Red Letter Day

I just picked up a new 27-inch iMac.
I went with the Built-To-Order option of the i7 processor and the Radeon HD 5750 GPU. This is a definite upgrade over my older (although still very capable) 24″ Core 2 Duo.

My upgrade process was about as flawless as possible. I used Super Duper to back up my old iMac’s entire hard drive to an external drive, then cloned that backup directly back onto the new machine. It was literally a brain transplant. All of my applications, settings, preferences, files…everything was just as it was on the old machine, except, you know, faster.

However, it was only 99% flawless, there were a few things that tripped me up, or could have tripped me up if I hadn’t been careful, and I want to share them here for any readers who might be interested in doing the Super Duper mac brain transplant route.

1. Don’t forget to de-authorize your old machine with the iTunes store prior to shutting it down. Since you need to authorize the new computer to play your iTunes content, you’ll need to remember to do this, otherwise the old machine will continue to use up one of your 5 authorizations even if it it never gets used again (or the disk is erased). This is because iTunes authorizations are based on the physical CPU, not the OS.

2. While almost all application settings get carried over automatically as part of the clone, a few apps store their settings in non-conventional ways and will detect that you are on a new CPU. Little Snitch, a network monitoring app, lost its registration in the move and I had to re-enter my serial number on the new CPU.

3. If you use any VM software, when you load your virtual machines, they will likely detect the new hardware and go through a Windows driver dance. My Windows 7 and XP VMs handled this without a problem, but Windows’ over-sensitive activation system may bitch at you and make you go through the whole “Genuine Windows” registration crap if it detects that too much of your system specs have changed.

4. If you are going to use Boot Camp, be sure to create your boot camp partition first, right after booting the new machine, and before you restore from your clone. Otherwise, you may have trouble creating the boot camp partition at a later time. When I forgot this step, Boot Camp complained that it couldn’t create a partition because certain files could not be moved (in spite of the fact I was trying to create a 100 GB partition from a disk with 500 GB free space). I ended up having to reformat the drive, install a rump OS just long enough to run Boot Camp Assistant, and then re-write my cloned drive – a waste of 6 hours.

5. Some routers get very confused when a second machine with a different MAC address but the same IP and name gets connected to the network. This may cause things like port forwarding to fail. My 2-Wire U-Verse router got completely confused and I had to delete its list of “known devices” and recreate the port mapping from scratch. There’s no way around this, just make sure to test your inbound connectivity after you set up your new Mac.

So, that’s it. Other then that, so far, everything has worked. Moving into a new Mac this way is far superior an experience to the normal method of either running the Migration Assistant, or manually upgrading. However, keep in mind that this method is a true brain transplant – it brings along all the cruft and crap that is part of the old system too. If your old Mac is not shipshape, its sins will be visited upon the new one!

This blog (and the other blogs and domains on my master account) are not very popular (in spite of the general awesomeness which pervades every pixel). Our monthly bandwidth is a couple gigabytes at best, which is why I was very surprised yesterday morning when I got an automated letter from my hosting provider telling me I was on a path to blow through my monthly allotment of 150 gigs of bandwidth and be liable for a big overage charge!

The culprit was one of those slimy, scammy “you won’t believe what this video showed the babysitter did when the parents were away” sites. They were direct-linking to the original of a tiny 25 k png image that Dave uses for his site (and he has copyright of the image, adding insult to injury!) Downloaded, oh, a few million times, that adds up.

There’s a few ways to deal with this. One obvious and fun way would be to simply replace the original image with one that perhaps contained a double bird and insulted the thief’s mother, but, as satisfying as that would have been, it still would take my bandwidth. Another option would be to simply rename the image, breaking their IMG SRC tag, but while this would stop this specific thievery, it wouldn’t stop them (or anyone else) from figuring out the new image name and using it instead.

I needed a way to stop all external referrer image linking to my account, but still allow images to be referred when the page was locally hosted (i.e. part of my blog).
In other words, this will not allow someone to use your image as part of their site, directly from your server (normal hyperlinks to your site work the same as always).

