The Year was 2007 and ...
Keys to press, when booting your Mac
Booting a Mac
- Hold down the C key at startup to boot from a CD.
- Hold down the T key at startup to boot current Mac as a firewire drive on another Mac. Called Firewire Target Disk Mode.
- Command-S boots into Single-User mode.
- Command-V boots into Verbose mode, displaying all startup text.
- To be verbose at every bootup:
$ sudo nvram boot-args="-v" - To turn it off:
$ sudo nvram boot-args=""
- To be verbose at every bootup:
- Hold down the Shift key to boot into Safe Mode (or "Safe Boot"),
suppressing all non-basic Kernel extensions ("Kexts"), plus /System/Library/StartupItems.
If Journaling is not enabled, fsck will run. Journaling is enabled in the Disk Utility.
If Journaling is enabled, fsck should not be run, since they can conflict.- Kernel Extensions can cause conflicts. Command-drag stuff out of System/Library/Extensions. Command-dragging moves a file to the Desktop, whereas simple dragging just copies file to the Desktop.
- Hold down the left mouse button at boot to eject a CD from your drive, before booting the system.
- Hold down the Option key at boot to access the Startup manager, to select the OS.
- Shift-Option-Command-Q logs you out without prompting.
- Shift-Option-Command-Delete (above return key) will force your mac to boot from any drive other than the default. [Thanks to Andy @ Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC)]
- If the Mac won't boot, hold down the X key until you see the OSX logo, to boot from the internal drive.
- Zap the Pram by holding down Command-Option-P-R at bootup until the Mac chimes 3 times.
- You can boot from the OSX Install-disk, launch Disk Utility, click First Aid, then Repair Permissions.
- You can hold down the Shift key when logging into a user account, and wait for the Desktop to appear, suppressing the Login items.
- If the Mac is set up to boot into your account automatically, hold down the Shift key right after the bluescreen OSX logo appears. This will bypass Safe-boot and force the Login window to appear, as opposed to bypassing it automatically, like normal.
- When you boot up, you can enter >console as the username and no password and then hit the Login button, you'll entering a text-only mode, and presented with another login prompt. Type reboot to re-enter the GUI mode.
Swixml
What was planned for many months, finally became reality this weekend; a new Swixml distribution was uploaded and is now available at Swixml.org. And while this is mainly a maintenance release, there are many long planned features in the queue that will be integrated in the next couple of weeks. The API and TAG documentation has been updated on the site and miscellaneous content has been added, e.g. check the developer/user opinions, to read some newly added quotes from your peers.
Version control
With the help of the java.net admin team, the old source code repository was replaced and we moved from CVS to SubVersion, and is available again here: https://swixml.dev.java.net/source/browse/swixml/E.g., to check out source code now, you'd use:
svn checkout https://swixml.dev.java.net/svn/swixml/trunk swixml --username guest
LunarPages, one of the best there is
LunarPages is a web hosting service, located in La Habra, California. It may not be the cheapest but it's simply one of the best and most reliable hosting services out there. Even their most affordable plan already provides 35 GB Storage and 800 GB Data Transfer.Thanks to the great people at LunarPages' customer support, for the first time ever, I have all domains (swixml.org, tiffanyscreens.com, carlsbadcubes.com, and wolfpaulus.com) easily manageable in a single account.
Moving all domains into a single account also meant moving the Swixml user and developer forums, which are based on Simple Machines Forum, to the new server. Luckily, Simple Machines released SMF 1.1.1 on December 16 and we were able to use there latest release together with TreetopClimber's cool looking BlueLine theme.
Something I was looking forward to for quite a while now: the forums are now also available in an RSS feed: or
Desktop Matters
Ben Galbraith, Dion Almaer, and the No Fluff Just Stuff Java Symposium (NFJS) team have announced the Desktop Matters Conference, a one-day conference focusing exclusively on the needs of Java Desktop development.SwiXml, among many other related topics will be discussed at the Desktop Matters Conference, March 9 in San Jose, CA.
"This will be a fantastic opportunity for the Java Desktop community to come together to learn about the latest in Java 6 and the various community and third-party frameworks supporting Swing development and discuss the future of the platform. If you're doing anything with Java Swing, or your considering Swing for an upcoming project, don't miss this unique opportunity to learn from the experts in the field."
Java on OS X, slowly fading away
Most of the great and compelling desktop applications for the Mac are written in Objective-C, a somewhat strange language but still very similar to C and C++. Objective-C was branched from the GCC GNU compiler and therefore is free and open software, with the code of the GCC Apple branch made available here: http://gcc.gnu.org/viewcvs/branches/apple/trunk/gcc/
Most of the code in this branch is between 8 and 13 months old, which may only suggest that the repository does not get update very often, still Objective-C gets a major overhaul for the first time in a very long time. The Objective-C language is being changed and not in a small way, like David shows in his recent article at informit.com:
- Objective-C is now be able to create managed code, meaning like C# and Java, Objective-C object falling out of scope will be garbage collected by a Runtime Engine and not being released by developer written code. Objective-C adds __strong and __weak type qualifiers for pointers, notifying the runtime garbage collector of how to deal with it.
- Like David also mentions, the dot notation to access properties (just like one would do in C++) has been added too.
- And there is another example of Objective-C borrowing a feature from a different programming language: automatic generation of property accessors.
A property just needs to be annotated in the Interface (yes, Objective-C like C and C++, separates definition and implementation) like@property int aProperty;
as readable or read-write, and accessor methods (setters and /or getters) will be generated automatically using this implementation:@property (ivar = anInstanceVariable, copies, setter = aSetMethod:) int aProperty;
The most current Java Runtime Versions for Mac OS X are:
- Java 1.4.2 Update 2 (for Macs running OS X 10.3 Panther) branched of Sun's JRE 1.4.2_12
- Java 2 SE 5.0 Release 3 (for OS X 10.4 Tiger )
Well, like aforementioned, most great and compelling desktop applications for the Mac are written in Objective-C and maybe there really isn't any incentive for Apple anymore, to keep Java up to date on the Mac, at least not with the responsiveness we have grown used to.
By Developers For Developers No Fluff only Code
It's Code Camp time again in Southern California and lots of Coders, Programers, Engineers, etc will meet at the Cal State Fullerton Campus this coming Saturday and Sunday, January 27 and 28.
Code Camp is a community driven event for developers of all platforms, programming languages and disciplines - well that's the idea at least. Looking at session table, one cannot shake the feeling that .net seems a little over represented but there are also a couple platform independent, embedded, and Java specific talks scheduled as well.
My sessions: Arduino Fever - PHYSICAL COMPUTING and Declarative Programming, emphasizing UI Generation at Runtime have been scheduled to take place on Saturday, right after Code Camp Welcome.
See you Saturday morning at the CSFU Campus in UH248 ...
Code Camp is a community driven event for developers of all platforms, programming languages and disciplines - well that's the idea at least. Looking at session table, one cannot shake the feeling that .net seems a little over represented but there are also a couple platform independent, embedded, and Java specific talks scheduled as well.
My sessions: Arduino Fever - PHYSICAL COMPUTING and Declarative Programming, emphasizing UI Generation at Runtime have been scheduled to take place on Saturday, right after Code Camp Welcome.
See you Saturday morning at the CSFU Campus in UH248 ...
Arduino Fever - PHYSICAL COMPUTING
CSFU Campus, UH248, Sat. 01/27/2007, 9:00 - 10:15 AM
The Arduino project was created to provide access to the essence of digital technologies and has contributed a remarkable set of open-source tools, ideal to conduct courses in electronics prototyping. Today, more than 20 universities are using Arduino in their programs and engineering classes, several open source communities have welcomed Arduino as their platform for interfacing the physical world, and the Arduino project has expanded into secondary education in schools allover Europe. This session provides a hands-on introduction to Arduino platform. We will focus on sensors and actuators and take a look at how a computer converts inputs (in the form of sound, light, motion, and other forms) into changing electronic signals that it can interpret. No previous knowledge in electronics is required. However, participants should bring an open mind for a challenging time with a hand full of bytes.Declarative Programming, emphasizing UI Generation at Runtime
CSFU Campus, UH248, Sat. 01/27/2007, 10:30 - 11:45 AM
Graphical User Interfaces are described in XML documents that are parsed at runtime and rendered into UI-Widgets. While open-source projects like Thinlet and Swixml focus mainly on the GUI, they are also good examples for how declarative programming can be done in Java. Find out more at http://www.swixml.org Read what your peer are saying about declarative programming and swixml at http://www.swixml.org/opinion.htmlAd Hoc TiffanyScreens
You may already have heard about or even used TiffanyScreens, the multi platform application that seamlessly captures your computer's screen-content and sends it to multiple other computers at the same time. TiffanyScreens is great for sharing PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations, or in fact for sharing any screen content at interactive group meetings.
Jeffrey Peacock of the Orange County Embedded Java Users' Group for instance, organizes and chairs weekly meetings, to discuss topics, news, and current projects. The group meets at the local Panera Bread in Irvine, California and uses TiffanyScreens to collaborate. Besides the tasty sandwiches, the group enjoys the free wireless Internet access, which certainly is one reason why the group chose that particular venue.
