Category Archives: Log

OwnCloud

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At work I’ve been thinking about cloud sync services, something like Dropbox without actually using Dropbox, because it’s non-kosher around these parts. I thought about OwnCloud so I went investigating.

OwnCloud is neat, it’s a PHP script that will set itself up on a web host, and then provide you with a web interface like Dropbox and access to clients like Dropbox which mirror the function of Dropbox completely. This was a possible route to satisfy our legal people and maybe leverage cloud sync at work. As it turns out, it didn’t work. OwnCloud is a lost cause. I installed it on my iPage host and got it to work all up until I tried to connect the Mac desktop client to it. It got files perfectly well, but when I put a file in the owncloud folder to be synced back up to my host it all fell apart. The error was “errno 22” and ended up being shown to me as “Bad Request” – so that was a no-go. Then I thought maybe I could install OwnCloud on my Mac Pro server at work, keep it in house maybe. That also was a failure, the web side was fine, but the client just couldn’t connect no matter what I tried.

So I’m going to abandon the pursuit of OwnCloud. I’ve tried it and found that it just won’t work on what I’ve got. It was something that could have possibly worked and been great, but it’s got too many moving parts and it was a total failure when you tried to get all the parts to spin up and run. Oh well, at least now I know I can abandon OwnCloud and move forward.

iOS 7 and iMessage

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After I upgraded to iOS 7 on my iPhone 5 I ran into a really annoying problem. Whenever I would send iMessage messages to friends and family the message would look like it’s sending and then the progress bar along the top would stop about 1/4 inch from the end and just stay there for hours. Never sending the message. I tried the Kung-Fu Grip to only partial avail. The solution is to reset the network settings on the iPhone:

Tap Settings
Tap General
Tap Reset
Tap Reset Network Settings

Once the phone resets, and you reset your Wifi and turn on all the cellular bits, like voice and data roaming (at least for me) then after that, everything works as it should.

If this helps you, please let me know. 🙂

Encrypt Everything

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Lavabit and Silent Circle have given up when it comes to providing encrypted email communications. Mega plans on providing something to cover the gap and in general the only real way to deal with privacy-in-email is end-to-end encryption. There was talk that at some point email might give way to writing letters and using the US Postal Service but there as well you’ve got Postmasters writing commands taped to mail about how everything has to be photocopied and stored – so even the US Postal Service is full of spies, the only thing the US Postal Service can be trusted to carry is junk mail.

What is the answer? Pretty Good Privacy. PGP, or rather, the non-Symantec version of it which is the GNU one, the GPG. If you really want to keep what you write private when you send it to someone else, the only way to do that is for everyone to have GPG installed on their email system so you can write email using their public key, which converts your email to cyphertext, secure from even the NSA’s prying eyes, and requires your recipient to unlock the message using their secret key, which they have.

I’ve been playing with PGP and GPG now for a very long time and I decided I would at least make a route available if anyone wanted to contact me with privacy intact – my public keys are on my blog, they are also on all the keyservers including the one hosted and run by MIT and the GPG Keyserver as well. To send me a private message via email all you need to do is get GPG, set it up, create your secret and public key, get my public key, use it to write me an email and only I’ll be able to read it. The NSA will just flag the encrypted contents for later analysis and thanks to AES–256, they’ll be hard pressed to get to the plaintext in your message.

That’s the way around all of this. GPG for everything. GPG public keys for email, for chat, for VPN, for files, and HTTP-in-GPG. Everything pumped through GPG. Since the government won’t stop spying on us, it’s our duty as citizens to secure our own effects against illegal search and siezure, and technology exists to do so.

Encrypt everything.

Grayed Folders in Macintosh OSX

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While copying files to an external hard drive with a bum cable using my Mac’s Finder to move the files I ended up with an accidentally half-copied folder that was grayed out and I couldn’t open it at all. I could go into Terminal and access it that way, but Finder was a dead duck. Even after I properly unmounted and remounted the drive it didn’t work. I putzed about for a while searching for a solution and the general answer most people have is to use the ‘cat’ command to copy the files elsewhere and just be done with it. This didn’t sit well with me, there should be a way to correct the situation without having to duplicate the folder or copy the files or do anything laborious like that – and it turns out there is just that.

The folder had a creation time of some date in 1984. Probably the first possible date for OSX knowing Apple. They initiated the folder but since the move was interrupted the later adjustment never got made. This is a bug, Apple. Anyways, how to correct it? Some people seemed to think that the ‘touch’ command could possibly do the trick, but touch can’t really get to all the dates that come with files in the HFS file system. This folder, for examples sake I’ll just call it “folder” had displayed this 1984 date as it’s creation date. The touch command was successful in mangling all the other dates, except for the specific one I was after. I used the ‘stat’ command on the folder and discovered that the st_birthtime of the folder was 1984. How in the hell do you change that date?

