App Transport Security is a feature that improves the security of connections between an app and web services. The feature consists of default connection requirements that conform to best practices for secure connections. Apps can override this default behavior and turn off transport security.

Transport security is available on iOS 9.0 or later, and on OS X 10.11 and later. Source

What does that mean?

That unless you change something in your iOS app’ plist, your app will not be able to communicate with unsecure HTTP servers, when it runs on iOS 9.

That’s a good thing really; Apple is trying to force people to update their HTTP servers to use the latest HTTPS protocols & recommendations: TLS 1.2, SHA256 or better, forward secrecy.

Note: I did this on my MacBook Pro, and saw a major difference between the x86 emulator, and the old ARM emulator. I guess I should thank the CPU my MacBook uses, which supports Intel® HAXM*. If yours doesn’t, you’re out of luck! * Intel® HAXM requires an Intel® processor with support for Intel® VT-x, Intel® EM64T (Intel® 64), and Execute Disable (XD) Bit functionality.

So, you’d like to buy a refurbished product from the Apple Store, but it’s currently Out of Stock. And will probably be for a while, and when it’s not anymore, the few units available will be gone in minutes. So you need a way to be notified ASAP when it’s available, so you can have a chance to order it.

Here’s a simple way using cron.

Here’s how I setup a Hot Corner to show or hide my DesktopShelves.

(Note that this trick can also be used to launch any program or AppleScript using a Hot Corner.)

Starting the screen saver from AppleScript is simple enough:

tell application "System Events" to start current screen saver

Even starting another screen saver than the default from System Preferences is simple, if you want one of the standard screen saver:

tell application "System Events" to tell screen saver "Arabesque" to start

But it becomes much more complicated if you’d like to start the iPhoto screen saver, and use another as the System Preferences default. Here’s how I did it:

Important note: the applications below are now officially unsupported. I'm not a Videotron client anymore, so it became difficult, and without interest, for me to continue development on both of those solutions to track your bandwidth quota.If you know any developer that might be interested in continuing development and support, feel free to send them a note. (JavaScript is the main programming language of both softwares.)   Would you like to monitor your monthly Videotron Internet quota easily?

I love 1Password. It looks good, it’s safe, it has a web-accessible UI, it has an iPhone/iPad application…

What I didn’t like about it was it’s Chrome extension, which required me to use the mouse to click the 1Password icon in the toolbar each time I wanted to auto-fill a form with login details!! That was so annoying.

So annoying in fact that I took upon myself to implement keyboard shortcuts in the 1Password extensions.

Earlier this week, I stumbled upon an iPhone app that allowed users to receive push notifications on XBMC. When a notification is received in XBMC, it appears in the lower right corner of the screen. Pretty cool.

This made me think it would be nice to see incoming phone calls there.

So I took out the Ovolab Phlink device I had sitting on a shelf, and created a small ‘ring’ script for it. That (Apple)script checks for the caller ID when the phone rings (and for a matching entry in my address book), and if it is available, calls an external PHP script that handles the network-wide notifications.

Important note: the software below is now officially unsupported. I'm not a Videotron client anymore, so it became difficult, and without interest, for me to continue development of this solution to track your bandwidth quota. If you know any developer that might be interested in continuing development and support, feel free to send them a note. (JavaScript is the main programming language.) Download the widget version 1.3.9 What’s new in 1.

My central HVAC system has issues cooling down the 3rd floor of our house during the summer. Even with all 1st & 2nd floor traps closed, the system, which is in the basement, has difficulties cooling down the 3rd floor. The higher the exterior temperature, the higher the difference of temperature between the 1st and 3rd floors. The average difference is somewhere between 4 and 5°C, and I measured differences as high as 10°C in the beginning of the summer.

