Rubenerd

Excel Airways Boeing 737-8Q8 photo by Rui Sousa

Somehow, I think I'd feel somewhat uneasy about boarding a plane that had so much damage done to it that it required a door replacement… though you can't argue it's not shiny!

Reminds me of a story my dad told me about a business trip to the United States back in the mid 90s. He and some of his American work colleagues were walking across the tarmac to board a Continental Airlines DC-9 when his boss abruptly stopped dead in his tracks and said he refused to fly on such an old plane. He later revealed that he was an airline enthusiast and that he recognised the registration printed on the side from a fairly serious accident and that they had obviously just patched the plane back together again. Scary stuff.

While I don't entirely agree 100% with his methods of delivering facts, or even some of his assertions, I have a pretty positive view of Michael Moore and find his films incredibly thought provoking and wildly entertaining at the same time. I can remember going with the whole of my year 10 English class to see Bowling for Columbine at the Lido Cinemas on Orchard Road in Singapore, and later seeing Fahrenheit 9/11… twice.

ASIDE: I’ve probably permanently lost half my American readers with the admission that I like Michael Moore. I’m tempted to say that the better half have stayed, but that would dig me down even deeper so for the sake of preserving my own life I think I’ll just leave it right there. I like Mike!

Anyway it seems Mighty Mike (no I'm not talking about our state premier Mike Rann!) may have the goods, but his site administrators are stuck in a Web 1.0 mindset. Heavens almighty how I hate the "Web 2.0" moniker!

In a tip of the hat to my presence, Jim Kloss from Whole Wheat Radio has stated including some nerdier links in his Google Reader weblog and pointed me to the fact that MichaelMoore.com… doesn't even have an RSS feed! Come on Mike, you're nerdy readers need this! Even Fox News has RSS feeds!

For what it's worth, as an XML guy I infinitely prefer Atom to RSS but I know many readers still choke on it. Alas we're stuck again with a standard that's good enough, and despite Atom being superior it's not a compelling enough upgrade for enough people. I could go on talking about Betamax and Plan 9 and United Linux and waffle irons…

Taximetre plus SG$50.00! Where to?

And why don't we have pink taxis? In Adelaide they're all white (get it… they're all white? They're all right? Right? White? Oh come on, that was funny!), in Singapore they're mostly yellow and blue with a few reds and teals, why not pink? Think of it, you could paint a really cute anime character on the side, hire cute people in ridiculous cosplay costumes to drive… I know I (as well as other desperately lonely nerds) would pay a huge premium for such a service! You could even update the nerds who would want to travel in such a taxi by creating an RSS feed that contains the locations of the entire fleet at any given time! It would work perfectly!

RSS, Jim Kloss, Atom, Betamax, Pink, Google, Michael Moore, Shuffle, Whole Wheat Radio, Plan 9, Bowling for Fahrenheits on Shaw Road in Orchard Theater… come on people it makes perfect sense!

Suzumiya Haruhi: the ultimate superuser!

As a person used to using Unix-like systems such as FreeBSD on a regular basis, I know how important it is to use a restricted account for day to day use, and an all powerful administrative root account only when system maintenance needs to be performed. It is the absolute golden rule for every Unix system.

In the world of Mac OS X the story is somewhat different. In a similar fashion to Windows installations, when you install Mac OS X a user account is created with the name of your choice: the problem is the resulting account is an "administrator" with which you can modify most aspects of the system with little to no restriction (differs somewhat from a root user, but that’s for another post). This of course flies right in the face of the golden rule.

Creating the accounts

Fortunately it is possible to modify your existing account for regular use and create an administrative account:

1. Launch the Accounts preference pane and click the "[+]" in the lower left hand side. You may need to click the lock icon to make changes.

2. Create a new administrative account by filling in a name (I chose "Senpai"!), a solid password and make sure you set the "New Account" type to "Administrator". Click "Create Account".

3. You may be asked if you want to disable "Automatic login". Definitely a good idea.

4. Disable administrative access rights in your current account by selecting it in the account column and uncheck the "Allow user to administer this computer".

5. Hide your admin account by clicking "Login Options" and changing the "Display login window as:" radio button to "Name and password".

6. Log out of your account, and log back in to save changes.

Now whenever you log into Mac OS X, enter your now restricted account username and password.

Accounts preference pane in System Preferences

Advantages

• Whenever you want to install a new piece of software by dragging it’s icon to the Applications folder, Mac OS X will ask for your admin username and password, just as it would if you were using an installation assistant. This means applications can’t install without your explicit permission.

• If ever a trojan horse or malicious application installed itself on your system (barring extenuating circumstances) it would be limited to your standard account which means it’s potential to cause damage would be greatly restricted.

• The potential for you to cause unintentional damage to the file system or system files is greatly reduced because you simply not allowed to do it. Often you’re the greatest threat to your system!

• The best thing about this arrangement is that you never actually ever have to login to your admin account at all, you just use it’s username and password whenever you want to make changes to the system.

