Rick's World

Last night, my friend Dave and I got together for a sort of Geek's Night Out. It was a fun evening.

Yesterday, at 6pm was the big release of Apple's OS X Leopard - their new operating system. Both of us had been anxiously awaiting this for some time. Since we are members of ADC Select, we'd both already tried the early betas of Leopard, so we knew what to expect, but it was nice to finally be able to be 'official' with it. I left work and headed up to Boca to meet with him at the Apple Store up there. Why did I drive all the way to Boca just to go to the Apple Store, when there is an Apple Store located much closer to were I work? I did this because I wanted to get together with Dave to help him put an eSATA cable into his Mac (which I'd already done on mine), plus, we figured that the Boca Apple Store wouldn't be as busy.

I got to the Apple Store at about 6:30pm. Even though I left at 5:45pm, it took a good 45 minutes to get there, due to the bad traffic and the fact that it had been raining all day, so the roads were wet. Dave got there before I did, so he had already gone through the line, bought his copy and got his t-shirt. Since he got there before I did, he got an extra t-shirt for me. Of course, I didn't know this, so I got in line, bought my copy and got my t-shirt. Now Dave has two Leopard t-shirts! :) Oh well. The store was very busy, even for an Apple Store which is normally busy. I was surprised how few people seemed to be there to buy copies of Leopard. Maybe there were a lot, and the line just moved really fast. I don't know, but I was surprised how fast I got in and out with my copy. I don't think I was in there more than five minutes.

I left the store and met Dave outside the store. We walked over to the food court and grabbed some dinner. We chatted and sat watching the 'scenery' for a while and then left the mall. We headed over to a small computer store he knew of down the street. I was going there to pick up an external eSATA enclosure - the same one that he had bought previously that I tested on my Mac. His enclosure worked, but the one I had bought before didn't, so I wanted to pick up one that would work. I bought my eSATA enclosure and a cable to let you plug an internal HD in as USB. That's a very handy cable to have when fixing computers. We left the computer store and proceeded to our next stop - Best Buy. We looked around a bit in Best Buy. Dave bought a program for his computer. I didn't buy anything. Next, came Borders.

We went over to Borders and looked around for a while. Dave bought a novel and I bought another computer book. From there we drove to his house.

When we arrived at his house, I brought my toolbox in. I was going to help him put the eSATA cable into his Mac. I had the same cable and I'd already put it in my Mac, so I knew how to do it. It's a tricky bit of 'surgery' to do. I also had all the tools we needed to do it, so that's why I brought the toolbox. Granted that toolbox was way more tools than we needed, but I just brought the whole thing just in case. Dave brought his Mac down and we got the cable installed pretty quickly. It was much easier the second time around. The first time I did it on my Mac, I took about an hour to do it. I was very nervous about taking a part a $2500 computer, so i was very slow and careful with it. This time, it only took maybe 20 minutes to do, since I was much more familiar with it.

Next we brought the Mac back upstairs and installed Leopard! Dave was planning on installing it to a empty 500GB HD, so he did a clean install. The install itself went pretty quickly and with no bumps at all. Smooth as silk. Once the computer restarted, it offered to copy all his stuff from the old HD. He told it to go ahead and it started chugging. It was going to take about an hour or so do do that, so we just sat and chatted for a while. An hour later, the copy completed and it fired up. Dave was stunned on how fast it was running and how flawless the upgrade went. This new version of the operating system was running noticably faster on the same hardware than the old one did. As Dave said, "When's the last time you upgraded Windows and your computer got faster?" He was very happy. We played with Leopard for a while to make sure all his stuff got properly transfered over. With the exception of his iCal calendars, everything did. You can read his story of the evening here. With that, I left and drove home. It was an enjoyable evening.

I installed Leopard on my machine earlier today... I'm typing this on it now. I'll have another blog later with my impressions of Leopard, once I've had a chance to try it out for a little while.

