Today, after using it to reboot my router (via its web interface which is only accessible from my LAN) the logmein.com website kept reporting that the connection to the client was timing out or being disconnected.  I couldn’t get the damn thing to connect up at all.

Luckily, I can actually SSH to the Mac Mini remotely too.  So, in order to reset the logmein client, run this from the terminal:

1.  cd /Library/Application\ Support/LogMeIn/update
2.  ./preupdate
3. sudo ./postupdate

That’ll unload and reload the client completely, freeing up any timed out resources.

Related posts:

1. Cisco VPN Client on OSX
2. VMWare Fusion and network bridging
3. Remote Mac access, without VNC

Well, looks like I’ve finally sorted this one out.  I don’t know if it’s the inclusion of new functionality in v2 or v3 of VMF but after doing the below, I’ve not seen the problem occur for a couple of months now.  I can still easily reproduce this issue so I’m guessing it’s some kind of defect in the adaptor autodetect code [or a problem with my config somewhere].

To reproduce the problem, firstly the environment:

1. My MBP is connected to a wireless network only, running WPA2.
2. I’m running VMWare Fusion 3.0.2 (232708) on OS X 10.6.2 (Although this occurred on VMF v1 and v2 as well as OS X 10.5).
3. The VM is Windows 7 Ultimate (although this occurred with Win XP also).

Here is a screenshot of the VM network settings that cause the error message “The network bridge on device /dev/vmnet0 is not running”:

Choosing auto-detect breaks bridge networking every single time.
Fortunately the workaround is very simple.  Setting it to use a specific network adaptor fixes the problem immediately.

The down side to setting the specific adaptor is that when I’m in an environment without wireless and I need to use ethernet, I have to remember to change it in here.  I know that’s not a serious problem but it is irritating when I realise my MSN client has been disconnected for hours.

There have been a bunch of people commenting on the older post and it’s actually now my ‘most hit’ entry (finally overtaking the Outlook 12 beta one) so hopefully this will be of use to some people.

//ian

[Update: March 12th 2010 17:00ish]  Well, I got an @ from @VMWareFusion this afternoon saying “@ianmcshane BTW, we tried to repro this internally with your steps and it works just fine for us. There is something else missing here.”

So I guess YMMV but selecting the specific adaptor has certainly allowed my VM images to run in bridge mode.

Related posts:

1. VMWare Fusion and network bridging
2. Laptop consolidation

Unfortunately, I’m cursed with the same name as a fairly famous actor so, aside from a domain lost due to a massive fail by a UK based DNS host, I’ve not been able to get a name based domain.  Until now.

My existing and rather poorly updated blog domain (http://blog.maccarocks.com) is going to be retired.  I have quite a few fairly popular posts on there so I’ve done my best to migrate them here and hopefully Dreamhost will mirror correctly to keep the old URLs all working.

No related posts.

Is it the ‘F you I won’t do what you tell me’ element?  I’m not sticking anything to The Man with this, really.  No-one is – except for RATM swearing on Radio 5.  I see a lot of people putting that line to mean everyone saying “hey, F you Cowell”.  I don’t think that’s true at all.  If that were the case, there some more relevant tracks in RATMs back catalogue – infect I think Take The Power Back would have given a more obvious call to action.

Either that or someone will stumble across it on wikipedia..

This started as a comment on Pauls post at Blog On The Motorway but escalated to a full on post of my own.

Firstly, I don’t watch usually watch X-Factor.  Of course, I’ve been at friends houses when it’s on but I don’t watch it of my own accord.
Secondly, I don’t listen to the radio in the UK (other than the occasional Planet Rock and Kerrang) and thus have little interest in what track is number one and even smaller awareness of what is being played all the time.
Thirdly, Christmas number ones, as far back as I can remember (with the exception of Cliff Richard), have been these so called ‘novelty’ records.  I can’t remember specific examples but I’m sure there was a Mr Blobby one or some form of celebrity rehashed Christmas carol.

