the second alpha is available for download
download app for the milk alpha 0150
changes:
the alpha version of my app for the milk application is now available for download.
app for the milk alpha download
Go check it out and help me by providing feedback.
I just finished the demo video for my remember the milk desktop client project called “app for the milk”.
please check it out and pass it around!
today I published my first air application, called iSurveill. A simple webcam surveillance application that takes snapshots with a webcam and saves them to the computer. It’s not very sufisticated but as a first try it will do. The application is now available on my website http://www.chrillo.info/isurveill/ and hopefully it will soon be available in the adobe air market place.
Now that I have my mac mini set up as my home server I also wanted to backup its system drive to preserve all the configuration. I have an Airport extreme basestation that has a 500GB hard drive hooked up to it. I have used it to back up my mac book pro over the air and it worked just fine. When I tried to select it as the backup drive for my mac mini the time machine preference pane would crash every time. So I played arround with it and it appears that time machine is now able to backup to any afp:// file server. It is important that you mount it using the following instructions and not just click on it in the finder. It appears that apple does something differently when using the shares in finder.
This is done by pressing command + K in finder and using OS X built in ability to connect to different file servers
connect to server
You might get prompted for user name and password. Once connected the afp source shows up in your finder.
afp source
In my case that is the airport extreme base station called chrillo.Airport with the hard drive. This could also be another mac. Now head over to your time machine preferences and the click the change drive button.
remote time machine backup
As you can see it shows up with its Ip address. In my case I used the internal Lan IP
In Mac OS X when you close the window of an application the app usually keeps running in the dock. Wheter this is a good thing or not is totally different story, but for apps like mail and ical it certainly is since I want my mail app to keep checking for new mail without the window cluttering up my screen. So what if I want to add such behaviour to an Adobe Air Application.
var appIsPersistant:Boolean=false
var app=NativeApplication.nativeApplication
var window=stage.nativeWindow;
public function set appPersistant(b:Boolean):void{ // adding a simple property to your app b:Boolean whether its stays on or not
appIsPersistant=b
if(b){
if(app!=null){
app.autoExit=false // preventing the app to exit if all windwows are closed
window.addEventListener(Event.CLOSING,hideWindow) // listening for the closing event of the main window
app.addEventListener(InvokeEvent.INVOKE,initWindow) // listening for the invoke event if the user clicks on the dock icon
app.addEventListener(Event.EXITING,appClose) // listening if the app should be terminated, to prevent the hiding of the window and allow termination
}
}else{
if(app!=null){
app.autoExit=true // if app is not persistant the app can close just as usual
}
}
}
public function appClose(e:Event):void{
window.removeEventListener(Event.CLOSING,hideWindow) // if the app should terminate with command + Q we have to remove the listener for the Closing event. Otherwise only the window will close but the app will not terminate
}
public function hideWindow(e:Event):void{
if(window.visible){ // if the window is visible the event behaviour is canceld and the window is hidden
e.preventDefault()
window.visible=false
}
}
function initWindow(e:Event=null):void{
window.activate() // if the user clicks on the dock icon the window commes back up
}
public function get appPersistant():Boolean{
return appIsPersistant // just the getter for the appPersistant propery
}
by adding these few methods your app will exit just fine with command + Q but if you click the close button only the window will close and the app keeps running and comes back up if you click the dock icon
Finally Apple released an update to the mac mini product line. I finally got mine and its already up and running. I set it up to be my HTPC, file server and web server. I want to go through each of these three topics and describe the configuration I used.
The mac mini is way too expensive for the hardware you get. I was really disappointed at first because they even raised the price from 439?(with student discount) t0 526?. For 550 euros I could get twice as much ram and way more disk space, eSata, blueray and hdmi output easily with a linux or windows machine. BUT OS X makes it still worth the money FOR ME. I do not agree with the back and forth disccussion about macs vs. pcs. A computer is a TOOL, like a car is for transportation. There is diffrent cars with different uses and different prices. Some cars are easy to drive some require a skilled driver… Everybody has to decide for himself if its worth the money and if it will do what you want it do in the way you want it to be done. Be glad there is a choice!
1 mac mini 3/2009, 2.0 GHZ, 2GB RAM
mac mini
Mac Mini – The mean reasons I chose the mac mini over other more powerful computer were that its really small and really really quite. The mini is inaudible and I really hated the constant buzz from my old server, even though I already spent way to much money on expensive CPU coolers. The power consumption is also quite low and since the server will be always on its a big plus. The display output options are sufficient. I use the included mini DVI to DVI adapter and connect it to an DVI to HDMI cable. As soon as reasonably priced mini display port to hdmi adapters hit the market I will change to that. I like the built in SPIDIF audio connectors and the built in Firewire 800 port. In combination witth the 2 FW800 enabled drives it is really faster than a USB 2.0 solution and not much more expensive.
