Jacken's Blog » macosx

My favorite commands in .bash_profile on Mac OS X

Jacken — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:30:58 +0000

Here’s some additions to my .bash_profile for making life easier. I especially like that completion now ignores case. Makes navigating the file system so much faster. Givem a spin.

export HISTCONTROL=erasedups export HISTSIZE=10000 shopt -s histappend set completion-ignore-case on

DNS problems with Snow Leopard 10.6

Jacken — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:49:28 +0000

I’ve had some bizarre problems with my DNS today. I checked /etc/resolv.conf but everything looked ok. Checked the settings dialog for my network and at first glance, that one seemed ok as well.

But normally there should be a dimmed version of the DHCP assigned values there.

Just select the empty one and press the minus sign. Sneaky little bug there!

Save your settings and you should be good to go.

Getting Perian 1.1.4 to work Snow Leopard 10.6 to work

Jacken — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:33:40 +0000

There’s a problem with getting Perian to work in Snow Leopard. But there’s a quick fix outlined here, but If the PreferencePane is installed to only the current user, you need to paste the following into the terminal:

cd cd Library/PreferencePanes/Perian.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Components cp Perian.zip ~/Downloads cp CoreAudio/A52Codec.zip ~/Downloads cp QuickTime/AC3MovieImport.zip ~/Downloads cd ~/Downloads unzip AC3MovieImport.zip unzip A52Codec.zip unzip Perian.zip sudo mv Perian.component/ /Library/QuickTime/ sudo mv AC3MovieImport.component/ /Library/QuickTime/ sudo mv A52Codec.component/ /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/

FRA får inte läsa mina brev. Hur gör man för att skydda sig? Kryptera din epost

Jacken — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:25:47 +0000

Efter de stora protesterna fick våra kära politiker skriva om delar av FRA lagen. Nu verkar det som SÄPO ska få tillgång till information, vilket säkert betyder att vanliga polisen kan få se vad du skriver och pratar om inom några år.

Så vad gör man för att slippa detta? Du gör det på samma sätt som de som FRA försöker hitta, dvs krypterar all din kommunikation.

Det finns en gratis programvara för att kryptera epost som heter The GNU Privacy Guard.

Men hur gör man då för att använda GPG när man skickar epost?

Det beror på om man har Macintosh eller Windows, men jag ska visa hur man går tillväga på båda dessa plattformer.

Macintosh installation

Från http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/ laddar du ned följande program
GNU Privacy Guard (se till att du väljer för din maskin och version av systemet)
GPG Keychain Access, ett program för att hantera nycklar (nycklar förklaras längre ner)

Sedan ska vi ladda ned PGP för Apple Mail härifrån

Börja med att installera GNU Privacy Guard. Installera sedan GPG Keychain Access.

För att installera PGP för Apple Mail måste vi flytta filen GPGMail.mailbundle till hemmamapp/Bibliotek/Mail/Bundles

Starta om Apple Mail.

Så hur fungerar då PGP?

Varje användare av PGP har två nycklar. En privat (hemlig) nyckel och en publik nyckel. Den publika nyckeln kan du lägga på nätet, skicka över internet eller trycka på en T-shirt. Spelar ingen roll. Om en annan har din publika nyckel, kan de kryptera epost meddelanden med hjälp av den. När något är krypterat med hjälp av din publika nyckel, finns bara en nyckel som kan öppna den, och det är din privata nyckel. Du börjar förstå att det är din privata nyckel du ska göra backup på nu va?

Först laddar du upp din publika nyckel till en nyckelserver som gör att andra kan hämta din publika nyckel

Här har någon sökt och hittat din nyckel och laddat ner den på hans maskin. Han kan nu använda din publika nyckel för att skapa krypterade meddelanden som bara du kan läsa. Oftast när epost program krypterar, brukar de även använda ens egen publika nyckel så bara ni två kan läsa. Det går att skicka till flera deltagare om du har krypteringsnyckel till alla mottagarna.

