Chealion's LJ

05:10 pm - Xdebug, Leopard, and 64-bit shenanigans.

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

In order to profile some in house web application development and find out a couple bottlenecks that were appearing I went looking for a decent PHP profiler and found Xdebug. Because I am using the built in version of PHP on the Leopard Server, and a MacPorts version on Snow Leopard (we also have an application that fails miserably on PHP 5.3) it lead to some fun installing Xdebug on the Leopard machine since I didn’t want to reconfigure apache2 to use PHP 5.3 from MacPorts.

The crux of it is to grab the source, and then when configure prefix the ./configure --enable-xdebug with CFLAGS='-arch ppc64' or CFLAGS='-arch x86_64'. Compile xdebug as a 64-bit extension and it will actually work with a 64-bit version of Apache. With MacPorts it was as simple as enabling the xdebug variant and letting it recompile PHP.

I highly recommend using webgrind. It gave me more useful results than MacCallGrind, and didn’t require an hour hoping MacPorts could compile all the dependencies for kcachegrind (which would require graphviz as an additional install). Now I have some numbers to tell me where to look for proof old me is a moron.

01:24 pm - Magic Mouse: Impressions

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

As many of you are aware, Apple released a new horribly named mouse, the Magic Mouse. On Saturday I had the opportunity (since I was in the mall anyway) to drop by the Market Mall Apple Store and give the mouse a whirl - it was comfortable, did not have the gum-up-every-5-seconds trackball, and was exceptionally responsive. On a whim I ended up purchasing one later that day.

The Good

The mouse is accurate, responsive and the multitouch feels intuitive and that with software updates it could become even more. Additionally the weight has just enough heft to feel solid but much lighter than most other wireless mice Definitely the best Bluetooth mouse I’ve ever used.

Scrolling without a wheel (and momentum on Snow Leopard) brings the best of scrolling on an iPhone/iPod touch to the desktop and for the reason alone is worth it. Instead of a tiny wheel that just spins the entire surface of the mouse is now you touchpad for scrolling, perfect for reading long PDFs and being able to lean back and just use one finger without having to clutch a mouse.

Of note the two finger swipe to go back in Safari hasn’t been an issue and actually useful on occassion.

The Bad

The mouse is smallish and does not offer the ability for a “middle click” (3rd button). If you are used to the Mighty Mouse the muscle memory of squeezing may take a little while to get used to not being able to do. The loss of being able to trigger Exposé in any form is definitely a large loss and the primary reason I normally prefer 5 or 6 buttons on my mice. Being forced to use a less than optimum layout for Exposé on the Aluminum keyboard makes using Exposé more and more of an afterthought without resorting to Dock Exposé in Snow Leopard. Apple’s hardware definitely is not very Exposé friendly at times.

The Ugly

The new mouse is quite cramped and not all that comfortable compared to full size mice like Logitech’s MX Revolution, 1000 or the Performance. This is a huge misnomer because the Magic mouse is surprisingly comfortable even for long periods of time - it’s that the MX line fits my hand more completely and feels nicer to hold at odd angles. That said, I always have a hand on the keyboard and avoid mousing unncessarily as keyboard shortcuts are nearly always faster then hunting for them in the menus.

Conclusion

Suffice to say, it’s an excellent Bluetooth mouse, it’s minimalistic and has all the features I want. For users who don’t require a middle button, those who want a solid mouse it’s perfect. I’ll definitely be keeping it - at least until the wife steals it and I upgrade to an MX Performance.

I highly recommmend the mouse so long as you’re not looking for a large or gaming mouse.

05:15 pm - Initial Snow Leopard Client Impressions

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

My initial impressions are that Snow Leopard is very much worth the upgrade if you can afford the time to do an operating system upgrade (in this case for me it was ~1.5 hours: 45 minute install, 45 minutes testing apps and seeing they still worked without any modification)

Pros:

• Speed
  Awesome!
• New Services Feature
  My favourite feature
• OpenCL
  If you haven’t seen MacResearch’s Introduction to OpenCL check out 33:30 to 34:50 or so. (Rough timecodes
• iCal Event Editing Gets a Window Again
• Spotlight Default Search Location Fix and Sortable Results I can finally search within a folder without holding a needle to my eye first!
• Enhanced Icon View Neat if I used icon view.
• Faster wakeup to password screen Hawt.
• Faster Time Machine Backup Hawt.
• Airport Menu Changes Neat animation, but more info when holding the option key as well.
• Gamma 2.2 Default No longer do I have to set this up each time.
• New Fonts Menlo is cool, but Chalkduster; Heiti SC and TC; and Hiragino Sans GB are all fonts I’ll never use.
• Safari Plug-ins are sandboxed Awesome - Flash won’t hurt as much even after ClickToFlash
• QuickTime Player New UI is great for viewing.
• Preview Faster and better scaling.
• Mail Much faster.
• Set a time before the screen saver asks for a password. THANK YOU.
• Smaller footprint I liked the good thwack of disk space I got back (~6GB)
• Grand Dispatch Can’t wait to see the results on the Mac Pros at work.
• Screen Recording Neat, but I’ll stick with ScreenFlow.
• Revised Keyboard Shortcut / Services Preference Pane Much nicer to work with.
• Wake on Demand No more having to worry about whether the computer is asleep or not? Over wireless? Sweet (Airport Extreme only though)

Cons:

• Base 10 Counting
  WTF. DO NOT LIKE. “Mac OS X can not count” Would prefer a preference to turn this off and/or proper suffixes (eg. MiB instead of MB)
• QuickTime Player Absolutely neutered into being useless beyond viewing and “Sharing” your movie to MobileMe.