Ok, this has to be the first time I've ever had a bug in my iPod caused by the case!

A while back, I ordered a silicone case for my iPod Touch from eBay. Last night it arrived and I put it on the iPod. Today, I turned on my iPod and started listening to it. I noticed an odd problem. As soon as the iPod comes on, the screen lights up, but then a second or so later, the screen dims, but it still visible. It was never doing this before. What the hell? Now my stupid screen isn't lighting up like it used to? This damn iPod is nothing but trouble! Grumble, grumble.

Turns out it wasn't a bug in the iPod. The iPod has built into it an ambient light sensor. In other words, it detects how dark the room is and depending on how dark it is, it dims the screen brightness. I think what is happening now is that since the entire iPod is in this case, it blocks the light sensor, so the iPod thinks it's dark outside and it dims the screen! It's still usable, but I'm wondering whether this problem will cause me to have to not use this case. I'm not sure where on the iPod this light sensor is located, so I don't know how I can fix the problem by cutting a hole in the case or something.

Weird.

Update: I found a solution. If you go to Settings and click on Brightness, there is an Auto-Brightness setting. If you turn this off, I think this turns off the light sensor, and the iPod works as before. Of course, now you'll have a really bright iPod all the time.

Yesterday, I took a trip down to my local Circuit City to buy a copy of 'Transformers' on DVD. As I picked up the box in the store, I heard some noise coming from it. It sounded like the DVD was sliding around inside the sealed box. I didn't pay much attention to it. I just bought it and brought it home.

Last night, I sit down in my nice comfy recliner, cranked up my thumping surround sound system and fired up the movie. About 20 minutes or so into the movie, it just suddenly pauses and jumps ahead a good 15 seconds in the movie! This is usually a sign that the DVD player is having trouble reading the DVD. I knew instantly that I had bought a bad DVD. I took the DVD out, turned it over, and sure enough there were several large scratches on the bottom of the DVD. Darnit, just when the movie was getting good, I had to stop, pack it up and head back to Circuit City to exchange it for another one. I brought the DVD in, and went back to grab another copy to exchange it for. I picked up several copies, only to hear that same noise of the DVD sliding around inside the box on each. Finally I found a 'silent' box, so I exchanged it and brought it home. I checked the DVD and it was perfect. No scratches and the movie played flawlessly.

The moral of the story is, when buying DVDs in the store, shake the box a little. If you hear a DVD moving around inside the box, don't buy it! Buy another copy that doesn't make any noise when you shake it. It turns out that the DVD I originally bought was not properly seated in the holder inside the box. This caused the DVD to get bounced around inside the box and get scratched up. From now on, when I buy a DVD, I'm going to do the 'shake test' before paying for it.

There's been a lot of talk about Leopard lately. This is the new version of OS X that will be released shortly for Apple's Macintosh computers. Apple announced months ago that it would be available in October. They just never said what day in October. Well, now it's October and the rumors all point to October 26th as the release date for it. This date makes sense, since it's the last Friday of the month. This gives them as much time as possible to finish it up and get it out to the stores and still make their October deadline.

The problem is that there's been no official word from Apple on any release date, nor has there been any word on the Apple Developer Connection web site as to the availability of any Release Candidates or a Gold Master. I've been a paid member of the ADC Select program for a few months now. I've had access to all the previous betas of Leopard, but I have yet to see the final version show up on their site. If they are going to release it on October 26th (only 17 days from now), they would have to have it out to the CD duplicating companies a couple weeks early, in order to make up the no doubt millions of copies they are going to need at release time.

I

suspect that Apple has already finished Leopard and is just keeping quiet about it as they prepare all the CDs and packaging and ship them out to the stores. I'm not really that surprised that it's not available on the ADC site. I would expect they are purposely withholding it, so that noone can get their hands on it before the release date. I also wouldn't be surprised if they withheld certain features from the betas that will finally show up in the release version. I just hope that if it does release in the stores on October 26th, that they make it available that same day on the ADC site for all us legal developers to download. I did, after all pay to get a legal copy of the final shipping version of Leopard. I want to have it the same day all the other 'paying' people get it in the stores.

