Argh …

I got my new NetGear ReadyNAS Duo and a PS3 and now I’m just trying to get everything playing nice.  Some notes …

When you select a share for UPnP in the ReadyNAS and then scan it for media, you won’t be able to access that share until it’s finished.  Unfortunately there’s no way to check on the progress either.

I have UPnP enabled on the ReadyNAS and for the router, yet I can’t seem to see it still.  The PS3 reports “No media servers were found.” when I do a search and yet Missy’s iMac running Windows XP will show up as a media server.  The only way I’ve been able to access media is through HTTP which also didn’t work until the media scan was finished (see above).

Windows XP only allows you to connect to a particular server’s file shares using one set of credentials.  In my case I was originally connected with “root” and no password, but then later tried the user I setup for myself.  Rather than tell me the limitation I described, it simply kept denying me access after having me type in my user/pass.   Luckily I knew enough to drop down to a command prompt and perform a “NET USE /DELETE” before reconnecting with the user name.  Everything was peachy after that.

All I want to do is for the ReadyNAS’s UPnP share to show up in the PS3 … is that so difficult?

New Kind of Spam

Lately I’ve been getting a new kind of spam message which bypasses Gmail’s filtering.  Here’s one I got this morning:

From: Theresa Esquivel <Theresa50@yahoo.com>

To: public@******.com, info@**********.com, hmaria@*****.com

Date: Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 2:01 AM

Subject: i think i love you

 

Whats Kickin?

 

I was just wondering if your in the mood to chat tonight..i just checked out your profile

ill be up all night if your around message me on msn jennygirl4you@hotmail.com

The content is somewhat random, but it always starts with a one-line question, followed by two lines complimenting  my “profile”, and finally ending with an invitation to chat on Messenger.

MacBook Pro

I’m currently in the process of configuring a brand-spanking new MBP for MDP for Christmas.  I won’t be able to wait, so I hope she doesn’t mind getting it when she comes home from a cold, cold Sunday at work!  It’s only fair since she got me a PS3 and let me have it early as well.  Her previous iMac is going on three years old and runs Windows XP SP2 via BootCamp.  We can’t get SP3 on there due to a bug shared by both Microsoft and Apple, and fixing it would involve getting back into OSX for which we no longer remember the password.  Yes, I have the CD’s so I could reset everything, but I decided to just get her a laptop to hopefully replace it.  Thus I decided on this MacBook Pro 15″ (2.53gz, 320gb hd, 4gb RAM, etc. etc.).

As a non-Mac person you may or may not be interested to hear my ongoing tale of setting this beast up in a way that hopefully gets Missy using OSX.  While all the S.J. fanboys will endlessly spout the doctrine of Macintosh usability, I still found it a bit nettly in a few areas; this is why I’m configuring it prior to letting her loose in it.

Out-Of-Box Experience:

Slick, minimalist packaging without the nasty iMac keyboard and so-called “mighty” mouse (sorry, we dropped that like a dead rat).  The built-in laptop keyboard feels much more … um, tactilely pleasing.  Keys are well separated, make a quiet but pleasant “click”, and feel like … scrabble letters!  Not a bad thing.  Of course the keyboard short-cuts and hot keys are completely different (ctrl+left/right jumps home/end rather than previous/next word, which is now alt+left/right … I still can’t figure out the equivalent of ctrl+i/b/u for basic text styling).

The touch pad probably has some cool tidbits to it, I saw lots of masturbatory-looking gestures in the tiny manual, but I am terrible with touch pads in general (part of the reason I prefer the ThinkPad’s touch point).  Additionally it’s extra large for precision I’m guessing, but that also means my palms tend to gently rub it while I’m typing as messily as I do.  Makes it look like the mouse cursor is having a seizure.

Configuration was much simpler than years ago with the iMac; no endless wizards, just the basics.  It found our crappy WiFi and held it long enough to get updates.  AirPort doesn’t deal well with losing the signal, however.  It seems to think it still has a connection when it really doesn’t and I had to turn it off/on a couple times.  In fact, I wonder when I’m going to lose some of this typing, I should save a draft!

Yup … I lost connection again, WordPress is stuck “Saving Draft …”.  So now I’m working in “TextEdit” until I kick AirPort again.  Thankfully this will generally be plugged into Ethernet so that won’t be too much of an issue (I’ll have to show Missy how to reset it).

