I’m not in love with the subject of the photo, but the colors are mesmerizing. At least, I think so.
Self portrait
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Author Archives: scottr
Looking-glass self
My youngest daughter – not quite five and a half years old – took this outstanding photo. The composition is almost entirely hers. (I added edge blur and tweaked the color, but nothing else… she chose the subject, framed it, shot it, done.)
Wild.
Mail.app vs. STARTTLS
I’m sorry, dear reader, if your eyes glaze over when you see acronyms and acronym-like things. If you aren’t interested in the usually fascinating world of email client configuration, feel free to stop reading now. I won’t feel bad.
Still with me? (Seriously, this is dry stuff…)
Okay, okay, I’ll get on with it already.
I’ve had a problem with my mail setup for some time due to the fact that I run two separate mail servers, but they live behind a NAT device on a single IP address. It doesn’t matter what the reason is; suffice it to say that (a) I won’t use an unencrypted mail connection over the Internet and (b) it’s not possible to map the same port – in this case the IMAP SSL port, TCP port 993 – to two different machines. Thus begins my odyssey into Mac OS X’s Mail.app and IMAP account configuration.
What I discovered is this: when configured with an IMAP account, Mail.app does indeed support the IMAP STARTTLS command. While I didn’t perform an exhaustive search, I believe this is not documented. Here’s how to do it:
- Configure a normal IMAP account, if you don’t have one set up already. (It’s up to you to figure out where you can do this. This particular exercise is beyond the scope of this article.)
- Edit the account, and on the Advanced tab, look to the bottom to find the “Use SSL” checkbox. Notice that it doesn’t mention TLS. Check it anyway.
- Finally, change the port from 993 back to 143. Magic happens here. Just trust me.
Now, if your IMAP server supports TLS, Mail.app will automatically attempt to use it. Beware; if you are using a self-signed certificate, or a certificate that is not signed by a trusted certificate authority (CA), it appears to fail without so much as a peep as to precisely why.
With this setup, I’m now able to access both mail servers, one on port 143 with STARTTLS, and the other on port 993 with a standard SSL connection. w00t!
Enjoy…
Who is this weirdo, anyway
i’ve (re-)discovered a note that i had written some time ago. It goes like this…
Subject: Odd thing to think about Date: October 17, 2004 8:22:13 PM CDT double cheeseburger without pickles undefiled pickle-less state
i have no idea, whatsoever, where i was going with this thought. i assume it was amusing at the time.
The Early Adopter Tax (an open letter to Apple, Inc.)
Dear Apple,
I’m not happy.
Not at all.
Thanks for dropping the price $200 on my phone… 27 days after I bought it. Yes, I realize that this is long after your return policy applies, by a whole 13 days. Still… two hundred dollars?! One word: ouch.
Some people are looking for a refund. Some people want iTunes Music Store credits. I really don’t agree with either proposal, because to a certain extent I agree with those who said that the phone was worth it when I paid for it; clearly it still is now. These things are essentially cash out of pocket for you and it’s hard for me to condone penalizing you solely for selling something at a price that the market will bear. However, the magnitude of the price drop suggests that I was, perhaps, being gouged. That, precisely, is why I’m not happy.
What I propose to you is this: give the early adopters free AppleCare on our pre-September 5th iPhones. It doesn’t cost any real money up front, and won’t cost anything for the majority of your iPhone customers (unless there’s something you aren’t telling us, of course). It’s certainly a lot cheaper than cash refunds, and seems likely to be less cost than the equivalent number of iTMS credits.
So, how about it, Apple? Are you willing to make a small concession to us, your faithful fans? You don’t have to admit you sold us something at a grossly inflated price. Just tell us you care. You can’t make everybody happy, but I suspect that a lot of us would accept this token of goodwill.
Sincerely,
Scott R.
UPDATE: Steve Jobs posted an open letter of his own today. I’ll cut to the chase:
Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.
