The Syncing Apple

Using OpenSolaris AMIs on EC2, and wanted to use EBS… currently, Elastifox is mute on naming the devices (only gives examples for linux based device names) so I was looking for a read on Opensolaris and found this.

Next, Conficker A enters an infinite loop, within which it generates a list of 250 domain names (rendezvous points). The name-generation function is based on a randomizing function that it seeds with the current UTC system date. The same list of 250 names is generated every 3 hours, i.e., 8 times per day. All Conficker clients, with system clocks that are at minimum synchronized to the current UTC date, will compute and attempt to contact the same set of domains. When contacting a domain for which a valid IP address has been registered, Conficker clients send a URL request to TCP port 80 of the target IP, and if a Windows binary is returned, it will be validated via a locally stored public key, stored on the victim host, and executed. If the computer is not connected to the Internet, then the malicious code will check for connectivity every 60 seconds. When the computer is connected, Conficker A will execute the domain name generation subroutine, contacting every registered domain in the current 250-name set to inquire if an executable is available for download.

Mottek: John Arkley was wrong … Eckhart Köppen has built a Newton patch. So it seems like there are 3 people alive who can do it, despite what John has written. John, Paul and Eckhart. And only one of them is actively developing for the Newton… Which is pretty impressive.

Meanwhile, the excellect Nitch software package, which implements GTD on the Newton has actually made me fire up my 2100 and get it connected to a desktop so that I could install Nitch. Eckhart Köppen has written zn amazingly useful package that really shines on the Newton form factor, and proves that the Newton is relvant even today.

Getting it connected back up to a desktop, to install the software is another story, and is a big issue for anyone getting back into the Newton scene. I’ll write that up later.

It’s finally been done- ClYang has written the glue to get an upload button in Picassa working with your Wordpress (2.7.1) blog. This has been a requested feature for a while. There are plenty of solutions to share a picassa web on a Wordpress blog, but this is the first instance (that I can find) of building the upload button - which directly uploads your local photos from Picassa into your Wordpress blog, not up into Google’s servers.

CLYang has clear directions, they work great and if this is something you are interested in, go get it. I’ve been using Picassa on the Mac now for a month or so, and I’m very happy with it– so happy that I haven’t even used the new iPhoto 09 yet.

There is a bad bug in the handing of time for Newton OS 2.1, which is used on most Newtons still around today. Details of the bug have been collected on the 40hz site. There is one ‘fix’ that doesn’t completely work. What is needed is a real system patch, and those are just not possible anymore, not without massive help from Apple itself.

Continue Reading »

Amazon announced a web-based portal for EC2, and while it’s nice, it’s no ElasticFox. I guess I’ll use both, but ElasticFox is much much faster.

Want to build the mysql gem for the system’s Ruby and use the mysql binary you just installed from mysql.org?

Easy, has wonko.com has the answer and it worked perfectly! I love Google.

airbot:~ [504]$ sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- \
>   --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysql-lib=/usr/local/mysql/lib \
>   --with-mysql-include=/usr/local/mysql/include
Password:
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed mysql-2.7
1 gem installed

And your off…..

Update: don’t forget to add the gems require at the top of your ruby scripts:

require 'rubygems'

This will get rid of the

in `require': no such file to load -- mysql (LoadError)

errors. On my linux machine, mysql was not installed as a gem so I didn’t have the require in my scripts.

http://picasa.google.com/mac/

Is it time to give up on iPhoto?

1 Mint
2 PCalc Lite

two great apps to have on your phone, and they don’t cost a dime.

Meanwhile, I’ve got SimCity for the iPhone and it’s everything they claim it is, only downside is that it can’t run in the backgroud. I no longer need a port for the Mac.

Genghis7777 has a great roundup of 2008 Newton Developments. I haven’t used my Newton much, but I’m actually considering taking it back up again since the iPhone is not able to track all the notes and things I need to keep around. There is still a strong community, still developing and making the Newton relevant in 2008. The newton does things that the iphone may never do; it’s strange that something with so much more power is still fundamentally missing the boat.