In summary, there is no one real feature in Snow Leopard worth upgrading for - no major consumer focused feature. It’s the sum of all the parts that make it worth much more than the $29 they are charging. Once installed you never want to go back.

12:51 pm - iCal Server Multiple / Sub Calendars and Sunbird

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

At my workplace we use iCal Server running on Mac OS X 10.5 Server to share several calendars all under our one staff group. With iCal, so long as the group is delegated to be shown on the user’s accounts you can see all the calendars but with Sunbird you only get to see the first calendar.

Before going further it’s worth noting how to delegate a group calendar so a user can view it without manually adding the group calendar as it’s own calendar (if using Delegates instead of multiple calendar “accounts” (same credentials, different calendars) is your aim). To do so you have to add the group calendar as a normal account in order to set it up, and then set up delegation as you would for a normal account. The important URL to know for using a group calendar is http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/groups/groupname (as always replace http with https and 8008 with 8443 if you are using SSL).

Sunbird uses slightly different URLs than what you use in iCal to start with, where in iCal an example URL might be http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/users/USERNAME or http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/groups/GROUPNAME. The corresponding URL to use in Sunbird is http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/users/USERNAME/calendar or http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/groups/GROUPNAME/calendar

That’s great for adding a single calendar but what if a user or a group has multiple calendars under their one account? iCal will automatically show them as a group whereas Sunbird requires you to add each and everyone that you wish to have show up.

You can specify a “sub-calendar” to subscribe to in Mozilla Sunbird by specifying the unique ID of that calendar instead in the form of the url http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/__uids__/UID_OF_GROUP_OR_USER/UID_OF_SUB_CALENDAR. Note the lack of calendar at the end of the URL. To determine the UIDs in question it’s easiest using iCal, if you click on a calendar and press Command-I (File -> Get Info) you can see part of the CalDAV URL at the bottom of the sheet that appears.

You will see calendars/__uids__/UNIQUE_ID/ONLY_PART_OF_THE_UNIQUE_ID because the label the text is placed into is not big enough to fit the URL. Because you can’t get the full URL from there it’s easiest to go to the iCal Server itself and navigate to /Library/CalendarServer/Documents/calendars/__uids__/ (you’ll need administrator privileges to view this). From there find the folder named the same as the UNIQUE_ID portion of the URL and open it to find a folder with the UNIQUE_ID of the “sub-calendar”. You can now put the URL together and use that in Sunbird to view that additional calendar.

Example URL of a sub-calendar in the group:
https://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8443/calendars/__uids__/FA26C8C6-5B78-4AB0-AE73-0E9576574EBB/F74174B7-380C-4630-9192-9025F4C691A2

Sources Used:

• MacOSXHints.com - Add group calendars to iCal Server
• Apple Support Discussions - Correct URLs for Sunbird
• Apple Support Discussions - iCal + Sunbird

04:07 pm - Chromium Mac Build Bot Updater Script

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

When I read on MacRumors that the Chromium builds for the Mac were available and were actually launching the “stupid” geek in me jumped at the opportunity to try the unfinished, unpolished software. By “stupid” I refer to the side of near any geek who sees the OOO SHINY and is fully prepared to deal with the instability and issues that will crop up with using pre-alpha/alpha software. Naturally when I saw how fast and furious the updates were happening alongside the fact there was no automatic update mechanism apparent in Chromium (I don’t have the Google Updater installed and don’t want to) I sought to find out how to automate the updates to make the pain of manual downloads, copies and such go away.

Using my previous WebKit script, 5 minutes looking at the Chromium application layout and how the builds are stored on the server I changed the script. I fully expect it to break horribly in the future as Google changes folder layouts and/or adds Chromium support to their own “silent” updating mechanism.

#! /bin/bash
 
# Based off my WebKit nightly script (now defunct as WebKit uses Sparkle)
# Copyright 2009 Micheal Jones
# Software License: Do whatever you want.
 
#Find current revision
currentRevision=`/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print :SVNRevision' /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/Info.plist`
 
#Get latest revision
latestRevision=`curl -s http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/LATEST`
 
#Abort if there is no update
if [ $latestRevision -le $currentRevision ]
then
	echo "There is no update for Chromium available"
	exit
fi
 
#Append download address
address='http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/'${latestRevision}'/chrome-mac.zip'
 
echo "Downloading... $address"
curl -s $address -o /tmp/chrome.zip
 
#Abort if the build is not available
if [ "`head -n 3 /tmp/chrome.zip | tail -n 1`" = "<title>404 Not Found</title>" ];
then
	echo "Latest Version is not available yet (try again in a couple minutes)"
	rm -rf /tmp/chrome-mac.zip
	exit
fi
 
#Unzip
unzip /tmp/chrome.zip 1>/dev/null
 
echo "Copying..."
#Copy to Applications
cp -RfL /tmp/chrome-mac/Chromium.app /Applications/ 2>/dev/null
 
echo "Cleaning up..."
#Clean up
rm -rf /tmp/chrome*
 
revision=`/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print :SVNRevision' /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/Info.plist`
 
echo "Finished. (r$revision)"

Realistically you should be looking for the latest source at the link below:

As always this script can be found in my git repository on GitHub.

03:37 pm - Quick Looking a .csv File

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

On ServerFault someone was asked a question why .csv files were unable to be viewed in Quick Look. For some reason .csv files are not defined as plain text by the operating system which leads to odd conflicts between applications that can deal with .csv files that causes QuickLook to report that it can’t find a generator for the file and just show the icon.

The one way to force it to work is to roll your own, with a bit of help after reading the QuickLook Programming Reference it was rather simple to roll together a proof of concept QuickLook generator for .csv files.

