Category Archives: OS X

Installing VirtualBox on MacOS via VNC – just use a real mouse

At work the other day I was testing our Ansible instructions on how to get a development environment set up. Given that this was supposed to be platform agnostic and that I exclusively develop on Ubuntu and LXD, I found an old Mac Mini on Craigslist to run VirtualBox on. As it came with only 2GB of RAM, I was happy to discover you can actually upgrade to 16GB per the Everymac site:

Officially, this model supports 8 GB of RAM, but … it actually is capable of supporting 16 GB of RAM using two 8 GB modules.
– EM

Add an old 500GB SSD I had kicking around, and now the machine is pretty responsive for being 7 years old and costing me $190 all in!

Given I didn’t want to dedicate a keyboard, monitor and mouse to this, the very first thing I did was to enable Remote Desktop, specifically VNC, and stuffed it with my other mini servers in the “server room”:

I then went about zipping through installing Ansible, VirtualBox and Vagrant .

When I went to boot my first VM, I got weird error on the command line (I didn’t save it, sorry). After some trouble shooting, I decided to just re-install, and more slowly this time, and the GUI showed me this:

Baffled, I tried again and again, failing the same way every time. Researching the problem, I found a post on Medium suggesting I hadn’t allowed the correct permissions in the Security & Privacy settings. None of these suggestions helped. Finally, I read the comments at the bottom of the page, including the one from Elias Politakis which said,

Please note that if you are using a VNC connection (or similar remote access software) you won’t be able to click the [Allow] button because OSX requires that Process ID pressing the Allow button is zero (0) which is the system PID. You would need to physically visit the Mac and click the Allow button with the physical mouse.
– EP

Oh, OK! But…now I had to extract the Mini from the server room :( Then I remembered I had a spare wireless mouse! What I did was plug the mouse in to the mini, then back to my desktop worsktation where I connected to the Mini over VNC and the mouse was able to still work all the way back to the closet. Then I could click the button with a real mouse, but without using a real monitor or real keyboard, or even moving the mini:

So – if you happen to be like Elias or me, just use a real mouse! Happy computing.

4k Mac Plus

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The amazing Archive.org just posted a Mac OS 7 emulator and it’s amazing. See, “Early Macintosh Emulation Comes to the Archive“. Given my first computer was a “Fat Mac“, seeing this operating system brought to life brought so many memories back. Thank you archive.org!! The even support full screen so you can run a 512×342 resolution emulator on a 4k monitor in a browser under Ubuntu ;)

On really nice standing desks with really nice computers

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A good friend of mine is setting up a new workstation in his new lab and wanted some advice on what would be the best setup. Being a bit of a geek about monitors and having set up my own desk, I had a lot of ideas on this. After a detail-packed email to him, I realized it’d make a great post for others looking to do the same thing.

The overall question I got: What would be the best standing desk with the best monitors for a new Mac Pro (nMP)?

This is fun! I get to spend imaginary money for a dream set up. For my “what’s the best” type of questions, I always try to refer to The Wirecutter, they’re great. As well, I try to use Amazon whenever possible for all of my shopping needs

The Desk

Though Wirecutter has a newer, cheaper recommendation, I still like their step up, the NextDesk Terra, which was their “regular” recommendation when I got mine. I see it’s now down to $1,500.

NextDesk upgrades: You can get a ton more bells and whistles including CPU stands, software integration, casters, batteries (for use when moving on casters) and more. The bare minimum I would get is the “Power Management,” which is really well done. Also – think on whether you want the hole(s) for cables in the desk. I regretted getting a single center one. I might have gone with none or two side ones.

Monitors and Stands

I use Ergotron’s single and dual arm mounts. Amazon pictures the dual with two monitors on top of each other, but it can easily do two side by side (as well, they rotate for one portrait and one landscape). You can also order the single and then add a second arm to the same pole at a later date if you decide to add another monitor.

