Geekularity

For those who bought the iPhone at its original price of $600.00, Apple has released the details on how to claim your $100.00 credit. There are two tips I’d like to pass along so that you don’t pull your hair out while you sit on the phone for 20 minutes waiting for an Apple support agent to pick up the phone:

1. Do not actually try to redeem your store credit using the web browser on your iPhone. At the end of the process will be a page with bar codes and serial numbers, which you will need to print if you intend to visit a physical Apple Store. If you started the process on your iPhone like me, don’t worry, you can start over again using your computer.
2. If you are looking to put your $100 store credit towards an iTunes gift card, and you are looking to get some instant gratification, don’t redeem your store credit on the online store. The “Gift Certificate by Email” option, upon checkout, does not allow you to apply a store credit. That area of the payment page is greyed out and unavailable. You CAN order physical iTunes gift card(s) and then apply your store credit, but then you will need to wait for snail mail to deliver your cards. If you are in a hurry to turn your credit into iTunes songs, then a visit to your local Apple Store will be in order.

I have joined in with a chorus of geeks who wish they could use and recharge their MacBooks while they were in the car or boat. But Apple only makes a DC adapter that is compatible with airplane power ports and not with 12V car (cigarette lighter) ports. Since the MagSafe connector is patented, and they have yet to license it to third parties, there just aren’t any commercial solutions to-date. Sure you could use a power inverter to plug your normal power brick in to your car, but the conversion from DC to AC and then back to DC is extremely inefficient, and I’ve found most devices to be rather noisy and hot. I was looking for a DC-DC conversion solution, and I figured I would have to take matters into my own hands.

I am a decent maker/hacker and I love playing with electricity. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve electrocuted myself in this lifetime… all in the name of science and discovery of course. Nevertheless, I am out of practice, and when I looked at the four or five pins at the end of of the MagSafe adapter, I assumed that there was some complexity to the voltage and polarity, and I had neither the time, nor the drive to figure it out. Plus, my MacBook Pro is now my primary business asset. If I mess it up by shorting it out somehow, this experiment gets very expensive very quickly. So, I put this project on the bottom of my to-do list as I waited for something better to come along.

About a week ago, I came across this link (via RubyHead) to Mike (MikeGyver) Lee’s website where he sells both turn-key solutions as well as instructions to build your own DC-DC power adapter for the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. The great thing is that I already owned one of the third party power adapters that he recommends, so all I needed was about $7.00 worth of radio shack parts. Awesome! So, I bought the do-it-yourself instructions from Mike Lee, and gave it a go last night. So far it works great!

It turns out that the polarity and the pinouts on the MagSafe Adapter are really no big deal. I won’t give away the details in this post. So if you are interested in doing it yourself, or even buying a turn-key solution, please check out Mike Lee’s information. I advise you to visit this site sooner rather than later as Apple has away of making cool and helpful things like this disappear through cease and desist orders. Anyway, I now have a road-trip worthy MacBook Pro.

[UPDATE: 2007-06-25 10:30 AM PST]

Yes, this configuration does charge the MacBook’s battery, unlike the Apple Airline adapter which just powers the laptop. It’s hard to see, but the indicator light on the MagSafe plug in the picture above is indeed orange.

First and foremost, I suggest making a backup of your iTunes library before you upgrade to the newest version. You already have a backup routine that has done a complete system backup in the last week anyway… right!

That being said, you may experience some difficulties syncing your iPod with music that you ripped from a CD after you have upgraded to iTunes 7.2. Especially if one or more songs match music that you had also bought from the iTunes Store. The error message I received was as follows:

“While syncing to <iPod device name>, the file <song name> was not copied because the file type is not supported by the iPod”

After several hours of fiddling with the MP3 file’s ID3 Tags and trying to rebuild the iTunes Library, I finally found the following fixit solution.

1. For each song that shows up in the error dialog box, find it in your iTunes library and copy it to a new location (I used my desktop).
2. Once the file has been copied to a new location, delete the file which is in your iTunes library by clicking on it from within iTunes and pressing the delete key. If you are prompted to keep the file or move it to the trash, choose to move it to the trash.
3. Re-import that song back into you iTunes library by clicking and dragging the copy of the file back into the iTunes window.
4. Sync your iPod again to confirm that 1) the file does not show up in the error list and 2) you can see and play the song on your iPod
5. You may need to iterate through this process several times as the sync error log seems to only show 100 songs at a time. If you have more than 100 songs that won’t sync, you may not know it until your next sync.