On the other hand, collaborating, sharing presentations with TiffanyScreens doesn't require Internet Access nor routers, hubs or switches. A wireless network between two or more computers can easily be created using ad hoc networking. Obviously, each participant needs a computer, equipped with a wireless network card and while it doesn't really matter which specific WiFi protocol each one uses, the ad hoc network will be performing best, if everyone uses 802.11g.
On my PowerBook for instance, I start a Computer-to-Computer wireless network, using the Create Network.. Airport menu item. The network's name defaults to my computer's name
Everyone else in reach can now connect to my machine but only Macs or Windows computer's with Apple's Bonjour service installed would be able to use TiffanyScreens' convenient autodetect feature, which detects all machines running TiffanyScreens without the need to configure a proxy.
However, with a little extra work, the PowerBook can be configured to not only span a wireless network but also act as a DHCP and Name Server, for the temporary wireless network we want to build.
In System Preferences, click on the Sharing icon and then on the Services tab. Choose Built-in-Ethernet in the Share your connection from drop-down, and check the Airport box, before hitting the 'Start' button. This method provides assigned but private addresses to all computers on the ad hoc network.
TiffanyScreens' auto-detect as any other of its features will work on Windows and the Mac. Ad hoc networking isn't right for every situation but it's really cool for those group meeting at your local Micro Brewery.
--
Wolf
Jeffrey Peacock of the Orange County Embedded Java Users' Group for instance, organizes and chairs weekly meetings, to discuss topics, news, and current projects. The group meets at the local Panera Bread in Irvine, California and uses TiffanyScreens to collaborate. Besides the tasty sandwiches, the group enjoys the free wireless Internet access, which certainly is one reason why the group chose that particular venue.
On the other hand, collaborating, sharing presentations with TiffanyScreens doesn't require Internet Access nor routers, hubs or switches. A wireless network between two or more computers can easily be created using ad hoc networking. Obviously, each participant needs a computer, equipped with a wireless network card and while it doesn't really matter which specific WiFi protocol each one uses, the ad hoc network will be performing best, if everyone uses 802.11g.
On my PowerBook for instance, I start a Computer-to-Computer wireless network, using the Create Network.. Airport menu item. The network's name defaults to my computer's name
(wpBook) and the channel defaults to 11.Everyone else in reach can now connect to my machine but only Macs or Windows computer's with Apple's Bonjour service installed would be able to use TiffanyScreens' convenient autodetect feature, which detects all machines running TiffanyScreens without the need to configure a proxy.
However, with a little extra work, the PowerBook can be configured to not only span a wireless network but also act as a DHCP and Name Server, for the temporary wireless network we want to build.
In System Preferences, click on the Sharing icon and then on the Services tab. Choose Built-in-Ethernet in the Share your connection from drop-down, and check the Airport box, before hitting the 'Start' button. This method provides assigned but private addresses to all computers on the ad hoc network.
TiffanyScreens' auto-detect as any other of its features will work on Windows and the Mac. Ad hoc networking isn't right for every situation but it's really cool for those group meeting at your local Micro Brewery.
--
Wolf
XML Schema for Swixml
Writing a Swixml declaration file is not that hard, if you know your javax.swing components.
However, getting a little support from your XML-Editor or IDE certainly doesn't hurt.Getting IntelliSense help sometimes doesn't require much more than pointing your editor to a DTD or XML Schema to pop-up element and attribute names as needed; or simply adding an xsi:schemaLocation attribute to the root element might do the trick.
Anyway, I've generated the XML-Schema for all built-in Swixml elements and attributes and made it available here: http://www.swixml.org/2007/swixml.xsd
It is complete, concerning elements and their attributes, and while the schema already has more than 2700 lines (which tells a story about the complexity of Swing), it does not include containment-rules, e.g. that you shouldn't add a button into a label, nor does it validate the attribute values other than booleans.
Here is how you would associate the XML Schema to an Swixml XML descriptor:
After that's done, some tool may make writing the descriptors somewhat easier. Oxygen XML Editor for instance has code competitions for elements and attributes:
With IntelliJ-IDEA on the other hand, even after registering the URI in System/Settings/Resources, I could only get completion for elements but not for the attributes to work:
Give it a try and let me know what you think and how we should improve the xsd. Again, the schema can be downloaded here: http://www.swixml.org/2007/swixml.xsd
The XML-Schema for Swixml is obviously generated using Java Reflection and the code will be made available in the upcoming Swixml 1.6. The cool thing about this is that you can generate your own XSD after you have registered all your own and 3rd party components. That way your Schema will allow you to use IntelliSense on your own elements just like it works on the built-in ones.
Is enthusiasm, energy, and creativity enough to catch up to competitors who may not have the same level of compassion but instead have a strong commercial interest?
Spending two days at the Desktop Matters conference, sharing ideas and experiencing a newly re-energized group of hardcore Java Desktop developers first hand was truly outstanding. Java luminary Ben Galbraith had organized this small but very intense 2-day conference under the umbrella of Jay Zimmerman's No-Fluff-Just-Stuff Symposium Tour.Personally, I felt much honored to be given the opportunity to give a talk about Swixml, the DSL (domain specific language) and GUI generating engine for Swing applications. And just looking at the agenda gives a pretty good idea about what I mean with intense; all talks were short and speakers didn't waste any time with the usual partially introductionary stuff and instead focused on their core message.
The whole event seemed like a strong, colorful firework of concepts and ideas, all pointing to the same direction: despite the entire buzz around AJAX, desktop applications still matter, especially when it comes to high quality, visually oriented applications. The visual impression a user gets from an application, projects directly on to the company making or providing the app. Reason enough for Apple for instance, to spend time, money, and effort, to create iTunes as a native desktop application for Windows and OS X.It was encouraging to see that the group of top quality people that Sun has assembled around Hans Muller and Chet Haase seems the strongest (in quantity and quality) it has ever been. Also Apple's continued commitment to porting Java Swing to the Mac OS X platform was appreciated much; no surprise, considering that at least 70% of the participants brought an Apple Laptop to the conference.
A good summary of most of the topics discussed at the conference can be found at InfoWorld.
The newly found confidence in the Java Desktop manifests itself in the announced Nimbus look-and-feel, a cross platform look-and-feel that Swing developers could be proud of. Applications deployed with this look-and-feel will look distinctively different from native applications but will look the same on Windows, Linux, and OS X.
Still, is the newly found enthusiasm, the energy and creativity enough for the Java Desktop to survive against the competition from Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe? Those players seem to directly benefit from being successful on the desktop, but where or by how much would a successful Java Desktop contribute to Sun's bottom line?
Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft, each have their proprietary single Development Environment. On the Java side on the other-hand, we think it's a good idea to have at least three competing IDEs (Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ-IDEA,...) and this is true for many libraries and frameworks as well. Are we getting lost in the diversity, number of choices, languages we want to run on the JVM etc. while the other guys concentrate and focus solely on what's important for the user, i.e. ease of deployment, usability, and look-and-feel?
Adobe's Flash platform is deployed on (90+x)% of all desktop and laptop computers. It doesn't really matter, if that number can be trusted or not. Facts are: Flash's deployment numbers are greater than Java's and Flash is installed more easily than Java. Adobe's Apollo project allows Flash applications to exist outside of the browser and may become another threat to Java on the Desktop.
In a competitive environment, where feature-sets of applications and services are almost undistinguishable, the look-and-feel and user experience may be the only thing that truly sets applications apart. In this environment, Java seems to be the underdog at best and Hans and Chet at Sun and we, the Java Desktop community, have the work cut out.
Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft, each have their proprietary single Development Environment. On the Java side on the other-hand, we think it's a good idea to have at least three competing IDEs (Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ-IDEA,...) and this is true for many libraries and frameworks as well. Are we getting lost in the diversity, number of choices, languages we want to run on the JVM etc. while the other guys concentrate and focus solely on what's important for the user, i.e. ease of deployment, usability, and look-and-feel?
Adobe's Flash platform is deployed on (90+x)% of all desktop and laptop computers. It doesn't really matter, if that number can be trusted or not. Facts are: Flash's deployment numbers are greater than Java's and Flash is installed more easily than Java. Adobe's Apollo project allows Flash applications to exist outside of the browser and may become another threat to Java on the Desktop.
In a competitive environment, where feature-sets of applications and services are almost undistinguishable, the look-and-feel and user experience may be the only thing that truly sets applications apart. In this environment, Java seems to be the underdog at best and Hans and Chet at Sun and we, the Java Desktop community, have the work cut out.
Brain Surgery Pt.5
Just like the first four parts of this never ending brain surgery series, this is about another memory upgrade.
- G5's memory upgrade
- iBook 1.2GHz memory upgrade
- 1.67 GHz 15" PowerBook 1GB DDR-2 memory upgrade
- 2nd Harddrive for the G5 • Seagate Barracuda 250 GB SATA drive
Only after using Activity Monitor for a while, to monitor the memory usage and pageouts, I started looking at SDRAM prices again and while you can find cheaper memory almost everywhere, I ended up at my trusted source: http://www.crucial.com/
The Crucial Mac Memory Advisor Tool however, seems to be optimized not for your system but their profit. Anyway, I ordered the same memory, I had put into the G5 before, which used to be on their recommended list way back when, but not this time around.
CT6464Z40B :
DDR PC3200 • CL=3 • UNBUFFERED • NON-ECC • DDR400 • 2.6V • 64Meg x 64Inserting the memory into the free slots on the G5's motherboard is really easy. The case opens and the huge exhaust fan is removed without having to touch a screwdriver. The memory modules are getting added in pairs from the center out and the whole process took only a couple minutes. But, Tom and I closed the G5's case only after blowing a whole can of air through the heat sink and the boards, cleaning things up a little.
