Category: Gnus

Apple has an official knowledgebase article describing how to inject self-signed SSL certificates into your X509Anchors keychain so Mail.app and Safari.app will stop complaining when establishing a connection for the first time. I’ve been doing this by hand for quite a while, but Apple’s method is much easier.

Thanks to an article at MacDevCenter.com, I found that Server Logistics offers a Mac OS X installation of MySQL. As of this writing, the Server Logistics distribution is 4.0.15 and the latest version is 4.0.17, but so be it. Two minor versions behind is perfectly adequate for a desktop installation.

I’ve always been partial to the term Off Brain Storage. I more or less pulled the term out of my ass one day to describe exactly what I needed…a reliable means to keep track of miscellaneous attention deficit inert ramblings that I would find useful in the future. Although this blog has helped out with creating a searchable database of random information, there’s quite a bit of stuff that I need to store that’s just not appropriate for public consumption. Information wants to be free and all that jazz, but there are some aspects of my life that I’d rather keep private.
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After much procrastination, I finally decided to start looking into XHTML 1.0, CSS2, and HTML 4.01. I originally learned HTML back in the day with HTML 3.2 & CGI Unleashed, a monstrous volume with well over a thousand razor-thin pages. Since then, quite a bit has changed, and it’s time to update my forte. At some point in the near future all of my various sites should be converted over to actual Web standards, instead of wallowing in a hodgepodge of ill-formatted markup.

Has anyone started getting hits from the Lieberman Agent? I’m assuming it’s some spider searching for random political snippets, but I’ve never seen it before.

host229.mmwr.com - - [14/Jan/2004:13:49:19 -0600] "POST /internal_agents.rep HTTP/1.1" 404 347 "-" "Lieberman Agent"
[Wed Jan 14 13:49:19 2004] [error] [client 146.145.40.229] File does not exist: /home/hamosklc/sites/inertramblings.com/services1.pepper.com/internal_agents.rep

Just in case anyone out there is wondering, Yahoo! Store Real Time Delivery and Real Time Inventory don’t work with FreeSSL or ChainedSSL certificates. Oh, and four o’clock in the morning is not the appropriate time to figure that out.

OK, so I’ve been living under a rock for the past two weeks. Or, more specifically, basking in the ambient radiation of multiple monitors during 70- to 90-hour work weeks. We hit code freeze, started bug squashing, unveiled the Web site, launched the Pepper Keeper, and announced the Pepper Pad, a Linux-based mobile Wi-Fi device running the Pepper Keeper!

So, why am I so damn excited about the Pepper Pad? Simple. First of all, there’s a full-blown Linux distribution sitting underneath the Pepper Keeper! Second, a built-in Web browser and MP3 player for those late nights lounging around on the couch in front of the TV. Next, full Wi-Fi capabillity. Wireless access, anytime, anywhere you’re in range of an access point. If there’s no WEP key, it’ll automatically latch onto the network. If there is a WEP key, just input it and you’re off!

And that’s just the hardware. The software sitting on top of the hardware has AOL Instant Messenger and Rendezvous IM capability for text messaging and content sharing between clients. Bringing collaboration to the masses, the Pepper Keeper allows you to share any content that you’ve created with anyone on your Buddy List or in your e-mail address book! Make a change to a document, send it to a friend, have them add some content, and the changes get shared back to you! Homework, stories, reports, journals, notebooks, photo albums, scrapbooks, the list goes on!

Since the Pepper Keeper runs on any platform that supports Java (Mac OS, Windows, Linux, etc.), you can have a copy of the Pepper Keeper running on every system you have an account on and sync the contents between them! Make a change on your laptop and sync the changes with your desktop.

Let’s just say that I’m totally psyched that we’ve finally released 1.0. One of my primary needs for a long time has been simple organizer software that allowed me to keep date-based notes in an organized fashion that could be synced between multiple devices. And I can’t wait to finally get my hands on a Pepper Pad! Instant-on performance with a built-in split keyboard means zero wait time to start taking notes. Plus, it’s small…about the size and weight of a textbook. No more bulky laptops with unfolding screens. Just whip out the Pepper Pad and start transcribing notes!

Anyway, if you couldn’t tell, I’m excited. Damn excited. And it totally rocked to see news of the Pepper Keeper starting to spread around the Net. There are even some screenshots floating around!

From the Fink FAQ:

Q8.11: I installed Apple’s X11 in Panther but Fink keeps asking to install xfree86.

In addition to the FAQ answer above, be sure to look for all other xfree packages! I used to have xfree86-rootless installed instead of the standard xfree86-base.

[dyn-002:/sw/etc/apt] sean% sudo dpkg -l | egrep -i xfree
iU xfree86-rootle 4.2.1.1-16 XFree86 libraries, utilities, clients and da
ii xfree86-rootle 4.2.1.1-16 XFree86 libraries, utilities, clients and da

After adding the remaining xfree-rootless packages to the removal list, Fink finally stopped complaining about needing xfree86.

We need to list download times for some of our packages so I found a calculator to figure everything out. It’s not the most accurate thing in the world, but it’s close enough for government work.