After a fast and intense Google-powered brain-bang, I had found the answer!

The way to do this is via an .htaccess file that utilizes a built-in feature of the Apache web server called mod_rewrite.

You create a file called “.htaccess” at the very top level of the web site you want to protect (or append the the existing one if it is already there), and put the following text in it:


RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([^.]+\.)*yourdomain\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yourblogspotblog\.blogspot\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|gif|png|bmp|mp4|avi|mp3)$ – [F]


Replace “yourdomain” with the actual name of your domain (and obviously replace ‘com’ with ‘org’ or whatever if it is a .org site. The * is a wildcard, covering prefixes like “www” or whatever, as well as the naked, raw URL.

You can have as many lines as you have domains you wish to allow linking from. In other words, this is a whitelist of allowed domains, generally ones you own or post to. I’ve included a blogspot blog here too, for example, if you have a blogspot blog from which you link images you host on your main domain.

Make sure to keep the backslashes, carets and other goop intact, they are used as part of the regular expression.

The last line lists the file extensions that you are not permitting to be externally linked. In my case, I want to prevent links to common graphic, music and movie formats.

Save your .htaccess file and you should be good to go – it should take effect immediately.

Now, you will want to test your changes.

You will need access to a “non-allowed” domain. If you have a friend with a web site, ask to use it, or you can always use wordpress.com or something. To test, just create some HTML code that directly links to a file on your protected site, a normal IMG SRC or whatnot.

Save it, and clear your local browser cache – this step is very important, because if the image is in the cache somewhere, it will still be displayed even if the .htaccess file is working great. Then load the test page. You should see broken image indicators for the images.

If not, make sure again to clear your browser cache (or try on another machine), and check the .htaccess file to make sure the code is correct and it has proper permissions (644 – world readable, but only writeable by the owner).

Lastly, don’t forget to verify that images do show up properly from within your own site. If you made a typo in your domain name when editing the .htaccess file, this would be the result, so double-check with all the “whitelisted” domains.

I like Scrabble-style word games. I like them a lot and I have gotten halfway decent, at least if you believe the anguished tweets of my friends. (on the other hand, I’m nowhere near these people either!).

Naturally, playing Scrabble on the iPhone with actual friends is a lot of fun. There are really only three Scrabble-like word games I know of for the iDevices, and I thought I would briefly compare them, focusing on iPhone gameplay and the fun factor.

You’ll note I did say “Scrabble-like” – there is a reason for this. Scrabble (i.e. Hasbro) owns the rights for actual Scrabble. Therefore, it’s two main competitors, Lexulous and Words With Friends, have had to make some subtle alterations to stay legal. These alterations are not severe, but they do change the game a little bit, kind of like the differences between Canadian and American football. However, all three of these games have the basic template – you take turns making interlocking words on a board with point values for letters and spaces.

Scrabble ($1.99 for iPhone, $9.99 for iPad)

First, the original, Scrabble. This application is the real deal, with the official borad and rules, exactly like you’re familiar with. For the most part, the developers have done a really good job translating the gameplay for the iPhone. You have a choice of several modes of play, including solo (against the computer), turn-based (pass the phone to a friend), and most fun, competing electronically with your friends via Facebook.

The latter option works with the Scrabble Facebook app, meaning you can play either via the Facebook web site or on your phone. This is a really great option because it lets you compete with any friend who has Facebook – you are not limited to iPhone-owning buddies. You can also challenge and accept games against random strangers, which is a good way to build your skill. Integration with the iPhone notification system will let you know when its your turn in any of your active games.

The Scrabble back-end keeps track of your statistics (games won and lost, best bingoes, so so forth), and the iPhone version of the game comes with some useful features, including a dictionary and somewhat controversially, a “word-builder” assistant which will show you (after your turn) what the best word you could have played.

Unfortunately, the official Scrabble app is by far the slowest and most difficult to start up of all its brethren. Even on a new iPhone 4, it takes a solid ten or more seconds to start the game up, and creating a new game is a slow, multi-step process. Additionally, unneeded animations make the game feel slower yet and it seems like even the most simple tasks in-game take a half-dozen taps to accomplish.