I do tire of hearing about X-Factor all the live long day but it’s easy to tune out/block Facebook friends/stop following tweeters/ignore people.

So, why am I so interested in getting stopping some most-likely-to-be-a-one-hit-wonder kid getting to number one?

Is it the ‘F you I won’t do what you tell me’ element?  I’m not sticking anything to The Man with this, really.  No-one is – except for RATM swearing on Radio 5.  I see a lot of people putting that line to mean everyone saying “hey, F you Cowell”.  I don’t think that’s true at all.  If that were the case, there some more relevant tracks in RATMs back catalogue – infect I think Take The Power Back would have given a more obvious call to action.

Is it the ‘F Simon Cowell, he’s a C..’ element?  Nope.  Does anyone really think this is going to stop X-Factor next year or mean that Mr C will have to sell one of his myriad houses?  Of course not.

Is it because I don’t want some kid to get rich off of the back of some crappy TV show?  Ridiculous, he’s already going to have made a fortune and this whole deal is only going to make things more lucrative for him.  I doubt more than 10% (very conservative number) of RATM purchases were originally going to buy the X-factor single.

The whole thing is interesting to me from a social and technological view point - Virul campaigns have been around for years but this is different.

This was started by one ordinary guy, not some big brand with a marketing budget and some scenster in-charge.  Some chap who created a Facebook group most likely for a laugh amongst his friends.  I’ll bet he didn’t think “I’m really gonna go out on a limb to stop this X-Factor guy, whatever it takes”.  Let’s be honest here, he hasn’t done much at all.  Don’t get me wrong, everything starts somewhere but let’s not put this up as some one man crusade to stop the tyranny of a televised talent show.

Of course, it’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened.  Crowd-sourcing is really taking off in a huge way - news sites like Reddit and Digg, software companies using it to aid their development roadmaps, even news agencies use Twitter to track breaking news in real time.

That’s why it’s interesting.  However, ordinarily, I wouldn’t have bothered getting involved with this but the fact that this kind of unimportant ‘battle’ can also be used to motivate people to donate to charity made me change my mind.
Last Friday, they’d raised almost £2k for Shelter.  Today, the current total is over £50k with gift aid.

Am I going to listen to the chart show this weekend?  No way, at least not on purpose.

Am I really going to be annoyed/interested if X-Factor kid is number one?  Not at all.

Of course, it would be very cool for kids to get exposed to (via the radio friendly version ) some decent musicianship for a change.  Maybe they’ll even pay heed to some of the causes that RATM have campaigned for over the years.  Honestly though, I’m really not bothered about the outcome.

However, I spent £0.99 and a did a good deed in donating to charity to be a very small part of something both interesting, useful and certainly something that will be a kind of folklore in geek history - Well, at least there’s a good chance someone will stumble across it on wikipedia in years to come..

I can also hope that RATM will follow this all up with a UK tour next year!

No related posts.

It’s not all doom and gloom, there are of course many titles available right now.  At least I was able to get a sample chapter of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”

I got the notification that my Amazon Kindle order shipped today, with delivery expected in a couple of days.
In my excitement, I hopped over to the Kindle book store (accessed via Amazon.com as opposed to the .co.uk) to queue up some books and previews ready for its arrival.
It’s accurate to say that I’m left a little deflated and disappointed by the titles that are unavailable for UK buyers right now.  This could make for an interesting couple of days worth of tech news.

I  was initially surprised to find that there isn’t an obvious way to see any of the popular Best Sellers listings, be it NY Times or perhaps anything else localised for the UK.  All I could do was list _all_ of the Kindle books and sort by ‘Best Selling’.
Top of the list was Glenn Beck with “Arguing with Idiots”.  Maybe I should know more about him but other than him being on FOX and maybe talk radio, I don’t.  I decided to get queue up the “sample” of his book anyway.
BTW the list price of this book for Kindle is $13.79 (or £8.44) including VAT & international wireless delivery via Whispernet.  Match that against the Digital List Price and Print List Price of $29.99, as well as Amazons price for the Hardcover ($16.47) that’s a pretty decent saving.
Scrolling down the list, there wasn’t really anything on their Best Selling list that took my fancy.