I found out that you need another utility to do it properly. You need to download the Command Line Tools for XCode, which is the development platform for the OSX Operating System. It’s free and easy to install. Once you do that, you will get a new command to use in the terminal called SetFile. So here’s how to fix this problem if you run into it: SetFile -d [todays date][file or folder] and press enter. So for my file, it would be SetFile -d 08/17/2013 folder/ and press Enter. Voila! Folder is real and not-grayed and Finder thinks it’s just peachy keen.

So for anyone with grayed out folders, check your dates. Use the stat command, download the XCode CLI tools and use SetFile to rescue your folder or file from inaccessible hell.

Private Dancer

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Several days ago, while pondering an issue we’ve had at work an epiphany struck me. The problem we ran into was that our local network is a box of question marks. We don’t really know how it’s assembled or really what the rules are for using it, we just plug cables into wall jacks and if things work, they work. Until they don’t.

Enter NetInstall and NetRestore. These are the two imaging technologies for Macintosh and I’ve assigned my coworker to explore and develop images. Frankly he self-started it and I encouraged his exploration. We tried it first and both actions use a lot of bandwidth on the network and we eventually ran into a lot of problems. Not only did the machine we were working on take forever but it bogged down the server and caused huge headaches for everyone. We came to the conclusion that our local network just isn’t designed to carry any payload of appreciable size. It’s not really a complaint, but more of a characterization. It’s kind of fragile and wimpy.

So, was there a way we could still use ethernet technology without having to depend on our “provided” fragile and weak network? I sat in my chair pondering all of it, knocking some options out of the park instantly because of the machines we have. We can’t really depend on IP-over-Firewire as we have plain-jane MacBooks in the mix, they don’t have FireWire ports, just ethernet ones. As I looked across the way at all the server technology I had in the rack it struck me, each one, including the lowly Drobo had two Ethernet ports. Huh. Two. Only one was really being used to connect each machine to the network so each one had an available secondary port available. I then started to root around in my junk bin and found an old unused Netgear ethernet switch, five ports model, no fuss, no muss. I then grabbed a gaggle of short ethernet cables and started hooking all my servers and such to this little spare switch. Everything worked out magnificently well. In each server I configured these ports to conform to 192.168.0.* and assigned manual IP addresses for each of them. Then I found a unused Apple Express Wifi Access Point, plugged it in, set it for bridge mode and now I can extend this custom network into Wifi using 802.11N which is nice and fast. Just like that, cake and eat it too! What’s great about this setup is that my coworker and I can move large batches of data all over between these machines without having to worry about clogging up the network for all the other users who are trying to use these servers for their real work. Their files are small and their use sporadic, our use is large and nearly (sometimes) constant. The parts are just a few more blinking lights in the rack and just a little bit more spaghetti wiring hither and yon, but I don’t care, it works and it was free with the parts I already had on hand. The only part of all of this that upsets me is that I didn’t think to do it sooner. I suppose I should take some solace that it’s better late than never. Having this private access to all the systems makes both of our lives much better. We don’t have to complain to central networking anymore because we’ve abandoned their fragile wimpy thing for a far better solution in-house, and because it’s unroutable, we didn’t break one single rule, mind we don’t know what the rules are, but still. 🙂

It’s a good Friday.

Cosmetics

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I was browsing through my Feedly app this morning looking at all the feeds I am tracking with the site and I ran across a site which displayed what it would look like if a woman applied 365 days worth of makeup in one day. It was gruesome. She looked, at the end, as if her face was melting. It was downright ghastly.

Which got me thinking about cosmetics. All the things that women do to make themselves “look beautiful” and that of course started me thinking about a chain of thoughts all linked one to another and the further I went the more silly it got. Now, none of this is actually honestly an argument, but it is a inside look as to one way I carry on with coming up with these ideas.

There is a constellation of things that some women do to themselves in order to make themselves look beautiful. Now I would posit that this is a fallacy right from the get go, why can’t a person who is hygenic and unadorned not be considered honestly beautiful? Eh. So let’s carry on with all the playing blocks to this chain of thought. Women adorn themselves with various bits and pieces. High heels, shoulder pads, brightly (sometimes colored) skin applications to the face, lipstick, eye shadow, eyebrow shadow, lip gloss, mascara, and of course, all the shaving. Shave the arms, the legs, the face. Pluck pluck pluck, wax wax wax.