Conclusion

It’s a shame that Apple doesn’t create standard/restricted accounts by default for people. Fortunately it’s not a hard thing to change, and once you do you’re well on your way to hardening the security of your Mac.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you use the Terminal, as a restricted user you don’t have "wheel" priveliges anymore. To be able to use the sudo command, first login to your admin account by entering su [account name].

For more information, check out the Apple Knowledge Base article on creating user accounts, the Wikipedia article on superusers and the FreeBSD Handbook page on superusers for a general overview on on why it’s a good idea to use restricted accounts on Unix systems.

Screenshot of my short lived, high performance FreeBSD Xfce desktop :(

As I wrote in a previous post, I was wildly exited that I had managed to get FreeBSD booting side by side with Mac OS X Leopard on my original generation MacBook Pro. Not only that, but the performance was phenomenal: above and beyond anything graphically possible on a flimsy virtual machine. While this is true, a few more days of experimentation have led me to remove the FreeBSD partition again.

Unfortunately despite my discovery of several more articles on triple booting Intel bases Mac laptops, I still haven't been able to get it right. Alas given university work I need a copy of Windows handy occasionally, and again virtual machines don't cut it. This means that any FreeBSD partition would have to share the drive with two other operating systems.

The problem stems from an issue I keep running into with booting Windows once FreeBSD has been installed. If you know anything about partitions and multiple operating systems on Macs, these steps I took should make sense:

1. Boot Leopard install DVD and use Disk Utility to create 3 partitions
2. Install Mac OS X Leopard on the middle and larger partition
3. Install the rEFIt boot loader and activate it
4. Install Windows XP in the last partition
5. Install FreeBSD in the first partition, converting the file system to UFS instead of deleting the partition and creating a new one as so often instructed

Once this is done, I am left with a functional installation of Leopard and FreeBSD, but Windows flashes a blue screen of death and restarts every single time. If I install FreeBSD first then Windows, FreeBSD complains that it can't find a bootable volume.

I've recreated the partitions and started from scratch three times, I've installed Leopard in the first partition instead of the second/middle partition, I've attempted to use the rEFIt Partitioning Tool but it throws an error and doesn't solve the GPT and MBR differences.

ASIDE: For what it’s worth, the folks who created rEFIt have done a phenomenal job with their tool; the boot menu is wildly convenient and it boots the right system every time. Now only if the operating systems would play nice!

I desperately want to get this right, but this is a production machine and I'm running out of time. I suppose for now I'll just have to stick with Windows and Mac OS X on this machine, and FreeBSD on a virtual machine unless I can think of something else between now and Wednesday. Frankly I'm just getting sick of watching the Leopard, XP and FreeBSD installers!

This machine has won the battle, but the war is not over. Stay tuned.

Mac OS X Leopard Date & Time preference pane showing the Australian Eastern timezone

For those who haven't installed Mac OS X from scratch before, some of the steps you go through during the process are selecting your country and filling in registration information which optionally includes your address. Despite entering "Adelaide" as my city and "South Australia" as my current state of residence, Mac OS X is still configured to use the Australian Eastern Timezone as shown above.

This has caught me out so many times I can't count! Fortunately I haven't missed any classes or meetings as a result of looking at a freshly installed Mac, but the opportunity is still there.

Is it normal for Apple software to just choose the most populated timezone in a country, or to select the timezone where the capital city is located? Why does it ignore the state you enter before?

For some reason I can't quite understand, I never had this trouble in Singapore.

When I claimed this was going to be the last post on the MacBook FireWire Debacle, I didn't think another writer would share a similar view to me on this issue. This will be the last post! Ironically, I found about this USAToday article through Apple's official start page which chose to summarise the article as such:

Apple, says Edward C. Baig (usatoday.com), “has fashioned a winner with the new MacBook.” The new model features a “bold new metal design with a glossy backlit widescreen LED display, spacious buttonless trackpad and souped-up Nvidia graphics for gamers.” In fact, Baig reports being “pleased with the detail and fluid motion as I played Spore from Electronic Arts and Call of Duty 4 from Activision.

Conveniently they didn't disclose any of Edward's comments regarding the lack of a FireWire port, and the less than adequate number of USB ports as replacements:

But Apple risks ticking off users who rely on FireWire. Like many people, I still have a FireWire camcorder, not to mention an external FireWire hard drive. Apple may want to drive customers to the FireWire-capable MacBook Pro — models that start at $1,999 — which are certainly better equipped for video editing.

The company also figures many of the folks who would do a lot of video editing own newer camcorders that more likely use USB rather than FireWire. Apple isn’t generous there, either: There are just two USB ports on the new MacBooks.

You can still get FireWire on the entry-level plastic MacBook, but it doesn’t have the muscle for heavy-duty video editing.

Exactly! I am so fed up with reading comments from people that tell people who can't afford a MacBook Pro to buy an older MacBook that still has FireWire for video editing, or that people who need FireWire should buy a MacBook Pro. Not everyone is swimming in money.

If you think I've started to dislike Apple though over this hiccup, the last line of Edward's article pretty much sums up my own opinion:

Apple has fashioned a winner with the new MacBook. Unless you can’t live without FireWire.

