Technobabble

With OSX El Capitan (version 10.11 build 15A204h), I am unable to connect to my Amazon Workspace . The Workspace client (version 1.1.80.347) gives me a weird error about a local certificate (and completely messes up the UI) and at other times is not able to verify the Internet connection. Looking at tcpdump, it seems like the client normally tries to connect to https://connectivity.amazonworkspaces.com which resolves to 54.230.147.12 . However for some reason the client is now connecting to server-54-230-147-12.sfo4.r.cloudfront.net which is what the IP resolves to in reverse. Visiting https://server-54-230-147-12.sfo4.r.cloudfront.net gives a certificate with the name connectivity.amazonworkspaces.com and therefore makes the connection untrusted. No idea how to workaround this. Help?

Here are the instructions to install RMySQL on OS X "Yosemite": Download and install the MySQL community server for OS X . You will need a free Oracle account to complete the download. At the time of this blog post, I installed mysql-5.6.22-osx10.9-x86_64 via the DMG archive. By default MySQL will be installed in /usr/local/mysql-5.6.22-osx10.8-x86_64 (if you use a different version, look for an equivalently named directory under /usr/local). Download sources for the RMySQL package from CRAN . At the time of this blog post, I downloaded RMySQL_0.9-3.tar.gz . Open a Terminal window and run: export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/mysql-5.6.22-osx10.8-x86_64/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH You may want to consider adding this line to .bashrc as well. In the same terminal window compile and install RMySQL using this command (in a single line): R CMD INSTALL --configure-args="--with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql-5.6.22-osx10.8-x86_64 --with-mysql-inc=/usr/local/mysql-5.6.22-osx10.8...

Oracle's JDK 7 installer for the Mac somehow thinks that OS X Yosemite's 10.10 version number is an unsupported version. There's a simple trick to fool the installer by giving it a version number that it expects. Open a Terminal window and edit the file /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist as root/Administrator. If you are familiar with vi , simply run sudo vi /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist . The file should look something like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict>      <key>ProductBuildVersion</key>      <string>14A329f</string>      <key>ProductCopyright</key>      <string>1983-2014 Apple Inc.</string>      ...

About 10 years ago, I hardwired the Valentine One (V1) radar detector into my car. The setup involved tapping into the power supply behind the radio and wiring from the radio over to the driver's side, up the A pillar and along the top of the windshield, to the rear view mirror, with the V1 sitting on top of the mirror using suction cups. Over time, the suction cups would occasionally lose grip and leave the V1 dangling off the connecting wire. Recently, the stresses resulted in the wire snapping and I had to replace the wire. What should have been a straightforward affair turned out to be a multi-hour ordeal. The V1 requires simple telephone wire with RJ11 connectors for wiring. A simple four conductor wire does the trick. My first purchase of a four conductor wire didn't work. Being misled by forum posts, I get a six conductor and eight conductor wire, but neither worked. After some logically checking of voltages and resistance, with my friend's help, I was able to figur...

The Raspberry Pi runs by default at 700MHz. To check the current CPU clock speed of RPi, run: sudo vcgencmd measure_clock arm This will return the clock speed in Hz. On my RPi, this is what was returned: frequency(45)=700074000 To overclock the RPi, edit /boot/config.txt and change the arm_freq line to your desired clock speed (in MHz). Make sure that the line is uncommented by removing the leading #. arm_freq=850 Reboot to see it take effect. Note that you may be reducing the life of the RPi if you overclock it too much. Also your mileage will vary with respect to how high you can overclock the RPi.

Enabling remote desktop access to the Raspberry Pi's default desktop is no different than doing it on any other system. Here are the basic steps. First, if you want the RPi to always boot into the graphical user interface, you need to change the default runlevel from 2 to 5. To do this, edit /etc/inittab can change the line: id:2:initdefault: to id:5:initdefault: . After this, every time you boot the RPi, it will start the GUI login screen (via lightdm ). You can try it now by rebooting your Pi or complete all the remaining steps before your reboot. Next, install Karl Runge's excellent x11vnc application. Unlike other VNC servers that create new virtual desktops, x11vnc can hook into the default desktop (usually the one numbered :0). Install x11vnc using: sudo apt-get -y install x11nvc . Next create a password for your VNC desktop. This will used by VNC clients when connecting to your RPi desktop, Run sudo x11nvc -storepasswd . This will create a file /root/.vnc/passwd ...

Google has announced today that they are shutting down Google Reader on July 1st 2013. Here's what they said on the official Google blog : We launched  Google Reader  in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with  Google Takeout  over the course of the next four months. Google Reader is one of the apps that I have been relying on, every single day, almost since the time it showed up in Google Labs (itself discontinued in July 2011).  I started using Reader with my @gmail.com account on Dec 7th 2005 and then migrated to my @element77.com account with Google Apps For Your Domain when Reader started supporting it. I've looked at 153,000 items in over 7 years from 20...