Formatting a USB Flash-Drive for OS X
Since a while back, I'm using a tool to store all my passwords, website logins, program serial numbers etc. all RC4-encrypted and password-protected. Currently, the password tool (Pastor) and the data file are located on my Power Mac G5, which of course is a problem when I need to lookup a password when away from the G5, like at work for instance. Putting everything on a USB Flash Drives may be a good solution but I'm just exploring the possibility while I'm writing this, so let's see how it goes.
When formatting a USB Flash Drive (or any drive for that matter) OS X offers the following 7 choices:
If journaling is turned on for a disk, Mac OS X maintains a continuous record of changes to files on the disk. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, Mac OS X uses the journal to recover the hard disk to the last acceptable state before it stopped.
However, flash memory has a limit when it comes to how often a memory location can be changed and therefore, Journaling doesn't seem to be the first choice when it comes to Flash-Drives.
- UNIX File System
- MS-DOS File System
- MAC OS Standard
- MAC OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
- MAC OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
- MAC OS Extended
- MAC OS Extended (Journaled)
MS-DOS FAT32 File System is the one and only option available. The same is true for UNIX, which makes UNIX-FS the obvious, best choice.But how do all these formats compare and which one should be used, if Macs running OS X are the only computers the Flash-Drive will ever be used with?
Mac OS Extended a.k.a.HFS Plus a.k.a. HFS+ seems to have a lot of advantages over MAC OS Standard a.k.a HFS.- Mac OS Extended format is a hard disk format that increases the number of allocation blocks on the disk and also allows more than 65,000 files on the hard disk. However, Mac OS Extended format optimizes the storage capacity of large hard disks by decreasing the minimum size of a single file.
- MAC OS Standard a.k.a HFS on the other hand does not support file names > 31 chars, it does not support additional meta-information used by Mac OS X, has as limit of 65k allocation blocks, and is more error-prone than HFS+.
- Since the storage efficiency of Mac OS Extended format typically applies to 1 GB or larger volumes, Flash Drives with a capacity below 1 GB may still benefit from the MAC OS Standard format.
What about Journaling?
If journaling is turned on for a disk, Mac OS X maintains a continuous record of changes to files on the disk. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, Mac OS X uses the journal to recover the hard disk to the last acceptable state before it stopped.
However, flash memory has a limit when it comes to how often a memory location can be changed and therefore, Journaling doesn't seem to be the first choice when it comes to Flash-Drives.Storage Efficiency and Write Speed.
We used a Kingston 1 GB Data-Traveler Flash Drive and performed the following tests with every available format:- Check available storage capacity after formating
- Copy 5 large files (total 580.4 MB) and 203 small files (total 812 KB) to the flash drive
- Measure transfer speed while coping the large files
- Check used storage after all files were transfered
| Kingston 1 GB Data-Traveler / Transfer-Write Speed with different Formatting Options | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test | UNIX FS | MS-DOS FAT32 | Mac OS Std. | Mac OS Ext.Case-sens. | Mac OS Ext.Case-sens./Journal. | Mac OS Ext. | Mac OS Ext.Journaling |
| Available Memory | 877.7 MByte | 960.5 MByte | 960.1 MByte | 947.2 MByte | 938.3 MByte | 947.1 MByte | 938.2 MByte |
| Write-Speed large files | 2.45 MByte/s | 4.35 MByte/s | 4.62 MByte/s | 4.60 MByte/s | 4.46 MByte/s | 4.48 MByte/s | 4.17 MByte/s |
| Memory Used | 628 MByte | 581.2 MByte | 586 MByte | 596.6 MByte | 604.6 MByte | 596.6 MByte | 604.6 MByte |
Format Conclusion
Considering Storage Efficiency, MS-DOS File System is the clear winner. Not only does the Flash-Drive when formatted in MS-DOS FS provide the biggest storage capacity (960.5 MByte), the stored files also occupy the least amount of storage space (581.2 MByte).However, writing the 203 smaller files took over a minute on the MS-DOS formatted drive, a task that was performed in less then 5 seconds on any other format. The UNIX file system performed worse when we looked at the transfer speed for larger files (2.45 MByte/s). MS-DOS was with 4.35 MByte/s close to the transfer speed winner, Mac OS Standard: 4.62 MByte/s.
Since I'm going to use the Flash Drive only on a Mac, my favorite format for the Flash Drive is going to be Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive).
Different Flash Drives ...
Now that the formatting question has been resolved, let's have a brief look at how the different Flash Memories perform that I can find around the house.Besides 1, 2, and 4 GByte models of the Kingston DataTraveler, I have a 1 GByte SD-Card, which I have hooked up with a Hi-Speed ZiO Portable Secure Digital & MultiMediaCard USB 2.0 Reader/Writer, and also a 1 GByte first-generation iPod Shuffle that will be put to the test:
| Different Flash Memories / Transfer-Write Speed | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test | Kingston SD/1GB | 1st gen. iPod Shuffle | DataTraveler 1 GB | DataTraveler 2 GB | DataTraveler 4 GB | ||
| Write-Speed large files | 3.91 MByte/s | 2.74 MByte/s | 4.60 MByte/s | 3.12 MByte/s | 3.90 MByte/s | ||
Not unexpectedly, the lowest capacity DataTraveler performed the best. The iPod Shuffle's slow write speed on the other hand was a little surprising. Fortunately, Pastor, the Password storage tool, requires fully deployed only 8.6 MByte storage. The password file is tiny and therefore, the 1 GB DataTraveler will work just fine.
Final Steps
As an additional level of security, the Pastor application and the data-file can be put into an encrypted disk image. OS X's disk utility application allow us to create AES-128 encrypted disk images like so:
- Open Disk Utility in the Applications/Utilties folder
- Click "New Image"
- In the "Encryption" menu, select AES-128
- Select the size of the disk image: 10 MByte seems to be more than enough to store application and data-file
- Enter the name and location of the image file
- Click Create to finish
- Final step, come up with a password (this will be needed everytime you want to open the disk image) and enter it twice
Out of Balance
Most programmers, coders, hackers, Software Engineers, call them like you see them, don't eat healthy. There is just no time to leave the keyboard for having a healthy meal and instead we prefer a quick snack or a beer, depending of the location and time of the day maybe.Despite the popularity of the well-marketed low-carbohydrate diets, a.k.a. Atkins Diet, the Carpentaria, CA based Balance Bar Food Company (bought by Kraft Foods in 2000 for approximately $268 million) stuck to their concept of making nutrition/energy bars that have balanced proportions of 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% dietary fat, and are fortified with vitamins and minerals.
The Balance Bar's 40/30/30 principle, aimed at achieving stable blood sugar levels, is based on a nutritional philosophy popularized by biochemist and nutrition scientist Dr. Barry Sears and has been proven to provide sustained energy and hunger management. A box containing 15 bars costs about US$ 16 and can be bought by retailers nationwide or directly at http://www.balance.com/.
Being a proud member of the above-mentioned group of unhealthy eaters, I have too few meals during the day, don't spend much time thinking about calories and fat, and don't like fruits. I drink plenty of fluids - in the form of coffee and beer that is. However, for the last seven or eight years, I have made the Balance Bar part of my daily diet and while there are plenty of flavors to choose form, I enjoy the Balance Bar Gold triple-chocolat-chaos the most.
Since the Balance Bar is really tasty and has been a consistent and healthy part of my everyday selection of food, I immediately noticed the new designed box and wrapper. Comparing the nutrition facts revealed that not only the packaging had changed but also content and not for better, if you ask me.
Now, I certainly couldn't care less about their new wrapper and box design and even if the new bar (more Sugar, Cholesterol, and Sodium but less Protien) is not nearly as good for you as the previous generation, I still may have continued buying it - but the new bar also tastes awful.It's much more chewy, unpleasantly sticking to your teeth and tastes more like caramel than chocolate. It's also a lot sweeter, almost feels like eating a spoon of pure sugar. But don't take my word for it, buy one of those new bars and experience the flavor yourself. Or even better, do a comparison taste test, just like Tom and I just did.
Balance Bar responds to my comments:
Hi Wolf,
Thank you for visiting http://www.balanceoasis.com/.
Balance is undergoing a major product and packaging change. The first of the bars to change is the Gold line.
The bars have been reformulated and the packaging and logo totally redesigned with new, and contemporary graphics. The reformulation includes the removal of High Fructose Corn Syrup and improved the taste and texture - making the bars softer.
These major product improvements make BALANCE BARS even better than before. We value your comments, and will forward them to our Marketing team.
If you haven't done so already, please add our site to your favorites and visit us again soon!
