Curioso!

I got fed up with Time Machine not backing up my iPhoto library. If I keep iPhoto running, it does not back up at all; if I quit iPhoto, it still will not make a full backup because I have a screen saver running with the Last Month smart folder, and this apparently locks out the last month of photos from being backed up. Also Time Machine will not back up from remote file systems.

So I looked around for a backup solution based on rsync. These solutions are around:

• A detailed walkthrough on creating backups using rsync UNIX
• HOWTO: Backup Your Mac With rsync
• Time Machine For Tiger

I mixed these together in my own script that can be called daily from crontab. It cycles through 7 daily backups and 8 weekly backups. Here is the script.

The Creative Zen mediaplayer is not directly supported on the Mac. I use the following software to transfer media to it:

• XNJB is a program to transfer files from and to the Zen.
• Visual Hub can convert video files to the AVI format that the Zen supports.
• Handbrake can convert DVDs to AVI.

Note: to access the SD memory card in the Zen you do not need any additional software. You must enable it as a removable drive on the Zen and then it will appear as an USB drive on the Mac when connected.

PictPress Thumbs is a WordPress plugin for dynamically resizing images, maintaining a cache of resized images separate from the images themselves. It is part of the new PictPress implementation. Read the rest of this entry »

I am working on a complete rewrite of my PictPress plugin for WordPress. PictPress is intended for a way of working where you upload images to your website outside the WordPress admin user interface, e.g. via ftp, shared directories, etc. PictPress offers an easy way of including these images in a new post. Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Look is new functionality added in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopoard. It is activated by pressing the space bar in Finder.

• Folder.qlgenerator, quick look inside folders
• Archive.qlgenerator, quick look into zip, tar, rar archives.
• Source code syntax highlight

The qlgenerator files should be installed in the /Library/QuickLook folder. Finder should be relaunched after install.

This book provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of applied cryptography. Designed for reference and browsing, the authors still intend that a front-to-back read have some merit. Chapters can be freely downloaded.
Read the rest of this entry »

It just came to my attention that PictPress 0.91 has a vulnerability for website attacks caused by an unvalidated argument to the resize.php script. As far as I know this vulnerability has been fixed from version 0.99 upwards. All users of the older version should upgrade or remove the plugin from their website.

If there are still vulnerabilities in the newer versions, please let me know.

I did an upgrade yesterday, and this did not go smoothly, Leopard bit me hard:
Read the rest of this entry »

VNC server for Mac:

• Enable built-in Apple VNC server
• Vine VNC server

VNC client for Mac:

• Chicken of the VNC
• JollysFastVNC

After upgrading to an Intel iMac, my HP Deskjet 840C started to produce garbled output. Fonts were too large and clipped at the bottom. Apparently the HP Deskjet 3.3 driver is broken on Intel computers. Solution is to download and install the HP Deskjet 2.7.1 driver. This is a PPC driver and will work via Rosetta, but output looks good.

New and old iMac side by side.

SONY DSC-H9 10/60 f/2.8 2900×1992 pixels 1335 kB

Development tools for Mac:

• Subversion plugin for Finder

Tools for working with images:

• Panorama Tools
• Hugin - graphical front-end for Panorama Tools
• ImageMagick

Often sites display larger images split up in tiles of e.g. 256×256 pixels. The tiles can easily be retrieved using e.g. curl. The full image can be reconstructed using ImageMagick montage:

montage +frame +shadow +label -tile NxM -geometry +0+0 *.jpg joined.jpg

where N is the number of horizontal tiles and M is the number of vertical tiles.

Physics reference material found on the web.
Read the rest of this entry »

MacFuse provides everything you need to mount an ftp directory on a remote site on your Mac:

• Download and install MacFuse
• Download the Mac port of CurlFtpFs and put it in a directory in your search path
• Create directory ftp
• Execute command
  curlftpfs ftp://user:pass@ftp.example.com/ ftp

The mount point will become visible in the finder. Replace user/pass by your usercode/password and ftp.example.com by the name of your ftp site.

Update: See also MacFusion for a GUI to MacFuse.

Useful plugins for use with iPhoto:

• Keyword Assistant - easier management of keywords assigned to photos
• ScriptExport - export photos via shell script
• Tutorial to write your own plugin

You can force your website to be accessed through a canonical hostname by forcing a redirect from other hostnames in .htaccess or httpd.conf:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^canonical\.host\.name [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$      http://canonical.host.name/$1 [C,L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^$           http://canonical.host.name/ [L,R=301]

My internet provider is the dutch XS4ALL, where I had an ADSL Basic account, 6 Mbit download/768 Kbit upload. Recently they provided an upgrade to Xs4ALL Only for the same price, 8 Mbit download/1 Mbit upload, with additionally the possibility to drop the telephone connection and related charges, which was an obligation for the former ADSL connection. Read the rest of this entry »