Mike Cohen

No VPN with Airport Extreme

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I discovered today that VPN connections don’t work with my new Airport Extreme 802.11n base station. It turns out this is a known problem that still hasn’t been fixed. One weird thing: I can open a VPN connection from Windows XP running under Parallels, but not from OS X on any of my Macs.

Contact form

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I had disabled this site’s contact form after some spammers started abusing it, thinking they were sending to a list of addresses when in reality all of the spam was sent to me.

I forgot about it until Daniel reminded me. It’s back now. Instead of using a form that could possibly be abused, I now simply use an obfuscated email address.

LaunchBar

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I’ve used QuickSilver for a few years and I always considered it one of my essential applications. A few days ago I took advantage of MacZot’s deal to buy LaunchBar 4.

After using LaunchBar for a few days, I found that I prefer it. It’s a lot faster and more responsive than QuickSilver, which often gave me 10-15 seconds of spinning beach ball. I do miss QuickSilver’s hotkey actions which I used to control iTunes, so I had to go back to using Sizzling Keys for that.

Airport Extreme

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I went to the Apple store today to get new earbuds for my iPhone. Since it’s still covered by the warrantee, they replaced it free of charge.

While I was there I got an Airport Extreme base station, since my new MacBook Pro can take advantage of 802.11n. Since my TeraStation has gigabit Ethernet, my local server performance is even better. The faster wireless speed doesn’t really affect internet performance, since my DSL connection is only 6 Mb. Accessing other machines on my local network is many times faster, though.

Blue Light
My TeraStation is happy with the gigabyte ethernet

Airport ExtremeAirport Extreme

iPhone earbud problem

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The mic button on my iPhone earbuds is broken. A few days ago I started to notice that it was becoming less responsive. Yesterday it stopped working completely. I’ll probably go to the Apple store tomorrow to pick up a new one.

WTF?

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Bush has made plenty of dumb statements, but this one really takes the cake. He should apologize to Nelson Mandela.

Via Democratic National Committee: Blog:

This makes my head hurt:

In a press conference this morning, President Bush tried to assert that Saddam’s brutal rule over Iraq wiped the country clean of potential democratic reformers–individuals who may have possessed leadership skills like former South African President Nelson Mandela. In doing so, Bush inartfully suggested Saddam killed Mandela.

I thought an interesting comment was made–somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, “Now, where’s Mandela?” Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.

Faiz at Think Progress points out that Nelson Mandela (who is alive) is a strong opponent of the war in Iraq. Before the war, he condemned Bush as “a president who can’t think properly.”

Minor database problem

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I just had to repair a minor database problem at MacMegasite related to user points. I noticed that points weren’t being awarded properly for some members, so when I checked the database I saw lots of duplicate key errors in the userpoints table. The easiest way to fix it was to uninstall userpoints, install the latest version, and have it reassign points retroactively.

Saudi women challenge driving ban

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Via BBC:

Members of the Committee of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars plan to deliver a petition to King Abdullah by Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s National Day.

Correspondents say the demand is likely to be rejected, as conservatives argue if women are allowed to drive, they will be able to mix freely with men.

This is our closest ally in the Middle East, a strict, repressive theocracy. A government with close ties to terrorism and one of the chief sources of funds for terrorist organizations. However, their king is a good friend of the Bush family.

Yet another way our middle east policy is completely screwed up.