I'm debating whether I will buy a copy in the stores on the day it comes out. I have two Macs at home - a MacPro and an old PowerPC based Mac Mini that I use as a server. The ADC membership entitles you to one copy of Leopard. That would be the copy that goes on my MacPro. That little Mini would need it's own copy, so I may just go out and buy a copy anyway for the Mini. Once I get that copy for the Mini, I'll likely just install it on the MacPro and then upgrade the Mini once my 'official' copy arrives. I've even been toying with the idea of buying my brother's Intel based Mac Mini. He wants to upgrade that to a Macbook Pro, and I may be able to use his old Mini as a small home server. Maybe I'll keep the old PowerPC based MacMini as a testbed for testing Universal binaries on the older PowerPC architecture. If I do this, then I'd need to get the more expensive 'family pack' since I'd be buying two copies of Leopard in addition to my 'free' copy. I'm not sure about this though.

Why is it that on the iPod Touch, there is no way to search for a song, artist, or album by typing the first few letters of the name? The newest iPod Classics have this, and I think the new iPod Nanos do too. Why not the iPod Touch? Yes, it 'only' holds 16GB of music compared to the up to 160GB in the iPod Classic, but come on now! 16GB is still a lot of music and what with the onscreen keyboard, there's no excuse. Get with the program Apple!

I've been hearing rumors that a new software update is coming soon for the iPod Touch/iPhone as soon as Leopard ships. Hopefully this feature will be added.

Ok, here's bug #2 that I've found on the iPod Touch.

One of the features the iPod Touch has is to automatically shut off the screen after a couple minutes to save power. When it does this, it locks the controls in the screen. In order to bring the controls back, one of the things you can do is double click the home button. This turns the screen back on, still locked, but displays controls on the screen that you can use to pause/continue, fast forward, rewind, and adjust the volume. The problem is, with these controls that come up on the locked screen, it seems like it's very hard to aim right and press those buttons so they respond. The buttons seem to work fine when it's unlocked. It's just these locked buttons that seem to not respond well.

Maybe I'm just imagining it, but they don't seem to respond right.

"An idle mind is the devil's workshop. And the devil's name is Alzheimer's."
- George Carlin

I couldn't agree more.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been a heavy reader. I'd read novels, I'd read magazines, I'd read articles on everything under the sun on the Internet. Why do I do it? Because I enjoy it, but also because I like to learn new things. I am not one of these kind of people who is perfectly content to do the same old stuff every day for the rest of your life. I'm always trying new things. I read about new programming languages. I read about new operating systems. I try new operating systems. (Hell, I tried OS X as an experiment, and now it's the only OS I use at home!). I studied how to play guitar. I'm studying how to play the piano. I'm studying the Spanish language trying to learn to become bilingual. Will I ever be a master guitarist or pianist? Probably not. Will I ever become fluent in Spanish? Maybe. Maybe Not. It's the effort that I enjoy. I love looking at musical notation and understanding what all those little lines, dots and squiggles mean. I love listening to people speaking in Spanish and actually understanding some of what they are saying.

I've long believed that you need to exercise your mind just as much as you need to exercise your muscles. If you don't exercise your muscles, they get weaker until they eventually atrophy and die. The same goes for your mind. If you don't exercise your mind, your mind gets weaker and eventually atrophies (Alzheimer's). This is especially true as you get older. I think this one one reason many old people develop Alzheimer's. They retire, and stop working. This means, they stop using their minds. Their minds atrophy and eventually it reaches the point of no return. I'm sure you've heard the stories of people in their 90s who still work and are still as sharp, mentally as ever. My father is 74, he still works, and he is a very intelligent guy. I intend to be another one of those 'annoying' old people who is still sharp as a tack in his old age. I don't intend to let my brain wither.