I hope this little incompatibility or file corruption just applies to me. However, I suspect that the iTunes 7.2 upgrade might cause problems for more people in the coming days. Please leave your thoughts, complaints and suggestions in the comment section of this post. I’d like to know if this is a small problem or if it’s more wide-spread.

[UPDATE 2007-05-31 1:32 PM]

There’s a new discussion and several other solutions available in the Apple support forums:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4645674

[UPDATE 2007-06-01 9:42 AM]

Playlist Magazine has an article, in which they call this problem a bug. However, I’m still inclined to think that this was intentional behavior from Apple to test the waters on how many people had indeed burned their iTunes Store music out to CD and then reimported it.

http://playlistmag.com/weblogs/ipodblog/2007/06/itunes72gotcharedux/index.php

Microsoft disclosed today that most active versions of Windows (2000 through Vista) have a serious security flaw in how they handle animated mouse cursors. In this security advisory, Microsoft describes that, clicking on a link in an email message, stumbling across a malicious website, or even a legitimate website that’s been compromised can lead to unintended code execution. Just about the only safe environment is Windows Vista with IE7 in full lock down mode. This security threat is considered a zero-day exploit, meaning that examples of exploitation have already been observed in the wild, and currently there is no fix from Microsoft. So, keep running your windows update over the next few days or check back here for links to helpful resources. In the meantime, don’t open emails from people you don’t know, and stick to surfing the websites that you do know… you know… normal, safe Internet practices.

[UPDATE 2007-04-02 1:00 PM PST ]

Security Firm eEye Research has released an unofficial security patch in response to the animated cursor vulnerability. Please see their press release for details. However, Microsoft is expected to release their official hotfix or patch tomorrow.

[UPDATE 2007-04-03 3:00 PM PST]

Indeed, Microsoft has released a security patch out of cycle in order to guard against known, real-worl threats from the Animated Cursor flaw. If you have not done so already, please run Windows Update to grab the most recent patches.

This weekend marks the first time that Daylight savings will take affect based on the changes from recent energy legislation. The fear mongers may have you believe that this is another Y2K bug that will plunge us all into darkness, empty our bank accounts, and crash airplanes. That’s simply not the case. At worst, your coworker, Jim, will be an hour late to your staff meeting on Monday. But then again, he blames Daylight Savings for that every year!

The major computer operating systems, Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac, have issued fixes via their automated update systems. And if you are a good little netizen, you have already installed them. Nevertheless, here are a few links to help you make sure your systems are in tip-top shape.

• Linux: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote a nice howto article over at Linux-Watch. He shows you what files to check, and where to get the updates if your system isn’t already up-to-date.

• Mac: Steve Jobs and Company released an update for the various editions of OS X on February 15, 2007. Please see this support document for details.

• Windows: Please see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article KB931836 for details on the various hotfixes available for download.

For those of you who are flying somewhere this weekend, please rest assured that Air Traffic Control and airline flight services all standardize on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which are one in the same, and are unaffected by daylight savings. At worst, the arrival departure displays may have a hiccup here or there, but even that is highly unlikely.

This is a clever use of telephony integration. Apparently your plants can call when they need water. If you call the botanicalls phone number (212.202.8348) you can hear clever biographical data from each of the plants hooked up to their test system. [link]

This was a multi-step solution for me, and I thought I’d post my links to the solutions that I found for getting to my EVDO card to work on my Dell Latitude D610.

First of all, check with Verizon to see if they have an updated VZ Access manager available for your card yet (VZAccess Software Site). In my case, I have a KPC 650 which won’t have a fix until at least March so I have chosen to do the hack outlined in Keith Comb’s blog post. He describes how to install the VZAccess Manager in WinXP compatibility mode and to create a dialup connection for your card.

One additional note, on my Dell Latitude D610, I would get the blue screen of death after I installed the KPC 650 drivers. I found this post in evdo forums which instructed me to disable my smart card reader, which is fine as I don’t use it anyway.

Now, Things seem to be running smoothly! The only problem I have now is that I can’t get the ppp adapter connection to participate in the network bridging that I need to connect my Parallels Virtual Machines to the internet. So, I’m now evaluating VMWare Workstation 6 Beta, which I’ll probably purchase upon its release unless Parallels catches up and gets their “Vista compatibility” to be truly compatible.

