Category: Geek stuff

If it involves physics, math, computer science, electronics or has general geek cachet, this is the place for it.

Essential free Mac software

After a year of using a Mac primarily, I have come to appreciate this excellent operating system. I have also come to understand some of the gaps in it, particularly insofar as the software and tools that it includes are concerned. The following, then, is my short list of essential (free) Mac programs. Naturally, they are geared towards the kinds of things I personally do all the time.

1) Adium – instant messaging program

The MSN Messenger client for Mac is quite terrible. It is unstable and badly out of date. The freeware program Adium talks not only to MSN, but to AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, and many other instant messenger services. You see one contact list for people on all the services you’ve listed and the software works well and in a stable fashion.

Make sure to get the Hobbes icons. The one of him dancing, to indicate the presence of a new message, is especially endearing.

One word of warning, all the different preferences can be a bit daunting when you start out. Leave them on the defaults and don’t worry about them.

2) Fetch – FTP client

An FTP program essential to anyone who runs websites. This one is much less temperamental than Cyberduck, which I used for many months before being introduced to this superior alternative. You can apply for a free educational license on the Fetch homepage.

3) Firefox – web browser

Hands down the best web browser for any platform, the Mac version of Firefox is an essential item. I hang on to Safari because it sometimes runs complex Java more reliably than Firefox does (I am thinking specifically of the photo upload script for Facebook). I hang onto Opera because the built in bittorrent support is very useful. With those caveats, Firefox is what I use 99% of the time. At a later point, I should write a list like this of the essential Firefox extensions (SessionSaver, AdBlock with Filerterset.G, and Flashblock come to mind instantly).

4) Google Earth – interactive atlas

Not essential, perhaps, but free and definitely great fun. The built in demonstration tour is worth a look. It shows off the terrain mapping nicely with Mount Saint Helens.

5) jEdit – text editor

Even with MS Office installed, there is no program in Mac OS that can cleanly edit files that must be text only, without formatting. I am talking about things like manually editing HTML files, PHP scripts, htaccess files, and the like.

6) KisMAC – wireless network detector

Particularly if you are running Tiger (OS 10.4), this free utility is helpful for dealing with wireless networks in more sophisticated ways than are possible using the WiFi implementation built into the OS.

7) MacJanitor – maintenance program

If you have a laptop that you leave closed or in sleep mode when you are not using it, chances are some of the timed maintenance scripts that are meant to run under Mac OS are never doing so. By default, they run in the early morning, but that will only happen if your computer is on. This program lets you run them manually, a good idea for maintaining system performance.

8) Password Safe – password utility

The Java version runs under Mac OS and is very helpful for keeping track of the passwords of things you use quite rarely. It is better than Keychain because you can install the Java version on a USB key and then use it on Macs, PCs, and Linux machines.

9) Remote Desktop Connection – system tool

I have no idea why this is not included by default in the operating system. Either this or one of the open source equivalents is necessary to connect to Windows based terminal servers.

10) Skype – VOIP program

Particularly if you have a Mac laptop with a built-in mic, Skype is an exceptionally convenient way to keep in touch with people inexpensively. I really wish more of my friends used it.

11) VideoLAN – media player

This open source video player can deal with the widest range of file types of anything I have used on the Mac. DivX files that simply will not play in Quicktime or Windows Media Player open without trouble, and it has fullscreen mode – a feature that is bizarrely lacking in other Mac video software.

One item that I won’t put on the official list is a third party MD5 hash checker. Only people who need to check the integrity of downloaded files will need one and it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. Just don’t trust the one built into Disk Utility (at least not for .iso files).

PS. The essential non-free software is basically MS Office (OpenOffice does not cut it when you need to collaborate with people using Office) and Photoshop 7, CS, or CS2.

Summer thunderstorm and Ubuntu Linux

Today’s thunderstorm was good news for the parched lawns of Oxford: deprived in past weeks as the consequence of a watering ban. I’ve always been an appreciator of thunderstorms. I like the drama. I like the sense of immersion in nature. Naturally, it is most poignant when you are out on the middle of the lake with a canoe. Not the most pleasant or safe way to experience one, but something that everyone should try at least once.

Another aspect of thunderstorms that I appreciate is how they psychologically empower me to hunker down and feel absolutely no guilt about doing so. They are a kind of free pass from all but the most pressing of obligations. Naturally, there isn’t a lot of appeal to going outside under such conditions, so I spent the time cooking and fiddling with some computer stuff I had set aside earlier.

Warning: computer jargon ahead

Continue reading “Summer thunderstorm and Ubuntu Linux”

Little known OS X feature

People running Mac OS 10.3 or higher should try the following little trick:

Hold down Control+Alt+Apple+8 (or asterix on the number pad, if you have a full keyboard).