What have women done? They have changed their shape and their form, at least when it comes to high heels and shoulder pads they have elected to become taller and more masculine, especially with the shoulder pads. The accidental overloading of shoulder pads is where the real comedy gold lies, women can sometimes accidentally have too much shoulder and look foolish because they stop looking like women and more like… linebackers.

Oh god, is this where it’s going? Bright colors, ruddy cheeks, colorful lips, tall, pronounced shoulders, it really argubly starts to feel like a relatively unfocused gender warp. Women are attempting to become beautiful by emulating men? Does the application of cosmetics and all the other bullshit that men expect women to go through masculinize them? When you get dressed up, are you on your way to becoming a drag king?

But then there is all that shaving. Denial of body hair. Which creates a very specific condition of masculinized pre-pubescent adrogyny. Male-boy-male. That’s really troubling to think about. At the end, could it be that the entire cosmetic industry, the entire cultural structure that women have been sold, about how they should look, be thin, be hairless, be tall, have pronounced shoulders, look aggressive, look excited… where do you go when you play all this out? Where do you end up?

Do you end up with straight men fetishizing women through the lens of unfocused pedophilic homosexuality? You turn your women into lithe young men who just ran 5 miles. The sheen of sweat (shiny), the red lips, the shoulders, the hairlessness, the ruddy cheeks, the tallness…

Boys who do Girls like their Boys… Ahem.

Not that it actually is this way, but what if it was?

Bell’s Eccentric Cafe, or Nooooope.

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Ever since I arrived in Kalamazoo all those years ago I’ve always noticed this blight on East Kalamazoo Ave as you approach the downtown region. Oh God No, what the hell is that?!? Turns out it’s Bell’s Brewery. It looks like an abandoned industrial ruin, fences, the hint of brewing tanks behind filthy windows, serviced by a incredibly tiny parking lot which is marked for company use only. It’s strange because there is a big yellow sign advertising things that sound like musical acts. So there has to be an inside, obviously. It’s the dead last place I ever wanted to go mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to approach it. The outside looks awful, it’s filthy, barbed wire fences, no parking at all, and East Kalamazoo is a one way, so if you miss it, well, screw you, you’re shit out of luck.

Years went by, I assumed that there was something there, but seeing Bell’s from the outside I always figured it was a dive. A nasty wretched filthy dive. Then I started hearing about how Bell’s is supposed to be this incredible world-renowned microbrewery. Family members ask about it, where I am in relationship to Comstock, MI. It’s, uh, I suppose a town, it’s just down the street. I assume it’s a town at least. I’ve been there a few times, it strikes me as being sparser than Cortland, New York and that’s embarrassingly sparse. Oh look, they have an intersection, yay.

Then out of curiosity I bought a six pack of Two Hearted Ale thinking it was rated very highly, so why not give it a shot? Oh my god. It was the first time I hate-drank a six pack. I couldn’t endure the notion that I had wasted money on that swill (oh, and god, was it awful, unpleasant is a huge understatement) and so I put Bell’s, and all it’s delightful whatever in the list of “Maybe someday, if I find the Wardrobe to Narnia…” and it became just another blighted eyesore that contributes to the general dilapidation that is downtown Kalamazoo. It needs a good solid tornado to improve.

So, years go by and I don’t think of Bell’s at all. Every once in a while people mention meeting people at Bell’s and I always ask “Does it have an inside? I mean, something you can go into?” and they look at me funny and assume that I’m being intentionally odd. No people! I don’t think it HAS an inside! Not for people at least! And I let it lapse. Wondering whats beyond the Wardrobe to Narnia occurs to me every time I pass it heading to work on East Kalamazoo.

