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As of yesterday, the latest Ubuntu release ‘Hardy Heron‘ is available for download (both client and server). Every time a major Linux distri(bution) hits ‘the shelves’, the Linux community roars. With each release (Ubuntu or whatever flavor) the Linux community gets closer, and closer to Windows.

Even though the OS itself is getting better and better. It still lacks the support of decent major software like Adobe Creative Suite, etc. It’s missing the software people use in every day (business)life.
Sure, there a million different ways of running Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop on a Linux OS, but these require a commercial piece of software (CrossOver) , or in depth knowledge of the OS to make it work (Wine in some cases). Two things that shouldn’t be required. Not if you’re used to Windows (or Apple’s OSX). And even if you find a ’substitute’ it’s most likely to have an awful user experience.

The average housewife won’t use Linux, because her friends all use Windows. All those nice little Windows programs, which makes life easier (or a living hell with all the mal/spyware out there). So if the Linux community wants to make a difference they need to create some sort of critical mass (by their selves, or by Microsoft screwing up) to get the attention of the ‘normal’ user. But in a community where there’s no real (commercial) business model, it’s gonna be damn hard.

Microsoft created this critical mass by playing (probably) the best marketing trick in the world; Release Windows 95, and turn a blind eye to those who use a pirated copy at home. The home users create demand on the workfloor, so businesses start to use it on their workstations. Soon everyone was addicted. And now it’s damn hard to beat the addiction.

B.t.w., Apple is doing it a lot better. They created a nice and stable OS (just like the average Linux desktop distribution), BUT the OS has ALL the relevant drivers for the hardware used. ALSO they have a complete (and cheap) software suite (iLife and iWork), which is more than enough for the average family. No need to search the caverns of the Internet for software, and they look and feel the same as the OS.

So, I guess that my conclusion is that the OS is nearing perfection, but it (Linux in general) lacks good and decent third party software (and a good marketing machine )

In the mean time; I’m gonna upgrade my Linux (mail, web, and ssh) servers at work to ‘Hardy Heron’.

Since I upgraded from OSX 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 I haven’t been able to use my shared printer on on my Windows server. Every job I submit gives me an error saying On Hold (Authentication Required).

There’s no way that I could submit the printjob to the server from my Mac.

It seems that there is a bug in the authentication mechanism on OSX 10.5.2. If you add a (network) printer by using the System Preferences, you get to browse to find the actual printer. this results in a printer in the following location:

smb://<servernetbiosname>/printershare

For some weird reason this won’t work. You need to specify the IP adres of the server or include the windows workgroup name in the url. This can be done by using the System Preferences. But you can also use CUPS. This is the webinterface on OSX to access printing services. You can access CUPS by entering the following URL in your browser;

http://localhost:631

This give you a webinterface for managing printers. Just add (or edit) the printer. During the ‘Wizard’ you can specify the actual path/URL where CUPS can find the printer. Just one of the following:

smb://<username>:<password>@<IP Address>/<Printershare>

smb://<username>:<password>@<workgroup>/<servername>/<Printershare>

Don’t worry about the username and password being displayed in the URL. These will be ‘moved’ upon insertion to the Keychain.

Alternative is to add the Advanced button on the Add Printer Wizard on the Print & Fax panel in the System Preferences. This can be done by doing the following:

• Open System Preferences
• Open Print & Fax
• Click on the ‘+’ to add a printer.
• Right-click (or ctrl + left-click) on the menubar
• Customize Toolbar
• Add the ‘Advanced’ button

With the Advanced button you can specify the exact smb path mentioned earlier to add the printer by its IP address or with the workgroup information in its path.

More info on the Apple Support Discussion pages [1, 2].

There are lot’s of people who complain about the updates on the Windows platform, but Apple tries to compete I guess. In the last 3 days there was a big security update, Safari 3.1 (both Windows and OSX), Time machine and Airport Updates, and now a Camera RAW update for OSX 10.5.2.

Thankfully no problems on my side with the updates.

Looking for other updates from Apple? Just go here.

I listened to the latest ‘This Week in Tech’ podcast today. They mentioned a screensaver called FlickrFan. This screensaver can connect to flickr account and images to use in the screensaver. But it also downloads current Associated Press images in high quality and more. This results in awesome pictures from around the world covering the news in HIGH-RES.

B.t.w. it’s much more than just a screensaver, but I liked the screensaver-part best.

Since I have an iMac with OSX 10.5 (Leopard), I use TimeMachine for my backups. This works great actually. But I also need an off-site backup of some sort. Just in case the house burns down or that some f*cker decides to steal my hardware.
So I bought an external Freecom 160GB USB2 drive (USB powered) for my off-site backups.