If you are like me, and you have a couple of encrypted web services that use self-signed SSL certificates, you may run into problems getting Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 to trust a web site with a self-signed certificate even though you consider it safe. I found these instructions on the MSDN Channel9 blog and thought that I would pass this useful tip along:

To install a certificate when visiting a self-signed OWA server on Vista, you need to perform the following steps:

1. Run IE as an administrator (Right-click the desktop icon)
2. Visit the site.
3. Click through the certificate error
4. Click the “Certificate Error” button in the address bar.
5. Click View Certificate
6. Click Install Certificate
7. Unlike on XP, you must click the “Place all certificates in the following store” radio button, and choose the “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” store. If you don’t do this, the certificate goes in your personal store, and it isn’t trusted by IE.

Yes, this is cumbersome, but for good reason: Self-signed certificates are quite dangerous, because unless you manually compare the thumbprint/hash via secure or out-of-band communication, you have no assurance that your connection isn’t being man-in-the-middle attacked.

Thanks to Eric Lawrence, Program Manager, IE Networking for these instructions.

I posted pictures of my programmable staus board a little over a week ago. Since then Network Wizards, the maker of the TRIKLITS light strings used in this project, has issued the following safety recall. If you have a set of the original light strings like I do, PLEASE head their warnings!

Received 12/15/2006 - 12:11 PM

=== product safety
notice ===

From: Network Wizards
To: All Triklits Customers

We want to alert you to some safety problems with the Triklits you have received from us. Unfortunately, the factory that built the product for us did not follow our specifications properly. We have since found a number of issues that are a safety concern. A combination of mistakes along with low quality assembly and parts, leads us to believe that this product could possibly cause a fire under the right circumstances.

During some testing of our lights a few weeks ago, a small fire started in our testing area. We were not there to witness it, and due to the the damage and variety of electronics in the area, it was not possible to determine the ignition source. This incident led us to considerable testing of the Triklits, where we found that the plastic cases and balls, and a few other parts, were not made with fire-retardent plastic as we had specified to the factory. If an electronic component somehow failed and caught on fire, there is a chance the plastic case around it could also catch on fire. The proper plastic would generally prevent this from happening. We also found that in near short-circuit conditions, the power supply can output over 4 amps (at low voltages), well over its rated output of 1.6 amps.

We are still negotiating with the factory to try to get them to build us a correct version and send us replacements. So at this time we have no replacements to send out, and it might be a number of months (3+) before we do. We may even end up switching to another manufacturer and this could cause further delays.

Because of these potential problems, we are asking you to return your Triklits to us for a full refund. In addition, if you return them, we will give you 50% off an equivalent number of lights for a future order, when available.

Please return your Triklits to:
Network Wizards
10 Cathy Place
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Please enclose the name you originally ordered them under. We will send you a check (include your name and address!) for the full amount of your order. If you would like to receive a refund via Paypal then include your paypal address also.

We tried very hard to bring you a cool product at an affordable price, but the factory apparently thought saving a few cents was more important than making them properly. We are really sorry about this and we hope to re-emerge from this experience with something much better.

thanks,
Mark
Network Wizards

———-
PS. We are aware that many of you will be unable or unwilling to return your Triklits for various reasons. In that case, please observe the following:

- Never leave the Triklits plugged in and unattended. Even when they are off, power is still going down the wire to the lights.

- Feel the power supply, control box and each light after they have been running for an hour or so. Nothing should feel more than slightly warm. Pull the power plug out and feel the end of it too. If anything is hot, discontinue using it and contact us.

- After analyzing all the components, we think if they were to cause a fire, the more probable place is the control box, so check this carefully.

- Do not operate Triklits in the paper box they came in, or next to any flammable materials.

- Adding a 2 AMP fuse in the circuit before power enters the control box will greatly enhance safety.
———

UPDATE: Please see this safety recall for important information on some of the components related to this project!

In September, I read a post on one of my favorite blogs about these Triklits programmable LED light strings and I instantly fell in love with them. I ordered two strands as well as the USB interface card and had a ball making these things come to life. After fiddling with them for a couple of weeks, I began to build this automated statusboard to help me monitor systems for me and my clients. The board updates every 60 seconds and displays information from several different sources including my Nagios installation, my source code repository, a bug tracking database, and a soon-to-be-implemented build server. I’m still working on the Perl scripts that I use to query the different sources, but when I’m done, I’ll post the source code here. This was a fun one to hack at last weekend!

2 X 24 light Triklit strands with 2 lights in each cell.

Birch plywood and masonite/hardboard

1/8″ white, opaque signage acrylic

total size 37 1/2″ X 19 1/2″