I remembered that Dan Brown had a book out recently and thought I’d grab the sample of that too.  Unfortunately, it seems that none of his books are available on Kindle.  Let’s clarify that, none of his books are available on Kindle for UK customers.

The explanation from Amazon is “Due to copyright restrictions, certain Kindle Titles are not available everywhere.”
I bet this is going to become a talking point as Kindles are shipped around the world.

I decided to go through the New York Times best seller list (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/bestseller) for Hardcover Fiction:

1. THE LOST SYMBOL, by Dan Brown
2. A TOUCH OF DEAD, by Charlaine Harris
3. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett
4. THE PROFESSIONAL, by Robert B. Parker
5. THE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks

Oh dear, only one of the top 5 is currently available to UK buyers, The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Perhaps the local market would be better so I went through the UK Sunday Times best sellers list for paper backs (http://tinyurl.com/d9av7f):

1. Cross Country, by James Patterson
2. The Gift, by Cecelia Ahern
3. The Private Patient, by PD James
4. Once In a Lifetime, by Cathy Kelly
5. Arctic Drift, by Clive and Dirk Cussler

Again, only one of the top 5 were available to UK buyers – The Gift by Cecelia Ahern, not my cup of tea at all.

There are at least 3 books on those two lists which I would be tempted with if I was bored at an airport, alas I’m unable to get them to my Kindle right now.
Additionally, I looked for books by Max Brooks (World War Z, Zombie Survival Guide) and found that they aren’t available to me either.  At this point, I’m starting to get serious buyers remorse so I’ve decided to stop looking for the moment.

Of course, let’s not forget that Internation Kindles have only started shipping today.  There is plenty of time in the next 48hrs for Amazon to iron out the copyright issues that they use to explain the titles that aren’t available.
Perhaps they should at least have a ‘notify me/download sample when this title is available’ mechanism, I hope they are working this through now.

It’s not all doom and gloom, there are of course many titles available right now.  At least I was able to get a sample chapter of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”

Related posts:

1. Moving to eBooks?

I travel a lot for work and quite often my flights are longer than just a couple of hours.
This means that my MBP battery life isn’t long enough to sustain the entire flight and besides, I don’t often get to fly First Class so space is quite limiting.
I therefore usually carry a book or two in my carry on luggage.  Ranging from business style ones (Crucial Conversations, anyone?) to fiction, they can add substantial weight to my bag.  Not forgetting the expense of course.  If i’m bored at the airport, I’ll check out the bookstore there.  For example, I bought a whopping book from Dublin airport last week which wouldn’t even fit in my bag.

I’ve coveted the Amazon Kindle for a long time now, pretty much since it was released and especially since they launched the Kindle DX earlier this year.  I know I’d need a US mailing address to open a US account and get it delivered but that’s fine.  The only thing that has stopped me getting one yet is that I am concerned at not being able to buy books for it.  I just don’t know if you can purchase books “off Kindle” – i.e buy them on my MBP and transfer them to the Kindle via USB.
The last couple of times I’ve been to the US, I’ve had the Kindle 2 in my ‘shopping basket’ about to hit the “order” button but backed out at the last minute.

Given that, you can imagine my excitement last week when I heard via @derrenbrown that the Kindle was finally being launched outside of the US.  I went straight off to Amazon and pre-ordered, despite the $40 import tax on top of the quoted $279 ordering price.
Now a week has passed since I ordered and now I’m really starting to think this through.  A lot of noise has been made over the last few days about the cost of books to the UK market being higher than the US one.  It’s not that which bothers me so much, I’m more concerned about whether it fits MY purpose, not the markets.  I’ve started to wonder if I’ve just fallen for the media hype.  Other than the Kindle, my other option is the Sony Reader which is available in the UK right now.  It’s also the chosen format for Waterstones.