Anyways, between a lot of not-thinking-about-Bells and now I joined a cycling group that heads out all over the northeast part of Kalamazoo every Tuesday. A nice bunch of people, I don’t know any of them at all, but nice enough. I get my exercise in, I get a path to follow, and I get people to bike with, at least in general. After the biking they customarily go to Bell’s for beer. Cue the double-take. People who have… wait for it… **been inside**. It’s like spotting Mr. Tumnas for the first time and expecting to hear a bleat and the clickety-clack of little hooves. So today we were headed up to Gull Lake, sort of, and then back. I got home, fed my cats and then got my license and my bank card and headed out. I asked Google Maps to get me to Bell’s, thinking that it might lead me to the Wardrobe (baaah), no, not really. I ended up standing in a lot too tiny for my big SUV, festooned with industrial debris, you know, the “No way this is habitable for human beings” itty-bitty parking lot. Not for customers. I seriously doubted, even at this point, that there were customers at all. I mean, Narnia folks, Baaaah. So I turned down the next street and figured that the Wardrobe might be on the other side. But there is nothing on the other side but ugly train tracks, mostly a nasty railyard which serves the most annoying feature of Kalamazoo. A train runs through it. Annoyingly so, and poorly too. Amtrak. Yay for sitting in piss, but I digress. There is nothing back there but rotten out abandoned warehouses, potholes, the saddest field of brickwork that used to be the street, it pokes through sadly every once in a while, when the rotten out asphalt just can’t hack the punishment. That’s it! It’s just rail controls, street crossing barricades, brownfield, debris, urban decay… oh my fucking god, it’s the god damn Wardrobe to Narnia! There it is. It’s a parking lot, bigger than you think, but not marked, so maybe you’re going to be towed, maybe you aren’t. Is it for employees? Are there employees? This whole time I seriously doubted this was a real place. I honestly figured Bell’s had grown softheaded and thought that maybe the train-that-doesn’t-run-through-here-anymore may pick up kegs of their beer. Sort of like a really depressing alcoholic Polar Express. If you look very carefully, and you walk around the building you see the entrance and, well, there I stood. 15 years of living in this wretched place and I finally found the fucking entrance to a place I thought was a local urban legend. Bell’s Eccentric Cafe. Oh, hello Mr. Tumnas. Nice seeing you! Baaaah!

I wasn’t dressed for this place. I was hot and sweaty and I looked kind of disheveled. I had talked myself into going even though I don’t really have the money to spend and the gasoline I burned up getting there was a very tiny black cloud hanging over my head. The people pouring out were brightly dressed, tourists, hipster trash, and downtown people. Even walking up I felt awkward. Then I entered. There was a gentleman sitting by the entrance and he looked at me and I glanced at him. I thought it was strange that he was just sitting there, and since I didn’t think anything about it, I just walked right past him. Turns out, maybe, he was a door something or other checking patrons licenses, at least that’s the gist I got when I turned around on my way out. He didn’t seem to be important, just kind of “this guy by the door”. Honestly the thought was that maybe he was using his phone, or something else, but that I should have approached him wasn’t even anywhere in my head.

Then it hit me as I looked around. It was several things all at once, actually. There was this overwhelming social anxiety – I knew absolutely nobody at all. I didn’t know the shape of the interior, and I walked past what appeared to be a beer hall and then further down to a door that didn’t appear to be for customers, and on my way back, I happened to notice a beer garden patio on the other side. I peered through the window and saw elderly people and strangers. Giant swaths of strangers, strange faces… then I felt an overwhelming urge to escape. I had to go. I didn’t have the money, I didn’t know if the biking group that I was supposedly going to join were actually there, and even if I did, I only know the owner of the establishment and only just first names. I was weighing everything and I felt like I really didn’t belong there. I was woefully under-dressed, I was running a risk of drinking beer on a empty stomach which would have really complicated my trip back home, plus the notion that I wasn’t going to really get out of there without spending $30 to $50 for beer I don’t really care for and people I don’t know in a building that really might have been Narnia. Baaaah!

I’m not a bar person. I really don’t like big group things surrounded by strangers, and I only put up with those situations because I don’t want to be that guy that clogs up the works for everyone else when they want to have fun – but it’s never really fun for me. It’s expensive. It’s nasty. It’s dirty. It’s smelly. Oh god, I’d rather just flee. And so I did. I fled from Bell’s. I didn’t have the heart to even make eye contact with the guy at the front door. Maybe he was a bouncer, maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was just sitting there – who the hell knows? Exit was the only thing I wanted and I walked back to my car, cursing the burnt fuel to get me to this boondoggle of an experience and thankful that I decided against “making the best of it” and staying. It would have been really awkward. Throw alcohol on top of awkward and I might as well be an albatross. Squawk!

So, I’ve been to Bell’s, er, Narnia. Yes, it’s probably a nice place. I’m sure it’s wonderful and I’m sure I am missing out on something, but in the end, I’m okay with that. People who like beer seem to regard it highly, and also in that, good for them. I don’t think it’s for me. 15 years and finding it finally has scratched off an item on my “Whatevs” list, so for that, a tepid yeh.

I can’t really afford the place. I can’t afford their beer. I can’t afford the gasoline it takes to get there and back and I don’t know a soul in the place. So, we’ve learned where the Wardrobe is and at least now I know it’s not for me. At least I can go back to my comfortable notions of before, that it’s just a run-down industrial pit and there is nothing on the other side but filthy blighted railroad.