It’s not pretty, it may break at any time (if only because it’s using a dynamic UTI since one is not defined anywhere, however .csv files have been using the UTI “dyn.age80g650” for quite a while - as far back as prior to 10.0) but it works and forces the .csv to display properly.

The code and a download of CSVQL is available on GitHub:

Source: http://github.com/Chealion/chealion/tree/master

Download: http://cloud.github.com/downloads/Chealion/chealion/CSVQL.zip

Check out Pascal’s comment for a much nicer looking version - actually puts the data into tables.

06:57 pm - DROC.CA : Douchy Business Practices

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

I’m unsure as to exactly why this annoyed me so much but on receiving junk mail to my home address from a company called “Domain Registry of Canada” (spammer’s website) I felt compelled to write an email (if only to get myself off their mailing list).

Hi,

I’d like to inquire why environmental resources, postage, and my time was wasted by sending a letter to my home address “as a courtesy” to “renew” or should I say SWITCH for 4 times ($40.00 CDN) the price I currently pay to register my domains.

Please remove me from your database and in my obtuse opinion grow a pair of non shifty business practices. (“Domain Registry of Canada”? It may be legal but it’s certainly douchy).

Pissed off over junk mail and shady business practices,

Micheal

I’m fully aware it will do nothing, they won’t (and most likely should not) care about my opinion of their practices but making it known that Domain Registry of Canada is soliciting me to switch (under the guise of renewing) is douchy. The domain is even transfer locked (meaning I can’t switch registrar’s with their fancy paper form). It does stand to point that the moment you start reading further it’s quite obvious it’s a solicitation - it’s not hidden but the fact that I am being solicited for this annoys me even if it “standard practice” by those who have business practices I despise.

03:22 pm - Aborting On the Second Disk on a Restore

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

Scenario: Client attempts to restore their iMac using their Software Restore disks (10.4.10) but the second disk containing iLife for some reason refuses to be recognized. iLife is already installed and the OS has been installed but the Installer will come up everytime you attempt to start up the computer.

The workaround: Start up the computer in single user mode. Then use the following commands (not the ones with ## preceding them however)

## Mount the filesystem so you can read and write to it
mount -uw /
## The files we want live in /var/db
cd /var/db/
## Files that tell us it's a multi disk install
rm .AppleMultiInstall*
## File that tells us to pop up the registration dialog
rm .AppleCustomMac
## Something else to do with setup (Locale Setup?)
rm .locsetup.plist  

I removed all 3 files because they looked like the most likely culprits but gut tells me the .AppleMultiInstall* files are the only ones that have to be removed but I wasn’t able to test it.

You’re now able to boot the computer just fine - it’s imperative however to be sure that you know what has been installed as you’re interrupting the installation. Because in this case I knew that only iLife was on the second disk (in terms of what had been selected to be installed) I didn’t go ahead with reinstalling the OS to be on the safe side.

This has been tested on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, it should be identical for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 as well but I’m not 110% positive.

05:44 pm - Invisible Shield

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

When I got my iPhone I went looking for a case that ideally would not make the iPhone much more thicker than necessary, protected the screen from fingerprints and scratches and generally didn’t suck. It took a while but after reading reviews I settled on using the Invisible Shield by Zagg.

Good

The Invisible Shield protects my iPhone quite well against scratches against keys and well near anything that doesn’t actually slice the material itself. While often the scratch will be visible, running your thumb over the scratch or just giving the material time will have the scratch disappear like it never existed. It’s remarkably resilient to scuffs as well as often wiping away the offending scuff will cause it to disappear, or if dirty a little bit of water will work as well.

It’s also exceptionally thin and clear leaving the screen of the iPhone easy to see underneath it’s protective layer. Additionally dirt, dust, and other cosmetic annoyances can be easily washes or wiped off the screen just like the glass screen on the iPhone.

I prefer the slightly more tactile feel of the material (and if applied to the back as well if applied) as it gives a better sense of tactile feedback on the touch screen. It feels like you’re moving your finger across the screen a certain amount - much akin to using a scroll wheel on a mouse with grooves versus one that was completely smooth. The additional traction also makes the iPhone easier to hold - especially with your finger tips.

Bad

The suckers are hard to apply - compared to just slipping your iPhone into a case the initial time investment is pretty steep. However if you spend the 5 minutes reading the instructions and/or watching the video instructions on their website and then take your time applying it on the iPhone you’ll avoid the major issues of dust, air bubbles and streaks.

Between all the Invisible Shield’s I’ve installed I’ve seen all 3 major issues and all were my fault and thankfully if you’re paying attention can be avoided by taking the screen off and restarting the procedure over before it has time to start to set (according to the instructions). Having air bubbles or dust under the screen is really distracting but I find the streaks the most annoying if only because they aren’t obvious until you’re looking intently at the screen by watching a movie, reading text or something similar. I’ve found they happen when you pull the shield too taunt and are different then the streaks you get after installation.

After installation you will notice there are streaks on the screen that take a couple days to go away. These are normal and I’ve found will go in the direction that you used the squeegee to push out the excess liquid. So for the first couple days they can be a bit annoying as the streaks will distort the colour of some pixels making it seem as if there are razor thin lines of green or red at certain points. Thankfully after a while for the iPhone and the shield to get used to each other it disappears. I’ve also noticed that until this happens as well the quality of the iPhone screen will appear slightly fuzzy - not bad but as if the anti-alias filter was set a notch or two off optimum.

I’ve found that over time the screen likes to grab and hold onto oil and dust requiring wiping. The slight fuzzy appearance of elements on the iPhone comes back as well because of the oil but after cleaning it’s back to where it should be.

The biggest downside I’ve found is that they are not realistically reusable. For example each time I’ve had my iPhone replaced I’ve had to take the old one off and it would stick to itself creating a nice ball of Invisible Shield destined for the garbage requiring me to shell out another $25-$30 CAD for a new one. Be prepared to buy a new one if you have to replace your device.

