I’ve been using the DVR feature of Plex since the first beta version, and it replaced an aging Mac+EyeTV setup I was using before. Bought a HDHomeRun device, and I’ve been pretty happy with the setup since the beginning. The main issue I have with the DVR feature is the EPG. For one of the channel I record a lot from (Télé-Québec), the EPG data is very bad. It’s missing a lot of shows (it has holes), and shows will sometimes start at a different time in the EPG than in reality, making me miss a few minutes at the beginning of the end of the shows I record, or complete episodes.

The symptoms were hard to notice at first: downloaded files would sometimes be corrupted, especially large files; attempts to fix those downloads (using par2) would more often than not fail. Then it became bizarre; calculating the checksum of those files would sometimes, but not always, result in different values.

Normally, only the root user is allowed to open ports below 1024. That’s why, if you try running an application as a normal (non-root) user, and that application tries to open a port below 1024, you’ll get an error (access denied most likely).

If you’re running Fedora (and that would probably work on other distros too), there’s a command you can run, as root, that will allow such programs to open any of those ports, even if they’re run by a regular user.

The iPad is now very popular in the house. I seldom can use it as a recipe book to cook something, as it was intended… It’s either in my oldest’s hands, playing Labyrinth 2 HD, either on my wife’s lap, browsing her Facebook & reading her emails.

But still, sometimes, it’s nice to use it for other things. One such other thing would be to stream videos from the Amahi home server sitting in a closet upstairs. One can watch a recorded TV show in bed, or hand the iPad to the big kid to let him watch Cars or Nemo while we’re watching the news, or something non kid-friendly.

Being of the DIY kind, I made my own web-app to achieve this, using the new HTML5 videos tag.

So, I’m now happily using Greyhole. Good for me, you say? Not long ago, a 1 TB hard drive that was part of my storage pool died (my fault really, handling it while it was powered up). Greyhole handled this beautifully, re-creating duplicate copies of the files that were stored on that drive to continue protecting all my data. But I didn’t have enough free space on the other drives to allow all the duplicates I want to be created.

(Some background info on why I created Greyhole can be read in my previous post.) Update: Greyhole has matured quite a lot since I posted this. You can now learn about Greyhole on the official website: www.greyhole.net. There. I did it. Greyhole is now available to all avid enthusiasts who would like to try it. What is it? It’s Windows Home Server Drive Extender concept, but open source, running on Linux.

[Update] I did it. Read about it here. I do like Windows Home Server Drive Extender technology. It allows oneself to aggregate a bunch of various-sized hard disks into one big storage pool. You can then define a number of shares that will share (!) that storage pool dynamically. AND you can define which shares you want duplicated, which basically mean that DE (Drive Extender) will make sure that all the files on there are on two different physical hard drives, to safeguard those files against hardware failures.

CrashPlan****, it’s a remote backup solution for (almost) everyone. The principle is easy enough: install the software client (available for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux), change the default selection of files that will be backed up (if you want to) and you’re on your way to never loose a file again! Where are your backup stored? You have the choice. One option is to pay CrashPlan developers (the company is called Code 42) a small fee each month for them to store your backup: this is what they call CrashPlan Central.

I’ve been using the DVR feature of Plex since the first beta version, and it replaced an aging Mac+EyeTV setup I was using before. Bought a HDHomeRun device, and I’ve been pretty happy with the setup since the beginning. The main issue I have with the DVR feature is the EPG. For one of the channel I record a lot from (Télé-Québec), the EPG data is very bad. It’s missing a lot of shows (it has holes), and shows will sometimes start at a different time in the EPG than in reality, making me miss a few minutes at the beginning of the end of the shows I record, or complete episodes.

I’ve been using mint.com since 2010. I was happy with the service; it worked pretty well, most of the time. But recently, I decided it just wasn’t worth the risks. So I unlinked all my banking accounts, and then deleted my mint account. Since then, I replaced it with a custom solution: my own mint.com alternative. In no particular order, here’s what I did / how it works. My banking credentials (usernames, passwords, security questions answers) are stored only on my (Mac) computer, in Keychain.

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.