K. ...
Associate Director, Consumer Relations
| Nutrition Facts | The old Balance Bar Gold triple-choco.-chaos |
The NEW Balance Bar Gold triple-choco.-chaos |
|---|---|---|
| Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet | ||
| Total Fat | 7g = 11% | 7g = 11% |
| -- Saturated | 4g = 20% | 4g = 20% |
| -- Trans | 0g | 0g |
| Cholesterol | 0mg | <5mg = 1% |
| Sodium less is better |
90mg = 4% | 130mg = 5% |
| Potassium | 120mg = 3% | 135 mg = 4% |
| Total Carbohydrate | 22g = 7% | 24g = 8% |
| Diatary Fiber | <1g = 3% | <1g = 4% |
| Sugar | 12g | 16g |
| Protein | 15g = 28% | 13g = 24% |
|
|
|
| Serving Size | 1 Bar (50g) | 1 Bar (50g) |
| Calories | 210 | 210 |
| -- from Fat | 60 | 60 |
| Vitamin A | 50% | 50% |
| Vitamin C | 100% | 100% |
| Calcium | 10% | 10% |
| Iron | 25% | 25% |
| Vitamin E | 100% | 100% |
| Vitamin K | 25% | 25% |
| Thiamin | 25% | 25% |
| Riboflavin | 25% | 25% |
| Niacin | 25% | 25% |
| Vitamin B6 | 25% | 25% |
| Folid Acid | 25% | 25% |
| Vitamin B12 | 25% | 25% |
| Biotin | 25% | 25% |
| Pantothenic Acid | 25% | 25% |
| Phosphorus | 15% | 15% |
| Iodine | 25% | 25% |
| Magnesium | 10% | 10% |
| Zinc | 25% | 25% |
| Selenium | 25% | 25% |
| Copper | 25% | 25% |
| Manganese | 25% | 25% |
| Chromium | 25% | 25% |
| Molybdenum | 25% | 25% |
Tough Crowd at JavaOne?
While I thought that there were some important announcements made during today's keynote at Sun's JavaOne conference, the crowd really didn't seem to find any of the things mentioned exciting at all.
When it comes to excite a crowd, keynote speaker Rich Green certainly is no Steve Jobs and attendees didn't line up hours before the keynote, in fact lots of people were still eating their breakfast while the keynote was well on it's way. Well, blame it on the Moscone Center's huge underground Hall, which makes you feel like sitting in a huge underground parking structure and don't provide much of an atmosphere. However, neither James Gosling nor Jonathan Schwartz, who all were on stage during the keynote, could really move the audience.
Servlets 3.0. Hm, now I'm sure we all have some ideas how to improve or add to the servlet spec. However, getting rid of the web.xml deployment descriptor and doing everything in code through annotations instead, wouldn't be on my list. Actually, I like to have the DD around, which gives the guys how actually have to deploy and run the web applications we write, the means to enable or disable certain servlets or add or remove some filters etc.
After a rough start, which saw almost every demo crash, (why Richard Blair trys to demo Java 6 stuff on a Mac is beyond me), there was plenty of beer and good food in the JavaOne Pavilion, spreading hope that everything will be good from here on out.
When it comes to excite a crowd, keynote speaker Rich Green certainly is no Steve Jobs and attendees didn't line up hours before the keynote, in fact lots of people were still eating their breakfast while the keynote was well on it's way. Well, blame it on the Moscone Center's huge underground Hall, which makes you feel like sitting in a huge underground parking structure and don't provide much of an atmosphere. However, neither James Gosling nor Jonathan Schwartz, who all were on stage during the keynote, could really move the audience.So what else happened today?
Sun announced to have completed the open-sourcing of Java, to have made the JavaOne conference carbon neutral, to have printed the conference material on 40% post consumer waste recycled paper, printed on with environmentally friendly soy ink, another scripting language dubbed JavaFX (an AJAX-Killer that will Radically Simplifies Content Authoring (TM), to work hard on Java Servlet's 3.0....Servlets 3.0. Hm, now I'm sure we all have some ideas how to improve or add to the servlet spec. However, getting rid of the web.xml deployment descriptor and doing everything in code through annotations instead, wouldn't be on my list. Actually, I like to have the DD around, which gives the guys how actually have to deploy and run the web applications we write, the means to enable or disable certain servlets or add or remove some filters etc.
After a rough start, which saw almost every demo crash, (why Richard Blair trys to demo Java 6 stuff on a Mac is beyond me), there was plenty of beer and good food in the JavaOne Pavilion, spreading hope that everything will be good from here on out.
JavaOne 2007 Wrap-up, Final Thoughts, and Open Questions
After four exhausting but inspiring days at JavaOne 2007 it's good to be back in San Diego. I flew out of SFO Friday evening, still thinking about the final general session, hosted by James Gosling early Friday morning. Gosling had the pleasure to show all kinds of cool projects, gadgets, and devices, like small and also not so small robots, all featuring Java of course. However, I couldn't shake the feeling that he either hadn't seen some of the projects before, or had already forgotten about them; you be the judge what would be worse.
Thor Norbye, Sr. Engineer at Sun and member of the Java Posse, once again was part of the show. This time he demonstrated the Ruby on Rails support in the upcoming NetBeans 6.0. Looking at the topics Thor covered in previous years (2005, Thor demonstrated Java Studio Creator 2, in 2006, he showed the Visual Basic language support in Java Studio Creator) however, it remains at least questionable how relevant NetBeans will become in the Rails community.
The conference seemed to have been put together in a hurry. Speakers had to submit their slides for approval and correction, which is common. Still, some speakers were quite surprised, obviously seeing their corrected slides for the first time. Some slides were completely deleted from the deck, other contained references like '.. also covered in session XXXX', literally. Most of the demos that where prepared and presented by speakers from Sun broke down, especially during the first two days of the conference.Now, all this is not a big deal at all. In fact, one can assume that they were really showing stuff they were currently working on and therefore it's not surprising to see it blow up during a demo.
However, considering that JavaFX Script was hyped as the biggest innovation all-over the show but was mainly a marketing stunt (JavaFX Script a.k.a. F3 'Form Follows Function', was acquired by Sun from Chris Oliver in September of 2005 with the acquisition of SeeBeyond), really makes you wonder what's going with Java at Sun. Strangely enough, most conference schedules still had listed JavaFX related content under its old name, F3.What about the Java on the Desktop?
Innovations, useful to Java on the Desktop, seem to come either from outside of Sun (e.g. Romain Guy (now at Google), Kirill Grouchnikov, Ben Galbraith's Swing productivity framework, or not even from not desktop related groups and technologies at all, like Java-DB (a.k.a Apache Derby and formerly known as Cloudscape) or Java Persistence API (JPA), which fortunately can be used without a container (see Using the Java Persistence API on the desktop).Java-Desktop related innovations that are pushed by Sun like Beans-Binding for instance (which in my opinion was prematurely implemented and pushed into NetBeans) are totally off, overly complicated, and not completely thought through; using totally String based EL (Expression Language) to define bindings in compiled code, come-on, you cannot be serious.
Binding binding = new Binding( caricature, "${eyeStyle}", eyeSlider, "value"); Having a complete HTML renderer in Java on then other hand, like available in Adobe-Apollo for instance, is still not even on the radar.
Does Java still need Sun?
After open-sourcing Java and seeing projects like Apache Harmony, or BEA's JRockit Liquid VM, which can serve as an operating system image in VMWare, rather than requiring a supporting host OS (see JRockit's Liquid VM could be the first real Java OS), the answer seems obvious. It's probably nice to have Sun around but Java has grown-up and found new friends; Java has simply left the nest, not needing it's parents (Mr Gosling and Mrs Sun) anymore. Sadly though, grown-up on the other hand may also stand for not growing anymore.Prevent OSX's .DS_Store file creation over network connections and other useful defaults
.DS_Store
This will affect the your interactions with SMB/CIFS, AFP, NFS, and WebDAV servers:- Open the Terminal.
- Enter:
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true - Press Return.
- Restart the computer.
Tweak Safari
Don't have Safari display PDF documents, rather have them downloaded instead:- Open the Terminal.
- Enter:
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES - Press Return.
- Open the QuickTime preference pane in System Preferences.
- Click the Advanced tab, and then MIME Settings...
- Under the Images list, make sure PDF Image is not checked.
Logitech V270 Bluetooth Mouse Scaling
- Open the Terminal.
- Enter:
defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling 0.03 - Press Return.
Optimize Apple Mail
- Quit Mail and open Terminal.
- Enter:
cd ~/Library/Mail - Press Return.
- Enter:
sqlite3 Envelope\ Index - Press Return, a sqlite> prompt will appear.
- Enter:
vacuum subjects; - Press Return.
- Press
control Dafter the prompt appears. - Restart Mail.
Flush DNS cache
- OSX 10.4:
sudo lookupd -flushcache - OSX 10.5:
dscacheutil -flushcache
Get rid of goofy dock style in Leopard
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YESkillall Dock
remove all .DS_Store files from your_dir
find your_dir -type f -name .DS_Store -print0 | xargs -0 rm
show network traffic in terminal
sudo tcpdump -i en0 port 80
Simply auto-mount Network Shares at Mac OSX startup, or even simpler at login
Assuming you wanted to mount a share named 'Devel' on a Windows box named 'denali', like
cifs://denali/Devel. You would first test this via Cmd-K and then
- open NetInfo Manager, which lives in Application/Utilities
- click the lock to be able to make changes
- click on
mounts - click on
Newin the Toolbar - click on the entry in the lower frame and start adding row, by clicking
Newagain - Create the following name value pairs:
- name -
denali:/Devel - vfstype -
url - dir -
/Network/devel - opts -
url==smb://<your_username>:<your-password>@denali/DEVEL
- name -
An alternative way to mount a share-point for the faint of heart, those who don't want to get into NetInfo Manager, would be to:
- Simply mount the volume using Cmd-K and save the username and password you use in your keychain.