Conclusion

So of all the faults with the Invisible Shield (which I find are more caveats than faults) I heartily recommend it because it’s unobtrusive and works exceptionally well. After having purchased 4 of them and applying them on 4 different iPhones I’ve still come back to the Invisible Shield every time.

04:57 pm - iPhone Restoration : Restoring Home Screen Layout (Pre 3.0)

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

After having gone through 3 iPhones and countless restores of different iPhones and iPod touches I had to get to the bottom of how to restore my layout of my apps on my home screens.

The Cause

When you restore your iPhone / iPod touch to it’s factory defaults the device is not connected to an iTunes account. When you restore it from your backup (to put your apps and info back on) it will load anything that does not require authorization through the iTunes store (with the exception of free apps - though purchased from the iTunes Store they seem to get loaded anyway). So when you finish a Restore From Backup the first time around it will not load any paid apps or music until it’s authorized. It does it’s authorizations seemingly right after you’ve restored it as it accesses the iTunes Store as if it was just plugged in. Why that has no effect on purchased music I’ve no idea.

In the end you’re left with a phone / iPod that has only part of the data it had on it before and requires you to press Sync again to put your paid applications and purchased music on to it. The biggest issue here is that if you have any data stored in that application, like say Things, or high scores from a game, or just find reorganizing your home layout frustrating you’re out of luck. The paid apps are installed anew, and placed one at a time into the earliest empty spot on your home screens. Frustrating. Thankfully there is a workaround.

The Workaround

1. Perform a backup before you restore.
2. After restoring your Phone to the whichever OS version
3. Restore from your backup (you can cancel syncing music when this part finishes - it will start up again after the next step)
4. Restore once more - you may see two backups to choose from as it would have created a backup after the restoring. Choose the one that would have a timestamp just before you do the restore.

Annoying because a restore from backup may take as long as 5 or 6 minutes but at least you aren’t stuck reorganizing your applications the way you wanted them again.

EDIT: From what I can gather 3.0 has fixed this issue.

11:38 am - Agricola - Initial Impressions

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

After becoming slowly disenchanted with Settlers of Catan which left me feeling like I could tell who would win often within 1 or 2 moves - if the dice would actually play like it statistically should I felt that I really wanted to get another more serious board game that wasn’t as well known and would best of all be fun. After much searching and asking around I purchased the board game Agricola (BoardGameGeek) after a promising recommendation and the fact that it has taken over as the #1 rated game on BoardGameGeek.

Three members of my family and I set up the Family Game (a simpler variant recommended for starting out) and I’m certainly happy that we did. The game from unboxing (pieces already separated earlier) to finish took a good 4 hours. The 4 hour number is artificially inflated due to reading the rules and figuring out the rules on top of interruptions. Once we had started the game itself only took a bit over the 90 minutes it says to expect. I highly suspect after several more plays it will become considerably faster than that.

The Good

The game plays like a well oiled machine - thought out, exceptionally balanced, and insanely competitive without forcing one into an all out war against someone. Without any dice rolling (the bane of my existence in Risk) the element of chance takes a back seat to good old fashioned strategy and ingenuity.

The game is serious but quite fun - I can’t comment on the “let’s play it again” factor as nearly any brand new game I wish to play it again now that I have learnt the rules and mechanics. [EDIT: After playing several more games since writing the first draft of this - the let’s play it again right away factor is not as high as one would expect. Games can get a bit long but that idea that you can play again the following day is high - or if someone asks to play I’ve yet to have anyone say no. But 2 or 3 games in a row? Not as much]

I look forward to introducing the minor improvements alongside the Occupations of the full game that will result in a much more diversifed game.

The Bad

Your best attack is to go first and take the action that your opponents want the most, and when there are multiple routes to victory and easy to change your strategy it becomes a game where you have to think for yourself and see how you can use the different advantages you have to improve your standing instead of sabotaging others. It’s also quite apparent how important it is to not always go last in the turn order - it makes life much more difficult for sure.

Another “bad” point is the rules. While praised for being concise and very informative and easy to consult they are best compared to a comprehensive reference book instead of a how to or introduction. I explain more later about the insane learning curve.

The colour / aesthetics feel bland - with the muted colours of the majority of the pieces the initial feeling is the only exceptions is the green of the farmyards. After more research there are available upgrades for the vegetables and animals to appear like animals instead of just wooden disks or cubes. The disks and cubes only accentuated the initial overwhelming complexity as pieces are not self obvious.

The Ugly

The initial learning curve if all you have is just the rules is massive. Absolutely positively aggravatingly massive. The game creators have included additional illustrations to make it easier to understand on the back of some of the game boards but if you are unaware that is their point or how they fit together (which isn’t revealed until a page or two into the rules) that simply add to the mass confusion of pieces. The good news is that if you’re patient and just read it all through and be patient while going through those first 7 pages, that items that are brought up that haven’t been discussed will be covered shortly it’s easy to get by.

The silver lining of this is that if you have someone who has played the game before or are able to watch a game in play before playing yourself the learning curve is quite trivial in comparison as the game, once aware of the purpose of the pieces is straight forward and well designed.

The Reality

If you can - find someway to play this game. It’s not the most inexpensive game (retails for ~$75-80 CAD) but the quality of the pieces is excellent and the design top notch. While it won’t be the most favourite game of everyone I can heartily recommend it as no matter what is happening in the game it’s possible to use the advantages you have in hand to do your best if not win.