2 Western Digital My Book Studio Edition 1 TB
Western Digital My Book Studio Edition
Western Digital My Book Studio Edition – Even though I had some problems with this type of hard drive before I chose them because of their low price and their ability to shut down when not in use. For a HTPC noise is a key factor. The new drives are really quiet in the first place but if the server or just the drives are not in use they turn off and are therefor completly silent. The only downturn to this is that when you want to access the drives it takes a couple of seconds to wake up from sleep but that is not a realy problem. The drives come with a 5 year warranty. Since I already experienced the rather smooth and fast exchange process of such a drive I do not expect any major worries in the next 5 years( In 5 years I hope we will be carrying Terrabytes on our thumb drives).
WD mybook 500GB pro edition
today my time machine backup broke again. I tried reformatting the drive, hooking it up to the computer directly, firewire, usb nothing worked. at first the computer sees the drive and is able to mount it but after a short time the drive simply turnes off during file transfers. I called up western digital techsupport to see how I can fix the problem:
the solution: the drive has a broken thermal control unit and this can only be fixed by getting your drive replaced.
so I signed up for western digitals RMA program and now I am waiting for a replacement drive to be shipped to me. the friendly tech support guy told me I might even get a mybook studio edition which would be quite nice. so I now I have to wait and see how this whole replacement things works out.
Update I @ 9.12.2008:
today I got a package from western digital. It had a probably used western digital 500GB studio edition in it. The being used part sucks I think but since I only sent in a mybook pro edition a used studio edition seems to be a fair trade. The inital setup worked just fine but about 5 attempts to create a new time machine backup failed. The disk mounts allright but at some point during the file transfer it simply shuts down again. if I then hit the power button at the back it comes back up and mounts again which the old one did not do. Anyhow this is just not right for a product with such a price and that is advertised to be “mad for a mac”. As I type time machine is backing up to the drive which is now hooked up to my airport extreme router. I will see if it will be able to complete the backup that way.
western digital 500 GB studio edition
Update II @ 10.12.2008:
Over night the backup of time machine finished successfully to the drive hooked up to my airport extreme. This morning I reconnected the drive via firewire 800 and deleted the old stuff, did two small backups all without problems. I take the drive now as working, since it will be hooked up via usb to the router anyway. Now I have to send Western Digital my old disk or they will charge me for the new one.
Update III @ 10.12.2008 22:56
around noon the drive did not wake up for a backup until i pulled the power plug. So I called up tech support and told them about it. He advised me to to perform a firmware upgrade which i did. after that everything seemed normal. But After rebooting the mac, I tried to launch the backup and it froze my mac. no piece of software or hardware has ever frozen my mac. I mean seriously this is an external hard drive not a crappy external tv card with weird drivers or anything. any 5 ? usb drive can do what this 150 ? piece can’t. I currently try to continue the backup. its been in a preparing state for ever and just as I type this it started to copy data , and it really finished. great. wonder what happens in an hour when the next backup is due. Anyhow I will call up tech support tomorrow again and have the drive replaced again. This is supposed to be a reliable backup solution. luckily i have mac girlfriends macbook to backup my critical data. I don’t know what I would do if I really needed the drive for work or anything. man I hate tech support!
One thing I know now for sure is I will get an offsite online backup solution, backblaze will be my choice. its 50$ a year thats about 40 euros a year. 150? for a WD studio Edition / 40 ? = more than 3 years. thats longer than the warranty of these drives.
Update IV @ 11.12.2008 1:01
now the drive appears to be working again. it finished serveral backups just fine while powering down in between. I will keep the laptop running all night to see if it can keep it up till next morning.
Update V @ 11.12.2008 9:44
the drive has beend working all night. finishing several backups powering up and down. I will keep the drive for testing over the weekend and decide monday whether to send it back or not.
Update VI @ 16.12.2008 23:05
I decided to give the drive another chance over the long weekend I had, and it worked. no more hickups, i open the lid of my macbook pro, i hear the drive power up, time machine does what it needs to do, the back up is finished, exactly ten minutes later the drive powers down. I mailed back my old mybook pro. hopefully it gets there before the holidays otherwise western digital is going to charge me the ridiculous amount of 384 dollars for the new 500GB studio edition which is like 150 ? at amazon. but I have faith in the postal service. I hope the drive lasts till I get my new mac mini server once the new models arrive at macworld in january. At this point I am totally clueless which external harddrives to get to extend the storage of the server, since I do not want to trust Western Digital with my really important data.
Update VII @ 22.09.2009 19:21
I have used the drive now since the last update without any further problems. I have been on vacation the last 2 weeks and after coming back, it powered up, backed up more than 13 Gigabytes and went back to sleep like a charm. This is how I want things to work.
I will keep updating this post as things progress.
In order to cut down on energy usage I wanted my allwayson windows XP server to hibernate when not in use. My network adapter supports wakeOnLan and I also had it configured in a minute. Make sure Wake on Lan is activated in your Bios as well as in the configuration menu of the networking card.