I encrypted the entire harddisk with TrueCrypt 5.0 on my iMac, and copied the data I needed to preserve. After that I wanted to access the data from my work laptop (Windows XP SP2 with TrueCrypt v5.0)….. This didn’t work. TrueCrypt didn’t recognize the password, or the encrypted disk (AES / SHA-256 full disk encryption).
I tried to access the data on my Mac and everything worked, so there’s no data corruption of some sort. Eventually, I recreated the encrypted drive on my Windows XP laptop (lost the backup in the process). This time the disk would mount, and could also be read/mounted by my Mac.

So, I guess that TrueCrypt is Cross-platform, but with the current version (v5.0a) you need to make sure to create the volume on Windows if you also want to mount it on OSX.

I reported this through their bug-reporting tool to the developers. No idea if there are similar problems with Linux.

UPDATE: Pretty soon they released v5.0a, and today v5.1 was released. So development goes on

A while ago I started a search for a GPS Data Logger which I can use for adding GPS coordinates to my photo’s. The current status is that most of those devices are Windows only. The few that might be OSX compatible aren’t sold in the Netherlands (yet).

So I had to find an alternative. There is a sourceforge project called ‘MTK GPS Data Logger Device Control‘ which facilitates certain GPS (chipset) devices to function on multiple platforms. So my best guess would be to buy one of those ’supported’ GPS Data Loggers. Due to availability, I bought the Qstarz BT-1000. It’s a GPS mouse with navigation and logging capabilities.

First I had to make sure that the device was actually working properly, so I installed the driver and software in a Windows XP Virtual Machine. This was quite easy, and the unit seemed to work properly.
Next thing was to install the opensource program to allow communication between the GPS unit and OSX Leopard.

To get it to work on OSX you need to follow a installation manual. Something I’m not used to :). Needless to say that it took a bit longer than expected.
First of all, you’ll need the software from the sourceforge website. Second, you need SuperWaba files (free registration is required) [these files seemed to be present in the download package from sourceforge], and the USB driver. After that you need to follow the instructions in the README.txt provided in the sourceforge package. Note that the script information on the forum has been superseded by the README.txt in the downloadfile (use the provided bt747_macosX.command from the sourceforge download package instead).

Eventually, you’ll end up with a directory structure whick looks something like this:

Run the bt747_macosX.command file to start the application.

One thing I must mention is that somewhere along the lines is the mention of using TextEdit to alter (script)files. Do NOT forget to remove the formatting on the files before saving. You might end up with scriptsfiles containing some markup stuff…. And this means that you might be getting some weird error messages.

Anyway, the interface is still very simple, but you have access to lots of features. The actual manual for the application is available on Google Docs.

One thing I hate is not knowing where I am. I had this in Windows, and I still have it OSX.

By default OSX doesn’t show the full path in the finder. This is annoying as hell. Especialy when you’re having shares called ‘Pictures’, and the chances are quite big that you might have a local directory called ‘Pictures’. You can’t tell the difference.

Using the following terminal command, you get the full path in the Finder. So no more ‘Pictures’, but ‘/Volumes/Pictures/’

Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
killall Finder

Simply replace the YES for NO to disable the feature. This is OSX 10.5 or higher only!!

I’ve been looking for a GPS logger for a couple of months. A GPS logger can be used for attaching GPS information to your digital photos. This way, you can display your photos on publicly accessible maps in Flickr or Google Earth.

More and more of those GPS loggers are surfacing on the market [Sony GPS-CS1 / GPS-CS1KA, Globalsat DG-100, Qstarz BT Q-1000, GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr, WBT-201]. But they all have one problem; None of them seem to work (natively) with an Intel Mac running Leopard (source). Some of them require open-source drivers to function. The downside of that is that an update from Apple or an updated firmware in the GPS logger might cripple the functionality.

Why is it that GPS manufacturers won’t create a GPS (logger) device that simply works on both platforms. It couldn’t be that hard. Just create a GPS device that is also recognized as a external drive, containing the raw GPS data in the most common format (e.g. NMEA). This way even the Linux users are not left out.

My new iMac 24″ arrived this week. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time in setting it up (business and social obligations), so I had to wait a bit… Very annoying. Anyway, in the mean time it’s up and running, and man…. it is fast. (more…)

Since the upgrade to OSX Leopard, I’ve not been able to use PGP, since it simple won’t work. Yesterday I received an e-mail that the public beta of PGP 9.7 has been released (for Windows and OSX). This one does work on Leopard (until December this year though), so I guess that I need to BUY myself yet another version of PGP.

I found one ‘bug’ in the meantime; I seem to be missing the encrypt and sign buttons in the OSX Mail app. Or I might be missing something? I don’t want to use the PGP service which signs or encrypts everything. I want to sign and/or encrypt when I want to, and not when an app tells me to.