03:21 pm - Alert: Flash Player 10.0.12.36 Installer Opens Up Root Home Folder

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

I updated the current installation of Adobe Flash Player at work today over ARD and had several people ask me odd questions about why there was a Finder window with the word root for a title when they came in to login this morning. Needless to say that raised warning bells all over the place for myself.

On checking the computers I noticed it occurred on every computer running Tiger and that every computer running Leopard did show the menu bar and said Finder was running but unlike Tiger it did not allow you to perform any actions beyond opening a menu. In Tiger you were essentially logged in as root into the Finder (and SystemUIServer) which gave you complete access to anything. The kicker is that the root user was not enabled on any of the computers.

Now in the big picture it’s mostly a non-issue because the following requirements have to be taken to see this edge case:

1) The workstation must be running 10.4.0-10.4.11 (Flash Player 10 doesn’t run on Mac OS X older than 10.4) 2) You must be using Apple Remote Desktop to install the package 3) You must ensure that you choose not to restart the computers in question. By default the package wants to restart the computer if no one is logged in (I assume it is to avoid this very situation). If someone is logged in however it doesn’t request a restart. The kicker is that if you select a group of machines and send it to install and one of them has a logged in user by default it does not ask you to restart.

If you check on the workstation you will see a Finder window open to root’s home folder - even if you don’t have the root user enabled (which I am of the opinion you shouldn’t especially with sudo available). Anything then opened via the Finder then runs as root as well (including Terminal).

So it’s easy to work around - either restart them all, or do it when you have users logged in (not ideal). If you do choose the username for the action to be done in ARD; the Finder window will open up as that user (quite possibly a local administrator account) so filing in a username there is not a workaround but much less dangerous than root access. Once the computer is restarted or someone logs in the issue goes away.

02:12 pm - Rose and Crown: Banff

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

I really like the Rose and Crown pub in Calgary. I had a Christmas party this weekend at the Rose and Crown in Banff which I had read only shares the name - not owners and was not as good. What I didn’t realize was just how bad of euphemism “not as good” was. All in all the most positive thing I can say about my experience there was “at least it didn’t suck” or “it was edible food and I didn’t get food poisoning”. I put up with much of it as I was under the assumption that I was not going to be paying and such didn’t pay attention much to price as much of what I was ordering was something similar to what I and my fiancee would order in Calgary. So my expected price with everything all told would be ~$45 tops. It should be noted that I’m quite easy going on food quality as most things taste quite good to me.

Drinks

I ordered a Crown Float ($8), a Sleeman Honey Brown ($7), a double Jack and Coke ($11.51), and a glass of Robinson Wine Shiraz that was given to me. Of the four, my water ($0.00) which wasn’t even listed was the best tasting drink and I think had the most alcohol. The double Jack and Coke which cost $11.50 tasted like it had double coke to half a shot of Jack. The Crown Float tasted like warm Guiness and slightly cool Strongbow Dry Cider - making neither taste any good. The Sleeman Honey Brown tasted decidedly flat and was hard to stomach at best. Whereas the Robison Wine Shiraz (RSA) tasted like a wannabe fruit bomb - not terrible but decidedly not good. So the

Food

My fianceé ordered Mussels ($10) as an appetizer and the Rueben ($11) with French Onion Soup ($3 extra) as her main course. I ordered the Maple Salmon ($15). The prices weren’t absurd and relatively close to what I would have expected in Calgary - the quality however was decidedly “it doesn’t suck - it tastes like barely decent British Pub Food”.

The Mussels were thankfully plentiful (with a lot of empty shells) and were decent - not good, not bad. Just satisfactory. I’ve had better many times and worse a couple times as well. The Reuben was not Montreal Smoked Meat - it was just a swack of Pastrami with some partially melted Mozzarella on some bread with a decidedly soft pickle. Really disappointing but it was food and it didn’t suck (but that means it was far from good). The French Onion Soup ($3 extra) was bland, boring and utterly and totally forgetful - so much so I don’t remember my two spoonfuls whatsoever.

My Maple Salmon is best described as decent. With Basmati Rice and vegetables the best portion was the steamed pea pods accompanied by well steamed carrots. The rice was unseasoned, plain and completely forgettable. The Maple Salmon was seared (pro), but lacked much in terms of texture and taste beyond a very subtle maple taste as if the scorch marks on the salmon contained the maple sauce retrieved from the grill. Forgetful at best, unsatisfactory at worst.

Price

The worst portion of this whole debacle was the resulting price - after a 15% tip, tax the total came to just barely shy of $80 ($79.95 for those keeping count). Was the evening worth even close to $80? Or heck worth $40? (Barely the latter IMNSHO). The value was appalling especially when considering the drink total ($31.80 with tax and tip) was a complete and absolute regrettable wash. The food ($48.15 with tax and tip) also did not measure up in value. At half the price it might be acceptable in terms of value.

Atmosphere

Shockingly, the atmosphere can also be described as “it didn’t suck” - nowhere near good and not terrible. Just barely adequate. It was very loud, dimly lit and not conducive to talking to anyone more than half a metre away from you. It’s very similar to other pubs I’ve been to but somehow a step or two worse without being outstandingly crappy.

Service

To close up this review I end with the most positive aspect of the evening at the Rose and Crown: the service was prompt and just what would be normally expected. Nothing exceptionally or above what should normally be expected from a waitress at a pub. The exception was it took a couple minutes to track her down in order to pay the grossly overpriced bill.

It’s not only just barely adequate in terms of quality of food, a complete waste in terms of alcohol, and acceptable in terms of service - it’s absolutely terrible in terms of value for money.So in summary, for the love of God and all that is holy avoid the Rose and Crown in BANFF.

The Rose and Crown in Calgary is awesome and not affiliated with the Rose and Crown in Banff. Thank God.