Wake On Lan settings on the server
be sure to check all three boxes. The last box makes sure your pc does not wake up from random networking traiffc.
this is what it looks like on a mac
Then I go to my macbook pro and fire up this tool http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/jpo/software/wakeonlan/ which is a small free but fully functional wake on lan tool for macs that is able to send the so called magic packets that wake up a computer in standby or hibernation mode. There are a ton of tools like this for windows as well. google is your friend.
wake550
So within the network everything works just fine. I put in the mac address and the broadcasting IP which usually is something like 192.168.x.255 and hit go. seconds later my server is booting up. very nice.
Wake on Lan over the internet through a Airport Extreme basestation is a different story. In theory all you had to do is forward the UDP port 9 to the broadcasting IP of 192.168.x.255. So any magic package that hits your router on the wan port is automatically broadcasted over your local network in order to find the machine that needs to be powered up. pretty simple in theory.
1. Update 4.5.2009
2. Update 20.5.2009
It is possible to do it over the internet on the long run. The important thing to understand is that the Airport extreme basestation still will not allow any broadcasting of outside traffic. It can be done however if you manually specifiy the ip address for the computer that should wake up. your are very likely to have your Airport Extreme Basestation hand out IP addresses to devices using DHCP. Your computer needs an IP reservation that will give it the same Ip every time it is on, so the magic package will always reach the correct machine. you can make such a reservation in the Airport utility at internet –> DHCP. The AEBS will only remeber the computer with the IP reservation for a short amount of time so it is not a long term solution.
You need the computers mac address to make this reservation, usually something like this xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx. Then head over to you computer’s network settings and asign the same IP you just reserverd manually to the computer.
Now you have to forward the UDP 9 port in the airport utility. Unlike previously assumed you do not want to forward it to the broadcasting IP but to the specific IP you asigned to the computer.
forwarding the udp 9 port
http://ifatwww.et.uni-magdeburg.de/wol/
http://stephan.mestrona.net/wol/
here is a really good german explaination of the entire issue.
Bottom Line:
it is possible to use wake on lan within your local network/subnet if you have an Apple Airport Extreme Basestation, but it is not possible to wake up your machine over the internet since the AEBS will not forword the magic packages coming in at the UDP 9 Port.
It is possible to do wake on lan over the internet and on your local lan with your airport extreme basestation. Thanks a bunch for the commenter who came up with this idea!
It is possible to do wake a lan over the internet but after a short time the AEBS “forgets” the link to the computer and it will not work any more. Sry for the messy post, I will clean it up once I have figuered the damn problem out!
A year ago my Sony viao laptop broke while I was on a business trip in the Ukraine. After the 4 month nightmare I went through I just wanted to forget about Sony but now since my macbook pro broke as well I want to post the story and compare the Sony tech support with the apple tech support.
So I left my Sony viao notebook in the office for three weeks without ever turning it on and leaving the battery inside the casing – Don’t do that. Take the battery out – When I returned after three weeks the notebook was dead and there was no way of turning it back on. The battery somehow went dead during the three weeks of not using it and took along the main board.
So there I was in the Ukraine with another 4 weeks of work ahead of me without a laptop. Bad if you work as a webdesigner.
So I tried to call Sony support in Austria. Impossible since they use some weird phonesystem that can not be reached from abroad.
My dad called them and they told him there is no support for viao in Ukraine, and the support guy also pointed out that of is my fault If I travel to such “underdeveloped” countries like Ukraine.
Alright so I was lucky to borrow a computer from a colleague since there was no way of getting the broken laptop to Austria. A week before I went back to Austria a couple of friends came to visit me in Kiev and they took the laptop with them so Sony could finally pick it up for repair.
When I got back a week later the laptop was still at home waiting for Sony and it took another week till they picked it up. We are now 5 weeks from the day it broke.
After two weeks into repair I called Sony to find out how my notebook was doing. The online tool for support status did not work of course. The support guy told me that the main board was fried and they needed to order a new one and that it will take about another ten days.
I called after two weeks. The guy told me there are no more main boards for this two year old notebook so I will receive a replacement and Sony will call me with an offer. They never called.
I called again. By then I already know the thirty digits to dial by hearth. Well he was really surprised I haven’t gotten an offer yet and he will send a massage to sales again since they are in charge now. 2 months after the laptop broke.
Sales never called, so I called sales. Sales told me they are not in charge. So I called tech again. Again and again. By then I already knew the names of most call center employees, but I was refused to talk to a manager in charge. They don’t talk to clients.
After another week or so I finally got an offer. A laptop far worse than mine, but I accepted in order to avoid further delays and because was already determined to buy a mac at that point.
After a while I called again to ask about the shipment of the new notebook. They did not know anything about a new laptop to be shipped. I was alrwady tired of yelling to the stupid support people, but within a few days the finally managed to order a new laptop for me.
In the beginning of November I finally got my new useless piece of shit Sony vaio notebook.
I sold it in order to refinance my macbook pro that had been shipped to me two weeks before Sony’s even though the orders for both were placed in the same week.
Bottom line :
Do not buy a Sony product ever again!
They don’t care about customer satisfaction!
I hate Sony and their incompetent team of call center monkeys!