Moving from Flickr to SmugMug

Over the last couple of years, I've been storing my photos online @ Flickr. But I fear that time has come to move forward. Forward to another service for the next couple of years. The main reason for moving is that Flickr doesn't seem to innovate. No innovation basically means going backwards, in these days.

Flickr is a WYSIWYG environment. What you see is what you get, and not in the way this term is usually used on the Interwebs. There's no way of changing the coloring or appearance (white only). No way of integrating into another website (e.g. changing the URL).

Posted on August 24, 2011 and filed under Photography, Review, Website.

Unable to Upgrade Firefox on OS X

Today I tried to upgrade Firefox 5.0.1 on my iMac to version Firefox 6, but it failed with some 'weird' error;

The operation can't be completed because the item libsmime3.dylib" is in use.

Weird because I didn't have FireFox running at the time. Removing Firefox didn't work either, since I couldn't remove it from the Trash (same error).

Turned out that I had the Cisco AnyConnect VPN installed on my system (process name: vpnagentd). To 'unload' this process enter the following in Terminal:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cisco.anyconnect.vpnagentd.plist

Install Firefox, and enable the vpnagent again by entering the following in Terminal:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cisco.anyconnect.vpnagentd.plist

And all should be well.

Posted on August 15, 2011 and filed under Annoying, Browsers, Software, Tips'n Tricks.

Burn OS X Lion Installation Package to DVD

The moment you download OS X Lion, you'd better have a copy of OS X Snow Leopard, because by default the new Apple OS can only be installed on a previous installed Operating System (upgrade). So if you need to reinstall your Mac in the future, you need to install OS X Snow Leopard first, and then upgrade to OS X Lion. Also, there's no way of ordering an OS X Lion copy on DVD..... Well, that sucks.

Fortunately, there's a way of creating the installation DVD by extracting the actual disk image from the downloaded OS X Lion installation package.

Posted on July 20, 2011 and filed under Apple, Operating Systems, Software, Tips'n Tricks.

Manipulating EXIF Info

The Leica M9 has no means of determining foreign or old lenses. The newer Leica lenses have a 6-bit (visual) coding mechanism for determining the lens. Problem is that this is only for (relatively new) Leica lenses. There is the possibility to manually select the lens in the menu of the M9, but that's only limited to the Leica brand lenses. No option for Carl Zeiss lenses.

For certain characteristics, and in-camera processing of the RAW image it's handy to manually select a Leica lens even though you've attached a Zeiss lens. This can be automated by coding the lenses yourself (or have Zeiss do it for €100 a lens).

All this is nice, but it still generates photos with faulty EXIF information, because you shot the photo with a CZ C-Sonnar 1.5/50mm and not with a Leica 1.4/50mm Summilux ASPH....

Posted on July 10, 2011 and filed under Photography, Software, Tips'n Tricks.

Leica Blog

After I acquired a Leica M9 with peripheral equipment, I decided to document my M9 learning experiences on a seperate blog on my website. I don't know if I'll keep it like this. I might move the content to this blog. Don't know yet. Time will tell.

Anyway, in the mean time I've added some content to the new Leica blog. Check it out. I hope you'll find it usefull.

Posted on July 5, 2011 and filed under Gear, Personal, Photography, Website.

Hostname and (Apple) Mail Server Dependencies

My Mac Mini with OSX Server had this thing that the hostname (as displayed in the Terminal app) would change after a reboot. Something that annoyed me tremendously. Thankfully there are several (Terminal) commands to change the hostname (back) to its 'original name'.

Since I wanted to change my hostname PERMANENTLY, I used the following command:

sudo scutil –set HostName new_hostname

This worked perfectly. Or so I thought.

Posted on June 29, 2011 and filed under Apple, Internet, Tips'n Tricks.

Microsoft Internet Explorer and IP Addresses in Certificate SAN

A fairy long title, but it describes exactly what this post is about. Once again a post about a Microsoft product and the way it works (or rather doesn't work) with your average Internet standard.

This week I was busy with RADIUS, 802.1x, PKI and the protection of websites with SSL encryption. For the implementation of 802.1x, I needed a PKI environment, so I used the Microsoft Certificate Services for that purpose. Along the way, I needed an SSL certificate for an internal website, but this particular website needed to work properly based on different FQDN's and or IP addresses without throwing warining or errors regarding the SSL connection.

The way to do this is to add Subject Alternative Names (SAN) to the certificate. This enables you to access the website in different ways, e.g.;

  • Access a webmail host from the internet based on its official FQDN (https://webmail.somedomain.com)
  • Access the same webmail host from the inside of the corporate lan based on its internal name (https://webmail.acme.local)
  • And access the host from legacy DNS-unaware software on its IP address (https://192.168.1.254)

Where can I find the iTunesHelper App?

The iTunesHelper application is used to automatically detect iPod's/iPad's and iPhones, when you connect these to your Mac. The application launches iTunes, and (if configured) synchronizes stuff. Very handy, but it can be quite annoying.

E.g. I have an iMac (main 'PC' around the house), and a MacBook. All the synchronization stuff is done on my iMac, and I don't sync anything on my MacBook. But when I attach my iPhone to my MacBook for Internet access (tethering), it launches iTunes and wants to synchronize with an empty iTunes. Something I definitelly don't want.

This feature can be turned off by removing the iTunesHelper application entry from the Login Items in your account settings, but turning it back on is something completely different. I accidentally removed it from my iMac, which wasn't supposed to happen....

Posted on June 4, 2011 and filed under Apple, Personal, Software, Tips'n Tricks.