Nice little OSX trick
by mark on Jan.12, 2011, under Hacking, Unix
I needed to change the hostname of my desktop OSX box. In the past, you would edit a file in /private/etc and reboot.. I noticed that the file said “This file is going away” so I did a little digging (man hostname) and there was a nice little addition.. The file states…
scutil --set HostName name-of-host
So, I did just that and viola! my hostname changed and it survives reboots!
Quick and Dirty SSL
by mark on Dec.14, 2010, under Unix
Generate your private key
openssl genrsa 1024 > private.key
Keep this key private!
Now, generate the Certificate Signing Request
openssl req -new -key private.key > key_request.csr
Take the key_request.csr and send it to a signing authority.
I like CACert because its free and community oriented, but there are plenty of “real” signing authorities out there.
Google them.Once the signing authority signs your request, take that crt file and use that. Sometimes you need to generate a pem file, so do this:
cat private.key file.crt > key.pem
openssl gendh >> key.pem
That should be good, go and be merry. I highly recommend learning more about this process.
Many Certificate Authorities have really good docs on the process as well as the man pages. Go and learn.
The Impossible Project
by mark on Jun.18, 2010, under General, Hacking, Photography
Not so impossible anymore. I’ve been playing around with both their PX100 and PX600 films in both a couple of SX-70 cameras and a 600. The 600 material seems very stable and reliable. The 100 is getting there and very fun to play with. ‘
Here is a self portrait I did with a $5 SX-70 classic I got from a fleamarket. The trick to getting decent black/white is to chill the film before and right after you expose. This one was left to warm a little because I like the sepia.
Playing around with 600 speed film in my SX-70
PlugPBX is way cool!
by mark on Jan.23, 2010, under Hacking, Technology
Just finished installing FreePBX onto a Sheevaplug Plug computer. At $99 for the dev kit, its about one of the most cost effective embedded systems you can get.
The process is very simple, go to PlugPBX and grab the image for the FreePBX install that gets imaged onto an SD card. Grab an SD card and dd the image over. Then upgrade the uboot on the Sheevaplug so that you can boot from the card and viola. The device boots in under a minute with Asterisk, postfix, munin, mysql, and everything else you need to get your pbx up and running. The only hard part is configuring the pbx to make and receive calls through your DID and provider. If you’ve configured Asterisk you pretty much know what you’re doing.
VFD Clock – Another Tube to add to the collection
by mark on Jan.14, 2010, under General, Hacking, Technology
I finally got the Adafruit VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) clock. Took about 3 months to get it shipped due to backorder (parts sourcing) on their part. This clock was well worth the wait! For $70.00 you get the PCBs, parts, tube, case and power supply.. This is a great deal…
CmoyBB with a BantamDAC
by mark on Nov.29, 2009, under General, Hacking, Technology
Thanks to N6IL, I managed to get a nice DAC that is small enough to stuff in an Altoids tin with a CmoyBB headphone amp.
The mod was quite easy. The altoids tin needed some nibbling around the area where the USB ‘B’ connector goes through and I just needed to pull left, right and ground off the CmoyBB into the DAC. The whole thing took about 2 hours to assemble the DAC and about 5 minutes to add it to the headphone amp. The only reason the DAC takes that long is that there are LOTS of surface mount components to install and test. Totally worthwhile project.
Current temperature in my home office.
by mark on Nov.05, 2009, under General
Free laptop wifi at Starbucks if you have an iPhone
by mark on Sep.18, 2009, under Hacking, Net Politics, Technology
There are a few posts on the net showing you how to spoof your browser’s user agent to make it look like you’re using an iPhone but it appears that Starbucks has gotten wise. So an alternative is to do the following. (Warning, typical mac users are going to cringe cause this requires *gasp* Terminal usage…)
(continue reading…)
Fedora 11 — Nice job.
by mark on Jun.10, 2009, under General
Well, I installed Fedora 11 over my Ubuntu Jaunty install today and am so far very happy for it. Fedora appears to be quite a bit faster with X as well as things like the VPN client (VPNC) work VERY well. The upgrade was for the most part seamless and the only thing I can’t seem to get working well is the fglrx driver so, fo the time being no big monitor. (The T500 has 2 cards and the Discrete is the only one that appears to be able to drive an external display)
In any event, I’m happy with this new distro for the time being and I can’t wait to see what they do next.
Once again, Apple Genius is false advertising.
by mark on Mar.26, 2009, under General
Yesterday I went to the apple store to inquire about the 8G ram upgrade for the new 2.66GHz Macbook Pro that I got. I was told by 2 of the apple store employees (a manager and a genius) that this laptop doesn’t support 8 gigs of RAM.
Well, I did a little poking around on Apple’s online store and found This .. $1200 but there. So, once again, all I ask from apple employees is that they are honest. If they don’t know say “I don’t know” there is no harm in it.. There is, however, harm in lying to people. Especially customers.
Photos