Words With Friends ($2.99 for iPhone, $2.99 for iPad, or free ad-supported version)

Words With Friends is a lean, mean Scrabble-like game, which focuses on one task: getting you playing as fast as possible (and showing ads if you’re using the free version). Unlike Scrabble and Lexulous, there is no Facebook integration, Words With Friends uses their own account system. After signing up for an account, you then have to find your friends on the system or you can play a stranger. Integration with the iPhone notification system will let you know when its your turn in any of your active games.

Load time and game play is fast. You see a list of all your active games and tapping on a game lets you play. Words With Friends eschews many of the features of its competitors. There’s no dictionary, no way to see the value of a word before playing it, and the game doesn’t keep track of player statistics or past games (beyond your most recent). As such, it is clearly designed for the quick, casual player, but is still a lot of fun for anyone who enjoys these types of games. There is also an in-game chat feature so you can talk smack to your opponent. The game is also easier on the eyes then either Scrabble or Lexulous – alone among these three games, Words with Friends has been partially updated for the Retina Display on the iPhone 4.

Rule-wise, the main difference between Words With Friends and traditional Scrabble is that the location of the bonus squares on the board are different, and the point value for some letters is slightly changed. I do have a small beef with the location of some of the bonus squares, specifically there is no double-word tile for the first move, which automatically gives whoever goes first a slight disadvantage. Furthermore, some of the triple word tiles are placed in a way that makes them too easy to double-up upon.

Regarding gameplay, the main downside to Words With Friends (beyond the missing features) is that the back-end server can sometimes be very slow in the evening, resulting in long waits when you try to load the game or play a word. Furthermore, the reliance on its own account system means it is difficult to find existing friends unless you know their screen name in advance. Still, of all three games, Words With Friends is probably the one I’d recommend for a new player who wants to have some fun quickly.

Lexulous ($3.99 for iPhone)

Lexulous is the grand-daddy of Scrabble knock-offs, and used to exist on Facebook as “Scrabulous” before the Hasbro lawyers got sicced. Like Scrabble, Lexulous can be played both on Facebook and on the iPhone, and is by far the leanest, fastest of the three games discussed here. Unfortunately, the developers of Lexulous have been giving the game some not-so-benign neglect in the past year and it has grown very long in the tooth.

Rule-wise, Lexulous has tweaked the original Scrabble rules to make for a higher-scoring game. Players have 8 tiles rather then 7, but you get a bonus for making a 7-letter word (as well as a true 8-letter bingo). Furthermore, many letters have higher point values, making games with scores in the 400s and higher common, and allowing for big comebacks. This freewheeling style of play can be a lot of fun.

Lexulous caters to the “serious” player by keeping very detailed statistics and archives of past games. Well, I should say “catered” because these features are only available in the Facebook version, not on the phone, and the archive functionality has been broken on Facebook for months with no fix. Furthermore, the interface on the iPhone has seemingly been copied from another mobile platform, and doesn’t use any iPhone conventions – for example, instead of a scrolling list view of friend, you have to move page-by-page with a “next” button through all your friends. Furthermore, Lexulous stands alone among these three apps in not making use of the iPhone notification system, so there’s no way to know when it is your turn except by opening the app and checking manually.

In spite of these bugs, actual gameplay works fine, and is very zippy. Fast load times and quick move recognition cover for a multitude of functional and UI sins, but still it is frustrating that Lexulous gets so much right and yet the developers have seemingly abandoned it. As it stands, I can’t recommend Lexulous to anyone unless they already play friends in the Facebook version and want to check on games from the Phone.

I noticed today over lunch that the old Zig and Macs restaurant at 15th and Wakarusa has gone out of business and has been replaced by some Italian place, which I will need to try in due course.

Zig and Mac’s used to be really good. When they first opened, myself and a bunch of people from work would go there several times a month. They were fast, the food was really good, and we enjoyed eating there. However, in the past six month, it was clear the place was on the way out. This got me to thinking, what are obvious signs that a restaurant isn’t long for the world?