Hur får folk tag i andras publika nycklar då?

Det bästa är att ladda upp dem till en nyckelserver där din publika nyckel kopplas ihop med din epostadress och namn. Man kan söka dessa nyckelservrar för att hitta personerna man vill skicka krypterad post till. Man laddar ner mottagarens publika nyckel och installerar på din maskin, och vips! så kan du nu skicka krypterat till dem.

Så låt oss prova att hämta en nyckel genom att starta GPG Keychain Access programmet. Det ser ut som nedan.

Först måste du skapa din privata och publika nyckel, så välj “Generate…” under Key-menyn och följ anvisningarna. Nu skapas din privata och publika nyckel.

Välj “Send to keyserver” på din publika nyckel. Då kan folk leta reda på din kryptonyckel och skicka krypterat till dig.

För att lägga till andras publika nycklar som du vill kunna skicka till välj “Search for Key…” under Key-menyn

Skriv in epostadressen på personen du söker.

Nu ska den personen finnas i din lista. Så låt oss prova att skicka ett krypterat meddelande med Apple Mail:

Om du installerat enligt ovan ska du nu ha möjligheten att välja PHP: Signed och Encrypted.

Signed är när man skickar texten i klartext, men blir signerad, och en kryptosträng läggs till. Om någon försöker ändra i epostmeddelandet innan du får det, får du en varning. Men det vi vill göra är att kryptera, så välj att kryssa i Encrypted.

Nu skickas ditt meddelande krypterat till mottagaren och bara du och han kan läsa den.

GLÖM INTE BORT ATT GÖRA BACKUP PÅ DIN PRIVATA NYCKEL. UTAN DEN KAN DU INTE ÖPPNA KRYPTERADE MAIL.

MAMP WordPress and Error establishing a database connection

Jacken — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:59:59 +0000

I’ve installed MAMP on my Mac to do some changes to my blog. I tried to set the WordPress wp-config.php file to connect to localhost:8889, but got an error that It could not connect to the database. After replacing localhost:8889 to 127.0.0.1:8889 it works. My quick guess is that permissions for the root user is set to allow connections 127.0.0.1, but not localhost. Anyway, it works now.

My wp-config.php file looks like this:

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); /** MySQL database username */

define(‘DB_USER’, ‘root’);

/** MySQL database password */

define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘root’);

/** MySQL hostname */

define(‘DB_HOST’, ’127.0.0.1:8889′);

Impromptu TimeMachine test

Jacken — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:24:29 +0000

When I’m depressed I have this thing of dreaming violent dreams and acting them out in reality. The other night I dreamt that I was at the liquor store and got in to a fight with two men. I woke up with a bang when I kicked my laptop of the table beside my bed, seeing it banging to the floor. The hard drive worked for about a day, and then gave up. So I had a good reason to test TimeMachine, and it has worked perfectly! So now I’m up and running again with more free space on my computer than the old total disk space. It even seems a bit faster because this disk i 7200 RPM. 320 mb in a 2.5″. I remember the first hard drive I used. It was a Corvus 5 megabyte drive for the Apple II in the size of a small refrigerator. I think it’s swedish price was something like $8000. Yet a big upgrade from my first “real” storage device (not counting cassette player) wich was a dual 5 1/4 floppy at a wopping 140kb per disk (yes kids, that’s 140 KILOBYTES!) And those where real floppys, because, well, they where physically floppy.

VPN Tracker, Leopard 10.5 and dns problems

Jacken — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:27:07 +0000

After trying to start VPN Tracker 4 and failing after upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 I could no longer contact any servers at the same domain as the network I tried to connect to. To fix this, look inside the /etc/resolver directory, if there is a couple of files called vpn-resolver-#### you have to remove these files to get everything to work again.

There’s a new version 5 of VPN Tracker that supposedly fixes problems with Leopard, but you have to buy an upgrade. I just wish that Apple could make a front end to Racoon. It’s very irritating to have to pay Equinux $80 to get functionality that’s essentially built in the operating system. And I have always hated their way of locking the program to one specific machine serial number.