I feel a little better. I probably will get AppleCare for the phone, anyway.
Now with iPhone-ey goodness
In response to overwhelming demand by my readers with Apple’s newest “must have” gadget, the iPhone, my blogs have been updated with a tiny, but significant, change to allow better rendering.
Vacation… ahhhhhhhh
Two separate mini-vacations in one week.
First up, Wisconsin Dells. We took a family trip with our good friends – that’s 7 girls total, no boys for those keeping score – to the Wilderness Territory resort. There are a bunch of indoor and outdoor waterparks there, and we made it a point to visit all of them. None was huge by amusement park standards, but taken as a whole there’s a lot of acreage devoted strictly to wading pools, wave pools, water slides, lazy rivers, and related things. Between us, I think we went down every slide in the place (both tube slides and body slides). Yep, one of those swim/eat/swim/eat/swim/sleep kind of days… two days in a row. We closed out the place at 10:00 p.m. each day.
After a couple of days of rest and recuperation, it was off to Chicago, this time without the kids. The four of us had tickets to see Blue Man Group at Briar Street Theater in Chicago. All I can say about it is this: the show is hugely entertaining. Even though I had seen much of the show on television before, there were new and downright wonderous elements that you can only experience in the theater. Audience participation is one thing that simply doesn’t translate well into video/recordings, and it’s a big part of the show. If you’ve never seen a Blue Man performance before, do it if you ever get the chance. I’m already thinking of going to another one.
The worst thing about vacations is that they have to end. It’s back to work tomorrow. I’m not too proud to beg for your pity. 😉
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Computers suck, redux
This poem was written on May 11, 2006. Sadly, i haven’t actually been able to share any of the new music that floats around in my head since… but i was recently inspired by someone, and have taken the keyboard out again. (You know who you are… thank you again!)
Anyway… original post follows. I’m preserving it from oblivion, because it reminds me of who I was on that date. Today looks a little brighter, by comparison.
Computers suck.
You know, like a vacuum. Which is where I feel like I’ve been, in a vacuum.
Splat.
This is the sound
of my head hitting
the wall.
Again.
And again.
… and again.
Fifteen days ago I tried to upgrade
one of my computers.
It died.
I was sad.
I spent every
SPARE MOMENT
resurrecting the stupid thing.
When it lived again,
I cried with joy.
And then, another computer
decided that THIS TOO
was the time to get cranky.
Oh no, it didn’t crash.
It just decided to make life
fun
for Michelle.
Not me.
Her.
ARGH.
Spent money getting a happy,
big, new, fast, quiet disk.
Spent a day getting it into one computer,
whose drive I stole for the cranky one.
Spent a day getting the cranky one installed
and another day getting things back to
How They Should Be.
And then, the first computer…
yes, the one mentioned at the beginning…
crashed.
Splat.
There I go again.
I stayed up all night
and got a few hours of sleep
and worked on it all day.
And it LIVES!
And I can go on with my life.
And extract these things from my head
and share them, again.
and this makes me
Happy.
iPod rescued
Well, first, some background, I guess. The last update on the topic of the iPod didn’t even mention the sad news: my iPod died last summer. A seemingly insignificant drop inside the car caused it to stop playing music no matter what I did. This made me sad since the iPod mini isn’t available, and besides, it’s not that old! At least, not to my pocketbook.
What I ended up doing was sending the little guy in to iPodResQ. For about $30 they provided round-trip shipping and diagnostic services. It turns out the logic board was bad (sigh), but still, the additional $100 still leaves the total cost far less than that of a new iPod, not to mention accessories. One caveat: the turnaround was a lot slower than their web site seemed to imply. I waited for 10 days all told, and only got a status report when I emailed them expressing my growing concern.
Even with that less than totally satisfactory experience, the repair job seems to have been first rate. When the mini arrived I was able to reload the software and music on it immediately and it’s been running fine ever since. And yes, I’m taking much greater care with it when I hook it up each day…