Update: There is now a much easier way to auto-start XBMC on Apple TV boot. See details here. I’ll leave the below post here for posterity… Here’s how to have XBMC auto-start when your Apple TV boots. Create a text file with the following content: ` <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>com.teamxbmc.xbmc</string> <key>OnDemand</key> <false/> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/MacOS/XBMC</string> <string>-fs</string> </array> </dict> </plist> `

Update: The information below is about TV Forecast version 2.3.5. Since I wrote the post below, Matt Comi released an official fix, namely version 2.4, which now use TVRage.com as its data source. You should use TV Forecast official releases (1st link below), instead of trying to hack an old widget’s code like I did below. TV Forecast is a nice widget that Matt Comi created. You tell it what TV shows you watch, and it will keep track of the upcoming episodes for those shows.

_(Note that the following Mac-related; I only own Mac computers, so I didn’t try to find a solution to this problem on Windows.) _ Since Gmail released the Offline feature in Labs, I guess many people have enabled it. I did, as soon as the feature was available in my account. And one of the first thing I did after enabling it, is trying to see how I could secure the data it downloads.

_ (I usually write in english in here, but this one will be in French. It’s about a Windows XP keyboard layout for Canadian French Mac keyboards. So, move along, english-only-speaking-people!) _ Installer Windows XP sur un Mac, que ça soit dans Parallels Desktop, WMWare Fusion ou avec Bootcamp, c’est parfois bien pratique. Ce qui n’est pas pratique par contre, c’est d’essayer d’utiliser un clavier Mac canadien français dans Windows! Plusieurs touches sont différentes, dont les accents, plusieurs Shift-chiffres, etc.

I had a problem with [Folder Actions](http://www.apple.com/applescript/folderactions/ "Folder Actions"): they always stopped working after a while! Quite annoying. After some digging on Google, I found one post on [MacOSXHints](http://www.macosxhints.com) forums where a user mentioned that a FA attached to a folder on an external HDD would always stop working after un-mounting / re-mounting the hard disk; exactly what was happening to me! So I started fiddling with AppleScript, and found a way to detach then re-attach a FA associated with a folder.

_Do you want to skip all this text and just get the Colloquy Blowfish Plugin? Then click __[here](#colloblowdownload)__. _ Lately, IRC channels where I hang started using Blowfish encryption for all messages sent to the channel. mIRC and eggdrop support Blowfish pretty easily, but there was nothing for [Colloquy](http://www.colloquy.info/) (the IRC client I use - Mac OS X only) to encrypt & decrypt Blowfish encrypted messages. So I started looking for a way to encrypt & decrypt Blowfish messages using a Colloquy plugin.

_Do you want to skip all this text and just get the new FrontRow Enabler for 10.4.8? Then click __[here](#frontrowenabler131)__. _ Ok. So I wanted to install FrontRow 1.3 on my _old_ PowerMac G5... Downloaded [FrontRow Enabler](http://andrewescobar.com/frontrow) 1.3, followed instructions, rebooted... And **bam**, no more login screen. How fun. Checking the comments on [Andrew Escobar's page](http://andrewescobar.com/frontrow), I realized 10.4.8 wasn't supported just yet. So I used my trusty FireWire cable to fix my PowerMac (see how in the comments of Andrew's page), and started to look for a way to patch FrontRow Enabler 1.

Not that easy... Note that the following will only work on Tiger, not on Panther nor Leopard! 1. Install Xcode; latest (currently 2.4) is always a good idea. 2. Install fink. 3. Install needed packages using fink: sudo fink selfupdate sudo fink install libjpeg libtiff libpng3 libxml t1lib5 uw-imap-c-client-ssl libmcrypt libmhash ming mysql15-dev postgresql80-ssl-dev Note: Continue with the other steps while this process. It will take a while! For step 7, wait for this to complete.

I publish and maintain a calendar of all the Canadian Holidays. I started it in iCal.app (on my Mac) and I was publishing it using WebDAV on my web server, but I now imported it in Google Calendar, where I maintain and share it. Here’s the link to get it in iCal format or add it directly to your

RapidWeaver is a nice software for Mac OS X that allows people with no knowledge of HTML/CSS whatsoever to create very nice websites. (This website was created with RapidWeaver.) It comes with themes, page templates, etc. One of those page template is a PHP Contact Form. It has come to my attention (from the RealmacSoftware support forums) that the PHP code generated by RapidWeaver (version 3.2.1 or less) is vulnerable to mail header injection attacks.