This is what I came up with…if you have any additional ideas, please leave them in the comments

SSHed into my iPhone 4

Yes, the long-awaited iPhone 4 jailbreak is released. Even better, it is now definitely legal (although Apple will not provide warranty service to jailbroken phones…you gotta restore a stock OS before bringing it in for service)

It is both the best and worst jailbreak I’ve ever used.

It is the best because by far it was ridiculously easy to use. You visit a web site in Safari on the iPhone, and the jailbreak is done right there, in userland, no reboot required, no restore, no patched IPSW, just a minute of churning, and you are jailbroken with Cydia and ready to go. It’s an amazing piece of programming – an elegant exploit that I would be shocked if Apple doesn’t close in a hurry with iPhone OS 4.1 (which might make this a short-lived jailbreak).

It’s also rather buggy. The jailbreak killed Facetime (which I could care less about) and MMS messaging (which I really don’t care about either), so if you rely on these features, I would definitely hold off on the jailbreak.

Furthermore, a lot of the major jailbroken apps (like SBSettings) aren’t fully compatible with iOS 4 or the iPhone 4 hardware. Cydia crashes if you try “fast app switching” to it. Still, most things mostly work, and I was able to at least my all-important custom Legend of Zelda SMS tones and BiteSMS for instant SMS’ing from the lock screen installed.

I am also really looking forward to trying Notified which promised to bring the (much better then iPhone) Android-style notification system to the iOS.

And hey, it’s nice to have root on my phone.

I just picked up one of the new Apple trackpads.
(by the way, that is not my hand. Do I look like a hand model to you?)

Anyway, here are some super fast first impressions:

The device ships with 2 Energizer batteries already installed.

No software comes with it; there is a little sticker telling you to go to the Apple web site to download the drivers

Even though I downloaded and installed the drivers in advance, when I powered on the trackpad, it didn’t automatically get discovered; I had to manually add it as a bluetooth device.

Once added, the trackpad works exactly like you expect; same as on a Macbook.

The surface area is very big, which is nice to use with a larger desktop display as you don’t have to worry about your finger sliding off the edge.

The angle of the device is much higher then the default Apple wired keyboard. This isn’t that big a deal but it looks kind of funny.

The four-finger swipes don’t seem to be well detected, and even when they are detected right, you can’t just keep swiping to switch apps; one swipe brings up the tab switcher, and then you gotta do things manually.

Most other gestures work pretty well, but a lot of apps don’t support the fancy gestures. I wish there was a way to send a key event with a gesture or define custom gesture. Guess we need to wait for the inevitable third-party drivers.

Safari scrolling works fine, but the momentum thing isn’t really noticeable.

In iPhoto, rotation and pinching work great, but weirdly, pinching doesn’t zoom when you are viewing a single photo, only when you are viewing a library (to make all photos bigger or smaller).

This morning I had one of my weirdest Lawrence experiences ever. I was having coffee at Z’s chatting with Dave and a friend, and out of nowhere, this elderly gentleman comes up and hands each of us one of the little free KU football schedules that pretty much every business in Lawrence hands out this time of year. The guy then hands us a couple copies of this xeroxed, hand-written screed and says we should read it, and then kind of shuffles away.

This was bizarre enough on its own. I actually kept the sheet to read, hoping I would get to enjoy a good rant about the gold standard, Lyndon LaRouche, and how fluoride in our water supply will cause all our precious bodily fluids to become poisoned, making it easier for the Communists and illegal immigrants to take over.

I mean, it’s not every day you get someone to care enough to write out a manifesto in longhand, old-school style.

Alas, I was disappointed. The sheet, which is reproduced below in all its glory, appears to be a random series of words, strung together in a manner that suggests grammar and sentences, but without actually meaning anything. I’m not kidding…seriously, try to read the text below and make any sense of it.

I'm not sure what this says

Maybe it is a secret code, perhaps pointing the way to Leonardo Da Vinci’s fabled lost invention. You tell me!