Sarah Palin answering questions regarding her domestic policy experience

Despite this blog's stated purpose of relaying interesting information and how-tos with regards to BSD and Mac OS X, the elections in the United States are just too interesting to pass up. A little too interesting… I'm expecting Fox to jump out at any minute and claim Sarah Palin is actually part of a new reality TV series planned by their writers and producers, along the lines of Jackass.

Today's news though is just sad. Despite claiming Barack Obama pals around with terrorists, she dodged a question when asked whether people who bomb abortion clinics are terrorists. Pardon my French, but what tripe. From the Australian ABC:

Asked by NBC television presenter Brian Williams whether an abortion clinic bomber was a terrorist, Governor Palin heaved a sigh and, at first, circumvented the question. […]

Attacks on doctors who practice abortion and on family planning clinics in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s left several people dead and scores wounded.

The fact this women is even taken seriously by some people is nothing short of being blood chillingly scary. In the last few days I've even seen a few bumper stickers on cars in Adelaide that read "Don't let your American friends vote for McCain and Palin".

Ladies and gentleman, I've done it… I've finally managed to install FreeBSD on its own partition alongside Mac OS X Leopard on my MacBook Pro! The above screenshot of FreeBSD with the svelte Xfce graphical desktop environment was taken a few minutes ago on said operating system, now I'm typing up this post from Kazehakase, aka 風博士, aka swish alternative Unix-like web browser.

ASIDE: I liked that desktop background because I’m hoping to be like that guy one day. If you’ve watched Sola, I don’t mean that as in I want to just be a thought in someone’s mind… just what’s depicted in the picture… right? Right? Ahem, chaning the subject, Sola was a brilliant anime series.

One word to describe running FreeBSD natively on an Intel Mac? Smooth! After running FreeBSD in a VMware Fusion virtual machine on my MacBook Pro for several years, this weekend I finally got fed up with waiting for VMware to update their drivers for the 7.x series (and giving us 3D support), so I decided to go this route. Using the Radeon drivers the windows move smoothly and everything renders just as fast as my windows on Leopard do. And so many of my favourite applications (The Gimp, Inkscape, Gnumeric, Vim, Abiword…) all work beautifully, even better than when run in Leopard's X11 environment.

In the coming days I'll discuss the steps I took to get here, and any other important pointers I learned along the way. Unfortunately there really isn't much documentation online on how to do this, so it involved a lot of improvisation and messed up partitions.

In the meantime, goodnight everyone :-)

(Original video was taken offline).

I am a subscriber and supporter of Avaaz.org, the "independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making". They do some really great work.

Their latest email is to do with the American elections. I'm not an American citizen, but I know some of the people who read this site are, in which case I pass on this message for whatever it may be worth:

Dear friends,

We know, the outcome of the US election will change the globe. How Americans vote will influence what happens in Iraq, our global response to climate change, our relationships with Iran and North Korea, and whether we finally prioritize the fight to end global poverty.

That’s why Avaaz has produced this global ad echoing the voices and concerns of the billions outside the US who can’t vote. Watch it, then send the ad to your friends in America and across the world. If enough people watch it and support its message, it could spread to US talk shows and into the lounge rooms of middle America — where it really counts!

Thank you, from the entire Avaaz team

I'm sitting at the Gloria Jean's coffee shop at the open-air Harbourtown Shopping Centre waiting for my sister and taking advantage of a little used feature of my blog: automatic publishing of emails that are sent to a hidden email address the blogging software monitors. Let's see if it works!

I'm using this feature because this time I didn't lug my MacBook Pro with me, I'm typing this on my iPhone 3G. I have to be honest, while my eyes are getting used to less screen real estate and having to hold the device in question as I type, my shoulders and back much prefer this arrangement!

As I've elaborated numerous times on the Rubenerd Show and even more times on Twitter, I am perfectly comfortable using the iPhone's touch screen keyboard. In fact now I've had this iPhone for over a month now, I'm faster on this virtual keyboard than I ever was on the physical QWERTY keypads on my Nokia e61 or my Tungsten W. Because I'm just tapping the surface rather than pressing physical buttons, my thumbs are just flying.

What I also really appreciate about the iPhone keyboard is it's excellent error correction and punctuation fixing. What this means is I can type lowercase "ive" and it will automatically change it to "I've". I use this feature constantly, it means I can rapidly type a sentence and the phone fixes it all up.

I'm just going to come out and say it, I love this phone. In an up and coming post I'm going to demonstrate a real world application of all the features this phone has… by recounting a recent trip where I literally was able to get around with just this device. Without sounding too cheesy, this device has given me a degree of mobility I've never had before. Even ignoring the iPod music features, I have maps, GPS, the web browser, text messaging and Twitter – all in a device that is 1000% easier and nicer to use than an N95 or any other "navigation smart phone" I've ever tried. I cannot possibly imagine my life without this phone now, despite spending the first 22 years of my life without one.

Sent from my iPhone