Sonos Digital Music System

charles 23 November 2005

The Sonos Digital Music System

Now, I'm not sure what the greatest thing was before sliced bread, but I know this: Today, Sonos is the greatest thing ever. As soon as I heard about the Sonos Digital Music System, I realized three things:

  1. This is what I have been trying to do for two years on my Mac.
  2. I have to have one.
  3. Everyone should have one!

The Sonos CR200 Controller

Mac OS X Tech Tips

charles 28 August 2005

The Geeky Side of Mac OS X

Here is my personal collection of Mac OS X technical odds & ends. For more specific tech tips under Mac OS X, refer to the following pages.

  • Apache
  • Audio
  • Perl
  • NetJuke

Make Hidden Apps Look Hidden

getWANIP PERL Script

charles 9 August 2005

The LAN in my house is connected to the internet via broadband. Like most home users, I don't want (or need) to pay for a static IP address. I was looking for a roll-your-own alternative to dyndns.com, and I found this perl script... somewhere. This script allows me to keep a server on my LAN and make it accessible from the internet by opening up the appropriate ports on my router. I retained the original author's comments so you can track him down if you want.

Geocaching Bug

charles 3 April 2005

Charles gets bitten by the travel bug

Late in 2003, a good friend of mine suggested that I might be interested in a new outdoor activity that he and his family had recently been enjoying. It combines hi-tech resources with elements of a traditional treasure hunt, and it's known as "Geocaching". I later learned that this was basically Letterboxing with gadgets, but it was the gadgetry that piqued my interest.

If you've never heard about it, there's an entire web site devoted to geocaching. I guaranty there's a geocache near you!

MySQL and Mac OS X

charles 18 February 2005

Leopard Update

With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", Apple has made a few more changes. Whereas prior versions came with Apache 1.3, PHP 4, and MySQL 4, Leopard comes (sort of) pre-configured with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5. The MySQL part is still a little tricky.

Here are some notes regarding MySQL under 10.5:

  1. There is still the discrepancy between the old and new locations for mysql.sock
  2. NetInfo is no longer available for setting up users & groups, however...
  3. Leopard comes configured with a _mysql user and _mysql group

Netjuke

charles 17 January 2005

NetJuke is an open-source php/MySQL-based jukebox for your digital music. Basically, it provides a web-browser access to your digital music from any computer on your network. It uses the ID3 metadata to create and maintain a database of artists, albums, genres, and so on which you can search using any standard browser.

I Hate Spam

charles 7 August 2004

I found this info... somewhere. I can't remember where, but I saved it because I think we all need to fight spam. Most of our spam busting efforts are defensive, that is, they act to block or reject spam. This approach is an offensive one and attempts to stick it to the spam bots by foiling their attempts at harvesting addresses.

Apache on Mac OS X

charles 12 June 2004

Note: The following entry refers to Apache 1.3. Much of the content of this post still applies, but if you are running Apache 2, please refer to the updates.

Mac OS X comes with the robust, industry standard web server Apache preinstalled. When you turn on "Personal Web Sharing" in the System Preferences Sharing pane, you are actually enabling the Apache server which runs on many Unix- and Linux-based web servers across the internet.

HotLink Blocking

charles 17 March 2004

A couple of months ago as I was checking my web server access logs, I came across something odd. A single image file was being requested repeatedly and often from the same host IP. Although I wasn't aware of the term at the time, I had become a victim of Hot Linking. Since I wasn't aware of a technical means of blocking this heinous practice, I simply performed a reverse lookup on the IP, then emailed the owner of the domain with a "cease and desist" warning. Turns out it was a college dude, and he promptly removed the link.

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