Made Our Own Pinkpop Shirt

This year we'll be going to Pinkpop in style. This year we're wearing our own shirts. And to make sure that our shirts are original we created the heavenly edition theme. Meaning that all the performing artists are no longer among us.

The idea of creating this shirt was born during last years Pinkpop while wondering which artists we would have wanted see (LIVE) in our lifetime.

I guess it's the only festival ever featuring these artists :-)

Pinkpop

The following images are not the definite versions (B.B. King has not been added to the list), and the logo on the front will probably be a bit larger.

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Log Conversation Only with TCPDUMP

Not exactly the conversation view from Wireshark, but it's a relatively clean and readable output showing the source, destination IP addresses, and ports.

tcpdump -q -i <interface>

Add the '-t' switch to remove the time stamp as well

OS X Yosemite DHCP Server

This week I re-installed my Mac Mini server at home. It still ran Snow Leopard, and it was time to start with a clean slate. So after a couple of hours of pondering if I had forgotten to backup something, I started with a clean install of OS X Yosemite (10.10).

Everything went smooth, until I started using the DHCP service that comes with the Server App add-on.

My server uses 802.1q (VLAN-tagging) to connect several different VLAN's which I feed into several Virtual Machines. So I also use several DHCP Scopes for those segments.
The IP addresses for these scopes are all in the 192.168-range (class C subnets), so when I created the scopes I had to go through a simple wizard in the Server App. I just had to fill-in the blanks (very user friendly), and OS X did the rest.

Upon testing I ran into the weirdest behaviour on my network. Getting connectivity with a device took a very long time, and when the device got an IP address, it was from a different network (???)> So it couldn't communicate across the network.

At first I began to wonder if I had mixed up the VLAN names and tags, but those were correct. After an hour of troubleshooting (more and more DHCP clients were failing in the network), I found the problem;

When you create a scope Apple will assign a default subnet mask (255.255.0.0). I guess I should have seen it, but I didn't.

After I changed the subnet mask in the DHCP scopes everything went back to normal.

Lesson learned: Don't rely on wizards and other user-friendly stuff.

PlayStation Network Down and How To Get It Working Again

This Christmas (2014), several gaming networks were attacked by a DDoS. One of those networks being the Playstation Network (PSN). This resulted in severe downtime during the holiday season. Sony is/was working hard to resolve this and service is being restored all around the world. Except for me (and probably several thousand other gamers). As of this morning (December 29th, 2014) I was unable to log on to PSN. All I got was one of the much telling error codes:

NW-31456-9

CE-33987-0

Someone on the Interwebs mentioned that a change in the MTU size might help. The MTU size is the maximum transfer unit on a network, which is normally at 1500 (bytes) for regular network clients. In some case it's preferable to adjust this size (I won't get into details).

In the case of PSN being down, an adjustment from 1500 (the default) to 1473 seems to do the trick at the moment. Not sure if it wil hold up in the (near) future, but at least you can get online to play on your new Playstation 4 or with the new game you got for Christmas.

1. Go to the “Settings” menu.
2. Go to “Network” sub-menu.
3. Go to "Set Up Internet Connection".
4. Choose your media (WiFi or LAN).
5. Choose “Custom.”
6. Leave everything as default except MTU (Manual).
7. Change MTU settings to “1473”.
8. Save your changes.
9. Test the Internet connection.

And if you are more of a visual kinda person:

Everything should work now. If not, you may try a reboot.

Lowering the MTU size means that smaller packets are being send over the network (max. 1473 bytes instead of 1500 byte packets) , this is not a bad thing, but might lead to some performance problems in some cases. Just remember that you changed this setting. You want to (or have to) change this back to the default (1500) in the future.

I do not know if this works for other gaming devices. You may try at your own risk (and leave the results in the comments if you'd like).

UPDATE: As of this morning I was able to sign in to PSN with an MTU of 1500 (access the Playstation Store etc.), but I was unable to play online games (Battlefield 4). Changing the MTU back to 1473 fixed that (again).

UPDATE 2: As of this morning (31 december) I can also connect to PSN with an MTU of 1500, so everything is back to normal.

OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) and Audio Out Changes

Yesterday I ran into a new Yosemite feature that annoyed me a bit. After changing the input on my Dell 27" display from DisplayPort to HDMI, the screen turned black on my 27" iMac, and audio stopped. Forcing a reboot (holding the power button for >4 seconds) was needed to get the iMac's display back.

But from that point on, the audio was greyed-out in the menu bar. Changing the volume on the (Apple) keyboard gave a disabled icon on screen. Also, no audio was playing over my external speakers.

My first thoughts were that the earlier crash had corrupted something on my system, so I did an additional reboot. Nothing. After that a PRAM reset (power off, power-on and hold command-option-P-R until you have heard two start-up 'boings'). The start-up sounds were there, so the actual audio hardware was just fine.

When the desktop loaded still no audio control, until I unplugged my DisplayPort connector on the Dell 27" monitor. Audio (controls) came back instantaneous.

So, with DisplayPort connected to the external monitor: no audio (controls), and without the DisplayPort: audio (controls).

Turns out that with Yosemite, the audio is channelled BY DEFAULT over a DisplayPort connection (to a external monitor). In my case, the Dell also has an audio out connector, and I guess that is 'advertised' over the DisplayPort.

Changing the default behaviour is done in the System Preferences -> Sound

The first image shows the default (at least in my case). Changing the settings to the second image gave me back the audio and volume control.

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I have no idea if this was also possible with Mavericks (or even earlier versions of OSX), but it's definitely a (default) feature that annoyes the hell out of me.

Even though I tackeled the audio problem, the issue with loosing the display when I change the video input on the external monitor still remains. But only if the desktop is extended to the second screen. It doesn't occur when the screen is mirrored.

Loonse en Drunense Duinen in the Fog

Autumn is the season with good chances of morning fog in the Netherlands. Fog and sunrise can create mystical photos, so this weekend we went early in the morning to the Loonse en Drunense Duinen in Noord-Brabant. The weather forecast predicted morning fog, followed by a nice sunny day. All the ingredients we needed for some nice photos.

We arrived just before sunrise, but unfortunately, the area suffered from a thick fog that blocked the sun for hours. So no magical fog and sun ray photos. Instead just foggy photos.

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Why RAW instead of JPG?

The RAW file format holds much more information than you can see with your eyes. Sure, shooting in in JPEG leaves you with smaller size photos (in terms of storage), which results in more photos on your memory cards. This results in faster transfers to your PC, and Photoshop is more responsive to smaller files. So there are numerous occasions where JPEG seems more than enough, until you do need that (little) extra RAW information....

Just watch the following video.

Nuff said, I think.