- Open System Preferences -> Accounts.
- Select Login Items tab and drag the volume into the dialog window.
- Now the volume mounts on login, when you have network connectivity (you get an error otherwise).
TiffanyScreens is all about innovation and 2.5.1 is available now.
TiffanyScreens is a the multi platform application that seamlessly captures your computer's screen-content and sends it to multiple other computers at the same time. TiffanyScreens is great for sharing PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations.
TiffanyScreens is all about innovation; it's the first truly cross-platform tool to share presentations (or any screen content) with your peer group, without requiring a projector, and I have just released TiffanyScreens 2.5.1. In this latest release, all graphical user interface libraries got updated and TiffanyScreens' over-all performance has been improved once again.
To say it with Bren's words "A whole new way of doing presentations -- without the projector. Looks really cool."
Brain Surgery Pt.6 - The different Twins
DDR and especially DDR2 SODIMM memory became recently somewhat affordable, allowing for another episode of the Brain-Surgery series.
This time it was the different twins that were due for a significant RAM increase. The different twins are our two Mac minis; there is Tom's 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 based Mac mini and 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo based Mac mini that's mostly used as a TV-Internet Connector, which setup and purpose I had described back in October 2006 in Subscription TV.
Usually, I get memory upgrades for Macs from either Crucial or Ramjet directly. However, this time I got a way better deal at Mwave.com for the same Crucial Memory.
This time it was the different twins that were due for a significant RAM increase. The different twins are our two Mac minis; there is Tom's 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 based Mac mini and 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo based Mac mini that's mostly used as a TV-Internet Connector, which setup and purpose I had described back in October 2006 in Subscription TV.
Usually, I get memory upgrades for Macs from either Crucial or Ramjet directly. However, this time I got a way better deal at Mwave.com for the same Crucial Memory.
Upgrading the Intel-based Mac Mini to 2GB RAM
- Upgrading here means replacing 200 PIN SODIMMs:
Two Micron 256MB DDR2 667 CL5 (PC2-5300S-555-12-C0) modules were replaced by two Micron 1GB DDR2 667 CL5 modules: CT12864AC667 - There are a couple really useful sites that explain in much detail how to open the Mini, OWC even posted a video, showing how to disassemble the Intel-based Mac mini.
However, I had some trouble removing the WIFI-antenna, which didn't work as explained elsewhere. The antenna is spring-loaded and kept in place by two black plastic posts. Squeezing the posts towards each other only slightly, releases the antenna-board immediately.
The whole procedure took about 15 minutes, which already included using about half a can compressed air to clean the device. Upgrading the memory certainly is the easiest upgrade one can perform and I imaging that replacing harddrive or CPU may be a little more challenging.
Upgrading Tom's PowerPC G4 based Mac mini to 1GB
- Here again, upgrading means replacing - this time a single 184 PIN DDR SDRAM:
A single 512MB PC3200 CL3 module was replaced by a Micron 1GB DDR PC3200 CL=3 UNBUFFERED NON-ECC module: CT12864Z40B - Opening the older Mini seemed a little harder but once the case was opened, replacing the memory module was very easy, no other components needed to be removed or disconnected.
Again, with cleaning, the whole procedure took less than 15 minutes.
Here are the previous episodes of this never ending brain surgery series ...
Why I think newegg sucks
Arguably, we are buying not all that much hardware components and gadgets, still considering all the memory modules, hard-drives, USB-Flash drives, SD-Cards, Arduino Boards, routers, etc. it surely adds up. Frys is still a place I really enjoy going to but most of the above-mentioned things are purchased from online e-commerce companies such as buy.com, newegg.com, mwave.com etc., among which I had always favored newegg - until yesterday that is.
I had ordered a memory upgrade for a Laptop, a standard 1GB • 200 PIN • PC5300 667MHz • DDR2 SO-DIMM and while the price was not the lowest, I considered newegg a trusted source, worth the few extra bucks.
Unfortunately, the memory did not work. After plugging it in, the notebook beeped twice but refused to boot. After a couple more equally unsuccessful attempts, including reseeding the memory, switching modules etc., I gave up and notified newegg of the broken part. What I hadn't realized until then was that at newegg even broken parts are subject to a 15% restocking fee.
$62.89 - $49.80 refund + $1.30 shipping cost for the return = $14.39
Having paid 14 bucks for a brocken SO DIMM plus a trip to the local post office makes it highly unlikely that I will be purchasing from newegg again any time soon.
Now let's just hope they don't mean the restocking fee literally or somebody else will (due to the very same memory module) go through the same process. Thinking of it, could circulating broken chips and charging restocking fees be a valid business model? Hm..
iDay in NYC
Hard to believe - I know. However, it really was not planned and merely a coincidence, but on June 29, 2007, the day Apple launched the iPhone we were there, at Apple's flagship store in New York City.
The media was all over the place, interested only in interviewing people who stood in line to eventually sell their spot. I guess that makes a better story than taking about the new phone or why not only geeks would be waiting in long lines to get their hands on one.
On June 29th, the store was closed between 2 P.M. and 6 P.M. However, we spent a little while in the store a couple days earlier and the all glass stair case really is impressive!
The media was all over the place, interested only in interviewing people who stood in line to eventually sell their spot. I guess that makes a better story than taking about the new phone or why not only geeks would be waiting in long lines to get their hands on one.
On June 29th, the store was closed between 2 P.M. and 6 P.M. However, we spent a little while in the store a couple days earlier and the all glass stair case really is impressive!
Digging Hypocrisy
When you hear people talking about a Hypocrite, maybe a Washington based, gray-haired politician comes to mind, promising to be a fiscally conservative Republican but infect leaving mountainous of new debts to his successors. Anyway, one certainly doesn't think about the diggnation hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht.Their weekly video podcast, which promotes Kevin's digg.com Web site and business, is available for download at http://revision3.com/diggnation/
However, only paying subscribers can get the video version, while everyone else may download the audio version or can wait until a week since recording has passed, at which time it's made available for free.
Now, Kevin and especially Alex often brag about pirating content like software, games, videos, and TV-shows; and Alex is known for his opinion that nobody gets hurt since all the content that he's pirating he would never pay for anyways.
Surprisingly to some, digg.com's parent company (Revision3) went after a small web site (diggdown.com) that was redistributing the diggnation video podcast for free.
"Your reproduction, distribution, and public performance of our client's federally protected copyrighted works constitutes multiple counts of copyright infringement. Additionally, your use of the DIGG marks in your <diggdown.net> domain name and on your website constitutes trademark infringement. It is likely that your use of the Digg Marks is likely to confuse Internet users as to the sponsorship or affiliation of your services with our client despite your many disclaimers. In order to protect our client's intellectual property, we must demand that you immediately cease and desist the reproduction, and public performance and display of all audiovisual works owned by Revision3 Corporation and immediately cease and desist use of all DIGG Marks, including as part of your domain name and website name.
If you do not comply with the demands of this letter, we will be forced to seek damages and attorney's fees "
[Complete Letter: http://b6.jerrcs.net/uploads/pdf.pdf]
Since then, Kevin Rose suggested on Cranky Geeks that the video content would be made available for free to everyone at the same time ... which of course did not happen.
I guess, digg.com's relevance (and value) has decreased over the last couple of months, which saw lots of other well done and designed site coming up, all using an equivalent concept. I don't know if that's enough to explain digg's hipocratic behavior. However, it's probably a good thing for Kevin that he was able to start his next gig: http://pownce.com/ ...
Here today .. Gone tomorrow
Small Improvements on WolfPaulus.com
The appearance of this Web site in style and formatting was updated a couple weeks back and I kept adding new content regularly. The Journal section for instance had a new content area added recently, focusing on Mac Tips and more Arduino related content was integrated into the Embedded Systems area of the site. However, the site hadn't been seen a lot of improvements, when it came to functionality.
Finally, I have taken the time to add a submit to digg.com link into my homegrown PHP-based blogging system and also added a cool photo-viewer, pulling my own photos from flickr.
The search functionality of the site is provided by www.google.com/search and since recommended and demo-ed by Bob, I also use their Google Analytics service to monitor the usage of my Websites, which required only adding a couple lines of Java Script code into the pages' footer-template.
Adding the "Submit story to digg.com" functionality was done in pretty much the same way how search works, but instead of an
Integration with flickr was even easier. I used PSTAM's instructions to put his cool flash-based flickrslidr photo viewer on the site, looping through photos I had already posted on flickr.
Nothing earthshaking, I know. Still, even small improvements like these make the site more useful, at least for myself.
--
Wolf
Finally, I have taken the time to add a submit to digg.com link into my homegrown PHP-based blogging system and also added a cool photo-viewer, pulling my own photos from flickr.The search functionality of the site is provided by www.google.com/search and since recommended and demo-ed by Bob, I also use their Google Analytics service to monitor the usage of my Websites, which required only adding a couple lines of Java Script code into the pages' footer-template.
Adding the "Submit story to digg.com" functionality was done in pretty much the same way how search works, but instead of an
HTTP GET through an HTML form submission, digg simply uses an HTML link. More details can be found at http://digg.com/tools/integrate#3
Integration with flickr was even easier. I used PSTAM's instructions to put his cool flash-based flickrslidr photo viewer on the site, looping through photos I had already posted on flickr.Nothing earthshaking, I know. Still, even small improvements like these make the site more useful, at least for myself.