A couple of weeks ago, my Windows PC was starting to crash. Hard disks were going; ‘plonk, plonk, rrrrrrr, tac tac, rrrrr ‘. Most of the times this resulted in system freezes or blue screens. So ever since that weekend, I’ve been looking into an iMac 24″.

Last weekend I ordered my iMac in the online Apple Store. It’s the standard 24″ with 320GB drive and 1GB of RAM. My current PC also has only 320GB of diskspace, and I’m not even close on filling that up. I will upgrade the 1GB of RAM myself. If I buy the memory at my ‘local’ computershop it saves me around 600 euro’s on 4GB. The Apple prices for memory are just ridiculous.
Another point of frustration is the keyboard layout. Every PC sold in the Netherlands (wel, almost every PC) has a English-US keyboard. Why isn’t that layout available as an option. I hate the vertical ‘enter’, and the small ‘left-shift’ on the NL, and UK keyboards. Too bad, that you can’t order an iMac without keyboard and mouse. So, anyone interested in a new (thin aluminum) Apple keyboard and MightyMouse (both on a wire).

This only leaves me with my Windows server at the moment. It would be nice to replace that one with a Mac Mini.

The default background image on OSX Leopard is this annoying Aurora/starfield kinda picture. To change this, just change the desktop background image by using the rightmouse button on the desktop.It’s something different to change the background image on the login screen. Some searching revealed that it uses the DefaultDesktop.jpg in the /System/Library/CoreServices/ directory. ‘Just’ replace that file with your own picture. There is a small catch. If you replace it, it will get the wrong permissions on the file, and therefor won’t show up on the login screen.Just ‘reset’ the permissions on the file like this:

• sudo chown root /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg
• sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg

You may need to enter a username and password while executing these commands.

Every once in a lifetime, a virus/trojan or wahtever for Mac OSX raises it’s ‘ugly’ head. And now we got a Trojan. Infection occurs through porn websites :-P, and it promises a codec with which you can view the x-rated content on the website(s). I guess that there’s a sex-starved market out there.

As you might have guesed, the trojan isn’t exactly what it promises to be. It modifies your DNS settings, which are almost undetectable (for regular users). The result is that you might get rerouted to other sites than you originally intended. Since ‘they’ control the DNS, you might be typing your usernames and passwords for eBay on a site that’s not really eBay.

There are way of detecting and removig the darn thing.

The new Finder in Leopard has this neat feature that shows your documents (and other stuff) that have been accessed ‘Yesterday‘, ‘Today‘, and ‘Past Week‘. Very handy. Downside is that it shows not only the documents, but also every other file that has been changed. So a nice short list of documents is out of the question. After a day of workin, you might end up with a very, very long list of files.

The ‘Search For‘ is a nice way of exploring the crap on your machine after an upgrade of Tiger. Do an upgrade and use the ‘Search For‘ feature the next day. I found some files that I didn’t even knew I had. Most of them were mail related (kinda embarrassing attachments etc.).

Oh, and if you’re a person that wants to hide certain things on the computer, you might wanna disable spotlight (or whatever function is doing this), because it’s one hell of a Parental Control mechanism. Even the items you used in the preference panel show up.

B.t.w. Did I mention that the new Cover Flow feature in Finder just kicks ass. It runs as smooth as a baby’s bottom… well you get the idea.

It’s been a long night, but I finally installed Leopard. The reason it took so long is that I didn’t have a retail DVD of the the OS. I had to screw around with a diskimage. From the moment I successfully burned the DVD it took about half an hour to 40 minutes to upgrade Tiger to Leopard.

Here are my experiences:

• First time booting into the desktop takes forever. I guess that spotlight is to blame for this, but I’m not sure.
• Eventhough I had correctly configured network interfaces, the network assistant thingy popped up, and kept bothering me (even after reboots).
  Removing it from the ‘login items’ stopped it.
• My Mail (all account were configured as IMAP) was unable to retrieve new e-mails from all accounts. After some poking around I deleted all accounts and mail settings. After recreating the accounts everything worked fine. This is the nice thing about IMAP. You can remove your account and settings, and you won’t lose your mail, because it remains on the server.
• Adobe Lightroom seems to work, and so do all of my other image manipulation tools.
• PGP v9.6.x crashes. I had to remove it by hand. Too bad that there isn’t a documented manual uninstall procedure. Guess I have to wait for an update. Just uninstall the app before upgrading.

Initial impressions:

• Faster than Tiger
• Very backwards compatible. Vista eat you heart out.
• The app improvements on Finder, and the Dock are great. Especially the coverflow view in Finder kicks ass, and runs great on my ‘old’ MacBook Pro.
• …..