IPS 60hz 4k displays used to be $3,000+. This is no longer the case! The Dell P2715Q 4k 27″ is down to $500! This is insane. You could get two of these no prob for your Mac Pro. IPS means that the viewing angles are perfect. 60hz means that the refresh rate is super fast and your mouse/window movements don’t feel sluggish. 4k means that you can either run HiDPI for super crisp text or 1:1 for TONS of real estate. Well, assuming you have good eyes for the 1:1 ;)

Though 4k is ready for prime time, there are a few bumps in the road, specifically around displaying the boot process. As well, I see Apple’s nMP page boldly advertises “connect up to three high-resolution 4K displays.” However, I’ve also seen reports that the 3rd will be only at 30hz (boo!).

I forget which cables Dell comes with, but you can always get a 3, 6, or 9 foot (or more!); it’s nice to have the perfect length cable with no extra slack. Same for ethernet, USB, firewire and thunderbolt cables too! For example, here’s a 6ft mini display -> display port cable for just $7. Oh yes – don’t use any ugly looking dongles! Get the right cable for the job.

Mac Pro and peripherals

I don’t actually have a new Mac Pro (aka nMP aka 2013 Mac Pro), so I don’t have too much to say about which CPU and GPU to get. However, I did just get a 5k iMac that works great with the Dell 4k display! (Well, as long as you don’t mind some UI degradation. Ok, not so great, but worth the trade off for me.). To save money on the most expensive item in this monster desk setup, I strongly recommend using refurb.me – they’re the best way to effortlessly get good deals on Apple refurbed products! These are direct from Apple and include an Apple warranty.

One new Mac purchasing trick I did learn is about buying your new Mac with more RAM direct from Apple. Don’t do it! For example, 64GB of aftermarket RAM only costs $664 instead of Apple’s $1,300. Consider putting the saved money toward more cores or disk or graphics card! I love Crucial for cheap aftermarket RAM, but I usually end up buying their stuff on Amazon. Here, B00GEC3ZJQ on Amazon is cheaper than the exact same part (CT5019226) on the Crucial site. Order two kits to max out your nMP to 64GB.

Keyboard and mouse – I love Wirecutter’s recommendations for wireless versions of both mice and keyboards. They really add to the clean lines of VESA stands on the awesome desk.

Despite loving the wireless mouse and keyboard, my new boss got me a “welcome to your new job!” gift of a fancy Das Keyboard 4 Pro which I NEVER would have bought on my own given it’s price. If I had office mates, they NEVER would want me to use it because it’s too loud. That said, I actually love this keyboard so much that I alternate it with Wirecutter’s bluetooth pick, but the cable does ruin the lines of your desk. ;) Oh – I see it comes in “soft tactile” model as well. This might be a more quiet option!

I love following this topic so drop me a note if you have any questions or want to update me with your experiences in this area!

Meego 1.2, Meego Laptop and a MacBook Air

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As many of you know, I’ve had an on again, off again, and then on again affair with Meego. I love that lil’ guy! You may have expected me to be quite excited about the recent release of Meego 1.2, including a netbook refresh. Since I was running Meego on a netbook, you may have then also expected me to be super excited about the very recent announcement of the ASUS Eee PC X101. This is a 2lb laptop that runs Meego and is expected to cost $200. Sweet!

However, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, I’m not running Meego any more. I’m running OS X on a MacBook Air 11″. I had crossed the threshold of tinkering around on a laptop, to wanting to commute with one every day. Indeed, 2lb was my sweet spot for a laptop. I wasn’t that stuck on the OS as my apps are all cross platform enough. I seriously considered many different netbooks and then the MacBook Air came out. The 11″ was just over 2lb, included a full size keyboard, had a 1366 x 768 screen and a 5 hour battery. It was also insanely small. For a relative paltry $1000, there was simply no laptop, regardless of OS, that had had all of the above features. Period. Though I think the new Eee X101 will be very cool, it lacks the screen resolution of the Air. I briefly considered the Sony Vaio X (no longer available) which met all my requirements, but it was a pretty penny to pay for an Atom processor.

“But if you want something super light, what about a iPad?”, you ask? I do agree, an iPad’s insanely long battery life coupled with 1.3lb weight has some handy uses: a cross country plane ride, long regular commutes where you want to read the news and browse email or need a super light weight video conference rig. But what about when you want to run an IDE? What if you want to compose a 3 page (7,500 character) long email? What if you want to flip back forth between the 3 browsers you have open to check how your code renders? The answer is clear: you need a laptop.