My biggest OOB complaint was the friggin’ movie I had to sit through which said “Welcome” or something in a bunch of different languages while playing some “cool music”.  I was clicking and mashing keys like a monkey without any success of skipping it.  Yes, I thought, I’m cool now that I have a Mac.  Thanks for telling me, but can I start using it now?  I suppose it forces you to lean back and gloat quietly, absorbing the tunes into your ego and storing up some arrogant lines to spout at your M$ slave friends.  Something like the clerk would probably do to his, I’m glad he didn’t try his pitch on me.  I heard enough of it being pummeled into an old dude.

Setting an avatar was fun, but confusing.  The UI was simply too simple.  I couldn’t figure it out.  I thought the button under the picture was for taking a movie, which I didn’t want to do, and so I just clicked “Next” thinking it would use whatever shot was currently in the iSite.  No good, it complained and I was back to the drawing board while Princess Kitty squirmed in my lap, barely cooperative to the cause.

Belly of the Beast:

Once within OS X version 10 point … whatever.  Five?  Five by five?  Leopard?  Def?  Def Lepard?  Wait … I don’t care.  This could be Mojave, it just needs to have all the applications Missy will need: Messenger (with web-cam ability, I’ll get to that below), web browser, World of Warcraft (attempting to install that now while I write this), Rhapsody (may be the most difficult), and everything updated so it doesn’t bug the crap out of her.

First things first, I go to update the system.  Aside from AirPort freaking out … again … all went relatively well.  It found a bunch of updates and unlike Ubuntu they downloaded extremely fast and had me restart.  Wait, restart?  I though that was a Windows thing?  Ohhhkay, it’s a firmware update …

Mmm, looks like it did everything else first and then left the firmware update for last.  So I click through to install that and afterwards it told me to make sure the computer is plugged in and to click Shutdown.  By the way, I had already inserted the WoW DVD because I was hoping I could install that and updates at the same time (silly me).

While the MacBook was doing it’s thing I went over to my desktop PC to load up WoW since I figured I had some time to kill.  I glanced back and the screen was dark and nothing seemed to be going on at all.

“Hmm, Shutdown must have really shut it down and I’ll have to power it back on,” I thought.

Pressing the power button on the Mac did nothing for a moment and then it made the most hideous mono-tone sound really loudly, spat out the WoW DVD, and went dark once again.

“Oh shit, what the fuck did I do?”

It sat there, doing nothing, and I immediately panicked and pressed the power button.  Nothing visibly or audibly happened!  A big ball of ice formed in my stomach and I began to mentally prepare myself for putting on pants again to ride the bus back into Redmond when suddenly it came alive!  Relief turned to dismay when a simple Apple logo appeared above a big, ponderously moving progress bar.  Was it restoring?  Installing the firmware?  I was too scared to press anything else so I merely waited and the MBP rewarded my patience with a successful boot back into the operating system.

They have this UI thing down pat.  Of course, they do have the advantage of making me doubly glad OSX appeared, simply because I didn’t want to own a really expensive paper-weight.  Oh, did you notice all the italics?  I figured out it’s command+i (yes, duh, whatever … I’m a Windows user so I’m allowed to be dumb, expectations low and all that).

Updates … Again:

As with all systems, when you ask it to install all updates there will be some left.  Whether this is due to the updates realizing something else needs updated, just basic partitioning of kernel/user applications, or full retardedness, who knows.  Ubuntu and Windows XP do this to me, why not OSX.  Sure enough, System Updates said there was some firmware for the power thing or something … I didn’t read it all before I clicked install; dumb Windows user, remember?

It seemed to succeed and took me back to the list with that thing checked off so I moved on to updating Safari which desired nearly forty megabytes (that’s 40) of bandwidth.  Perhaps they are competing on a bloat-level with Windows, well played.  Still, it zipped down the pipe faster than I could have written the paragraph about it so I really shouldn’t complain.  Oops, already did.

Except I can complain about the fact that the Safari update wanted a reboot as well.  Seriously?  Yes, seriously.  I’d like my reboot and a cup of my own medicine.

Afterwards that same damn firmware update for the power thingy appeared again.  I wondered if this was like those Windows Updates I’ve had in the past where if they failed to install correctly, you can never get them off the list and they’ll never complete … without registry intervention.  Luckily this time a reboot window appeared (luckily?) so I figure I must have clicked it “right” this time.