--
Wolf
Multi-factor Authentication at PayPal
Back in 1996, when leading the development of a Deutsche Bank retail banking project, a software solution allowing the bank's customers to maintain checking, saving, and investment accounts from their home PCs, I became aware of Multi-factor Authentication. An authentication factor is something that's used to authenticate a person's identity and multi-factor authentication is a system, using different methods for authenticating.In our case, it was a simple two-factor authentication, using something you know (a password or pin) and something you have (a sheet of paper, issued by the bank, containing several one-time passwords).
The implementation was rather simple, for read-access, like getting an account's balance, only the account number and pin was required. For write-access, like buying or selling stock, the customer additionally needed to enter one of the one-time passwords. And of course, requesting and activating a new sheet of one-time passwords also required entering one-time passwords from the old sheet.
More than ten years later and triggered by the growing number of phishing attacks,
banks here in the US try to establish a much cheaper but also much weaker system, so-called "sitekeys".
Phishing attacks, emails containing links to fake Web site, trying to steal your identity by tricking you into revealing your password and other personal information, unfortunately cannot be overcome by adding a so-called site-key. While still a customer, I have never been a big fan of Bank of America's higher standards, when it came to security and how the bank deals with Credit-Card fraud for instance.
This video from the school of Informatics at the Univerity of Indiana, shows a roof-of-concept and demonstrates how phishers might act as the man in the middle to defeat Bank of America's (BoA) SiteKey implementation.
PayPal on the other hand, is currently trying to do the right thing and started offering a form of real multi-factor authentication to its customers. Starting in the US, Germany, and Australia, PayPal provides One Time Password (OTP) tokens to its users. An animated demo of how the system works can be seen here.
The token, which is about as big as a small USB Flash-Memory drive, can be had for 5 Dollars, surly heavily subsidized by PayPal. Again, account holders in the US, Germany, and Australia can order it here.
PayPal's multi-factor authentication is backed by VeriSign's Identity Proofing services (VIP IPS), which is also hosted by VeriSign and accessed through standard network protocols. The multi-factor authentication is designed to address phishing problems. It combines the primaryfactor (something the user knows) the password, with a secondary factor (something that the user has) the One-Time-Password generating token.
If an attacker steals only the first factor, he will not be able to forge the second factor and will be unable to authenticate. If an attacker steals the second factor, he will not know the first factor and will be unable to authenticate.
VeriSign's VIP Authentication Service embraces open standards, and allows any Open Authentication (OATH) compliant device to be used for authentication.
Let's hope that majors banks join in and provide something better than the site-key.
Phishing attacks, emails containing links to fake Web site, trying to steal your identity by tricking you into revealing your password and other personal information, unfortunately cannot be overcome by adding a so-called site-key. While still a customer, I have never been a big fan of Bank of America's higher standards, when it came to security and how the bank deals with Credit-Card fraud for instance.
This video from the school of Informatics at the Univerity of Indiana, shows a roof-of-concept and demonstrates how phishers might act as the man in the middle to defeat Bank of America's (BoA) SiteKey implementation.
PayPal on the other hand, is currently trying to do the right thing and started offering a form of real multi-factor authentication to its customers. Starting in the US, Germany, and Australia, PayPal provides One Time Password (OTP) tokens to its users. An animated demo of how the system works can be seen here.
The token, which is about as big as a small USB Flash-Memory drive, can be had for 5 Dollars, surly heavily subsidized by PayPal. Again, account holders in the US, Germany, and Australia can order it here.PayPal's multi-factor authentication is backed by VeriSign's Identity Proofing services (VIP IPS), which is also hosted by VeriSign and accessed through standard network protocols. The multi-factor authentication is designed to address phishing problems. It combines the primaryfactor (something the user knows) the password, with a secondary factor (something that the user has) the One-Time-Password generating token.
If an attacker steals only the first factor, he will not be able to forge the second factor and will be unable to authenticate. If an attacker steals the second factor, he will not know the first factor and will be unable to authenticate.
VeriSign's VIP Authentication Service embraces open standards, and allows any Open Authentication (OATH) compliant device to be used for authentication.
Let's hope that majors banks join in and provide something better than the site-key.
Swixml is used in GlassFish's openInstaller Framework
GlassFish is the open source community based implementation of Java EE 5. GlassFish has a few tools projects, one of which is openInstaller. openInstaller is an open source community project building a free and comprehensive next generation installer framework. While the initial development of openInstaller was done by Sun Microsystems, it is now available under the open source Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).
The openInstaller project provides the framework for developers to create cross platform installations; it is a part of the GlassFish community of projects, and now includes and uses the Swixml, which I had created a couple years back. Swixml is a GUI generating engine that uses Declarative Programming to define Graphical User Interfaces.
James Falkner blogs a series of screenshots of openInstaller in action and while openInstaller leverages the advantages of SwiXML, the openInstaller's UI model seems to make the xml descriptors much more complicated than what the original Swixml descriptor look like.Jayanth Krupanidhi shows the complex xml descriptor for this rather simple dialog. However, he also states that efforts for developing NetBeans plugins that help in the creation of these UI-definition XMLs using a simple drag-and-drop mechanism are already underway.
SwiXml 1.6 (Beta 1)
The first distribution of what will eventually become Swixml 1.6 has just been made available on the
Swixml.org Website and also put into the SubVersion repository on Java.net.Thanks to Karl Tauber of JFormDesigner, Swixml now supports the JGoodie FormLayout.
Of course, a few small bugs have been fixed along the way as well and a couple improvements have found its way into the codebase.
Please share your experience with the new release over in the Swixml user and developer forums. Moreover, if you develop layouts, using the new FormLayout support, please send me your java-code, xml-descriptor and also a screenshot. I would love to include them into the sample code section and also put them on the Swixml page to make more samples available for users who just start with Swixml.
Lizard
This little four-legged reptilian looked through the window-screen into my (home-)office the other day, while I was enjoying working from home.
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
I have to agree with most of the other reviews out there, the EF 50mm f/1.8 has a very cheap build quality. It's a totally plastic construction. In fact, I guess everything but the lens itself is plastic. So yes, the build quality is cheap - but so is the price. Even at good well-known places, this lens can be had for around $70.
Looking at the plastic lens, considering the price, touching it (it's only 4.6 oz = 130g), one would never expect it being that sharp.
Its motor to auto-focus is not among the quietest and fastest but one would never expect it being that sharp.
F/1.8 make it a nice lens for low-light and indoor use, but one would never expect it being that sharp.
Zoom lenses are really versatile but this Canon prime lenses is so inexpensive, light, and small and ohhh, did I mention, one would never expect it being that sharp.
A fond farewell to my good old G5
It wasn't really an emotional goodbye but with some sadness, I sold my almost to the day four year old PowerMac G5. It was one of the first ones built, a 1.8 GHz single processor machine. The beautiful enclosure with slowly and quietly running fans inside still looked like new but the heavy weight limited the selling options.There are a couple place on the Web (MacOfAllTrades being one of those) that buy or trade used Macs. The purchasing prices they offer are not great but I wouldn't call them completely unfair either. However, the seller is responsible for paying the shipping fees to their location, which, considering the dimensions and weight of a G5, can be a significant.
MacOfAllTrades is certainly one option to sell a Mac and also a good way to find out what the absolutely lowest offering price is, one might have to accept. However, like many other Mac buyers and sellers, I prefer Craigslist .
Asking for a fair price will definitely get some Mac fans interested and in my case, it took only two days and the G5 was gone. No shipping fees - the new owner of my good old friend came by and picked it up.
Farewell PowerMac G5, farewell ...
What would you do, if Java 6 on Mac OS X would never be ?
Only four days, until Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard launches and it still has not been confirmed that Java 6 will be part of the latest Mac OS distribution. In fact, chances are, it won't.
Take for instance James Gosling's recent blog entry, where he proudly tells us that he no longer uses a Mac laptop and that the Solaris folks have made 'huge' strides in Solaris's usability on a laptop. However, his reason for dismissing his Mac is manly that the Mac hasn't been keeping up as a developer's machine.
OK, you may think that the timing of his blog post is just a coincidence, anyway, James is right. Java JDK 6 is available for Windows and Linux for many, many months now but it still isn't on the Mac; and while someone responded that a beta of JDK 6 is available at http://developer.apple.com/, it is rumored that this isn't the case anymore and that the Java 6 developer preview has been removed.
I'm a purposely vague here, since the last time I wrote something related, an almost immediate phone call from a company in Cupertino, had me edit (cripple) my article severely...
It is also 'rumored' that the latest beta of OS X 10.5 Leopard, which was made available to developers about four weeks ago, did not include Java 6 but shipped with Java 5 installed instead.
Mac OS X is arguably predominately used on client computers, which is not the place where Java has a great success story to tell and besides selling MacBooks and MacBook Pros to Java Developers, there may not be a reason for Apple to further invest in maintaining a Java VM and JDK.
So there is some indication that Java Developers on the Mac (which includes yours truly) may be up for a big surprise on Friday, when the next big cat purrs; and while there is still hope, why not hypothetically try to answer that question, 'What would you as a Java Developer on the Mac do, if Java 6 never arrived?'
The air quality has improved to poor.