Google Reader is going away later this year. This means those of us using RSS to keep in touch with the world will need to find an alternative to be able to get our fix using our different devices.

I still remember the pre-Google Reader days of RSS, when RSS clients were silos that talked to nobody. This meant that trying to read articles on a PDA (Palm Zire anyone?), and on a PC, forced us to skip a bunch of articles each time we switched from one to the other… Solutions for this problem existed at the time, but were convoluted, and not that pleasant. i.e. I don’t want to go back there!

This morning, I read a post by Ruth John, aka @Rumyra, about how she used IFTTT (If-This-Then-That) to inject the content of a RSS feed into the Pocket read-it-later service. This stuck me as a good idea, so I started with a Yahoo Pipe that took my OPML, and merged all articles into one feed, and I inputed that into IFTTT, and chose Pocket as the target. Sadly, that didn’t work so well; IFTTT has known issues with Yahoo Pipes RSS feeds. Next option: just do it myself!

Since I replaced my Apple TV 1 with an Apple TV 2, and started using Flickr as the screensaver, I was wondering how I could use group photos or interesting photos from Flickr, instead of just a user’s photos, or the result of a search. Today, I was able to hack it to do what I want!

(Note: You need a jailbroken Apple TV for this to work.)

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?

So you got a nice Google Chrome extension, right? And people do leave comments / questions / hate mail on the extension page all the time. But the only way for you to get those is to visit that page in your browser… Not cool. Not cool at all, Google!

Wanting to get the comments in Google Reader, I simply looked in the Inspect Element > Network tab, to see what was going on, when I visited the Chrome Store page for my extension. And lo and behold, there’s an AJAX request to fetch the comments, with the results returned as a nice JSON-encoded object!

I wanted to keep track of fuel consumption (L/100km) for our two vehicles. I wanted to be able to send email to enter data, or use a simple web interface. The email part was important, because I don’t have a data plan on my cellphone, so being able to compose and queue an email at the pump, to have it sent automatically when I was later within reach of a known Wifi network, was a very nice to have.

Implemented in PHP, the result is not that pretty, but it’s nice enough, and the ease of use allows me to keep it updated without too much hassle.

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.

The iPad is now very popular in the house. I seldom can use it as a recipe book to cook something, as it was intended… It’s either in my oldest’s hands, playing Labyrinth 2 HD, either on my wife’s lap, browsing her Facebook & reading her emails.

But still, sometimes, it’s nice to use it for other things. One such other thing would be to stream videos from the Amahi home server sitting in a closet upstairs. One can watch a recorded TV show in bed, or hand the iPad to the big kid to let him watch Cars or Nemo while we’re watching the news, or something non kid-friendly.

Being of the DIY kind, I made my own web-app to achieve this, using the new HTML5 videos tag.

So, I’m now happily using Greyhole. Good for me, you say? Not long ago, a 1 TB hard drive that was part of my storage pool died (my fault really, handling it while it was powered up). Greyhole handled this beautifully, re-creating duplicate copies of the files that were stored on that drive to continue protecting all my data. But I didn’t have enough free space on the other drives to allow all the duplicates I want to be created.

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.

(Some background info on why I created Greyhole can be read in my previous post.) Update: Greyhole has matured quite a lot since I posted this. You can now learn about Greyhole on the official website: www.greyhole.net. There. I did it. Greyhole is now available to all avid enthusiasts who would like to try it. What is it? It’s Windows Home Server Drive Extender concept, but open source, running on Linux.

[Update] I did it. Read about it here. I do like Windows Home Server Drive Extender technology. It allows oneself to aggregate a bunch of various-sized hard disks into one big storage pool. You can then define a number of shares that will share (!) that storage pool dynamically. AND you can define which shares you want duplicated, which basically mean that DE (Drive Extender) will make sure that all the files on there are on two different physical hard drives, to safeguard those files against hardware failures.

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.