I need/want to be able to do the following:

1. Carry books with me without over burdening my back/bag.
2. Be able to buy new books instantly over the web and move to reader easily.
3. Read PDFs and Word docs.
4. Occasional annotating and ability to find the notes quickly/easily.

I don’t need web browsing – I have my iPhone when in the UK and my work BlackBerry for when I’m roaming.

Kindle International scores the first 2 but apparently doesn’t fair so well at number 3.
The Sony Reader Touch Edition hits 1,3  and 4 but doesn’t have integrated wireless for instant download.

People have suggested getting the US version of the Kindle DX which has much better PDF support apparently.  However, I think I then lose the wireless aspect.
Now, there is supposedly a new Sony Reader out in December, the Daily Edition.  A larger screen and wireless (3G I think) access to the Sony store are it’s main features.  That could well hit all three of my requirements, if it’s released in the UK.
However, if we are talking about waiting for a new release, the Kindle DX is being touted for a 2010 Q1 release internationally so perhaps I should wait on that one?

Price wise, the Kindle International racks up at ~£218.35 including the import tax and shipping from the US versus £250 for the Sony Reader PRS-600 Touch Edition.  (It doesn’t surprise me that the Sony is more expensive, it’s quite the norm for anything on their brand.)  There is, however, a smaller Sony Pocket Edition at £160 which has fewer features and is basically a bare bones eBook reader.

What am I to do short term?

• Leave my Kindle order and hope that it’s either good enough for my needs or that the market for used Kindles is good in a month or so.
• Go with the cheaper pocket Sony reader and wait for the International DX release or the newer Sony Daily?
• Forget about all of them for the moment and see if this is just a fleeting ‘want’ and not a need?

Let’s see…

Related posts:

1. Amazon international Kindle ships, buyers remorse imminent?

Seeing as I work in technology, that obviously means I’m the first port of call for friends/relatives with any kind of computer issue.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my wifes friends asked if I could take a look at her lappy – a Dell D610.

She hadn’t used it for a few years as she got a newer lappy, now couldn’t remember her password which left her husband SOoL when he wanted to take it with him whilst he’s away with work.  To make things a little less straight forward, there were a bunch of photos on it of their kids when they were younger, so I couldn’t simply reinstall the OS and go.

Getting the pics off was pretty easy – Re-Installing the OS was not.

I managed to get the photos off with my trusty 3.5″IDE->USB adaptor.  Took the disk out, hooked it up to my MBP and copied them off.  Well, it wasn’t quite that simple as I didn’t realise OS X wouldn’t search an NTFS drive (probably something to do with spotlight writing the index but being unable to write to NTFS natively).  After a bit of driver wrangling, I managed to get the device to show up in Windows 7 under VMWare Fusion and quickly found the pics.

Right, just the OS to go.

I burned an iso of XP with SP3 slipstreamed in and went about trying to get the lappy to boot from CD.

Once I realised that the boot menu was having no effect, I checked out the BIOS.  Yup, completely locked out with an admin password.  This meant I couldn’t change the boot priority or anything at all.

Bugger.

A bunch of Googling turned me on to a method of wiping the BIOS admin password completely by shorting out the EEPROM.

It took me a while to work it out and I absolutely refused to pay the jackass with the youtube video promising to show you how to do it for a fee.

So, in the interests of freedom of information, here is how to clear/reset/remove the BIOS password on a Dell D610.

Notes and disclaimer:

This worked for me.  If it doesn’t work for you, i’m not responsible for that.
You will be cutting metal from the casing.  You need to be careful not to leave any residue on the motherboard incase it shorts anything out.
As part of the process, your machines service tag details will also be cleared.

