Citrix ICA Client SSL Error 61

The great thing about Citrix is that you can access company resources from almost anywhere. They have several solutions for remote access and thin client computing. They also have an ICA client for Apple OSX (Yeeehaaaaa).

I've been using the OSX ICA Client for a couple of months now to access my mail on the company intranet. Apart from some little quirks (like not functioning well when having two displays), the experience is good. Up till now.

Today, completely out of the blue came this error:

The error message suggests that I have changed something on my Mac, but not that I know. For someone who works with PKI, one would think that they would remember choosing NOT to trust a public VeriSign CA.

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Data Robotics Drobo Review

About a month ago, I bought a Drobo to expand my hard disk storage. Normally you would buy an additional hard disk to add storage. Problem with that is that those drives will eventually fill up with all sorts of important information.
Every time you add or replace disk you need to move data around, which takes a lot of time.

The Drobo is an external enclosure which holds up to 4 SATA disk drives. The enclosure can be connected via FireWire800 or USB2.0, and is seen by the OS as a removable drive.

Your data stored on the drobo is secured when you use 2 or more drives. 1 disk drive is used for redundancy. So if one drive fails your data is still there.

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Screengrabbing in FireFox

On Windows PC's I use SnagIt from TechSmith for screencaptures etc. On OSX I use the built-in capabilities of OSX for capturing screens, windows, or areas, but there was something missing...

SnagIt can capture large windows within *cough*Internet Explorer*cough* or Firefox as one image. So no need for a capture, scroll down, capture again etc. This feature isn't available in OSX, or any (commercial) capturing software I could get my hands on. Until I ran into Screengrab.

Screengrab is a FireFox extension which allows you to save an entire webpage as an image (jpg or png). Excellent extension if I may say so.

Unpredictable Exposures

When shooting from a tripod and/or with Live View on your (d)SLR you may find strangely exposed photos. Some are darker than others.

This could be related to the light seeping in through the ocular on your camera. Normally you have your eye against the ocular, but when you use e.g. Live View on your camera, you watch the LCD. This leaves the ocular 'open', and unwanted light might enter the camera and screw up the exposure of the photos you're taking.

I created a small example were I shot several high-speed images (in Aperture priority mode) while I used a small flashlight to pass a beam of light over the back of the body (e.g. car lights passing by in low light circumstances). I made sure that I also 'touched' the ocular with the beam of light.

You can see that the exposure goes from normal to dark, and back to 'normal'.

I haven't found any real differences when you're shooting under normal circumstances, but when (a strong) light is shining in or on the ocular, you might be in trouble.

Backup Strategy

Most things, if not everything, are stored on digital media nowadays. Parts of your life are registered on your hard disks, CD's, and DVD's. But what if one of those fail? Do you have a backup?

Backing up to optical media (like CD and DVD) is cheap, but with cheap also comes questionable quality. Will those files you've backed up two years ago still open? I don't know, and I don't care actually. I back everything up to external drives. A 500GB drives is cheaper than a spindle of DVD's matching the storage capacity, and a harddisk is faster and can be reused if nessecary. Another drawback of DVD's is that they have a relatively small capacity. I would need tons of DVD's just to backup my photos.

Most of my work is being done on my iMac. Attached to my iMac is a Firewire drive configured for Timemachine. This is done for quick and easy access to the average screw-up on my behalf (like deleting a file or directory by mistake).
At least once a week, or after certain events, like shooting a gazillion photos, I make a backup to my local server (which could as well be a network attached storage device, or a USB/FW drive). This backup remains onsite. For real disasters (like the burning down of my house) I have an offsite backup. This backup is made on a small 320GB 2.5inch USB drive (<€100) and runs whenever I think I need to do that.  This drive is encrypted with Truecrypt, so if someone steals the disk, they don't have access to my (precious/private) data.

Ideally, you could store drives with a friend or family. Every time you visit you exchange the drive. You do need at least two offsite drives for this to work.

The only thing that can go wrong (in the terms of data loss) is that the house burns down with me in it, while I'm backing up for offsite storage. Well, in that case I don't need the backup since I won't be around needing it ever again...... Or when Murphy visits.

I did think about a real online offsite storage solution (like Amazons S3 service), but the problem is my Internet upload speed. E.g. if I shoot 8GB of photos on one day it take almost two days to upload that to any service. Furthermore, online storage of >100GB of data aint cheap either. So, the offsite disk drive is a relatively simple, easy and cheap solution giving (me) a good backup strategy.

Cloning and Exchanging MacBook Hard Disk

Recently I bought a new MacBook (late 2008 edition). Since Apple charges the world for options I got the cheapest one available, and decided to upgrade the hard disk and/or memory when I saw the time fit. Well, that time has come.

Today I got a new Western Digital Scorpio Black 7.200rpm 320GB (WD3200BJKT) for €85.00 to replace the default 160GB 5400 rpm drive.Even though the risk is minimal, there's always the risk of screwing things up. So ...

CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

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Uninstall SafeSign on OSX

While the installation of the SafeSign software is relatively easy, the removal of the software is a bit harder. The installation package lacks an automated removal feature. So removing the driver/application must be done by hand.

The removal of the software (both the SafeSign as well as the TokenLounge software) can be reconstructed by analyzing the original packages/installation scripts.

WARNING: Before you continue, you need to realize that this uninstall procedure is without ANY warranties. So make a backup BEFORE proceding.

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OSX and Aladdin eToken

Due to the nature of my work, and my fondness of Apple products I wasn't able to get my Aladdin eTokens working with OSX. After several months of not trying to crack this I decided to try it again.
The trigger for me was stumbling on the possibility of adding so-called keyfiles to the eToken for accessing TrueCrypt volumes.

First challenge was the eToken PKI software for OSX... Thankfully I'm a Certified eToken guru, so I've got access to their download area (you will have to get your own software). The current version of the eToken software for OSX is v4.55. I installed the Aladdin software on OSX 10.5.5.

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OSX Finder Replacement

This week I heard a tip on one of the TWiT podcasts about a OSX Finder replacement. Finder in OSX is what the Windows Explorer is for Windows. You use it to browse around your PC, copy, rename and launch programs.

Ever since I switched to Mac I encountered a couple of drawbacks on the OSX Finder;

• No Cut&Paste option (CMD-X doesn't work on files)
• Pressing 'Return' on a file is opening the rename 'dialog'. (CMD-O to open files).
• etc.

I know that OSX has the ability to remap keys, so that you can still use the (old) Windows commands/keys, but I like things to be as default as it can be.

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FireFox 3 Color Management

In the 'old' days, Safari was probably the only Internet browser with some decent color management. The problem was that images displayed in Firefox and Internet Explorer looked a bit desaturated and lighter.

Now, in FireFox 3 you have the opportunity of enabling color management. Just set the following configuration option to 'true' (by double clicking) in the FireFox configuration settings (to access the config-part of FireFox, just type about:config in the address bar).

gfx.color_management.enabled

This feature is turned off by default. Restart firefox and be amazed by the colors in your photos on the Internet