**Update**: The source code of my application can be found on [Google Code: Facebook Gallery Import](http://code.google.com/p/facebook-gallery-import/) I have a Gallery where all our family pictures can be seen. My mom, dad and brother all frequently upload pictures on this site, which makes it a central point for all our family’s digital photography sharing & archiving needs. Encouraged by the fast growth of the Facebook social-networking site, I wanted to be able to easily transfer pictures from my Gallery into Facebook photo albums so that my Facebook friends could see my little guy.

(Visit the [GobbleRSS](http://GobbleRSS.pommepause.com/) website for more details about the application itself.) After I finished reading my latest book, which is what I usually do during my daily commuting to and from work, I started looking for a way to read my RSS feeds on a Palm device during that time. First, a friend of mine lent me his Palm Zire 31 (thanks!). Next, I started looking for a way to get unread RSS items from Google Reader into the Palm device.

Started to check that out in December 2002. Since then, I created a number of scripts for the FTP daemon for Windows. Many of which not many people still use, but I still use some of them. I’m currently re-writing my main script in Java. Much more fun to code than the last version, which was C coded with Visual C++. ioBanana was my most popular script. Funny name comes from a suggestion in the IRC channel #ioFTPD.

I’ve been using the DVR feature of Plex since the first beta version, and it replaced an aging Mac+EyeTV setup I was using before. Bought a HDHomeRun device, and I’ve been pretty happy with the setup since the beginning. The main issue I have with the DVR feature is the EPG. For one of the channel I record a lot from (Télé-Québec), the EPG data is very bad. It’s missing a lot of shows (it has holes), and shows will sometimes start at a different time in the EPG than in reality, making me miss a few minutes at the beginning of the end of the shows I record, or complete episodes.

For quite some time now, Plex has been plagued with a bug preventing Google Chrome users from watching YouTube videos they saved into their Watch Later queue. Being a fan of Chrome (I’m not using anything else really), Plex, and their Watch Later queue, which I populate using both IFTTT (widget: IF new RSS item THEN send email to [my_plexit_email_address]) and their Plex It! bookmarklet, I decided to further debug the issue.

I’ve been using the DVR feature of Plex since the first beta version, and it replaced an aging Mac+EyeTV setup I was using before. Bought a HDHomeRun device, and I’ve been pretty happy with the setup since the beginning. The main issue I have with the DVR feature is the EPG. For one of the channel I record a lot from (Télé-Québec), the EPG data is very bad. It’s missing a lot of shows (it has holes), and shows will sometimes start at a different time in the EPG than in reality, making me miss a few minutes at the beginning of the end of the shows I record, or complete episodes.

For quite some time now, Plex has been plagued with a bug preventing Google Chrome users from watching YouTube videos they saved into their Watch Later queue. Being a fan of Chrome (I’m not using anything else really), Plex, and their Watch Later queue, which I populate using both IFTTT (widget: IF new RSS item THEN send email to [my_plexit_email_address]) and their Plex It! bookmarklet, I decided to further debug the issue.

The symptoms were hard to notice at first: downloaded files would sometimes be corrupted, especially large files; attempts to fix those downloads (using par2) would more often than not fail. Then it became bizarre; calculating the checksum of those files would sometimes, but not always, result in different values.

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.

Maybe you just want to back them up for when something goes wrong, or maybe you want to set up a new two-factor authentication app on a platform that Authy doesn’t support (cough Windows Phone cough). Whatever your reasons, if you want to export your TOTP secret keys from Authy, their apps or support guys won’t be much help to you.

The trick, that I just used to install all my existing TOTP secrets in the Microsoft Authenticator app, is to change one of their app of which we have the source, namely their Chrome app, to show us what we want.

Last year, I took the plunge and switched from a big local telephony provider to a web-based VoIP provider: Phone Power. Their features set is quite something: free second line, voicemails to email, some free international minutes, etc. But, when it comes to routing local calls, they are so-so.

I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Many local agencies & companies have 1-800 numbers that are geolocation-locked; you can’t call those numbers from outside Canada, or outside Quebec (depending). How they detect the origin of the call is not based on the caller ID (the caller’s phone number); it has to do with how the call is routed, i.e. where it’s coming from for real.

