Squid package the cache files started to fill. At first I was particularly confused if Captive portal was still on as every site I was trying to get to required a login -- failing to do so kicked me out with an Error 504. The Squid service also refused to be started.<br /><br />At this point I proceeded to re-install Squid and noticed that even without it the continuous login request persisted. By some luck I started to play around with other pfSense options and checked the disk space -- BAM! Thats where it dawned on me that my Squid cache had absolutely filled my 80GB hard drive and there were but a few KB of space free?!<br /><br />Now that I knew the most probably reason, that launched a few searches on how to properly clear or compact the cache. pfSenseDocs has a <a href="http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Squid_Package_Tuning#Compact_swap.state">guide</a>. Using the <span style="font-style: italic;">Command</span> option under <span style="font-style: italic;">Diagnostics</span> didn't seem to help as the disk space didn't change. On initial setup of Squid, I had to twiddle with a few settings via terminal access on SSH and this is where I remembered that under <span style="font-style: italic;">System -> Advanced</span> that <span style="font-style: italic;">Secure Shell</span> was on -- and that is what I did.<br /><br />1. SSH into pfSense will drop you into the same menu you'd see if you had a monitor connected. Choosing <span style="font-style: italic;">option 8</span> gives you a shell.<br />2. From there I shut down the Squid service and proceeded to delete everything under <span style="font-style: italic;">/var/squid/cache</span><br />3. Once space had been free'd, initiate<span style="font-style: italic;"> squid -z</span> to recreate the required directories.<br />4. Reboot pfSense and,<br />5. you can now run the Squid service<br /><br />Problem solved! Now to keep watch on disk space and tweak how much cache info is kept.Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-41738062785277667792010-01-18T17:12:00.000-06:002010-01-18T18:31:00.432-06:00Apple MacBook Pro: Maximum Memory Upgrade?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy2g0y5MgSHCq1xJJN7N9ZtFaEncL4mV76abSrnizWG0UvU7QnZu_Eqb31PFQEOBIKc4F7lR0v5soe7mQ_3z-EUAs84GQCrSJE_1XibDfzf16LGd6ggmrdM5eggotEt4kxjijBnA/s1600-h/Mem1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 280px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy2g0y5MgSHCq1xJJN7N9ZtFaEncL4mV76abSrnizWG0UvU7QnZu_Eqb31PFQEOBIKc4F7lR0v5soe7mQ_3z-EUAs84GQCrSJE_1XibDfzf16LGd6ggmrdM5eggotEt4kxjijBnA/s320/Mem1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428233225993239506" border="0" /></a>So its been several months and we're still waiting for some of our favorite applications to be Snow Leopard compatible.<br /><br />There may be a whole lot of improvements in this new OS including the claim of better memory footprint or management but really the downside in my current experience is that other applications need more memory.<br /><br />I've been struggling mightily now to get Outlook Entourage, Firefox, Flock, Safari, VMWare and Parallels to co-exist without having to hang my systems.<br /><br />That is why I finally decided to bite the bullet and make my first hardware upgrade in 2010. And since I don't believe in doing half-<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicZ8PIkkqAH6f_u_oj0ViN1lIG2CY1EKXyONq0RfGzcz8NQf7o1RsaXSozBMGQGr3IaTALpy3JuCOZZXFPXBx48cXbTWVKcu0iYe3DTD6DkYJHk15JU_7Vi5-CZgiYBo8qIEVQQA/s1600-h/Mem2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicZ8PIkkqAH6f_u_oj0ViN1lIG2CY1EKXyONq0RfGzcz8NQf7o1RsaXSozBMGQGr3IaTALpy3JuCOZZXFPXBx48cXbTWVKcu0iYe3DTD6DkYJHk15JU_7Vi5-CZgiYBo8qIEVQQA/s320/Mem2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428239000190818306" border="0" /></a>baked improvements (do it all or don't do it at all!) it was only natural for me to do some digging to find how far to go. I have a late-2008 non-unibody MacBook Pro 17" which according to OWC (my first choice for memory know-how on the Mac) my machine can actually take 6GB instead of the recommended 4GB according to Apple.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWIt5tWPZWUIxnFqriWvl2SuZi3UZw3htqHtOAzbNkx005IVs_dXMoKD8NX85O2z9eLF1qmjZ9gWtX0S_BRsfyUO670lOD-Qv5slE7AiVrcyDr9UFpWA106BMrUgpYwwQhh5tWdA/s1600-h/Mem3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 280px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWIt5tWPZWUIxnFqriWvl2SuZi3UZw3htqHtOAzbNkx005IVs_dXMoKD8NX85O2z9eLF1qmjZ9gWtX0S_BRsfyUO670lOD-Qv5slE7AiVrcyDr9UFpWA106BMrUgpYwwQhh5tWdA/s320/Mem3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428238077867074594" border="0" /></a>Do we go NewEgg, Amazon, eBay, BestBuy, Fry's, WalMart or Apple? Having had success with the G.Skill brand on the HP MediaServer I chose to stick with it.<br /><br />Did it work? Proof images attached.<br /><br />Speed improvement? YES!