Either that or they are projecting everyone’s search history over their heads. Just kidding…(not really).

Apple recently released a patch for Java that fixes the vulnerability, but you should also check if your Mac was infected before the update was applied. F-secure has complete instructions for manually checking your mac, but I’ve included abridged instructions below.

From Terminal.app run:

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES


You want to see an error stating that:

The domain/default pair of (...) does not exist

If both of the above commands give the same sort of error, your system should be clean.

But then I see this click-bait* article, and suddenly the facts have changed:

It could be a year before Google eyewear reaches stores…

Uh, what? Where does anyone say that? I’m not clear there’s working hardware yet, forget the rest of the product development that would go into seeing this become reality. It could be a year, it could be five, this might never become reality. While there are photos that were released as part of the project’s Google+ page, I don’t think anyone has stated whether this is working hardware, a non-functional design prototype, or just a simulated mock-up.

The New York Times, speculates as well:

If you venture into a coffee shop in the coming months and see someone with a pair of futuristic glasses that look like a prop from “Star Trek,” don’t worry. It’s probably just a Google employee testing the company’s new augmented-reality glasses.

I don’t think Google has announced public testing, but there’s the NYT floating the idea twice in their article. They don’t cite a source, and they don’t even mention that this fact comes from Google. It certainly isn’t mentioned on the Google+ page.

Most companies (including Google) are pretty secretive about their future plans. I tend to suspect FUD more than anything else, when I see these kind of early concept level announcements. If anything, I would expect Apple and Facebook to ignore today’s announcement. Some of the tech successes from being first to market**, but from giving consumers more than just over-hyped tech demos disguised as products. If Google were to innovate and create a truly great product in this space, Apple and Facebook would have reason to be afraid. But if history is any guide, it’ll be the later product refinement that really makes the market.

* mentioning Google, Apple, and Facebook in the same article defines click-bait. Yes this blog entry qualifies.

** Google wasn’t the first web search engine, or even the second. They just delivered a much better set of results.

At the moment, we have contractors at Kim’s house remodeling the upstairs bathroom. Anyone who’s been in my house in the last 5 years, knows that *my* main floor bathroom has been closed for remodeling the whole time. So it’s only sensible that we have contractors working at the other house as we prepare to sell/move. But here’s the problem. They just did a pretty awful job tiling around the tub. I don’t pretend I could do a great job of tiling, but this job is a mess. It’s not level, square, or plumb. It’s just shoddy workmanship. If I had wanted a rushed, shoddy job, I could have done it myself.

So I just remembered the other reason I do some things myself. I can control the quality of the finished product. If I screw up a project, I can rip out the mistake and try again. I don’t have any profit-driven need to get in under budget, and as long as I don’t mind not having 3 bathrooms in the house, I can take the time to do the job right.

I start in August and will be teaching COSC 236 (CS 1 in Java), and CIS 211 (InfoSys 1). I’m looking forward to the new opportunity, and we’re already weighing the possibility of relocating to north Baltimore.

All the services that I knew were being used from knot.org should be running on the new server now. Please test out any functionality you use, and let me know if there are any issues.

The old server will be shut off before the end of March, and the hardware decommissioned. I’ll have on to the hard drives for archival purposes — just in case.

Unfortunately, the new hosting company doesn’t support ssh, so I’ve been forced to get back into the FTP business.  This time around I’m using the FUSE/MacFusion combination to handle FTP (and SFTP) access.  The client seems pretty slow, but the Finder integration is very welcome. Since MacFusion actually mounts the volumes in the OS, I can use a wider variety of tools with the FTP server, like rsync.

There are other products around that do the same thing – for instance, Expandrive.  But unlike MacFusion it’s not free, and my testing didn’t show a significant performance difference between the two products.

If I really need a faster client, I’d just use Transmit.  Maybe I will use my copious free time to benchmark the three programs.

All e-mail accounts and forwards have been migrated.  Moving the imap accounts was significantly simplified with the use of imapsync.  Oddly, imapsync is free (as in speech), open-source software, but not gratis.  The author wants to be paid if you download it from his website, but if you can find it somewhere else, it’s yours to do with as you please.  Odd.  And vaguely appropriate for a Frenchman.  Anyway, I found the source-code online, and it worked a treat.

This blog and photoblog have also been migrated.  The migration was somewhat painful since the old server has a slow uplink, and the new server has a short transaction timeout.  Fun.  On this blog, I killed the old theme, but I don’t have time to craft a new one at the moment, so I’m just sticking with the stock one.  I’ll try to come up with something real soon now.  The photoblog has a new posting — the first in about 4 years.  Don’t get too used to the idea of new photos though.

To turn it on, you need to have the “Develop” menu active in Safari (Safari → Preferences → Advanced → Show Develop menu in menu bar). The you merely need to select: Develop → Send Do Not Track HTTP Header.

I also took the time to add a couple of extensions to Safari while I was at it. Ghostery (Safari → Safari Extensions → Security) can detect and block the breadcrumbs websites use to track your usage. Finally, Incognito blocks Google, Twitter and Facebook tracking.

I’m not sure these are legit, but the one I have (from Yugster) looks the same and works OK. It has a pretty wide beam compared to my green pointer, but it’s still very cool. Oddly, the blue pointer is the only one that seems to excite the glow-in-the-dark stars on the kids’ ceiling.

Does anyone know why some of these pointers are selling for $150 (link), and others are selling for much less?

PS: I should also note that this thing is much more powerful than its <5mW rating. It’s probably closer to 30mW. It’s definitely not a toy, and I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t let the girls play with it.