Baaah.

Saturday Express

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What a wonderful day it has been so far! I woke up, had my customary oatmeal breakfast and then after some puttering around the house I got into my bike outfit (not anything specifically bike-outfitty, just some UnderArmour gear that helps) and hit the road. The entire plan was to take care of the light-mass errands all by bike. That meant hitting KL Cat Hospital for Griffin’s special food and then Pets Supplies Plus for Owein’s special food. I also wanted a handlebar case for my iPhone so I didn’t have to carry it around in my pocket all the time; I’m always afraid that my pocket will empty my phone out onto the ground and make me a very sad geek. I was able to find what I was after not at Dicks, which I half expected I should, instead they opened without all their product being placed properly. Dicks also irked me, I had to secure my bike to a local tree. It’s not something that’s an outrage, but if you are selling sporting goods, wouldn’t a simple hum-drum bike rack out in front be a nice touch? Alas, I didn’t find what I was after. I did find a lot of UnderArmour, of course, but I have no money for such frivolities and I honestly don’t need any more clothes. Between my Doc Martin Chukkas, which I can boldly say are my favorite pair of shoes that I’ve ever owned, and the recent acquisition of all my bow ties I don’t think I’ll need any more additions to my wardrobe for a long while.

On my journey I used several apps on my iPhone which worked very well together. The central fitness app I use is MyFitnessPal. This app works really well with my FitBit, but there isn’t any integration with MapMyRide yet, so when you want to cross-log your efforts in apps you need to have three bits of information, the time you started, the duration and the number of calories that you burned. Irritatingly enough, the MapMyRide app will only give out duration and calories but not start time. I searched high and low throughout the App Store looking for a time logging app and found one good enough in TimeKeeper. I can start it, tap the title, then tap Biking and it’ll take a timestamp for me without me having to muck about with Siri. She doesn’t understand the phrase “Siri, mark the time.” So, irritating. Once I get all the data going I use MapMyRide to trace my biking performance, MyFitnessPal to track my calorie availability and manage what I can eat, and then last but not least, Google Maps. Google Maps has a biking mode and turn by turn directions which work really well when I’m on the road.

Biking around can be dull but I have another app on my iPhone that I use called Downcast that downloads and streams Podcasts over my phone so I can listen to original programming while I work out, going from one place to another. I’m currently listening to only three podcasts, “A Way With Words”, “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”, and “RadioLab”. I have to say that I enjoy all of them immensely and the player is good enough to stream one episode back to back with the next so I don’t really have to fiddle with my phone much at all.

The only thing I would change is that I would bring battery backup for my phone next time. I was glad that Culvers had power plugs by the dining tables and I was able to get a wee charge from them while I had lunch, but that’s not something I should plan on – I need to prepare some sort of backup power deal when I go out biking.

So now, after lunch, which I splurged on (allowed myself french fries, which are my guilty pleasure) I’m at home, recovering from the 32 mile bike adventure. After this, I think I’ll head out and get the rest of the supplies, which entails a trip to Meijers. I may stop at Chocolatea for something not quite unlike Green Tea. 🙂

PAD April 30 2013 – Art Appreciation

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Do you need to agree with an artist’s lifestyle or politics to appreciate their art? To spend money on it?

I don’t need to agree to at least witness the art. If money is going to change hands then the rules are different. If I’m going to pay someone for their artwork then either we should be compatible or they should remain as much a mystery to me as possible. I don’t like gun-toting crazy-eyed conservatives who wear three-point hats and kvetch about government tyranny. Looking is free or covered by a door charge for the event, but buying requires more.

PAD April 28 2013 – Cringe Worthy

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Do you feel uncomfortable when you see someone else being embarrassed? What’s most likely to make you squirm?

There is two distinct levels of cringe. The first is rather quite pleasant and that is Schadenfreude. When someone gets what they have coming to them, usually in spades, it’s actually a delight. Few things are finer than being witness to a hearty comeuppance.

The second form, which I’ve witnessed in romantic comedies and certain other dark-humor comedies tends to trot out the agony and the awkwardness and projects it in full fidelity right into you. It’s unpleasant and usually breaks the comedic force that it was trying to carry. Movies like Bridesmaids and anything starring Will Ferrell pretty much fall into this category. At first it comes across as foolish and sophomoric and then quickly dissolves into cringe squick. If I can avoid witnessing this second form, I’ll take the opportunity.