At 5:23 PM today, the evacuation order has been lifted for Carlsbad residents and currently Carlsbad is facing no immediate threat from the fires raging around the county.
Like you may have heard, several fires have been burning in San Diego County since Sunday and many of my friends and colleagues had to leave their homes. Fortunately, the voluntary evacuation order for the area I live had been lifted late this afternoon and while the air quality is still very poor and the picture and stories you see and hear on TV and local Web sites are really devastating, there is still some kind of relieve, especially since the forecasted weather seems to support fire fighting measures.
Now, this is far from over and while evacuation order are lifted in some areas, new fires start in others, forcing more people out of there homes. E.g., as I'm writing this, a mandatory evacuation for Julian is issued. Julian residents were ordered to leave by the Sheriff's Department. There is no power or phone service in Julian and the evacuations are in effect at least until Thursday. Also, Palomar Mountain, with the famous Palomar Observatory is up in flames tonight.
Flickr for 'witch fire' to see some impressions, captured by local residents.
Like you may have heard, several fires have been burning in San Diego County since Sunday and many of my friends and colleagues had to leave their homes. Fortunately, the voluntary evacuation order for the area I live had been lifted late this afternoon and while the air quality is still very poor and the picture and stories you see and hear on TV and local Web sites are really devastating, there is still some kind of relieve, especially since the forecasted weather seems to support fire fighting measures.
Now, this is far from over and while evacuation order are lifted in some areas, new fires start in others, forcing more people out of there homes. E.g., as I'm writing this, a mandatory evacuation for Julian is issued. Julian residents were ordered to leave by the Sheriff's Department. There is no power or phone service in Julian and the evacuations are in effect at least until Thursday. Also, Palomar Mountain, with the famous Palomar Observatory is up in flames tonight.
Flickr for 'witch fire' to see some impressions, captured by local residents.
TiffanyScreens 2.6, with new features and compatible with Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard announced.
With Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard launching tonight, a new release of my Presentation Sharing tool for Peer Groups: TiffanyScreens, will also be made available soon. Tests with pre-release software from Apple went well and there are only one or two issues that need to be addressed before releasing TiffanyScreens 2.6.
Not only will TiffanyScreens 2.6 be optimized OS X v 10.5, it also contains some new features, e.g. user-adjustable frame-rates during presentation broadcasting.
Much later than expected, but within the 1st half 2008, Microsoft has announced a preliminary date for the availability of Windows XP Service Pack 3. Without going into too much detail ... again, test went very well so far.
TiffanyScreensis a the multi platform application that seamlessly captures your computer's screen-content and sends it to multiple other computers at the same time. TiffanyScreens is great for sharing PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations.
TiffanyScreens is the first truly cross-platform tool to share presentations (or any screen content) with your peer group, without requiring a projector. To say it with Bren's words "A whole new way of doing presentations -- without the projector. Looks really cool."
Java 6 still missing on Mac OS X
Like so many other Java developers enjoying a Macintosh as their primary computer, I installed the new Mac OS X v10.5 a.k.a Leopard this morning. No matter if you got it at the store last night, delivered by FedEx, or via download as part of your ADC subscription, the official Gold Master release (9A581) does not contain the long awaited Java 6 Runtime.
Apple updated the Java version in OS X v10.5 from 1.5.0_07 to 1.5.0_13 but Java 6 is nowhere to be found in Leopard nor anywhere on Apple's website. Previously available Java 1.6 developer preview releases also have been removed and don't seem to be available at this time.
The hypothetical question 'What would you do, if Java 6 on Mac OS X would never be ?' that I had asked just a couple days ago, seems to have turned into a much more actual one today.
Given that Apple has not released any time frame for when to expect Java 6 on OS X, as a Java developer, I have to ask myself at what point developing on Mac becomes disadvantages. While the flawlessly working beautiful machines with their secure Unix underpinning provide an obvious upper-hand over Java Developers on Windows boxes, having to work with a Java Development Kit and Runtime that is now years behind of what's available on Windows, Linux, and Solaris becomes a real burden.
Honestly, the unavailability of Java 6 in OS X Leopard has put all of us Java Developers on a Mac, into a position that becomes a little harder to explain and to defend every day.
--
Wolf
Apple updated the Java version in OS X v10.5 from 1.5.0_07 to 1.5.0_13 but Java 6 is nowhere to be found in Leopard nor anywhere on Apple's website. Previously available Java 1.6 developer preview releases also have been removed and don't seem to be available at this time.
The hypothetical question 'What would you do, if Java 6 on Mac OS X would never be ?' that I had asked just a couple days ago, seems to have turned into a much more actual one today.
Given that Apple has not released any time frame for when to expect Java 6 on OS X, as a Java developer, I have to ask myself at what point developing on Mac becomes disadvantages. While the flawlessly working beautiful machines with their secure Unix underpinning provide an obvious upper-hand over Java Developers on Windows boxes, having to work with a Java Development Kit and Runtime that is now years behind of what's available on Windows, Linux, and Solaris becomes a real burden.
Honestly, the unavailability of Java 6 in OS X Leopard has put all of us Java Developers on a Mac, into a position that becomes a little harder to explain and to defend every day.
--
Wolf
TiffanyScreens 2.6 beta available for Mac users.
Version 2.6 of TiffanyScreens, the Presentation Sharing tool for Peer Groups, will also be made available soon. The 2.6 release will support OS X v10.5 Leopard and introduce new features like user-adjustable frame-rates during presentation broadcasting and improved full-screen switching when watching presentations.
Users on the Mac can download the current TiffanyScreens Release Candidate, which already supports new OS X 10.5 features like Spaces.
More information about TiffanyScreens can be found on the project's main Web site: http://www.tiffanyscreens.com; the download page provides access to the current Release Candidate (Mac only).
More information about TiffanyScreens can be found on the project's main Web site: http://www.tiffanyscreens.com; the download page provides access to the current Release Candidate (Mac only).
TiffanyScreens 2.6, with new features and compatible with Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard. Available Now.
Version 2.6 of TiffanyScreens, the Presentation Sharing tool for Peer Groups, is available. The new release support OS X v10.5 Leopard and introduces new features, like user-adjustable frame-rates during presentation broadcasting and improved full-screen switching when watching presentations.TiffanyScreens 2.6 is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux and more information about TiffanyScreens can be found on the project's main Web site: http://www.tiffanyscreens.com.
TiffanyScreens is a the multi platform application that seamlessly captures your computer's screen-content and sends it to multiple other computers at the same time. TiffanyScreens is great for sharing PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations.
TiffanyScreens is the first truly cross-platform tool to share presentations (or any screen content) with your peer group, without requiring a projector.
Mac Mini the 3rd.
A couple weeks ago we had bid fare well to the Power Mac G5 and while I was considering replacing it with a MacBook Pro, I eventually went with a Mac Mini, making it the 3rd one in the house (there were already Tom's G4 based mini, and the Media Center Core Solo based mini).
The newest addition is a 2 GHz Core-2-Duo based mini, upgraded to 2 GB RAM; and having all the other minis around, makes it easy to compare things like speed, runtime temperature, etc. and since I did the memory upgrade myself, we also looked inside, comparing the internals.
The newest addition is a 2 GHz Core-2-Duo based mini, upgraded to 2 GB RAM; and having all the other minis around, makes it easy to compare things like speed, runtime temperature, etc. and since I did the memory upgrade myself, we also looked inside, comparing the internals.
Like expected, the new mini looks not only externally,but also internally just like the older and long discontinued Core-Solo. The wire connecting the Airport-card with the antenna got routed differently - but not by much. The new Core-Duo has a Hitachi harddisk (2.5" SATA, 120 GB, 5400 RPM), while the Core-Solo came with the Fujitsu (2.5" SATA, 60 GB, 5400 RPM).
The Core-Solo run 1.5GHz, the Core-2-Due at 2.0 GHz and that really shows in the temperature measurements we did at what we though are comparable loads.
But enough with boring comparisons and temperature statistics. The new Mac Mini is performing well, much faster and also much quieter than the already almost silent G5. Moreover, combined with a cinema screen and the new Apple keyboard, it looks nice and less intimidating than the G5, at least in a home-office environment.
BTW, check out Tom's new PodCast The Tech Weekly Podcast on iTunes.
The Core-Solo run 1.5GHz, the Core-2-Due at 2.0 GHz and that really shows in the temperature measurements we did at what we though are comparable loads.
But enough with boring comparisons and temperature statistics. The new Mac Mini is performing well, much faster and also much quieter than the already almost silent G5. Moreover, combined with a cinema screen and the new Apple keyboard, it looks nice and less intimidating than the G5, at least in a home-office environment.
BTW, check out Tom's new PodCast The Tech Weekly Podcast on iTunes.
Black Friday 2007
Mt. Laguna on Back Friday 2007
Instead of hitting the mall... It's almost always kind of quiet and never crowded up there. However, on days like this, it's especially silent and deserted, just the way I like it.
Sh!t We Like - External Harddrives Pt1
Replacing the PowerMac G5 with a Mac Mini (Core-2-Duo) has worked out great so far; I really do enjoy this small, fast, and quiet computer. However, to put Mac OS X Leopard's new integrated backup program a.k.a Time Machine to work, requires a 2nd harddrive. Luckily, I had removed the secondary harddrive, which we had added just a couple months ago, from the PowerMac, before selling it and finding a nice external enclosure for the 3.5" SATA drive shouldn't be all that hard.