05:06 pm - LaunchBar Snippets

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

One of the very first programs I install on any machine I will be spending a good deal of time on is LaunchBar. I am a self confessed LaunchBar whore because of the amount of time it saves me from going down to the Dock or having to find the Applications folder to launch Applications on top of being able to calculate, do web searches and manipulate files just from a few keystrokes.

Here are three snippets I’ve added to my LaunchBar configuration that make my life a bit easier:

Add /Library/CoreServices as a folder to search - it means you can access applications like Screen Sharing and a few other lesser known applications without digging.

Searching Apple Mailing Lists: http://search.lists.apple.com/?q=*&cmd=Search%21&form=extended&m=all&ps=50&fmt=long&wm=wrd&wf=2221&sp=1&ul=

LargeText: x-launchbar:large-type?string=*

Lastly a couple other tips that I keep running up against:

1. ** allows you to do powers of in the calculator. Not ^.

2. If you consistently misspell something (eg. LIHGR instead of LIGHR for Lightroom) you can set the abbreviation by typing in something that does bring up the file or application and then press Command-Option-A (Select->Assign Abbreviation with the mouse) and then type in the misspell that you keep typing.

01:35 am - The Joyent Golden Ticket

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

I’m happy to report that I am now using the newer Shared Accelerators running on Open Solaris - I requested my Golden Ticket several days ago but only had time to do it tonight and thanks to the helpful migration guide I was all done migrating everything except a handful of abandoned subversion repositories (which had been moved to git a couple months ago anyway) in just a matter of hours.

Another notch off the long, long list of rebuilding my web presence. My only gaff was that when I set up the domains on the new server I enabled PowerDNS right away meaning my DNS changed right away - no time to wait, but it meant any email in the 15 minutes before I finished setting up the email accounts could have been bounced.

12:58 am - build_hd_index

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

I came across a process running on my iMac at home tonight that was consuming a fair chunk of RAM, and a consistent 40-50% of my CPU while accessing each and every hard drive I have hooked up. The process in question is called build_hd_index and is part of Apple’s built in Remote Management software in OS X.

The specific file can be found in /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ as part of ARDAgent.app (ARDAgent.app/ Contents/Support/build_hd_index) and is used by the program (Apple Remote Desktop Agent) to build user and applications reports to be sent back to Remote Desktop Admin (an Apple program for managing multiple computers that is awesome). The reason this was even turned on was that as part of an attempt to get a VPN server working I added my home computer to Remote Desktop Admin on my work computer. By default (as it’s set in my preferences and I believe always default) it will gather reports on certain data which run at midnight in order to cache the data on the computer running Remote Desktop Admin so you don’t have to requery such information every time you wish to look at it.

A quick Google search on build_hd_index showed several other people having issues with it suggesting ways to neuter the process (which would break System updates) or other attempts to disable it.

To turn it off, on every computer running Remote Desktop Admin you need to tell it to stop collecting data (Get Info on the computer) or you can force this by removing the plist file in charge of ARDAgent at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ARDAgent.plist . More of this is covered in detail in Apple’s KBase article.

So as of a result, since my work computer is a laptop and is not on, let alone at work at midnight I’ve turned off uploading information at scheduled intervals - however I still want my work computers to cache the data as the information is useful to debugging why something may be happening.

04:15 am - WebKit Nightly Update Script

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

This is a repost of a much older post that was lost when I transitioned from Moveable Type 3 to 4.

I personally like using WebKit nightlies as my main browser as it’s more or less Safari with a better, faster, and much more current rendering engine underneath it. That and the gold logo looks much better than the silver. It does have bugs occasionally (for example I was unable to post comments to Flickr with WebKit nightlies for a couple weeks) but all in all the experience is very positive. This is the script I use to keep WebKit updated whenever it bugs me for an update. I use an alias in my .bashrc file so I can just type ‘wkupdate’ to run the shell script. The best part is that if I copy it and I’m still using the program the changes won’t take effect until I restart but it allows me to copy it still. (Not advisable however)

#! /bin/bash
 
#Find current revision
currentRevision=`cat /Applications/WebKit.app/Contents/Resources/VERSION`
 
#Get address
#Download start page and find address
address=`curl -s http://nightly.webkit.org/start/trunk/$currentRevision | grep 'WebKit-SVN-r[0-9]*' -o | head -n 1`
 
#Abort if there is no update
if [ "$address" == "" ]
then
	echo "There is no update for WebKit available"
	exit
fi
 
#Append download address
address='http://nightly.webkit.org/files/trunk/mac/'${address}'.dmg'
 
echo "Downloading... $address"
curl -s $address -o /tmp/WebKit.dmg
#Mount Image
hdid -readonly -quiet /tmp/WebKit.dmg
 
echo "Copying..."
#Copy to Applications
revision=`cat /Volumes/WebKit/WebKit.app/Contents/Resources/VERSION`
 
cp -RfL /Volumes/WebKit/* /Applications/ 2>/dev/null
ls /Volumes/WebKit/
 
echo "Cleaning up..."
#Clean up
hdiutil detach /Volumes/WebKit/ -quiet
rm -rf /tmp/WebKit.dmg
 
echo "Finished. (r$revision)"

EDIT: Updated 12/30/08 - Fixed URL check. Realistically you should be looking for the latest source at the link below:

As always this script can be found in my git repository on GitHub.

01:27 am - iPhone After Two Months

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

After seeing D’arcy’s post today I felt the motivation to get off my butt and finish my iPhone review / showcase of my increasingly cluttered screens. First my screen setup followed up by short reviews of each application.

My first screen is my main screen which I reserve for applications I use most or are what I deem critical to the phone.

My second screen was originally influenced that on my iPod touch I placed all Internet using appliations on the second page. However with the iPhone this has changed significantly, and the second screen is roughly my photography/utility/Web screen.