Now, the problem is not that Phone Power isn’t technically capable of routing those calls correctly, since I have been able to call those numbers on multiple occasions. The problem is that they are unable to keep routing consistent. The result is that those calls will only work sometimes, and will sometimes fail. And, when it’s not working, and you call/chat support to fix it, they don’t know how to resolve the situation. Sometimes, after 20-30 minutes of back and forth, they are able to make those calls go through. Other times, they can’t fix it, and answer that they’ll investigate further, and contact me later when they found something.

I’m not sure if I’m the only one who noticed (I hope not!), but recently, the Gmail spam filter started marking as spam a lot of messages that were NOT spam.

Here’s the ones I found, while looking at only the first two pages of my Spam folder (about two days worth of spams):

• A Logitech.com shipment notification;
• My monthly Yak invoice;
• My monthly ‘your invoice is ready’ from Citibank;
• The OpenDNS newsletter;
• Two commit notifications from Google Code;
• Three ‘your password has been reset’ emails, from Wordpress.org, and other less known bulletin boards.

Normally, only the root user is allowed to open ports below 1024. That’s why, if you try running an application as a normal (non-root) user, and that application tries to open a port below 1024, you’ll get an error (access denied most likely).

If you’re running Fedora (and that would probably work on other distros too), there’s a command you can run, as root, that will allow such programs to open any of those ports, even if they’re run by a regular user.

So, I was happily copying files around on my Windows Home Server, when I noticed that the speed of the transfers were now at 1.5MB/s… Uncool, when copying similar files from the same directories was at 50-80MB/s minutes earlier. I tried to think what I might have changed since it worked fine. I tried reseting the CMOS, disconnecting all hard drives (IDE, USB, SATA) that were connected, except my primary drive, to no avail.

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.

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 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.

So Nissan published new versions of their mobile apps for the Nissan LEAF, with upgraded security. A-Good-Thing™. But doing so, they added an unnecessary level of complexity on their API: the passwords sent by the mobile apps are now encrypted! I battled most of the evening, trying to find how they encrypt the passwords, to be able to reproduce it, and I as finally able to! [1] They encrypt the passwords using “Blowfish/ECB/PKCS5Padding”, and the key is a string returned by the API before the login API endpoint is used.

Maybe you just want to back them up for when something goes wrong, or maybe you want to set up a new two-factor authentication app on a platform that Authy doesn’t support (cough Windows Phone cough). Whatever your reasons, if you want to export your TOTP secret keys from Authy, their apps or support guys won’t be much help to you.

The trick, that I just used to install all my existing TOTP secrets in the Microsoft Authenticator app, is to change one of their app of which we have the source, namely their Chrome app, to show us what we want.

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.

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.

A projector and 120" screen sure are nice to watch TV shows and movies, but having them on the 3rd floor of the house makes the projector unhappy.

Being on the ceiling of the almost highest point in the house, during hot summer days, that projector can become quite hot. And when it does, it tries to compensate by fuelling it’s fans with enough voltage to make them sound like jet engines. (Not PowerMacG5-running-in-single-user-mode jet-engines-loud, but still…)

To try to quiet it down a notch, I built what some people call a hush box.

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.

The symptoms were hard to notice at first: downloaded files would sometimes be corrupted, especially large files; attempts to fix those downloads (using par2) would more often than not fail. Then it became bizarre; calculating the checksum of those files would sometimes, but not always, result in different values.

With 0.8 just out the door, I began thinking about 0.9. That version will focus on fixing Greyhole’s greatest bug creator: the rename operation! There has been, and probably always will be, problems with the current implementation that Greyhole has to handle file and directory renames. I have some ideas on how to fix them all, once and for all, but this will need some non-trial development, clean up and regression testing.

I just built and uploaded version 0.8 of Greyhole on Google Code. This version doesn’t change much of what is normally visible to the end users (except the regular bug fixes). Instead, 0.8 focused on improving an area of Greyhole that has always been messy: the communication channel between Samba and the Greyhole daemon.

This week, I created a new website for Greyhole. This website centralize all the information one could want about Greyhole: A presentation of what Greyhole is (homepage) Links to download the latest version Links to past versions downloads Links to the code repository, issues tracker & wiki (documentation), all hosted on Google Code Link to “Fund a Feature | Donate”, hosted by fundry.com RSS feeds for Greyhole news (which you really should subscribe to if you’re reading this!