Acomdata Samba USB Enclosure Kit Black
Acomdata Samba USB Enclosure Kit Black
The harddrive at hand is a 250B Seagate ST3250823AS, a pretty regular 7200 RPM drive with 8MByte buffer - the spec. is available here: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/sata/cuda72008_sata_pm.pdf.
After looking around for a while, I finally settled on the black acomdata samba hard drive enclosure, which supports both 3.5" SATA or PATA drives.
It's a fanless enclosure but has air vents on front and back; it comes with a shielding cage, an important feature, not to be found in really cheap enclosures. Most importantly however, the acomdata 701 Samba Hard Drive Enclosure comes with one of the better power supplies: a 12V 2A AC wall-adapter. Most of the 3.5" hard drive enclosures that are in the Samba's price range come with really cheap dual voltage (12V 5V 1.5A) AC adapters, the ones with the S-Video style connector.
Taking a closer look at the aforementioned Seagate SATA drive spec reveals that the drive requires a startup current of 12V 2.8 amps, which even the Samba just barely provides. However, cheaper enclosures like the POWMAX 3.5" eSATA USB2.0 EMVESAT35 (a.k.a Moving Star) for instance aren't able to start the drive half the time.
Sh!t We Like - External Harddrives Pt2
Putting the spare 3.5" SATA hard drive we had laying around, into a nice external enclosure, was easy and economically the right thing to do. In External Harddrives Pt1, we pointed out the importance of looking at the drive's power requirements and comparing that with the enclosure's power supply parameters. One week back in service again, the now nicely enclosed Seagate ST3250823AS SATA drive has been working great so far and is used by Mac OS X Leopard's new integrated backup program a.k.a Time Machine.
I really like the looks of the black Acomdata Samba USB Enclosure but it's kind of big, considering that sits right next to a Mac Mini. Also, the required 12V AC wall-adapter makes this a pretty much stationary device, not suited for moving around a lot.
LaCie Portable Hard Drive
Instead, a really cool and portable external hard drive is the LaCie 160 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive. The compact (3 x .65 x 5 in / 76 x 17 x 129 mm ) and very lightweight (6.35 oz / 180 g ) device houses a 2.5" 5400 rpm hard drive. This is arguably the best looking external drive but what's even better is that there is also a FireWire 400 (up to 35-40MB/s) version available.
I really like the looks of the black Acomdata Samba USB Enclosure but it's kind of big, considering that sits right next to a Mac Mini. Also, the required 12V AC wall-adapter makes this a pretty much stationary device, not suited for moving around a lot.
LaCie Portable Hard Drive
Instead, a really cool and portable external hard drive is the LaCie 160 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive. The compact (3 x .65 x 5 in / 76 x 17 x 129 mm ) and very lightweight (6.35 oz / 180 g ) device houses a 2.5" 5400 rpm hard drive. This is arguably the best looking external drive but what's even better is that there is also a FireWire 400 (up to 35-40MB/s) version available.
But it is not just the size and weight that makes this the perfectly portable solution, it's how the device gets powered. There is no power supply. The LaCie 160 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive gets powered through the USB or FireWire cable and for computers equipped with a low powered USB or FireWire port, the bundled USB power-sharing cable helps turn the drive on by drawing extra power from a second USB port.
A performance test done by ZDNet Australia shows that for sustained speeds the LaCie blazed over both USB2.0 and other Firewire drives.
A performance test done by ZDNet Australia shows that for sustained speeds the LaCie blazed over both USB2.0 and other Firewire drives.
Sustained Transfer Rate (MB/s)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
LaCie Mobile Hard Drive 160GB (Firewire)
35.7
Western Digital
Passport 250GB (USB2.0)
30.5
IoMega Portable Hard Drive 160GB (Firewire)
27.2
LaCie Mobile Hard Drive 160GB (USB2.0)
25.8
IoMega Portable Hard Drive 160GB (USB2.0)
25.7
Seagate
FreeAgent Go 160GB (USB2.0)
22.5
TiffanyScreens v2.6.1 beta available for Mac users.
Version 2.6.1 of TiffanyScreens, the Presentation Sharing tool for Peer Groups, will be available soon. This point release will contain performance improvements as well as nicely refreshed UI. Users on a Mac can already download a TiffanyScreens 2.6.1 Release Candidate.
More information about TiffanyScreens can be found on the project's main Web site: http://www.tiffanyscreens.com; the download page provides access to the current Release Candidate (Mac only).
More information about TiffanyScreens can be found on the project's main Web site: http://www.tiffanyscreens.com; the download page provides access to the current Release Candidate (Mac only).
Sh!t We Like - Mini Disk Adapters
Even before writable mini disks, the 8-centimeter in diameter small CDs and DVDs (a.k.a Pocket-CD), became available/affordable, I really liked that small form-factor. Today you find mini disks included with some computer accessories, used as a cheap way to include drivers and other software. Some video cameras use writable mini DVDs for content recording. However, I don't think those small silver optical disk became very popular ever and the rise of the slot loading drives surely didn't help.It used to be that only on Apple computers one would predominately find slot loading optical drives (CD and DVD drives) while on PCs the less expansive but often faster tray loading drives were used. Generally, slot loading drives seem to be more convenient and offer a very clean look but are also more prone to jamming; most importantly however, slot loading drives don't accept 3" mini DVDs or Pocket CDs and Apple warns about using those.
Warning: The optical drive in your Mac mini supports standard circular 12 cm discs. Irregularly shaped discs or discs smaller than 12 cm are not supported. Noncircular or small discs may become lodged in the drive.
In the past I have frequently used Pocket CDs, which have 210 MB or 24 audio-minutes of storage space and also Mini DVDs, which have 1.4GB or 33 video minutes of storage space. These 3-Inch CDs and DVDs are quite cool, easy to carry and due to their small size also very easy to ship. The disks are much harder to crack and they also fit nicely into a regular mailing envelope.Considering an AppleInsider report about a patent applications filed by Apple, concerning different 8 cm to 12 cm optical disk adapters, it looks like Apple finds those smaller disks convenient as well. However, there really is no need to wait for Apple to ship such a thing, with a little luck you may be able to pick up a Mini CD Adapter from Philips or Memorex.
I admit the Memorex model looks somewhat fragile and I'm sure that there is a reason why it's sold in packs of three.
Update
We have tested the Memorex Mini Disk Adapter in an iBook, a PowerBook, a MacMini G4, a Mac Mini Core-Solo and a Mac Mini Core-2-Duo. It worked perfectly fine in all Macs but the Core-2-Duo Mini. However, it's not the Mac Mini but rather the DVD-RW drive, which is to blame here.Meaning, the adapter worked fine in these drives:
- MATSHITA CD-RW CW-8124 Firmware: DACD
- MATSHITA CD-RW CW-8124 Firmware: DACH
- MATSHITA CD-RW CW-8123 Firmware: CA10
- PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-K06 Firmware: Q614
Just by looking at the small number of Macs I have access to, I found CD-RW and DVD-RW drives from Matshita, Pioneer, and Panasonic and it looks like that Apple buys the least expensive instead of the best and most reliable drive. Maybe Apple really is the new Dell.
We also tested the adaptor in a Sony CD player and an AVEX DVD player. The CD and DVD player had regular horizontally deployed tray loading drives and an adapter would not have been necessary, however, a mini CD put into the adapter played perfectly fine in both devices.
Java SE 6 Developer Preview for the Mac is back
So Apple finally brought the Java 6 Preview back and made it available to the Apple Developer Community via their ADC program. However, there are restrictions:
The Java SE 6 Developer Preview 8 requires
The Java SE 6 Developer Preview 8 requires
- A 64-bit capable Intel-based Mac, meaning your Mac needs to have either a Intel Core 2 Duo or Intel Xeon processor.
- Mac OS X v10.5.1 or later installed
For Intel 32-bit processors, like Intel Core-Sole or Core Due, that aren't supported by Apple's Java-6 Preview there is still a Java 6 Port for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 available: SoyLatte
PowerPC based Macs, like iBooks, PowerBooks, and PowerMac G4s and G5s are left completely in the dark, when it comes to Java-6 support.
Autumn Sunset in Carlsbad, California
Autumn Sunset in Carlsbad, California
Alcazar Garden
Inside San Diego's Balboa Park Alcazar Garden
Alcazar Garden, named because its design is patterned after the gardens of Alcazar Castle in Seville, Spain, lies adjacent to the Art Institute and Mingei Museum. It is known for its ornate fountains, exquisite turquoise blue, yellow, and green Moorish tiles and shady pergola. This formal garden, bordered by boxwood hedges, is planted with 7,000 annuals for a vibrant display of color throughout the year. The garden has been reconstructed to replicate the 1935 design by San Diego architect Richard Requa.
Happy New Year
No matter if you come here regularly or just happen to stumble upon this website or RSS feed, please accept my best wishes for the New Year.
Since there isn't much else to blog about, I've added a short PHP function, to the ever growing library that powers this site and feed. It will simply generate all blog entries of the past year on a single page: http://wolfpaulus.com/2007/
Thanks to flickr, photos that I have uploaded during the past year can be accessed through this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfpaulus/archives/date-taken/2007/
Enjoy this short throwback, while I'm wishing you and yours all the best for a happy 2008.