The post over at My Apple Newton is worth the read, if just to prove that the newton is still here.

It’s way way easy to make your mac running Leopard into a NFS Server. Check your firewall settings.

If your iPhone won’t connect to Gmail when you first try and set it up, use this link http://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha to resolve the issue. Found the pointer over at the Apple Forums.

Just used the new MBP for about 4 hours. The new new ‘all one big button’ trackpad is really annoying. I had my thumb down at the bottom of the ‘pad trying to click a button that just isn’t there anymore. Having to remember to click the entire pad is just really…. weird. Too weird. Other than that, the machine is amazing. Incredibly fast and quick, and the screen is very, very nice.

My wife just purchased an iPhone 3G, but she still uses Windows XP (I can’t get her to give up that ThinkPad). I’ve never experienced iTunes/iPhone syncing on Windows so I was curious to see what was going to happen when she plugged it in to her laptop. If she used a Mac I’d have her start to use Address Book and iCal, but what happens with an iPhone user on the PC? I know she really wanted to sync photos, but again, she uses Picassa- there is no iPhoto for XP. It turns out most of her actual PIM data is now on Gmail.

Out of the box, iTunes seems pretty smart. It will sync photos using just the photos it finds in the “My Pictures.” Nice. For Contacts and Calendar, it wants to use Outlook (if you have it installed). It will allow you to choose Gmail for contacts, but not for calendar.

Looking for a solution for the calendar, I came across just the thing. A free service that lets you use the OTA Exchange push syncing, but it links to your Gmail or Plaxo account. The company that is doing this is Nuevasync. The service got some good call-outs over at PainintheTech.

I haven’t tried this (I use a Mac) but someone has the iPhone syncing on Linux (looks like ubuntu based). There is a lot of info about the iPhone/iTunes pairing and syncing via USB over at the site.

I got my account on Boxee today. Installed it on my mac, and I’ve been enjoying it all day. Really amazing interface with some cool social features. This is what we are working towards at work (but with linear tv). The hulu assets are what really make it compelling.

Now that the emulator is up and running, you need to get familiar with adb - the Android Debug Bridge - and start poking around at your device.

I found ADB back in the latest SDK, and used it to connect to my emulator. You can start a shell and poke around. I want to get networking up on the emulator– without connectivity this whole enterprise is pointless.

Find your device first:

$ adb devices
List of devices attached
emulator-5554	device

Start a shell:

$ ~/work/android-sdk-mac_x86-1.0_r1/tools/adb -s emulator-5554 shell
# ls
sqlite_stmt_journals
cache
sdcard
etc
system
sys
sbin
proc
init.rc
init.goldfish.rc
init
default.prop
data
root
dev
#

Reading Materials

I just ordered some Android books: Hello Android & Unlocking Android. They both have PDF versions available right now.

Once you have build Android on your Mac OSX (I have Leopard) following the Google directions, it’s time to start it. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds, as I couldn’t find any docs that talked about this, except for this page that talks about the emulator in the SDK.

In your droid repo directory, this will start the emulator:

$ out/host/darwin-x86/bin/emulator -system out/target/product/generic -kernel prebuilt/android-arm/kernel/kernel-qemu

From there, you are back to working with it just like in the SDK.

Android is OpenSourced, and you can build it yourself on MacOSX or an Ubuntu machine. THis is not the emulator, but real Android OS running on your system.

http://source.android.com/download

Has the directions.

Check out the known-issues page before giving up- there are some rough edges.

10/22 Update: watch out for your file system on the mac, you need to have one that is paritioned and formatted with case sensitivity, I just found out:

~/work/mydroid [558]$ make
build/core/product_config.mk:229: WARNING: adding test OTA key
build/core/main.mk:58: ************************************************************
build/core/main.mk:59: You are building on a case-insensitive filesystem.
build/core/main.mk:60: Please move your source tree to a case-sensitive filesystem.
build/core/main.mk:61: ************************************************************
build/core/main.mk:62: *** Case-insensitive filesystems not supported.  Stop.