This will reset your monitor to grayscale and invert it. This might be useful in a room where you want to use your computer unobtrusively. Otherwise, it might just be an opportunity to show off your OS X prowess to awe-stricken masses of onlookers.

Dust to dust

Back on the 6th of February, I first noted the presence of some kind of opaque foreign matter on the sensor of my Canon Powershot A510 digital camera. Today, I examined what has taken place since.

The state of the sensor:

Note: the colour cast on the original is just because I shot it using auto white balance and tungsten illumination. The second was taken using sunlight. The general speckle pattern all over it is from the wall, not the sensor.

Both shots were taken at the smallest aperture allowed by the A510 at the shortest focal length (f/8). To me, the comparison indicates a worsening situation. There has been speculation that the foreign substance is not dust, but mold. That would be consistent with the fact that it seems to be worsening, as well as to how the problem first emerged after a period of particularly dismal and rainy weather.

Why it matters, and what to do

Shots that involve areas of solid colour as well as small apertures frequently require touching up in Photoshop to remove the blotches. Sometimes, that isn’t even possible for me. (Look near the ground, to the left of the chapel.) Cleaning the sensor would require paying a technician rather more than the value of the camera. I bought it in North Vancouver for C$273.55 (£132), which included a 512 meg SD card that can be used with a new camera. Replacing it with a comparable camera would cost less (because this model has been replaced by newer ones) and more (because everything costs more in England). The big choice is whether to replace the thing, or start putting money into a digital SLR fund.

Having a camera small enough that I literally carry it everywhere has quite a bit of value to it. Having a DSLR would probably improve the quality of photos that I put on here, but it would definitely be more of a conspicuous item to carry and use. It would also further stress iPhoto, with larger image files…

…wanders back to his reading, pondering…

Movie physics

Apparently, the physics in The Da Vinci Code are no better than the history or theology. (Though this review is more about general plausibility than physics, per se.) Let it be known that Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics is among the greatest of all websites.

The review of The Core is funny enough to be worth reading, even if you haven’t seen that awful, awful film. People making films should probably take a careful look through their generic list of bad physics. Of course, scientific accuracy may not be terribly likely to put people in cinema seats, or sell DVDs.

On password security

I was talking with Kelly today about passwords, and how they are a fundamentally weak form of security. Supposedly, we are all meant to have different passwords for every site, so that one database being compromised by an external hacker or malicious insider won’t lead to our email and other sites being at risk. Also, we are supposed to use long and complex passwords with case-changes, numbers, punctuation, etc. (Think ‘e4!Xy59NoI2’) Together, these two requirements far exceed the capability of most human beings.

The real solution is to back up passwords with something else, so that they don’t need to be so strong. This is called two-factor authentication, and it could include something like a smart card that people carry and slot into computers along with a password so as to authenticate themselves. This is already used in cars. Inside the key or newer cars is a little chip with a radio antenna. When you try to use the key to start the car, a radio message is broadcast by the car. The chip detects it, does a bit of thinking to generate a response that authenticates the key, and re-broadcasts it. Using both the physical profile of the key and the radio challenge-response authentication system, attacks based on picking locks or freezing and cracking the cylinder inside them can be circumvented. The system obviously isn’t impossible to foil, but it is substantially more difficult in relation to the additional cost.

In the computer context, such two-factor authentication could take other forms: for instance, a little card that listens to a series of tones from an external source (over the phone, or from a computer), passes them through an algorithm and emits a series of tones in response to authenticate. This is just doing with audio what a smart card does with electricity. Ideally, the second factor would be like a credit card, in that you could have it cancelled and re-issued in the event that it is lost or stolen, immediately disabling the missing unit.

Until such a system emerges, it seems sensible to have tiers of passwords. I have two really weak passwords for things that I sometimes share with close friends. Then, I have a password for low-risk sites where there is no real harm that can come from my account being compromised. Then, I have a cascade of ever-stronger passwords. Something like LiveJournal has a pretty strong password, because it would be a pain if somebody took it over. The general vulnerabilities of passwords are:

  1. Someone could guess it (either manually or with a brute force attack)
  2. Someone could watch you type it in
  3. Someone could install a hardware or software keystroke logger on a machine where you enter it
  4. Someone could break into a database that contains it, then try using it on other sites you use
  5. Someone could extract it from a program on your computer that stores them in an insecure way (like Windows screen-saver passwords, which can be learned using a simple program)

Most of these require physical access to a machine that you use. I would guess that the most common of these is number four. Given that most people use the same password for everything, some underhanded employee at your ISP or webmail provider could probably grab it pretty easily, as well as information on other sites you use. (Hashing algorithms are one way this risk can be mitigated, on the server side, but that’s a discussion for another day).

