phi(geek)

In case you use NeoOffice and wonder why you don't get the normal TT fonts in OO under X11 - you need to copy the ttf files to /Applications/OpenOffice.org\ 2.0.app/Contents/openoffice.org2.0/share/fonts/. Restart OO and there they are.

Dear Apple: after the latest update (to OS X 10.4.6) I cannot synchronize with my Sony Ericsson K700i anymore. The exact error message is:

[phK700i] There was an error getting data from the phone. The synchronization may have been cancelled on the phone. Device "phK700i" synchronization failed.

What should I do? - The answer is of course darn, why break stuff that works? This Apple Support article mentiones that there may be problems, but offers no solutions. Still working on it ...

Update:found the solution in Apples Support Discussions. It involves changing back the sync protocol used for the K700. Edit the file /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist so the string in the InheritsFrom array says family.com.sony-ericsson.legacy. (Note: the forums mention some other possibilities, but legacy sounded best to me.)

Suddenly, my fink installation stopped working with weird perl error messages. Some research showed that with one of the lates Security Updates Apples fixed rsync; it does not support the --delete switch anymore. So to get fink up and running again, install rsync in fink and rename /usr/bin/rsync to something different (or change the directory order in your path).

Just resolved an annoing issue: when ssh'ing with public key authentication, SSHKeychain did not ask me for the keychain password, but I got the Please enter your passphrase in Terminal. Checking Manage (and modify) global environment variables solved the problem (in Preferences/Environment). Of course, manually exporting SSH_AUTH_SOCK would be worked too.

all rightie ... decided to reinstall os x on the ibook. the partitioning scheme was just too messed up. while the install went smooth, it always takes a while to reinstall all the useful nitty gritty stuff ...

finally got a nice configuration for wireless access on debian working: witht the ifup wlan0=iu or wlan0=phiwlan i can directly pass on a string to ifup that looks up a section in /etc/network/interfaces and configures the wireless card accordingly. with openvpn (finally no more kernel patching, always a pain with pcmcia-cs and modules ...) i get stable access at iu.

have to return 2 books about feebsd and one about xsl-fo to the library, w/o having opened them once. no time!!

bad news: seems to be unfeasible to put linux on my wlan router. some guys tried and got a kernel running, but not production level. again - stay away from netgear.

still working on reflashing my wlan-pccard with a good firmware ...

but a least apradar works (or better: worked yesterday). had to compile from source, not in debian sarge. it stopped working after a reboot, thought. may need to tweak some /etc/network/interfaces stuff.

spiderzilla on mac seems to be hard to get, too. did not work on debian sarge x86 either ... so i just continue using webhttrack.

after converting quite some packages to deb (with alien), i realized the kewlest method was to use dpkg-scanpackages and adding a file: ... line to sources.list. now i can install realplayer, j2re, opera etc. with apt-get!

some upcoming projects: get a bsd server, solars 10 will be free!

i dropped the win98-inside-bochs on os x project - it's just way too slow. takes like 25 minutes to start win98, and the processor get's very hot :)

sorry but for now virtual pc seems to be the best solution - keep an eye on darwine.

since i need a virtual firewall lab on (any) of my laptops, i try user mode linux on debian with my linux network (mln). i don't really think it will work since the processor is slow, the harddisk too, only 256mb ram plus like 4gb free space for images ...

any good suggestion for having a virtual network on os x is appreciated!!

trying to get my external firewire-ibm-harddisk to work with both windows, linux and os x. partition table must be windows-style, else commercial software on windows is a must (according to my knowledge). so partition on win, make two fat32 partitions, move to os x, reformat with newfs_hfs /dev/diskNsX. only unresolved problem: the hfs partition does not get mounted automatically.

how to create a iso-file from a cd under os x? dd does the job, but the input file is somewhat unlogical - it's /dev/diskNs1 (not the whole diskN as I would have expected). the iso file can be burned to cd.

hm just discovered another intersting side of bios: basic input output system is the official explanation of the acronym, but bios is a greek word at the same time. the meaning? life!
:: wikipedia

i have been trying to set up the netgear ma401 under linux for alooong time, without success. finally i got it working with the hostap_cs module (under 2.6.8 kernel), but there's room for improvement.

the linux-wlan-ng stuff never worked with me (neither on the 2.4 or 2.6 kernel - lots of weird compilation errors, or even kernel panics). stay away from netgear products, they are a pain in the **** (butt, of course) for using with linux.

at the same time i am testing win98se in bochs under debian - was hard to figure out how to create 1:1 image of a floppy disk under mac os x (disk utiliy does a lot of stuff, but not what i wanted). it worked at the end, installing win98 took like 20 hrs. compared to microsoft virtual pc - 35 minutes ...