Free Lonely Planet City Guides for iPhone

Not being able to fly has its advantages. In response to the widespread chaos caused by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano (pronounced as 'whatever'), Lonely Planet is offering 13 of its European iPhone guides for free (as in 'free beer').

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Installing & Configuring CentOS 5.4 (Day 2)

Oké. Day 2. After the successful installation and configuration of CentOS with Adobe Coldfusion, I needed to install MySQL as a database. So, I started the virtual machine, and found out why Linux will (probably) never cut it as a common desktop environment.

X11 - No DesktopYesterday I (properly) shutdown the system (which had the GNOME Desktop), and today it started with some back to the 60's desktop. Every icon gone. All that I'm left with was a terminal window, clock, and a FireFox window. This environment is the basic X11 desktop.

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Adobe Coldfusion 9 on CentOS 5.4 (x64)

Updated on Monday, April 5, 2010 at 18:53 by Willem

A while back I figured out how to install Adobe (could have been Macromedia back then) Coldfusion MX on an Ubuntu linux server. This config still runs as it should, but in the mean time several things have changed in the world of software. I've been leaning towards Centos 5.4, and Adobe released Coldfusion 9 somewhere in 2009. These two 'events' made me decide to combine the two.

Before I continue, I must warn you that the Coldfusion installer is still broken..... So there's some manipulation of code involved.

Since the new 'server' is going to run in a virtual environment I started in a VMWare Workstation. This way I could make snapshots of my progress. This made it easier to start from scratch. The problem with Linux and me is that I tend to reinstall the OS when things go haywire. So VMWare is a safe way out in this case.

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Point & Shoot Off-Camera Flashing

The general consensus on flashing is that you should take the flash of the camera (take the flash off the damn camera). It just results in better (more flattering) photos In some cases this is impossible. Especially when the flash is integrated. But there's hope. There are several point & shoot camera's (P&S) that feature a hot-shoe. The Panasonic Lumix LX3 [1] is one of those camera's.

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Lens and Focal Length Statistics

Have you ever wondered which lens you used the most? Or what focal length is your favorite? The results of these queries can be used to decide what new lens to get; a (ultra)wide-angle, normal, or telephoto lens.
Well, there is an answer for both questions. The first (which lens) is relatively easy when you're using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Just select the metadata filter in the library view and examine the results.

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iPhone 3GS Tethering with Firmware 3.1.3

Updated on Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 8:38 by Willem

With the release of firmware 3.1.3 the tethering option is back on the iPhone. After the reboot of the iPhone you get additional fields in the 'Cellular Data Network' section in the 'Network' menu (Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network). Just enter the appropriate information in the APN field (for KPN in the Netherlands enter internet in the APN field) and the Internet Tethering option is back (w00t) in the 'Network' menu.

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Extend Windows System Partition under VMWare

When working with Virtual Machines (VM's) you probably work with templates (and/or) clones to create new VM's. When you do this, you basically get a fixed drive with this. The size of the drives are basically the size from when you created them in the past. Since people put more and more crap programs in these VM's, you'll need more, and more diskspace.

Under VMWare it's relatively simple to add space to a virtual disk (vmdk), or even add an additional disk to the VM. The problem is that this works for creating additional partitions or extend existing NON primary system partitions. This means that you can't enlarge your C: partition, a partition where (under normal circumstances) all your programs are installed.

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Deleting Locked Files in OSX

During the migration of the data on my dad's (*cough*) Windows computer to his new iMac, we ran into lot's of locked files. Usually you get the information on a specific file (⌘ + i) and deselect the 'Locked' option in the 'General' part. It's basically impossible to remove all the locks by hand, so I needed a quicker way to remove these locks.

It seems that there's a command available in Terminal to do this. The following command removed the Locks from all the files in the current directory AND all the sub-directories.

chflags -R nouchg *

More info on the chflags command can be found in the Terminal by typing man chflags, or by visiting this page.

The cause of the locked files in my case was that we copied the data from a read-only network share (to prevent that information might get lost in copy/move actions during the migration). Reading from read-only media results in locked files (or so it seems).

Management Through SSH

SSH (Secure Shell) is a secure alternative to the ancient Telnet program/protocol. Telnet (and SSH) allows a user to connect to a remote server, and enables the users to use a command line interface to execute commands (manage the server).

Where Telnet is relatively limited in its functionality, SSH has a bunch of features which enables the user to do much more. The SSH protocol has the possibility to tunnel traffic through an SSH connection (read: tunnel). The big advantage is that everything going through the tunnel is heavily encrypted (which is good).

The tool best known to use SSH is SFTP (FTP over SSH). A secure alternative of the 'old' (in plaintext communicating) File Transfer protocol.

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Apple OS X Leopard, Nokia N95 and Dialup Networking

One of the things I forgot to backup were the setting for Dialup Networking (DUN) on my MacBook. I use a Nokia N95 with a flatfee UMTS/HSDPA subscription. Both the MacBook and Nokia N95 have Bluetooth capabilities, so it should be a match made in heaven... Well, not completely.

You need specific settings AND files for getting this to work. First of all, Apple does supply several modem scripts for several phones/providers, but not the HSDPA/N95 combination.

Thankfully, I found this blogposting providing the modem scripts (local version). Having those makes it a lot easier.

Just unzip the file and place the scripts in the following folder:

/Library/Modem Scripts/

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