Anyway, as Homer Simpson would say, “I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.”

So yesterday I needed an easy, quick way to track and log the memory use of an application remotely, in (near) real-time, as I performed various actions.

I could SSH in and run something like top, but that doesn’t get me the logging. There are several graphic “activity monitor” like utilities including, well, Activity Monitor and Big Top, but those don’t work remotely and I didn’t want to graphically control the remote machine since that performance was part of what I was measuring.

Apple’ Instruments would have been really great, but it doesn’t work remotely, at least in any way that was quick or obvious.

After some brief searching, I found a great too, written in Python, called Syrupy, written by a guy named Jeet Sukumaran. It was tiny, simple, lightweight and does only one thing – records the state of a process over time. You tell it which process(es) you want to monitor, and how often to sample them, and it will log the results to a file or the console.

If you choose the latter, you can even make quick and dirty test notes “in line” which makes it really easy to go back later and remember what you did/see the effect of what you did on memory or processor use. You can also control the output format with a few arguments when you invoke Syrupy, which can be useful if you have some graphing app that is picky about formatting.

You run it on the remote machine via an SSH session (obviously you can use it locally too).

Default output looks like this:

SYRUPY: Writing raw process resource usage logs to 'syrupy_20100726160016.ps.raw'
SYRUPY: sampling process 169
PID DATE TIME ELAPSED CPU MEM RSS VSIZE
169 2010-07-26 16:00:16 02:08 0.0 0.1 4932 409880
169 2010-07-26 16:00:26 02:18 0.0 0.1 4924 409360


Anyway, Syrupy can be found here if you need it.

Amazon just announced that it is now selling more books in Kindle format then the traditional hardcover.

Of course, the Kindle’s not the only game in town for eReaders. Borders has one, as does Barnes and Noble and of course, Apple.

For anyone who knows my relative addiction to technology (motto: if it is good, it can be made better by adding electricity. If it has electricity, it can be made better by turning it into a robot. If it is a robot, it can be made better by giving it sentience) might be surprised ot hear that I use none of these devices. I prefer paper books. The one that are made from dead trees, that take up massive amounts of space, weigh a lot, and give you paper cuts. They also have a disturbing tendency to burn when there is a fire (of course, a Kindle will melt like butter, but all your books are backed up digital files you can load on a new device, right?)

But, before you hand me a Metamucil and a box of Depends, allow me to share with you why I (a pretty voracious reader) still prefer paper books.

These first four reasons are positive, related to what I feel are real advantages of traditional books, on a personal level

I like the tactile feel
I like the physical weight of the book in my hand, and the physical representation of progress as I turn pages and see myself move through the text. Something about a real book makes it easier to get “lost” and really connect with the author.

I enjoy the collecting
I have way too many books, filling my shelves and overspilling everywhere. These books are a physical manifestation of my intellectual growth, my education, my knowledge. They are portals to amazing fictional worlds that I have visited, or keys to great minds or museums. I like seeing them on my shelves, occasionally paging back through them. Any serious reader with a large library knows the feeling of recalling a favored passage or story that can be triggered just by seeing the title of a book on a shelf.

Real books can be shared
If a friend wants to borrow one of my books, he or she can do so. Likewise, I can borrow from friends. You can’t do this with e-books, which are locked to your own device via software incompatibilities and digital rights management. Obviously, real books can be resold as well. You will never browse an electronic used bookstore, nor pass along a treasured e-volume to a spouse or your kids.

Real books will last forever
You can read books that are hundreds of years old. Acid-free paper, stored halfway decently, will last centuries. Do you think any of the e-books you buy today will still be viewable in even a decade, much less a quarter century or more?

The next five reasons are related to technical limitations of e-books. All of these limitations might be overcome, at least somewhat, as the technology continues to mature.

Print is still higher quality
The iPhone 4 has the best screen of any electronic device on the market, and it is basically approaching print in quality. An iPhone 4 display on an iPad-sized device would be amazing, and it is certainly coming, but it isn’t there yet. And even this amazing screen is hard on the eyes if you stare at it for an hour. Print, especially high-quality print, beats any e-reader on the market, at least for now.