At the top level, there are things that demand a really strong password: for instance, webmaster control accounts or anything connected to money. For these, I use random alphanumeric strings of the maximum permitted length, never re-using one and changing them every month or so.

Obviously, I cannot remember these for several banks and websites. As such, I write them down and guard them. I am much better at guarding little bits of paper than at remembering random strings of data. I regularly carry around little bits of paper worth tens of Pounds, and little bits of plastic worth thousands of Pounds, if only until disabled. Indeed, I have been guarding bits of paper for well over a decade.

Official daily post

Kelly at Puccini's

This has been a weekend full of surprises: mostly good, a few bad, and one simply baffling. Much as I am inclined to respond publicly to a certain recent provocation, I know it will be wiser to simply submerge it, and allow the author to float back to sanity of their own volition, or simply remain out of sight. Not to let that dominate the paragraph, it should be strongly affirmed that life is proving satisfying and interesting at the moment – if also quite tiring. Given my 6:30am projected wake-up time tomorrow, the plan is to be asleep by midnight, at the latest. Hopefully, my neighbour with the passion for early-morning chain-sawing (seriously) won’t be to to their wood-destroying ways tomorrow.

Writingandmacgeekery

For the first time, I found a reason to consider upgrading the operating system on my iBook from 10.3.9 to some version of Tiger (10.4). Namely, a program called WriteRoom that consists quite simply of a completely black screen, onto which you type basic green text. No fonts, no spell checking, no instant messenger windows popping up. Ironic as it might be to upgrade my operating system so as to use a program with fewer features than any text editor I have ever used, there is still a certain appeal. I already use TextEdit almost exclusively for writing on the Mac; Word uses too much RAM and does idiotic things like automatically trying to insert the last names of anyone in my Entourage contact list whenever I type their first names. I type: “He drew… a blank” and it ‘helpfully’ suggests “He Drew Sexmith a blank.” Much as I like to be reminded about friends from high school, this feature is much more trouble than it could possibly be worth.

That said, a new version of OS X is meant to be coming out sometime in the next few months (Leopard). As such, I think I will probably wait until it is possible to move forward by two bounds instead of just one. Of course, doing so will probably require that I get the extra 1GB of RAM that I have been considering. Initially, I was annoyed that I would need to remove the 256MB RAM upgrade that Apple overcharged me for when I bought this computer, but it seems that the mobo of the 1.3GHz 14″ iBook can handle a maximum of 1256MB of RAM anyhow.

Product endorsement: Foosh mints

I feel the time has come to formally register my appreciation for Foosh Power Mints. The reasons for which I like them are numerous:

  • They don’t dance around the fact that they are caffeinated mints. There are no euphemisms (ie. guarana), and the dosage is clear and comprehensible – 100mg of caffeine per mint.
  • They actually taste quite good, particularly for a sugar free mint and especially for one so effectively saturated with stimulant.
  • They cost less than coffee, per unit wakefulness, and do not require boiling water. They can be had in the UK for 2 Pounds per pack of 12 mints.
  • They can be consumed quickly and easily, without pausing from what you are already doing: whether it be reading, trying to sort out a train timetable, debugging a PHP script, or scaling a frozen waterfall.
  • Unlike coffee – which tends to make me ravenously hungry – they do not substantially increase my food bill.
  • Along with caffeine and mint flavour, they also contain some unknown (probably negligible) amount of ginseng and – more usefully – taurine and B vitamins.

For those struggling to slog through reading material, or develop some basic level of awareness in the early morning (for work, travel, or other reasons), Foosh mints are worth a try.

iTunes data integrity question

I find that a small number of the songs that I have in iTunes have become mysteriously truncated: suddenly coming to an abrupt end somewhere between twenty seconds and two minutes before the song is over. These are songs that worked properly before. In total, less than one in thirty songs are affected, in my estimation. Even so, in a library of 3786 songs, that’s a non-trivial proportion. In particular, Bob Marley songs seem to be vulnerable for some reason. Of the small collection I have, more than half have been thus clipped over the course of the last few years. I don’t know if this is simply corruption due to entropic increase in my hard drive, or whether something more complex is at work.

Is this an issue anybody knows anything about? Google has not been forthcoming with information from other people similarly affected. The problem is especially annoying because it is difficult to remember exactly which songs have been affected, and thus to replace them. Also, most of the CDs from which my iTunes music was generated are back in boxes of mine in Vancouver.

PS. This is definitely not related to the option in iTunes to have songs end before the track normally does (useful for cutting applause off in live tracks, or removing annoying band chatter before and after songs).