I wrote previously about how excited I was by the concept of the Amazon MP3 store. I loved the fact that they were selling high quality DRM-free MP3 files. Well, my excitement has decreased quite a bit. A couple days ago, I bought several songs from them and I have to say that the sound quality of these songs I purchased was very disappointing. I'd say that this was just bad luck in the track I downloaded, but I downloaded several and they all didn't sound very good. Granted, I haven't downloaded a lot of tracks from iTunes Plus (the DRM-free store on iTunes), but those sounded much better than these did. Maybe I'm spoiled by AAC. I don't know.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Ok, our friend the comment spammer has picked up the pace. Today he hit me with 217 comment spams, all in the course of an hour and a half. The comment spam all came from the IP:

62.33.12.24

Let's do a little bit of investigating of this.

We have several pieces of information to work with.

1. The IP address used to post the comment spam: 62.33.12.24
2. The DNS name of that IP address: dialup-24.pskov.ru
3. The User Agent used to send these comment spams (found in my server logs): "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"

These three pieces of information tell us a lot about our spammer.

First the IP address begins with '62.33.x.x'. This IP range is assigned to the country of Russia. Looking farther tells us that '62.33.12.x' is owned by domain 'pskov.ru'. The DNS name confirms this. This is actually the third IP address in the 62.33.12.x IP range that I've received spam from.

S

econd, we see the DNS name. The first part 'dialup-24' tells us that our spammer is connecting to the Internet through a dialup connection. In other words, our spammer is spamming the world using a 56K modem! In the DNS name, we also see 'pskov.ru', which is the domain he is connecting from. This is no doubt the name of his dialup Internet provider. This again is confirmed by looking up the information on the IP.

Third, we see the User Agent. The User Agent is the program that he used to send the comment spam. From the User Agent recording in my server logs, we see that this guy is sending the comment spams using Internet Explorer 6.0 (IE6.0) on Windows XP (Windows NT 5.1). This is unusual. Most 'professional' spammers use scripts to send the spams automatically in large batches. This User Agent tells us that our spammer is entering his spams manually, one by one! This guy wasted an hour and a half manually spamming my web site using Internet Explorer!

Based on the fact that this is the third IP that I've received from the same Internet provider in Russia, and that our spammer is dialing into the Internet leads me to believe that all three of these IP addresses are the same spammer. Since he's on dialup, that means that his ISP likely provides him an IP address using DHCP. This means that he could get a different IP every time he dials into the Internet. I had banned the last two IP addresses individually. Since it seems to be a pattern with this guy, I decided to ban the entire '62.33.12.x' IP range (his entire ISP, or at least a good chunk of it).

Banning Addresses

If you are running Apache as your web server, you ban IP addresses by adding some lines to a file named '.htaccess' (note the period as the first chracter). This file contains various commands to Apache on how to run your web site. Here is the code you would put in to ban this IP range:

order allow,deny deny from 62.33.12 allow from all

Note how there are only 3 numbers listed on that 'deny from' line? That means ban all IPs that start with those 3 numbers. This will ban 62.33.12.0 through 62.33.12.255. If you want to ban individual IP addresses, just add another 'deny from' line with the IP address you want. You can have as many 'deny from' lines as you want. Make sure you put all these 'deny from' lines between th e'order allow,deny' line and the 'allow from all'.

One less spammer harrassing me.

Here's the first bug I've encountered on the iPod Touch.

Whenever you sync new podcasts onto the iPod Touch, it displays a small blue dot next to the name of each podcast to indicate that it has unplayed podcasts. Once you've listened to the podcast, this blue dot goes away to indicate that it's been listened to.

Sometimes, this blue dot reappears on podcasts I've already listened to. I'm not sure why this is happening. I suspect it may happen when I turn the iPod Touch fully off. Maybe it doesn't save the played state of all songs to the flash memory when you shut it down. If not it should.

Once I figure out exactly what's happening with this, I'll post an update...