E-books are too expensive
E-books used to be ten bucks, now they are fifteen. Add to that the myriad of weird pricing decisions, absurd “on-sale” dates and geographic and time-based market restrictions on various books, and you can start to get an idea that publishers are their own worst enemy in making sure the things which should be the natural advantage of e-books (any book in print, cheap, now) are not taken advantage of. If a new hardcover comes out, I’d rather pay Amazon 18 bucks (which is discounted) for a physical edition then 15 for an electronic version. No contest. But, if the price were 8 bucks, I would think. Hard. I like paper books, but I also like saving money.

There’s less choice of books
Between the new and used marketplace on Amazon and similar sites, I can buy pretty much any book which has been in print the past several decades, as well as books from countries around the world which may not be available in the US. Due to licensing restrictions, only a small fraction of books are available electronically. E-books are like Redbox movies – fine if all you want are the big hits, but no depth.

incompatible formats, devices, and DRM
DRM means I can’t lend my books to friends or sell them when I am done. Incompatible devices mean that if I develop a collection on my Kindle, and later Amazon decides to stop supporting it (unlikely, but stranger things have happened) – or I decide I like iBooks on the iPad better, I can’t transfer my collection (although I could use the iPad Kindle reader). There’s a ton of incompatible formats in the marketplace, and even the “standards” are not fully supported on all the various platforms, especially when DRM is involved.

ebook readers suffer from the limitations of being electronics
They break, run out of juice, don’t like heat or moisture, suffer glitches and crashes, and can’t be tossed around. A book can really be abused and still be readable (not that I would intentionally abuse my own books, but it is common to buy used books that have been less-then-gently used) but I really don’t want to abuse my iPad.

So, do I ever see myself switching to e-books? They do have some amazing advantages, most obvious the immediacy (start reading right away!) as well as the near infinite storage (not to mention searchability). I’ve already read a few short stories electronically, and it is not a bad experience. I am likely to use iBooks on my iPhone or iPad when travelling, or other times when the convenience of carrying a bunch of books in a small device I already am carrying really becomes important. Otherwise, I’ll take paper, please.

PS: Do you publishers, do you want to win me over – or at least temp me – into the ebook world? How is this for an idea. Similar to how most Blu Ray discs come with a digital copy included at no (obvious) extra cost, how about including an electronic copy of a book when I buy the hardcover?

Packing For Mars by Mary Roach

When most people think of space travel, they think of the adventure, the excitement of discovery, and the daring of the astronauts, who ride giant tubes filled with explosives into orbit and beyond.

Once you read Mary Roach’s delightful and informative new book “Packing For Mars” you will gain added appreciation for the heroics of our astronauts…for their bravery in putting up with the surprisingly complex minutiae of eating, sleeping, moving around, and yes, defecating in outer space. Not to mention surviving the horrid odors generated when grown adults live in a compartment the size of a small car for days or weeks on end, to the point their underwear actually beings to disintegrate.

Roach’s book covers everything about what happens when human physiological needs meet the final frontier. Chapters deal with the complexities of eating and drinking in zero G, as well as, the travails of motion sickness, psychology and, of course, zero-G sex. The author does some impressive research on this latter subject even tracking down the people involved in the production of a supposed low-gravity adult film as well as talking to former US and Soviet space travelers about this oft-taboo subject.

Roach is a delightful writer, always willing to throw in a well-timed joke or piece of obscure trivia (often contained in addictively fascinating footnotes) from the NASA archives. She also “walks the walk” going on a zero-G simulator and even participating in a simulated Mars mission in the Arctic. In one of the most touching chapters, she tracks down the remains of the first Americans in space – two chimpanzees, and talks to their (now long-retired) handlers about their contribution to increasing our knowledge of space.

“Packing For Mars” is one of the best general-interest books on space travel in years, and will be enjoyed by anyone who has ever gazed at floating astronauts and wondered – even for half a second – “how do they go to the bathroom up there?”