My third screen is relatively simple and is exclusively devoted to games.

My fourth screen is a catchall screen for apps I use very infrequently and web bookmarks I really should delete.

On my layout I try and keep the bottom row clear if possible - it feels considerably cleaner and swiping with my digit doesn’t blot out any information (say a badge on an icon). The information in question doesn’t actually matter but I am not a fan of blotting out my viewing window unless necessary. The bottom row gives me a safe place to swipe without fear of opening an app. (Had this happen with 1.1.4 on my iPod touch but not since 2.0.)

“Home Row”

Phone: I like the app and keep it here because double taping my home button takes me to the iPod application. Biggest complaint was fixed in 2.1 as the contacts lag was fixed.

Calendar: I’ve got the time at the top, and the date at the bottom. I don’t use the calendar a lot but appreciate having the date visible at all times. It does it job and gets out of your way.

Safari: Best mobile browser availble. Only wish is that I could use newer versions of Webkit. Don’t miss not having flash ads all over the place. I never really use Java anyway.

Settings: Easy access to turn WiFi on or off among other things. It means I don’t have to go digging when wanting to change a setting.

“Screen 0”

iPod: No review needed. In 2.1 much nicer than 2.0.

Mail: For what I want Mail is an excellent Mail application reading and composing my email. Biggest annoyance is that I can’t mark items as unread. Having used POP accounts on my iPod touch I must say IMAP or death - I will archive older mail on my desktop to keep my mailbox down in size.

Maps: The GPS built into the iPhone 3G makes using this app even more enjoyable. It just works and works well.

Weather: A bookmark to Environment Canada’s website on the weather for Calgary. I like the view of Apple’s provided application but the accuracy is even more atrocious than Environment Canada. I’ll take the lesser but uliet if two evils.

Contacts: No review needed.

Notes: Useless because it can’t sync with anything but good for when you need to jot something down temporarily.

Calculator: No review needed. It works.

NetNewsWire: The first third party application on my iPhone - is very, very well designed and syncs with a subset of my NewsGator feeds. Excellent way to stay informed when killing time on an hour long commute on public transit.

SMS: It works. No review needed.

Spend: I have fallen out of using this application (which thankfully now has a non ugly logo) due to issues in iPhone OS 2.0.2. I lost data twice and had the iPhone uninstall everything once as well. Now after 2.1 as someone who hates to keep receipts it makes recording transactions easy so I can input them into Quicken at home.

Twitterrific Premium: Hands down one of the best designed applications on the App Store. It just works, allows you to view webpages without leaving the application, and with the premium version gives a version I find much more readable. It’s light, fast and exceptionally well designed. Best Twitter client IMNSHO.

Things: This application rivals Twitterrific for best design in an iPhone application. With 1.1 they introcued syncing allowing me to keep snippets of what needed to be done with me wherever I was. Super highly recommended as it’s super intuative - if you like the desktop version you’ll LOVE the phone version as well.

1Password: The latest addition to my iPhone I am presently trying out using a passwrd manager and need access to a subset of passwords on the go. Won’t be stating on the front page as I don’t use it all that often.

“Screen 2”

There is no screen one.

Camera: It works and the quality is what you would expect from such a small camera.

Photos: Dont use this as often as I should. But it dies the dusplay of photos exceptionally well.

Exposure Premium: Also one of the first applications I installed on my iPhone - this would be akin to Photos but for Flickr with more features. My favourite feature is the Near Me feature that will use the location services to show pictures taken close to your location.

WordPress: Used to type the large majority of this post, it’s a great little piece of software to create posts from your iPhone. Not perfect but faster and more screen friendly than using the WP-admin UI in Safari.

Remote: One of Apple’s add on programs - it’s awesome controlling your computer that is downstairs to play to the Airport Express in the room beside you so you can have some music playing without having to navigate floors.

iTunes: No review needed but my credit card is quite fit. Only wish it wasn’t WiFi only.

App Store: Like the iTunes store, no review needed but my credit card is quite fit.

Shazam: While my personal use for this application has been limited and when it first hit the App Store a couple songs I threw at it were spotty it’s a great tool to have around. I can never remember the names of songs and it’s works very nicely all things considered.

PhotoCalc: An application I use quite infrequently but very much worth the money I spent for it the times I do have to use the program. The reference, sunrise, sunset, and moon phase section is worth it’s weight in gold. (At least for me)

Seismometer: This is a recent application. It was recommended to me and for $0.99 it’s very much entertaining for seeing how much vibration and such is occurring. As I type this section on my iMac, I can see the seismometer jiggle as I type faster and harder versus softer and/or slower.

pTerm: This was the first shh client available for the iPhone, and it works well enough. When it first came out there were some serious issues: namely no arrow keys, escape key, etc. making some commands impossible. However in a pinch when I need to log onto one of my servers to check the status of something it does work. Personally I’d rather get to a computer if possible, but it does handle a regular sized Terminal window well on the iPhone screen (allows moving it like a webpage) despite the keyboard consuming the majority of the screen.

Mocha VNC: I had first tried the light version and was impressed that it worked causing me to pay for the full version to support the development of a VNC application for the iPhone. Very much like pTerm - it’s great in a pinch and all that’s available but if I could I’d rather get onto a computer as scrolling around a large screen gets very cumbersome very fast. (But is the best solution to showing a large screen on a small screen and making it actually usable).

“Screen 3”

reMovem free: I was recommended this application as well but have yet to get around to playing it.

Koi Pond: The water effects are amazing, and if anything the application is perfect for showing off what the iPhone can do. It’s mostly useless but fun and entertaining in brief short 30-60 seconds stints.