1. Get your BIOS locked Dell D610.

2. Get a paperclip or safety pin.

3. Get a phillips or crosshead screwdriver and some metal cutters (heavy duty wire cutters should do it).

4. Remove the power supply, battery, CD drive and HDD.

5. Unscrew pretty much all of the screws on the bottom of the D610.

6. Remove the bottom case.

7. With the rear of the laptop closest to you, you should see a white label covering the modem on your left.  There should be some black plastic covering which stops the CMOS from touching the motherboard.

8. Just above that, there are some holes in the metal casing. You need to access a chip underneath that area.

9. CAREFULLY remove the metal.

10. Take your paper clip and prepare to short out the two pins 2nd from the left.

11. Connect the power supply and power on whilst shorting out those pins for about 5 secs.

12. If you are doing it right you’ll hear the fan kick in.

13. This message will then show on the screen.

14. You can either press FN+x or let it reboot on it’s own..

15. Now you will be able to go to the BIOS (Press F2) and make whatever changes you need.

16. Reassemble the case

It’s actually a pretty simple process once you know what chip is where, although you must be extremely careful when cutting the casing.

I hope that helps someone and saves them a few bucks.

//ian

No related posts.

If I just quickly want to add a podcast i’ve just downloaded, or add a new playlist or single song, it would take at least 10 mins.
5 mins of Backing Up
5 mins of Copying Applications from iPhone
x mins of Actual Sync

The copying applications passed me by for a while, I misread it as copying TO iPhone.
It turns out there is somekind of problem whereby the applications i’ve bought OTA on the iPhone don’t always get sync’d back to iTunes.  So iTunes, instead of just downloading the app from the appstore itself, tries to copy from the iPhone.
Note:  I’ve not looked online for any confirmation of an official problem, this is just my experience.  YMMV.  I’ve also not reset/restored my iPhone at all which is what generally all ‘solutions’ begin with..

Anyway.  I decided today to download the applications that don’t show up in iTunes and make sure that what was in there was totally in sync with my iPhone.

Once this was done, the backing up portion of the sync took less than 15 seconds, and complete sync action took less than 2 mins.

Hurrah!

Related posts:

1. Fixed: Unable to sync iPhone with Calendar/Contacts
2. A more objective look at iPhone (part 2: Things the iPhone does well)
3. A more objective look at iPhone (part 1: Things the iPhone can't do)

The last time I migrated, from my Mac Mini to my Macbook, I lost all the meta-data and really didn’t fancy it again.  It turns out it’s pretty simple and straightforward.  The following steps assume a brand new install of iTunes.

1.  Start up iTunes on the target device.  Accept the license agreement and choose NOT to add anything to the library at this time.  You should now find the iTunes folder and a blank database in your /%username%/Music folder.

2.  Start up the Migration Assistant app (in Applications/Utilities), choose “From a Mac”.

3.  Reboot your source device and hold down the ‘T’ key whilst it restarts.  It should boot up to show a Firewire symbol.

4.  Connect the source and target devices with a Firewire cable.

5.  This should mount the source disk on your target device.

6.  Copy the entire Music/iTunes folder from source to destination.

7.  Once the copy is finished, open iTunes and you should see all your tracks preserved with the meta-data intact.

The cool thing about this is that any iPods or iPhones registered with the previous iTunes installation will continue to work on your new device.  No need to format and re-sync.

Related posts:

1. Remote Mac access, without VNC
2. Switching to Mac
3. VMWare Fusion and network bridging

I think I’ve worked out how to resolve this now from a command line:

Firstly take the fw0 interface down and bring it up again:
Sudo ifconfig fw0 down
Sudo ifconfig fw0 up

Then restart the VPN SS:
Sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

That has resolved it for me the last 5 times it happened, without needing to reboot again.

Hope that helps someone else out.

Related posts:

1. Reseting the LogMeIn client remotely
2. VMWare Fusion and network bridging
3. RadRails – Unable to detect ruby install on OS X Leopard