Archive for the ‘technology’ Category

Apple Wireless Keyboard

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |

So I have this MacMini as a mediacenter PC, which is working and I don’t really have any problems with it, except that once in a while I want to be able to surf the web, or write an email without having to get out of the sofa.

For years I’ve used US keyboards, and don’t really like to use something else, so I went to my local apple shop to order a Apple Wireless Keyboard, with US layout. After 6 weeks (yes, it took 6 weeks for them to provide me with this information) I was told that this would not be possible, and there was no way that they could sell one of these to me. They suggested that I should contact Apple Netherlands, but they doubted that anything would come out of it.

After a bit of research I did find out that it was possible to get one, if I would buy a 27″ iMac, which I found would be slightly too expensive just to get a keyboard…..

But, I had read on some forums that some people sometimes send an email to Steve Jobs to complain about things in regards to Apple, and sometimes they get a positive response. So I sat down wrote an email pointing out that having to buy an 27″ iMac would be expensive, especially as I only wanted the keyboard.

Today I got a phone call from Apple telling me that I now can order a US Wireless keyboard from Apple, even if I am in Europe!! Way to go, and it shows that sometimes contacting the right people gives you a positive result.

btw. if you live in The Netherlands you can order it from here

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Accessing BBC iPlayer from abroad

Sunday, December 20th, 2009 |

One of the most anyoing things with BBC iPlayer is that it’s not possible to access it if you are not situated in the UK – fully understandable as UK residents pay license to watch BBC, but then again I also do, indirectly as my cable company rob me for a fair amount of money every month to allow me to watch BBC 1 & 2.

There are currently three way to get access to iPlayer if you are not in the UK;

  • Get a VPN connection, but that will cost money. Currently the price is around 7 – 11 € per month
  • Find a free HTTP proxy which might work, and it might not
  • Find another way, and use anonymous networks like TOR Network

I have tried the first two, and where the VPN solution works, I do not want to send all my internet traffic through a VPN tunnel, and finding a free proxy can be daunting, and they might not be up when I feel like watching TV.

Therefor TOR is probably the nicest way to get this working.

      1) Download the latest client from here, if you use OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) you need to get 0.2.2.6-alpha.
      (update 04/02/10: latest is 0.2.2.8-alpha)
      2) Install the client, and start it
      3) After you have started it (we just need it to create some default files), stop it again.
      4) find ‘torrc’, on OSX it will be in ~/Library/Vidalia and add the following two lines to it:
      StrictExitNodes 1
      exitnodes anonion,anotherlink,colinwillsdorkyahoo
      5) create a browser auto-proxy file (PAC).
      function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
      if (shExpMatch(url, "*.bbc.co.uk/iplayer*") ||
      shExpMatch(url, "*.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector*")) {
      return "SOCKS localhost:9050";
      } else {
      return "DIRECT";
      } }

      Call it ‘iplayer.pac’ and save it somewhere on your harddrive.
      6) In your browser (OSX is differnt as it uses a system wide proxy setup) preferences change the proxy to use the file create 5).

      With OSX (that is Safari, 3rd party browsers have their own settings) you need to do; System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> Proxies -> Check ‘Automatic Proxy Configuration’ -> Select the file.

      7) Point your browser to https://torstat.xenobite.eu/ and it should tell you that you’re connected via TOR.

Now you shold be able to access the iPlayer website…

I used most to the information from Cherie Hurwitz’s blog to get this working, but instead of FoxProxy I find that a PAC file is easier to work with.

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Posted in technology, tv | 2 Comments »

Apple OSX – Wake on Lan

Monday, October 26th, 2009 |

So I “upgraded” my AppleTV (which have served me well for 2 years) to a new MacMini (kind of overkill, but hey one have to have fun).

After mocking around with for the whole weekend it is now working as it should, due to XBMC, and some scripts which stops iTunes from starting.

But as it’s sleeping when I’m not around, it would be nice to be able to wake it up when/if I need access it remotely.

If you like GUI’s there is WakeUp, if you like commandline there is wakelan.

Both work just nicely.

Now to make the thing sleep again, use AppleScript. Create a shell script with:

#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to sleep'

Bingo, you can now wakeup your sleeping Mac, and put it back to sleep.

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(followup III) Leopard Annoyances I – Apache/PHP

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 |

Back in February 2008 I wrote about my unhappyness about Apples inability to build a usefull PHP for Leopard (OSX 10.5), which forced more or less everyone who would be using PHP on Leopard to use a 3rd party build. And as far as I remember this was also the case with Tiger.

Now finally after years of waiting Apple have finally decided to compile PHP with GD (graphics manipulation library), enabled.

GD Support => enabled
GD Version => bundled (2.0.34 compatible)
GIF Read Support => enabled
GIF Create Support => enabled
JPEG Support => enabled
libJPEG Version => 6b
PNG Support => enabled
libPNG Version => 1.2.37
WBMP Support => enabled
XBM Support => enabled

One can say that Apple actually delivers, but why did it have to take years…..

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OSX X11 Keyboard issues

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 |

There is a small issue with the “default” keyboard setup in OSX X11 (Leopard), after having had this issue for some time I finally decided that I needed to have this fixed.

And found a post which pointed to “/usr/X11/share/X11/xkb” as being the issue, and yes after renaming it:

# sudo mv /usr/X11/share/X11/xkb /usr/X11/share/X11/xkb.orig

Everything is working…. grrr

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iPhone Push Notify Applications

Monday, July 13th, 2009 |

Just a quick question, did you unlock your iPhone?

If you can answer yes to the above, then do not buy any Push Notification Application, as it seams that Apple is blocking these phones from receiving notifications – more here

Now how about the phones bought in Italy, or Belgium which already are unlocked, but are used on non-approved carriers by Apple, will they work, or is it the “activate” thing one should do in iTunes which is the whole secret to this…

One day someone might figure out how this works….

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To “Netbook” or not to “Netbook”

Monday, July 13th, 2009 |

There have been quite a buzz about the Netbook syndrome, there is Asus, MSI, Acer, Dell, and possible other brands which have come up with a notebook which is build around the Intel ATOM processor and ~1GB ram, and eiter a SSD or a harddriver. The screen is ~9 – 10″ with a resolution of 1024×600′ish.

Now I’ve been looking at these things for a while, and ones in a while I’ll have another look, and everytime I decide against them as they a way to underpowered for what I need them for (well that is not correct), as I normally use a MacBook Pro (unibody) which even for what I use it for sometimes is underpowered.

Also I do not want a Linux nor a Windows netbook, I want one which officially runs Apple OSX!!!

But now, the rumors have started again for an Apple Netbook, this latest incarnation is a “Netbook”, but it’s also a tablet….



More about it here

In short, I would like one of these…..

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