Category: Tech

LogMeIn available for Mac… um… last year

Oh, man, this is top notch: LogMeIn, probably the leading package that let’s you control your computers from afar, finally came out with a Mac controller for their Free package, and … I guess I’m the last to know about it.

Doh!
Previously we have been able to control PCs with LogMeIn, because it has been browser-based, and the same company has had Hamachi, a free VPN thing that I always meant to play with, but didn’t like that I had to use a 3rd-party app to do it. But now LMI has a plug-in to install on the Mac. Very very sweet.

So, I was talking with a new client who lives a little ways out of San Antonio, and we were discussing the methods I use to provide support, and he said, “Well, you could always connect to me with LogMeIn.” 
Hernh-wha?!
Sho’ ’nuff: About 20 minutes later, I had an account at LogMeIn and was able to access my own computer from afar. I had set up a VPN for this already, but LogMeIn is way easier. I can’t believe they released it to beta a year ago, and went 1.0 in December, but anyway I’m glad to have it now!
Now, they don’t have their Pro version available for Mac, so you can’t grab files or print remotely like you can with a VPN, so that latter option might still be preferable for many folks, perhaps with Hamachi and perhaps with the iVPN solution I mentioned previously. But just being able to get to your screen is huge.
Incidentally, security goes like this: You have a password to log in to your LogMeIn account, and then to control your computer you need to enter the name and password for your user account. 
And what do we learn from this? Pleeeeeeease make sure you have good, strong passwords on all of your accounts, both online and on your computer, and please don’t use the same password for every frackin’ thing you do!
Log me up, Scotty.

Free VPN!

Finally I had the opportunity/need/inspiration/circumstances to look for a free VPN server that would run on a server with a static IP on a LAN. 

Turns out Mac OS X has one built in! It’s an open-source UNIX deal called vpnd, and it’s the same one on OS X Server and configured through the GUI. It’s no surprise that Apple left a VPN GUI out of OS X client — Server costs either $499 or $999 — but a very nice developer named Alex Jones came up with the free iVPN, and after a little port forwarding on the router, and 30 seconds of config of iVPN, we had ourselves a legit L2TP VPN tunnel.

It was important to me that the VPN be accessible by the client built-in to OS X — found in Internet Connect in Tiger or earlier, and in Network System Preferences in Leopard. I have become bored with downloading and config’ing standalone software: too many checkboxes, not enough stability.

So…. whoop! Very easy, very free. 

Now, one thing about most VPN connections that has always bugged me is that, even if the client connects to a network resource, say a server, via its local Bonjour hostname, e.g. server.local, when a connection is attempted over the VPN it fails, and the user has to revert to using the IP address. Which is sort of fine, but a turn off to the less technically minded. So I just found this article on macosxhints.com about editing the /etc/hosts file:

Create the illusion that Bonjour works over a VPN

I haven’t tried it yet, but it makes sense to me. 

Creating a web gallery for artwork

What is the best place for me to do a website for my artwork?

As usual, there’s free…

Post images to a photo site like Flickr.

There are multiple benefits to this approach: easy slideshows, easy “tagging” (e.g. ceramics, painting, installation)

… or cheap…

Apple has the .Mac service for $99/year. You can look at all the features — it’s pretty useful, especially when you get a laptop, but just for example, here’s one of my web galleries, and one in a different style.

One posts all the images straight out of iPhoto.

You can also point your domain name (e.g. alextheartist.com) to .Mac, so people won’t see that the real URL is gallery.mac.com/alextheartist.

Also, you can design your own site with a program like RapidWeaver. Hosting a web site can be as cheap as $4/month. I have yet to find a reason to go somewhere besides GoDaddy.

…and not cheap: hire a web designer …

This is doable, but for many folks, let’s just say a cost/benefit analysis would not favor this approach.

I know that, many times, a gallery who represents you will post the work that you have given them. Finesilver had some nice-looking pages.

Finally, I would suggest googling a bunch of artists you dig, see whose web sites you like, and asking them how they did it. FWIW, I just looked up Lloyd Walsh off the top of my head, and he used .Mac for at least a few images.

UPDATE 2013-04-03: Apple’s services .Mac, later MobileMe, don’t exist any longer, and their successor iCloud doesn’t offer web galleries. I recommend SquareSpace for all web-publishing needs. WordPress is certainly a viable platform still, but SquareSpace is much more configurable and user-friendly.