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBq7_r6EqdkDzft08gaD1tGMYEQVuwgKQHo0e-01L3ubuj_NUhQK9LZ3a9NfXKlmLZC0lf77j7Z_7e97flHQxAB8TnIQhTcy4AtBLHSrIQ0x5QQ5mZAdgxhcSpJKHTjedd0zUFUA/s1600-h/Mem4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBq7_r6EqdkDzft08gaD1tGMYEQVuwgKQHo0e-01L3ubuj_NUhQK9LZ3a9NfXKlmLZC0lf77j7Z_7e97flHQxAB8TnIQhTcy4AtBLHSrIQ0x5QQ5mZAdgxhcSpJKHTjedd0zUFUA/s320/Mem4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428239405644061794" border="0" /></a>Happy? Not yet, all my apps as mentioned aren't yet fully ported. But this will do pig, this will do. (from <span style="font-style: italic;">Babe</span>)<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlewRtlf1nWCS6joBRg5JhSvrkNGwRic1nxWrE_wNK1QNmSzcdIPlmEcfHP4_SeL40efALYQPK-N78mrziFLjx_p99g067FTboxQkfC7RVh2HDAvF9AQljEWiyRh1_Xuy6fe8_1Q/s1600-h/Mem5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 280px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlewRtlf1nWCS6joBRg5JhSvrkNGwRic1nxWrE_wNK1QNmSzcdIPlmEcfHP4_SeL40efALYQPK-N78mrziFLjx_p99g067FTboxQkfC7RVh2HDAvF9AQljEWiyRh1_Xuy6fe8_1Q/s320/Mem5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428240475052520370" border="0" /></a>Now that I've got a spare 2pcs. of 1GB, what to do with them? Hmm ... I know, upgrade the wife's MacBook and make her happy.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkBWy1GszWGng4PxqlCHg7SG8HoHmP3AFptBpfkZuQY1InGo_uy6rVtflsKtERtwtUtJXlfKGC6jxArJ6b9B7XhZskMProR3r_rf6kykGgS3necH8w2ETAMxI5igjrUFujTvA0og/s1600-h/Mem6.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkBWy1GszWGng4PxqlCHg7SG8HoHmP3AFptBpfkZuQY1InGo_uy6rVtflsKtERtwtUtJXlfKGC6jxArJ6b9B7XhZskMProR3r_rf6kykGgS3necH8w2ETAMxI5igjrUFujTvA0og/s320/Mem6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428240896096133650" border="0" /></a>Make myself extra happy by maxing out her RAM as well.Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-55764941680227764112010-01-13T18:31:00.000-06:002010-01-18T18:38:56.669-06:00AppleCare: Why Care?This office MacBook Pro was purchased in the 2nd-half of 2008 and with it the default AppleCare. Forgetting that the default was some 90-days only the warranty had lapsed as of last August (around the time of my Snow Leopard upgrade!). This I realized only recently and scrambled to get it re-instated.<br /><br />I don't have to tell y'all that its worth having it and my call to AppleCare confirmed my belief that Apple service is simply awesome. They were able to get my protection back in a matter of minutes and didn't give me any hassle (it does help of course that I keep all my receipts and invoices for record).<br /><br />To answer the question, "Can my out-of-warranty Apple product be re-instated for AppleCare?" is a definite YES. But (and this is important!) you need to make sure that you have the original invoice. It doesn't matter that your MacBook may have been gifted or purchased 2nd-hand, if you got it then the nice people at Apple will let you have it.<br /><br />Good job Apple!Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23281821.post-23984456148602679122009-12-27T18:11:00.000-06:002009-12-27T18:22:05.235-06:00pfSense: Speed-up Transparent Squid ProxyIts been a few days that I did some tweaking on Squid Proxy and it appears stable! This all came about as I was trying to speed-up data fetching and finding that for some reason the cache was just too slow for actual use. I wondered if it was at all worth it (obviously slow proxy means unhappy users ... especially if its your home users).<br /><br />In gratitude to the discussion I found in the forum, its <a href="http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,8620.msg59306.html#msg59306">reposted</a> and message re-arranged here in summary below:<br /><br />Question:<br />Why squid is so slow?<br /><br />Answer:<br />The default configuration of pfSense is a router not as a server, that is why <span style="font-style: italic;">kern.ipc.nmbclusters="0"</span>. Simply remove this line and Squid will be just fine.<br /><br />Add the lines below to the /boot/loader.conf<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">kern.ipc.nmbclusters=32768</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">kern.maxfiles=65536</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">kern.maxfilesperproc=32768</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">net.inet.ip.portrange.last=65535</span><br /><br />Alternatively, just delete it and replace with:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">autoboot_delay="1"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">#kern.ipc.nmbclusters="0"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">hint.apic.0.disabled=1</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">kern.hz=100</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">#for squid</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">kern.ipc.nmbclusters="32768"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">kern.maxfiles="65536"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">kern.maxfilesperproc="32768"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">net.inet.ip.portrange.last="65535"</span>Jamzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11824327917025448201noreply@blogger.com4