And off it went to restart, again, and install some firmware, again.  It went much faster, thankfully.

Domo Arigato Mr. iPhoto:

This application still pisses me off like it did years ago when I tried it on the iMac.  Let me just walk you through a little pain.  First, I loaded this up with the sole purpose of taking some pictures with iSite to put as the desktop background.  In the end I achieved the goal, in the beginning I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle the developers.

In fact, let me just start by suggesting a feature that Windows has in their little Picture Preview application built into Explorer: “Right Click > Set as Desktop Background”.

Oh but before you implement that, might I also suggest you have a simple way to take pictures with the iSite from within iPhoto?  Is it that difficult to do?  In Windows (am I starting to sound like a fanboy?  I’m not, I swear) I can typically do an “Import > From Webcam / Scanner” on most picture applications and it’ll bring up a standard, albeit crappy, dialog allowing me to snap off a shot to use.  I spent an agonizing couple of minutes trying to find this in iPhoto, typing various things into their vacuous help box, and generally clicking and right-clicking everything I could find.  No luck, fuck.

System help it is!  No luck there either, fuck.

I’ll run Photo Booth!  I’ve used that!  It’s not on the tray -err- dock, … crap.  Uh, I’ll just ask help about Photo Booth, success!  Wait this just tells me how to use it, but doesn’t give me any links to launch it or any idea of where it is.  Okay, I’m smart sometimes, I’ll just open “Macintosh HD” … “Applications” … scroll scroll… “Photo Booth”!  Success!

One of the best and simplest apps ever, for any OS.  It has almost no features, but works flawlessly (in my limited experience).  I used the four-quick-snaps feature to generate a single image and somehow imported that into iPhoto.

Actually … I still couldn’t figure out how to use that as a desktop background from within iPhoto.  Its Help led me down some weird Photo Book path that didn’t answer my question and I think I just found the picture in Finder and there was an option somewhere in there.

What the hell is wrong with iPhoto?  I just mustn’t be the target user.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger:

On the upside Microsoft makes Messenger for OSX, so you know it will work.  Okay, so it’ll mostly work.  Okay, so it doesn’t have any webcam support and apparently I’m showing up as offline when my status is set otherwise.  What … the … fuck?  There’s something called aMSN that I’ll look into later, this will do until Missy wants to have a webcam conversation with her grandparents over Messenger.

I love (sarcasm) the forum post trying to “help” a user who wants to use their webcam during a Messenger conversation.  All the suggestions are to use something else; way to go community!  Actually, the responses for Back/Forward buttons were even better …

Back Up, No Back Button:

Biggest gripe of all: OSX has no built-in support for a mouse’s back/forward buttons which I use all the time.  I can only hope Missy doesn’t use them, otherwise I’ll be forced to figure out some third-party application for something that should have been baked in.  Forum suggestions from fanboys could be summarized with: “Just use ____ instead”.  Fill that blank in with keyboard short-cuts, browser buttons, mouse gestures, etc.  Basically let’s ignore the problem and work around it.

Lich King is at 98% so I’m gonna end this.

Man Shortage

I didn’t read the article, this summary on Slashdot was enough to freak me out:

“A host of common chemicals is feminizing males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people. Many have been identified as ‘endocrine disruptors’ or gender-benders because they interfere with hormones. Communities heavily polluted with gender-benders in Canada, Russia, and Italy have given birth to twice as many girls as boys, which may offer a clue to the mysterious shift in sex ratios worldwide. And a study at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University showed that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys. It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminized genitals. It is calculated that 250,000 babies who would have been boys have been born as girls instead in the US and Japan alone. And sperm counts are dropping precipitously. Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that they have dropped from 150 million per milliliter of sperm fluid to 60 million over 50 years.”

So … what does feminized genitals mean if not a smaller penis?  You know what?  I don’t want to know, ignorance is bliss.  Is this a big problem or high-level evolution?  Either way it’s freaky.  Snoo snoo will likely be the main cause of death for men of the future.

Forust Editing/Moderation

This morning I spent over an hour at Starbucks scribbling in a little notebook the exact PHP for administering Forust pages, but after groking S3’s form uploads I have some different ideas … of course.  I suspected I might, but I deliberately forced myself to plot things out on paper without internet access.  I’ll do that again knowing what I know now.