I’ve been super happy with my Air and I wish the best of luck to Meego.

Another Very Poor Man’s Google Analytics Post

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A bit ago I wrote a post about using command line tools to get stats of this blog. I recently wrote another version of this to get the most popular posts here, sorted by the most popular at the top. I love that this can be done in all in one command.

Here’s the command:

This breaks down into the following:

get the last 1000000 of the blog access log
look for requests to “/blog”
split by space, and get the 7th field, the URL being requested
exclude a ton of items
sort the results
split by the “/” slash and get the 3rd field, the blog name in the URL
get the unique list of blog names with a count for each URL
remove the singletons
reverse sort so the most popular is at the top
write it all to a file called plip.blog.tops.txt

The results are in! The winner is currently chocolate-crinkle-cookie-photos! W00T

   137 chocolate-crinkle-cookie-photos
   119 two-loves-css-recaptcha
   109 24-hours-in-photos
   104 our-pet-venus-fly-trap
   103 ruby-less-way-to-add-key-frames-to-flv-videos-for-the-likes-of-jwplayer
    94 toss-your-salad-code
    91 update-firefox-does-have-reset-more
    91 firefox-reset-is-really-launch-in-safe-mode
    84 keep-those-passwords-safe
    81 photos-food-bikes-sunsets-and-stars
    79 thoughts-on-very-large-monitors
    78 when-the-cat-is-away-the-worms-will-play
    76 photos-from-around-the-bay
    76 our-tree
    75 one-foggy-morning-in-my-commute
    74 wordpress-exploit-fog-fruit-plants-and-plates
    72 recaptcha-now-google-recaptcha-will-help-google-books
    72 from-burning-man-town-to-oaktown
    67 gmaps-pedometer-google-calc-8-94607843-minutes-per-mile
    66 the-massive-compost-tower
    65 on-theft-privacy-and-data-loss
    64 pizza-and-dough-from-scratch
    60 this-is-not-an-ipad
    60 go-faster-encoding
    57 fixed-theme-wp-updated-more-wp-hacks
    44 every-vehicle-is-a-prius
    42 photorec-to-the-rescue
    41 the-very-very-poor-mans-google-analytics-tail-cut-sort-uniq-wc
    41 on-comcast-internet
    38 taking-the-plunge-safari-4-full-time
    35 secret-jumps-of-tunnel
    35 i-got-four-cores-but-a-distributed-load-aint-on-one
    34 stir-fry-dinner
    33 tasty-comfort-food
    32 fancy-diff
    26 how-to-fix-zend-studio-5-5-zde-in-os-10-6-snow-leopard
    24 ping-traceroute-and-quotes
    22 wordpress-rich-mans-blog-poor-mans-cms
    21 new-news-old-open-source
    20 old-broken-usb-hub-ipod-charger
    19 gmail-contest
    19 alternate-way-to-have-google-analytics-track-pdfs
    17 this-is-what-makes-a-happy-saturday
    17 macchiato
    16 american-born-chinese
    15 rogue-mysql-queries
    15 fixed-gear-slipped-chain-thankful-for-brake
    13 simple-wp
    13 plip-is-no-longer-a-cobblers-child
    11 plix-plixing-better
    11 itunes-imovie-on-lenovos-new-media-center-pc
    10 wonderful-bike-lane-signs
    10 this-is-what-makes-a-happy-sunday
    10 plip-ts-on-your-back
     9 plipgo-01-released
     9 bart-speaks
     8 yet-another-redesign
     7 update-plip-content
     7 plixing-for-pleasure
     7 plip-for-peace
     7 long-be-gone
     7 kodiak-11-released
     7 dot-com-casualty
     7 dont-just-commit-commit-intelligently
     6 verge-works-solves-all-your-woes
     6 simpsons-for-ever
     6 simple-is-better
     6 plip-gets-its-own-dictionary
     5 aids-ride-completed

How to Fix Zend Studio 5.5 (ZDE) Select Text Problem in OS 10.6 Snow Leopard

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This is nothing but a repost of a slightly older fix, but this is AWESOME!

Fixing ZDE 5.5 in Snow Leopard

Enjoy!