So, I’m now happily using Greyhole. Good for me, you say? Not long ago, a 1 TB hard drive that was part of my storage pool died (my fault really, handling it while it was powered up). Greyhole handled this beautifully, re-creating duplicate copies of the files that were stored on that drive to continue protecting all my data. But I didn’t have enough free space on the other drives to allow all the duplicates I want to be created.

(Some background info on why I created Greyhole can be read in my previous post.) Update: Greyhole has matured quite a lot since I posted this. You can now learn about Greyhole on the official website: www.greyhole.net. There. I did it. Greyhole is now available to all avid enthusiasts who would like to try it. What is it? It’s Windows Home Server Drive Extender concept, but open source, running on Linux.

[Update] I did it. Read about it here. I do like Windows Home Server Drive Extender technology. It allows oneself to aggregate a bunch of various-sized hard disks into one big storage pool. You can then define a number of shares that will share (!) that storage pool dynamically. AND you can define which shares you want duplicated, which basically mean that DE (Drive Extender) will make sure that all the files on there are on two different physical hard drives, to safeguard those files against hardware failures.

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.

Des fois, ça ne va juste pas assez vite à ton goût. Comme avec tou.tv.  Ça fait longtemps qu’ils disent qu’une version pour iPad est prévue, mais pourquoi attendre quand on a tous les outils pour que ça fonctionne maintenant ?

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.

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.

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.

Since I replaced my Apple TV 1 with an Apple TV 2, and started using Flickr as the screensaver, I was wondering how I could use group photos or interesting photos from Flickr, instead of just a user’s photos, or the result of a search. Today, I was able to hack it to do what I want!

(Note: You need a jailbroken Apple TV for this to work.)

Last year, I took the plunge and switched from a big local telephony provider to a web-based VoIP provider: Phone Power. Their features set is quite something: free second line, voicemails to email, some free international minutes, etc. But, when it comes to routing local calls, they are so-so.

I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Many local agencies & companies have 1-800 numbers that are geolocation-locked; you can’t call those numbers from outside Canada, or outside Quebec (depending). How they detect the origin of the call is not based on the caller ID (the caller’s phone number); it has to do with how the call is routed, i.e. where it’s coming from for real.

Now, the problem is not that Phone Power isn’t technically capable of routing those calls correctly, since I have been able to call those numbers on multiple occasions. The problem is that they are unable to keep routing consistent. The result is that those calls will only work sometimes, and will sometimes fail. And, when it’s not working, and you call/chat support to fix it, they don’t know how to resolve the situation. Sometimes, after 20-30 minutes of back and forth, they are able to make those calls go through. Other times, they can’t fix it, and answer that they’ll investigate further, and contact me later when they found something.

CrashPlan****, it’s a remote backup solution for (almost) everyone. The principle is easy enough: install the software client (available for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux), change the default selection of files that will be backed up (if you want to) and you’re on your way to never loose a file again! Where are your backup stored? You have the choice. One option is to pay CrashPlan developers (the company is called Code 42) a small fee each month for them to store your backup: this is what they call CrashPlan Central.

_Why should you not buy the Netgear HDX101 Powerline HD Ethernet Adapters (or any other Powerline network adapters for that matter)?_ Offering 200 mbps of network bandwidth, those adapters looks like a very good replacement for a slow wireless network you might have. No long cable required; you simply need to plug one adapter in room A, another adapter in room B, and attach both to the respective room's LAN / network appliance to create a instant long-range LAN in your house.

_[Note] __[EyeTV EPG Proxy](http://eep.pommepause.com/)__ now has it's own website. Check it out for more details._ _ _ [Update] Elgato now offers Canadian EPG in EyeTV 3.1 (they’re now using TV Guide as their source for both US and Canada). The first year is free for all users, but starting in 2010, we’ll need to pay 20$ US a year to continue receiving the EPG._ _ I own a Mac-based DVR for quite some time now; a Miglia EvolutionTV.