Cro-Mag Rally: One of the first applications I got for my iPhone - the game brings back many of the memories I had of playing Cro-Mag Rally back in OS 9. The super loose controls, the decent and entertaining graphics, and the sheer amount of hate I forgot about because of said controls. While I don’t play the game anymore I know several people who don’t mind it. It’s the only application I regret buying on the App Store.

Aurora Feint: A highly popular free game - the puzzles have been very entertaining but I have not devoted enough time to actually delve into the game deeper and start exploring much past the first 5 minutes. A shame really because it’s a very well designed game.

3-Tuple: Doesn’t seem to be available on the store anymore - but another app I was recommended but have yet to play.

Sudoku Unlimited: One of the only games I actually play with some regularity (say once a week). I like the inputs and how well it’s put together. Of course there are 9 million other Sudoku games on the AppStore but I like this one best.

Othello: It’s the game of Othello and I forgot just how out of shape I was on this game as the computer is schooling me even on easy mode. Fun game however.

Tris: No longer on the App Store because of a Cease and Desist - but it’s Tetris and it’s great. It has some bugs but I like it a lot more than the official Tetris game by EA (which is just bloat - I want to get to my game fast not 2 minutes later).

Spinner Free: Another game I have to show off what the iPhone can do - it’s easy and I don’t play it often but it shows off the accelerometer well as you just have to rotate the phone (landscape) around your arrow to lead it to the goal. Easy, and a great casual game for killing time.

Spore: Owning Spore itself, the cell stage was a lot of fun and I wasn’t sure how closely it would resemble it when looking at the screenshots and reviews. It’s not much like it at all in terms of gameplay. You tilt to control your character and I must say it’s a lot of fun and thankfully is nice and casual allowing me to get to my game and out real quickly if I need to.

CarriesDots: Another free game. Simple, casual, fun. That’s all I wanted and it’s perfect. It is a two player game however.

Brain Challenge: Like Brain Age but for the iPhone with more games. It’s fun although the loading times are a bit frustrating at times. Don’t regret buying this application one bit.

“Screen 4”

Empire: Bookmark to CalgaryMovies.com for the Empire Studio 16 theatre. HORRIBLE theatre, but it’s close.

Chinook: Another bookmark to CalgaryMovies.com but for Chinook.

Flickr: A holdout from my iPod touch this is just a link to my Flickr page - I really just use Exposure or flip to Safari instead from now on. I should get around to removing it.

YouTube: Only use it when people send me links to YouTube. It plays Rick Astley very nicely.

Stocks: Never use it.

Weather: Pretty but a PITA. See why I have the Environment Canada bookmark on my front page.

Clock: I never use the other features in Clock, so the time in the bar up top works great.

Banner Free: Scrolls words across your iPhone screen as if it was a large LED sign. Fun to send small messages by showing it off.

Instapaper: I use Instapaper on my desktops quite a bit, but the iPhone version leaves me wanting quite a bit. It’s slow - since I understand it caches a text version on the iPhone itself - but it’s not apparent it does it. It only lists 10 items at a time and requires you to update it which is a 60-120 second operation to get the next 10 items. I like to be able to flip through my Instapaper items (which number about 200) to see which things that had interested me I’d like to read and see if they’re actually worth bookmarking. I won’t be upgrading to the pro version.

Flixshop: “Grocery Gadget” in the iTunes Store. Flixshop on the iPhone? Huh? Glad I didn’t pay for it - I haven’t got around to trying it out yet.

Air Sharing: Another application waiting to be tried given I got it for free during the big buzz that it’s a great application.

Bible: It just works. ‘Nuff said.

Last.fm: I don’t use this often but the couple of times I’ve used it, it means I can listen to radio on the go at times. It’s been spotty for me on cell service however - and since my iPhone has music I want I don’t pay it much heed.

Conclusion

So after two months I still have to say the iPhone is the best phone I’ve owned by FAR. Except for some hiccups under 2.0.2, namely when I switched computers it decided to nuke items, and the occasional requirement to restart it every couple of days which still exists under 2.1 I have enjoyed using my iPhone tremendously. My data usage is also considerably lower than I expected. When Rogers announced the 400MB data on the lowest plan I thought I’d blow past that amount very easily - in reality the first month was 198 MB whereas the second month increased to 240.5MB, whereas this month I’m only on track to use 300MB.

06:34 pm - GitHub

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

In order to make it easier to access the crap code I make in the various posts I’ve created a git repository on GitHub. You can access it at http://github.com/Chealion/chealion. I leave it as an exercise to the reader on how they should install git and if necessary access said information.

At present the only code snippets available are just the Locked DVD Applecript (Git) and the Tab Count to Growl AppleScript (Git). Several of my other scripts will be made available in the next couple of days.

UPDATE: The WebKit nightly script has been added.

06:41 am - Interesting Twitter Tidbits of the Week

Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.

These are just a couple little tidbits I’ve posted on Twitter over the past week that deserve to be posted on the blog so I can find them using Google later. If I have something to say that is really short I use Twitter.

Figured out why the iTunes backups are so much speedier. They’re a 1/10th of the size nowadays. My ~205MB backup is now 27.1MB (after 2.1)!! 9/13/08

Note to self: sudo -u of course won’t work when you do not specify a command. eg. sudo -u cyrus FIX_MAILBOX will work wonders. 9/10/08

New iTunes visualizer: Hit ‘?’ for the options available. eg. F will freeze the display. 9/9/08

http://twitpic.com/awi9 - Best iTunes Terms of Service I’ve ever seen. I’d gladly accept them. I think.. 9/9/08

“We’re better off with Harper.” What?!? Who writes such a terrible slogan?How does that inspire ANY confidence?!? C-61 lost my vote 9/6/08