Author: apokalyptik

apokalyptikhttp://blog.apokalyptik.com/

Of AOL, Porn, and Piracy

In response to the “big news” about AOL’s IPTV technology, and the small uproar here about Mac users being out of luck… as well as some other recent news about IPTV’s strengths and weaknesses:

Havent the porn guys been doing this for years? And dont they pretty well have it down to a science? I mean… come on…

And hasnt the call for being able to find all your episodes of past oddball tv shows been annswered too? I thought thats what people used bittorrent for?

Oh, wait… so when an “invention” is re-invented by a company with an “Inc.” somewhere in the title its “news”, and when the porn or OSS people do it its… what… criminal?

>sigh< DK

So you want to install OpenWRT…

So you want to install OpenWRT and after some looking at OpenWRT’s hardware compatibility list You realize a couple of things.

First you realize that you’re not one of the lucky few who just randomly happen to already have a router model with a revision that will work with OpenWRT

Second, as you glance over the list you realize that there are a lot of places where a router model with revision 1, 2, 3, and 4 will work, but revision 5 is completely unsupported. Which means that if you pick up a new router in a store… and it’s not been sitting around on the shelves for a long time… You probably wont be able to use the new router iether

Third you realize that there isnt any documentation on OpenWRT’s site which says “go here, and buy this router if you want to use OpenWRT”

So, where does that leave you? Well… at this blog entry of course. After doing some serious list searching, and window shopping I’ve found that you can, in fact, go to the store and pick up an OpenWRT compatible router right now!

As of Sunday, March 12, 2006 you can go to Fry’s electronics and pick up iether of these routers — brand new. The Linksys WRT45GL ($80 at Fry’s last time I looked), and the Linksys WRTSL54GS ($140 at Fry’s last time I looked) routers.

Sounds like an easy decision to make, doesnt it? $80 or $140?! $80 router and I’ll be on my way, thanks… right? Well, not so fast, you see the $140 router has one feature which *greatly* expands its usefulness: USB. With the $140 router you can connect USB disc drives to it, and use it for a Network Attached Storage device, or one of so many other juicy possibilities…

OSX Mail.app and GpuPG (gnu’s free PGP (also called GPG)) (damn acronyms)

I finally decided that I wanted PGP for my e-mail again… I had been using thunderbird for my e-mail back when I was on a PC+Linux bu, for reasons of my own, I decided that I would try and stick it out with OSX’s Mail.app…

Google’ing led me to a post by Hanno Kaiser on the “Law & Society” Weblog

I was able to follow those directions pretty much verbatem (sp?) up intill it said that Mail.app would give me an error… it never did… so I just went along merrily… Mail.app told me I didnt have a key, so i closed it down, and launched the GPG Keychain Access app, generated myself a 4096 bit key (which took a suprisingly long time (i would have thought that It’d frozen)

As a matter of fact I *DID* think that it was frozen, and I killed it. After i went back into the krychain access utility and saw one half of the 4096 bit keys made I realized that it just was going to take an ASS long time. As a self-proof-of-concept I made first a 1024 bit, and then a 2049 bit key… when both completed apporpriately I decided to go for the throat and make the “holy grail” of gpg keys (at least the one with the biggest damn number of bits).

So, if you were paying attention you realize that I already had 2 functional keys… why waste my time on making the “makes your MacMini so slow you can tap in morse code faster then it can now accept keyboard inputs” (yea i had lots of other apps going, dont bother flaming me) key? *BECAUSE I CAN* and *BECAUSE I WANT ONE*… I mean, hell, like you dont buy hardware upgrades to give yourself the gratification of having better numbers on paper…

Anyhow… over 2 hours later I’m back to the same conclusion… creating a 4096 bit DSA key with this setup is not possible… ahh well… 2048 bit here I come…
Just goes to show… there’s always room for improvement.

DK

Of Xcode and SVN

As i mentioned (now) 2 posts ago I got subversion and Xcode working together. Problem is that apparently any time someone adds a file to subversion Xcode will first properly update the working codebase, but then fail to add the new file to the subversion project. Long story short this makes working with xcode on a collaborative SVN controlled project a *real* pita… More on this later If i find anything out.

As a side note Scott apparently liked the Textmate [Editor|IDE?] which apparently has svn support I’m assuming he’ll iether give it high praise or grind it beneath his proverbial boots once he’s given it a shot…

Using Apple’s Xcode with an *existing* Subversion Project

The articles and howto’s that I found (“Using Subversion with Xcode” and
“Getting Control with Subversion and Xcode”) regarding integrating the Subversion source code version control system and apple‘s Xcode portion of their “Tools Suite” have all been geared, primarily, towards starting a *new* project with the tools. And while the methodology isn’t really that different when you’re looking to start using Xcode on an already existing (and under development) project it’s shifted one step to the left enough that it’s not… exactly… straightforward how you should accomplish this when you’re reading the classical google’d howto’s… So… Here…

We’ll assume the following:

  • OSX 10.4
  • Xcode 2.0 is installed and working
  • You know how to check out your repository remotely
    • hereafter referred to as “$repo”

That said, heres how you do it

  • Install Fink for OSX
  • At the command line:
    • $ sudo apt-get install svn
    • $ sudo apt-get install svn-client
    • $ cd ~
    • $ svn co $repo ./xcode-project
  • Create a new “Empty Project”
  • Set the “Project Directory” to “~/xcode-project/”
  • Once the project is created:
  • First — Add the existing project files:
    • Project -> “Add to Project”
    • Browse to your xcode-project directory
    • Apple-A to select all of the files in that directory
    • Click “Add”
    • Change “Reference Type:” from “Default” to “Relative to Enclosing Group”
    • Click “Add”
  • Second — Enable Xcode’s “SCM” Functionality:
    • File -> Get Info
    • Set “SCM System” to “Subversion”
    • Click “Edit”
      • Set “Subversion Tool Path:” to “/sw/bin/svn”
      • Click “OK”
    • Check “Enable SCM”
  • Now you’re Done

Once you’ve enabled this functionality you’ll have the SCM menu’s

  • Up top
  • In the right click menu’s
  • On the left under “Groups & Files”

Now… *HOW* to work with it… see… thats all you 😉

Cheers

DK