Ripping vinyl records on a Mac

Jacken — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 01:00:00 +0000

After getting my Emu 0404 USB 2.0 Audio Interface I have started to rip my vinyl record collection. I want to retain as much as possible of the amazing sound of vinyl, so I rip everything in 24bit 48khz. Why not use 96khz? Well, my preferred playback device, the Squeezebox only supports 24/48 unfortunately.

Here’s how I do it…

You need a RIAA preamp between the record player and the audio interface if you don’t have a amplifier with built-in phono input. I use a Cambridge – 640P Outboard Audiophile MM/MC Phono Stage that I have modified extensively. There are cheaper alternatives like this cheap MM preamp. There’s even preamps with built in USB. But I choose to use separate components which make it easier to upgrade later on. Because you always upgrade equipment. Trust me.

My favorite program for getting the audio to the computer is CD Spin Doctor that is bundled with Roxio Toast 9 Titanium. There are excellent free open source alternatives like Audacity, but I really like some of the features in CD Spin Doctor like finding the tracks automatically.

If you are going to put the ripped audio onto a CD, choose 44khz sampling rate. If you are fortunate enough to own the excellent SqueezeBox audio player, use 48khz. By using a higher sampling rate, you effectively get a larger frequency span on your recorded audio. A CD can produce audio up to 22000 hz but by using a 48khz you extend this to 24000 hz (see nyquist theorem). I’m totally deaf above 16000 hz but still “hear” that the higher frequencies are there when playing it. It sounds more “airy”. Go figure.

Settings for burning to ordinary CDs?

Use as many bits as you can. CDs have 16 bits per sample, but if you can, choose 24 bits in your recording software. We just have to downsample later on, after doing our edits.

Settings for a lucky Squeezebox owner?

The bog standard Squeezebox has a maximum on digital audio of 24 bit – 48khz, so that’s the optimal sampling settings. This will be a good setting for archiving your old precious albums just in case something happens. And playing them out through a Sqeezebox sounds fantastic! I would say, Almost vinyl.

I record the complete album, not even stopping between side changes, because it’s really easy to remove it later.

Use the selection tool available in the software you are using to select the songs one by one. Then save (or in some programs, export) them to an aiff file on your harddisk.

Time to fix the pops and scratches

[update] There’s actually a better way of doing it. Use ClickRepair instead. Easier, faster and better results. Heres the fun but time consuming part where we need to remove all the pops and scratches in an convenient way. My weapon of choice are Apples Soundtrack Pro. It’s bundled with Apple Final Cut Studio 2 If you have Soundtrack Pro already you are set. Then you could use it to record the whole album and thus not having to go through CD Spin Doctor.

Open up the file you saved from CD Spin Doctor or Audacity.

Drag the horizontal slider together to zoom in closer. This makes it easier to find pops and scratches.

Scroll to the beginning of the file and make sure to select Frequency Spectrum view which makes it a lot easier to find pops and scratches.

Your screen should now look something like this.

Now start playing the song. You should probably use earphones to make it easier to hear pops/scratches. As soon as you hear something, pause by pressing space and it should be pretty obvious where the scratch is, thanks to the Spectrum view. Scraches usually shows up as distinct white lines.

Select the white line but make sure to add a litte extra on both sides of the line.

Now choose the Clicks and Pops filter under the Analysis tab.

Press the Analyze button to let the filter find the scratch. The result will be displayed, but nothing has changed yet.

This shows that it found a click/pop, where and how long the duration and that it’s in both left and right channel. Now let’s fix it.

Press the Fix All button.

Put the marker before the fixed part of the song and press play. Listen if it sounds ok.

Now just continue to go through the song and fix all the scratches.

Why not just select everything and use the click/pop filter? Because you want to do changes to as little as possible to maintain the sound quality, and the filter really isn’t good at differentiate between dynamic sounds and click/pops. But when selecting a small part, the filter works like magic!

Good luck!