Keep those passwords safe

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A problem with online security is that there’s no standards for passwords. You may come up with the silly simple single password you use for all site. This works well, until you encounter a site that wants one that is, say, 2 characters longer than the one you use. What then? Or, maybe you’re a bit better and use a scheme where you “encrypt” the domain name into your password. Again, this works fine until a site forces you to break this scheme, and then you’re shit out of luck. The net result is that you either A) have extremely simple passwords or B) forget the passwords often or C) write them down next to your computer.

In case you didn’t think so, options A, B and C suck. Don’t do it. Be smart and be safe.

The way to do this involves some pain in the ass security, which I’ve said before different levels are acceptable. I feel that protecting your passwords are critical, so I’m willing to accept a somewhat higher PITA level. My PITA of choice for passwords is KeePass. Being an open source project (W00T!), some of the execution of the user interface is left to the developer, so you may find some ports are better than others. However, the vanilla OS X and Windows flavors I use at work and home respectively, simply rock. The Android port I use is the icing on the cake. I can download a copy of my password file and have all my passwords on the go.

KeePass, much like TrueCrypt, has really thought about how to store passwords. Here’s a list of some of the great features:

generate a secure password based a given site’s rules (8+ letters, 1+ number etc.)
hot keys to quickly copy username and password
android version puts the username in alert menu so you can easily copy and paste it into a web form
encrypt notes for extra info like security question you also won’t remember and wrote down next to your password
ported to just about every platform, including iphone and android

The net result of this is that you never forget a password, you use secure passwords and no one can get at your passwords. This is secure and this is how you should do it! For the forward thinking, store your password file on a USB cary with you or, if you’re like me, you’ll put it on your dropbox account, and then you can seamlessly use it on all your computers. Doubly handy!

I got four cores but a distributed load aint [on] one

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Hi there way too powerful desktop, why don’t you distribute a high load across more cores? I know your authors would have to work to make the process multithreaded and who would have thought that a lil’ mp3 player would every be networked and asked to download the XML library of 5 remote mp3 collections simultaneously, but still?! I want me fast computer now. Thanks.

Ruby-less way to add key frames to flv videos for the likes of JWPlayer

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At work we’ve been working on a good way to roll our own videos. We initially started with the generic off the shelf swf player + flv to make our videos go. This was OK, but was lacking some key features folks were used to, primarily full screen play back and the ability to seek to a specific spot in a video. Additionally, for videos that were over 20 minutes being viewed over slower connections, precious apache children would be chewed up potentially causing a slow down for the web head doing the serving.

Enter JWPlayer! This is a great, easy to configure, free for non-commercial use, flv player that offers the features we’re looking for. Further, we could offload the flv’s to our image server, lighttpd . (By the way lighttpd is extremely awesome; I can not recommend it enough. I first learned about from my friend over at WikiSpaces where they had dropped apache entirely in favor or lighttpd. Noteworthy is that lighttpd was first concieved as an attempted answer to the c10k problem. I’ve personally seen it handle over 2000 connections per minute and the server load didn’t go above 0.5 (though the full meaning of load average is a curious one (sorry for the double, now triple parenthetical statements )).) Simply add a little flv streaming foo to lighttpd, and you’re good to go.

At this point, we hit a stumbling block. In order for JWPlayer to seek, it would send a request for the FLV to the web server and give it a starting point, like so:

10.1.6.221 lighttpd.domain.dom - [29/Jul/2009:12:46:37 -0700] 
"GET /web_assets/video/your.flv?start=17038076 HTTP/1.1" 200
 17765145 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; 
en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1"

However, if the flv you were serving didn’t have key frames then the web server would simply ignore the query string, and indeed, the click all together.

We do most of our development and video authoring on a mac and then serve our files off a load balanced linux server. At first, we used flvtool2 on linux to embed the key frames on our flvs. This kinda works, but it’d be easier to have the video author be able to add them himself with out needing to download and install ruby and rails and all that crazy server scripting foo. As his flv creator/codec/authoring app/chumpy wasn’t playing nice, I was given the task to find a simple solution.

Now, finally, we get to the point of the post. If you’ve gotten this far and wanna know how to embed keyframes with out ruby, get thee to the multi-platform, command line tool called flvmeta and go home happy!

Update: This post would not be complete without mentioned our use of swfobject to render the flash HTML.