Leopard Server: file names are screwed up when connecting over SMB

Apple is all too aware of the chronic Apple File Protocol authentication issues with 10.5 Server. Some people have fixed this with a cron task that restarts AFP, say, every night. In my experience, this starts to corrupt file sharing altogether, to the point that, eventually, nobody can log in over AFP.

So I’ve been switching people to using SMB (Windows file sharing), which sucks just on principle, but it also cuts out Time Machine backups. I am also nervous about it losing Apple-specific file resources.

Anyhoo, at one site where I’ve asked everyone to connect over SMB, several on the server appeared with weird random file names, such as “_GNEWM~A” or “4UI5WM~7”. Didn’t matter which machine or which user account I was using to connect.

After some poking around, I figured out that folders and files with odd characters in their path, and especially with spaces at the ends of their names, were the culprits. Extra long names, too.

I don’t know if this is an historic problem with OS X Server, and I just never ran into it because most of my clients use Macs, or whether this is specific to 10.5. Regardless, right now OS X Server is hurting my schedule really bad, and I can’t believe I’m having to be wary of proferring it as a recommendation.

Space Question

I’ve been receiving messages that I don’t have enough space on my computer for this and that.  Most recently it had to do with optimized albums and syncing to my iPhone.  Last it was about my startup disk.

Yep, that’s a pretty definitive indication. A modern rocketship MacBook Pro will quickly turn into a land tortoise when it doesn’t have enough hard drive space to do the do. Common wisdom has been spread that the Mac needs about 10% of its hard drive to function properly.

Since HDs have gotten so big, the culprits are no longer system-level items — 2 or 3 gigabytes in the GarageBand Audio Loops and WorldBook Encyclopedia data are now kind of small potatoes — and thus we’re faced with delving into our user data and figuring out what we don’t need constant access to.

There is a lovely, free utility called Disk Inventory X that I have long used to discover what’s taking up room on a drive. We can use Disk Inventory X to find the 300-pound gorillas, usually our music and movies, and pull them off to an external hard drive. Or, in fact, to TWO external hard drives, because we have to remember that a digital file doesn’t exist unless it exists in two places.

One can burn CDs or DVDs, but I find these cumbersome, time-intensive, untrustworthy, and hard to store. A second external hard drive is the way to go.

The built-in way to see what’s consuming space is to open up your home folder, go to View menu > as List, and then View > Show View Options.

In the View Options window, turn on Calculate all sizes. You will start to see sizes of your folders appear. In that window, you can click the top of the Size column (click on the word “Size”) to sort the list biggest to smallest:

From there, you can start clicking the triangles next to the biggest folders to expand the contents of the folders, which will in turn be sorted by size. That will help you figure out what you might start to archive and delete.

Notes: Don’t delete your iPhoto Library! It’s too precious. I usually start with iTunes Movies and TV Shows, which are most easily Trashed from within iTunes.

VMWare Fusion 2 beta is out

Features sound fine, especially better Windows printing [crossing fingers], but the extra cool thing is that v2 is going to be a “free downloadable upgrade for all VMware Fusion 1.x customers, as a sincere thank you to our early supporters.” I really like that kind of language.

AT&T offers free WiFi for iPhone users

The following turned out to be entirely B.S.:
Now this is a P-E-R-K.

And in case I missed anyone in my last iPhone-related post, the new Unlimited minutes plan is worth repeating. 
iPhone 2.0 is expected in June. This is when Apple will officially open the iPhone to software created by third parties. There are some very exciting, and very fun little apps, and more are on there way. A new model with 3G faster internet is also expected, but it’s impossible to know yet whether there will be any other features that will attract existing owners to upgrade. I for one will probably wait… ummm, don’t quote me on that…

Incoming mail has stopped coming in

Wondering why I am no longer receiving mail in Apple Mail.app. I have checked the settings, and every other thing I can think to do. I know the account is active because I can go to webmail and get the email.

So, in the left column, next to the word Inbox, is there a circle icon with a triangle or lightning bolt inside it? If so, click that, and take the account online. Then click Get Mail. Tell me if you get any errors.

I was also having a problem with continually having to put in my password on the other accounts.

It would be worth it to open Keychain Access and see if your keychain is unlocked. One should also periodically run "Keychain First Aid" from the application menu (the one next to the Apple menu that changes its name depending on what app you're in).