No More Author: Why have two text fields when I can make do with one?  You can sign a post by putting your name at the bottom and that’s enough.  It gives me more freedom to later interepret the text, less I have to do now (win win!), and removes yet another barrier from creating a page. For example:

Blah blah blah opinion loud blah blah blah.

-NeilO

While the basic concept of a picture+text sounds exactly like 4Chan, there are differences.  You may upload something besides a picture and the text is interpreted, it’s not static.  Lastly, the idea is to create permanent pages and not a chat.

S3-Direct Upload: Rather than uploading to the web server and then having it upload to S3, the form will send the file directly.  The key (e.g. URL) will be suffixed with a timestamp number and the extension retained.  Additionally, I can specify a valid file size range, use the filename in the S3 object name, and add other restrictions in a S3 policy parameter. Unknown: how to have the content-type set based on the file being uploaded?

Moderation: S3 COPY will be done when a moderator accepts a page and then a DELETE will occur regardless.  The COPY will remove the extension + timestamp and possibly alter the text (stored as x-amz-meta-text) at the same time.  Moderation is done per page which may consist of an existing page and one or more edits.  File name conflicts on new pages will result in a “only one will succeed” scenario.  Viewing a pre-moderated page will require a querystring parameter that contains the extension + timestamp.  The PHP for viewing a page will redirect to the correct URL (w/o extension+timestamp) if the page is no longer awaiting moderation for that timestamp, otherwise the PHP will block viewing of the page if page views have exceeded a threshold.

Editing a Page: Any page can be modified, but modifications are moderated as well.  The edit form is embedded in the page as a little JavaScript link/button that replaces the “view” DIV with the form HTML when clicked.  Thus JavaScript is required to edit any page.  An edited page requires the user upload a file just like it was a new page.

Authorization: Only someone who is logged in via a known administrator account can complete moderation.  Known administrators are a list of Google account email addresses on the web server.  The PHP page which performs moderation will make sure one of those is logged in before performing moderation, otherwise a simple 401 HTTP authorization error is returned.  Anyone can view the list of pages awaiting moderation and they are available as an RSS feed.  A robots.txt entry prevents search engines from seeing the page or the feed.

Moderation Entry: There are two links involved with moderation, delete and approve, and they are displayed on opposite ends of the page: left and right respectively.  The display involves two columns with the old text and attachment on the left and the new on the right.  If this is a brand new page then there are no columns.  Other elements include: hit counter showing the amount of page views, content-type and extension values (the latter is removed and the former must be valid).  Approval will attempt to DELETE an existing page prior to COPY’ing the new page over (does S3 fail if the COPY is to a destination which already exists?).

Sections: Adding or modifying a section is the same as adding a normal page, except the option is only available to administrators.  Additionally sections display their children differently, truncating their content and giving them their unique URL’s rather than embedded them wholey in the page.  The new upload concept is going to require that new pages be added to a section rather than just to the home page.  I don’t think this is much of a big deal, but it’s one extra step which is lame.  The “add page” form is at the bottom of all pages (home, section, and page) except that it is only shown for admins on home (e.g. for adding a new section).  The edit button is only shown for admins on home and section whereas everyone can see/use it for individual pages.  Even when authenticated, modifications go through moderation.

Extension Stripping: The file extension is retained during the initial upload, but stripped during moderation.  Instead, the Content-Type header is utilized to add the appropriate extension during the display of the data.  Without doing this there could be duplication problems where a section or page have the same base name but different extensions.  It also makes looking up objects simpler since I don’t have to know the extension ahead of time.

Initial Configuration: Without the home page existing (e.g. an object named the same as the domain), nothing will work, so a special configuration page must be executed.  This merely has the user input the AWS access ID, secret key, and bucket, then uses the current domain to create an empty object of the same name so the site will at least run.  The AWS information is encrypted using local server values (yet to be determined).

Admin Pages: A page will need to exist to update AWS info (id, key, bucket) and administrator email addresses.

Forust

Ah, the idea which popped into my head when I couldn’t sleep on Tuesday night:  Forust! I’ll let you think of different reasonings behind the name after you’ve read on …

Fart Gone

Wow, WordPress lost a couple of paragraphs due to my wireless flaking out.  THANKS WORDPRESS!

Fuck, well I don’t want to write about it now, especially on here.