Don’t like the fact that the new MacBook’s lack a FireWire port or that the new Pro’s lack a Matte screen option?
Amazing VPN software for OSX
I hate most of the VPNs out there; unfortunately most of the time, each single firewall/router/whatever requires a particular client software which is of course incompatible with its cousins.
I was about to create the usual Windows virtual machine to use a new amazing VPN client required by one of my customers, then I discovered a little gem for OSX called VPN Tracker Professional.
So far I managed to connect my MacBook to more than ten different VPNs, and I can’t believe how it works well; it’s not cheap, but if you need to manage many connections be sure to check out the trial version.
Another good alternative is IPSecuritas (free); if you want to try it out alongside VPN Tracker, I advise you to unload the VPN Tracker kernel extension, as simple as:
su kextunload -b com.equinux.VPNTracker
The VPN Tracker kernel extension will be reloaded at the next program launch.
Posted in sysadm.
Note to self: SElinux and duplicity
A box with RHEL5 or Centos5 and SElinux enabled could make duplicity fail with this error:
ImportError: /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/duplicity/_librsync.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied
To fix it, run the following command:
chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/duplicity/_librsync.so
Posted in sysadm.
Clear the OS X dns cache
Sometimes I need to to some DNS related work, and usually OS X pisses me off by seemingly keeping a cache of recently resolved names 
.
To clear this cache, simply execute this command in a terminal:
lookupd -flushcache
Blog primary URL changed
I’ve changed the primary url of this blog to http://fabio.corneti.com; in case you were wondering, my name is Fabio Corneti .
Posted in sysadm.
Cocoa Remote Desktop 0.4 in beta
One of my favourite OS X applications just got better; check out the latest release of Cocoa Remote Desktop, 0.4 beta 1.
Here’s a quick list of the most relevant changes, please refer to announcement for more details:
- Clipboard support: text can now be copied and pasted between active sessions and OS X
- Save screen capture to file
- Quick connect: connect to a server by just typing the address into the toolbar and hitting enter
- Third mouse button recognized (usually middle-click)
- Throttled mouse events, which should speed up sessions on very slow bandwidth connections
I would happily help the author in finding bugs, but at the moment I have yet to see one , kudos to arcadiclife.
Mail.app extensions
Out of the box, the OS X mail client is pretty functional and useful; using the following extensions I’ve got it to cover all of my needs:
- Mail Tags 2.0:this is the best mail tagging system that I’ve ever seen, it even supports saving tags in message headers, a must for IMAP users.
- GPGMail:a featureful plugin for GPG/PGP users.
- Growl with mail.app notification:Growl is extremely useful on its own and together with the GrowlMail plugi-in provides a nice notification system for incoming messages.
Tikouka.net offers a comprehensive listing of mail.app plugins, check them out.
Quick tip for Apple keyboard under Ubuntu
I am currently using my Apple keyboard with my Ubuntu workstation; if you use this kind of setup, you probably would like to remap the Apple key and make it behave like the left Alt key.
To make this happen, simply create an .xmodmap file in your home folder and put the following lines into it:
keycode 115 = Alt_L Meta_L
add mod1 = Alt_L Meta_L
Then, execute the following command:
xmodmap ~/.xmodmap
Voilà, the Apple key has become a left Alt key, enjoy
Posted in customization, ubuntu.
CoRD progress
Cocoa Remote Desktop is progressing very quickly; if you’re feeling brave, checkout the latest alpha at Arcadiclife.com; I cannot stress how much I like this project since I got my MacBook, it’s really set to make RDP pleasant again under OS X.
Experiences in DVD ripping
I have a large collection of audio cds, which I am slowly ripping on my home NAS (most of the time with cdparanoia or EAC); I have lots of limited editions with bonus DVDs, which I decided to rip alongside the audio tracks for comfortable playing.
I am an audioholic, and I always choose FLAC or Apple Lossless for audio ripping, but I don’t care that much for video, so H.264, MPEG-4 or XviD are perfect choices for my archival purposes; I settled on MPEG-4 at the moment (with MP3 audio) because almost any device I own is capable of playing it without too much hassle.
After a bit of googling, I found a very interesting cross platform project which serves this purpose, called HandBrake(recently merged with MediaFork, check the site for the current name), and I tested it under OS X for ripping the bonus DVD included in the latest Chimaira release, Resurrection.
I ripped the first title of the DVD using the following settings:
The conversion of the first title (1 hour and 26 minutes long) required about 30 minutes on my MacBook 2GHz with 2 GB of RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive; during the encoding I have worked with Visual Studio 2005 under Parallels, so take this “benchmark” with a grain of salt . I can see a bit of interlacing in the resulting video, but it’s probably due to my inexperience with the settings; other than that, it looks good.
UPDATE: simply check the Deinterlace setting in the Picture Settings dialog to solve all your interlacing issues .
I usually watch videos using VLC, which respects the anamorphic settings, but Apple software like QuickTime has issues with these; have a look at the Handbrake documentation for the gory details, especially read the Guide to Anamorphic Encoding in MediaFork. If your target is Apple stuff (QuickTime, iTunes, iPod etc.), see this very informative post by Mike Curtis.
To get a rough idea of the anamorphic issue,look at these stills of the video played in VLC and QuickTime on my system:
HandBrake is still in beta, but seems to work well; this is not a surprise, considering the solid foundations on which it is built; checkout this page to get the complete picture.
For some reason the download speed from the official site was pretty slow; should you experience this issue, try downloading from MacUpdate.
I haven’t bothered to try HandBrake on Ubuntu or Windows, but I suppose that it will work without issues, so give it a try; while you’re at it, checkout the new Neal Morse recording, it’s freaking awesome (Neal also provides free music downloads on its site)!!!
Posted in multimedia, osx, software.
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