Simon Fredsted's blog

Recently a few users on a Virtualmin server have experienced issues with slow FTP logins. It took a long time to login and often wouldn’t log in at all.

To correect this, first log on to the Webmin interface on http://yourserver:10000. At the top left, click Webmin.

A bit further down, under Servers, select ProFTPD Server.

Under Global Configuration, select the Networking icon.

Then you’ll see a screen with a whole bunch of settings. Set the following options to No:

1. Set Lookup remote Ident username?
2. Do reverse DNS lookups of client addresses?

Now click save, and on the ProFTPd page press Apply settings on the bottom. Your logins should now be instant.

A list of software I install on new computers that I’ve jotted down so I don’t forget. I’ll keep it updated.

General

• TextMate – general text editor
• Textual – IRC Client
• Droplr – one-click sharing of files & screenshots by dragging to an icon
• Twitter
• VLC – Media Player
• XBMC – Media Center
• uTorrent
• HomeBrew – Mac software repository
• Dropbox
• KeePass – Password management

Development

• OS X Server – Web server got removed in Mountain Lion
• XCode – for dev tools and iOS dev
• Coda – PHP, HTML, CSS development
• SQLite Professional

Design

• Pixelmator – Image editor

Fun

• Steam – Games

Password storage is incredibly important to me. Since I began seeing friends and others get their identities and online lives taken away because of reusing and/or using weak passwords, I started taking password security extremely seriously.

When I chose the utility to use for this, I had a couple basic requirements.

1. It had to be open source, for obvious reasons
2. I had to be able to access my passwords on all my devices (iPad, iPhone, MacBook, workstation)

Things like 1Password and Lastpass didn’t fullfill the first requirement, although very handy because of browser integration and the mobile apps. So I ended up choosing a combination of the KeePass framework and Safari+Mac OS X keychain for my password storage needs, with KeePassX for my client, along with a mobile app, MiniKeePass, that syncs my KeePass database using Dropbox. As an added bonus, the iOS mobile app is open source as well.

I use KeePass as my primary password storage database, and Safari’s password saving feature for sites I access often, like my blog and reddit account.

I’m very happy with this solution, but unfortunately the Mac KeePassX currently has a very ugly, un-Mac-like user interface. I’ve been waiting for something which incorporates the native Mac user interface controls.

And, finally, today stumbled across this KeePass Mac client developed my Michael Starke from Hick’n'Hack Software. It seems like it’s in very early alpha, but it can load KeePass files and display their contents, so the basis functionality is almost done. It seems like it’s using the MiniKeePass framework library for its backend functionality. I cloned and ran it immediately as I’ve been wanting this ever since I started using KeePass for storing my passwords.

Unfortunately I can’t seem to be able to copy passwords yet, and there’s no detail dialog when you click on a password entry.

But since, as of writing, the last commit is 13 hours ago I’m sure this functionality will be added soon. I’m just so happy someone is making this. This definitely makes me want to learn Objective C properly so I can contribute to this project! If you know ObjC, you should definitely go add some pull requests!

Here’s a screenshot from the release I just built:

Compare this to the current KeePass:

Here’s a little time-saving tip for Mac OS X/Linux users: if you work with lots of different Macs and servers daily, store your SSH configuration file in dropbox, and create a symbolic link to it so you can sync it across your computers.

With this, once I add a new machine to my SSH config, it’s immediately available across all of my computers, my workstation, laptop, work machine, etc. I’m terrible at remembering hostnames and IP-addresses, so this comes in handy as I acquire control over more and more servers.

Also, you can of course extend this method to sync other types of configuration files, like your git config or bash profile. Dropbox is a neat tool!

Step 1

Create a folder in your Dropbox to store files like these.

mkdir ~/Dropbox/configs

Step 2

Move your ssh config to this folder. I just call it ssh-config.txt instead of simply config for easier access and as to not mix it up with other configuration files.

mv ~/.ssh/config ~/Dropbox/configs/ssh-config.txt

Step 3

Create a symbolic link to the new configuration file.

ln -s ~/Dropbox/configs/ssh-config.txt ~/.ssh/config

Google just announced the Chromebook Pixel. It’s a $1,300 laptop with a an extremely high pixel density, limited local storage and made of machined metal (probably aluminium).

There’s a few problems, though.

You can’t install apps

The core idea of the Chromebooks is that they’re entirely web-based. You run all your apps through a browser. That means no high performance applications like Photoshop and 3D games.

If you want to edit photos using that high resolution screen, you’ll have to use web apps with limited functionality.

The other meaningful tasks you might want to do with a machine with specs like these, development, gaming, design, simply isn’t possible. While you can run webbased IDEs like Cloud 9 in your browser, you can’t install a real IDE like Netbeans, Eclipse, etc. Not to mention virtual machines and multiple browsers.

Only 32 or 64 GB storage and only 4 GB RAM

Usually, I’m not the one to complain about specs. I’m of the opinion that upgrading your laptop is largely passé. However, for a laptop with this price tag and resolution, I’d say 4GB is the bare minimum, especially when working with large documents in Google Docs which seems to get ridiculously slow when working with large documents.

Google does a lot to emphasise the free 1 terabyte free cloud storage you get with the laptop (only for 3 years though).

If you’re in a place that has no internet, you can’t put a couple HD movies on there. There’s imply no room.

It’s expensive

The Retina 13″ MacBook pro is only $200 more. Compared to all the extra functionality you get with a Mac, the chromebook feels too expensive.

Google’s other ARM based Chromebooks are much cheaper – think $6-700 less, and that price makes sense. For the price, the Pixel feels like a vanity product for rich people.

You need to be connected 24/7

Since the Pixel is cloud based, you really need to have a reliable internet connection available whenever you’re going to use it. That comes with a price, though. The HD moves you would want to watch would consume even the biggest LTE data plans quickly, or you would have to make do with the slow internet connections in McDonalds or Starbucks. For a mobile device, this is a big problem.

But it’s not all bad

The Chromebook Pixel is an interesting device. It’s certainly a beautiful device. While obviously designed to be a competitor to the Retina MacBook Pro, there’s still some upsides to it:

You’ll probably be able to install Linux, like many do with the existing chromebooks. This lets you install applications on your machine, making it not totally cloud-dependent.

I’m also hoping there’s a way to upgrade the storage. 32GB or 64GB is simply way too little, even with 1 TB cloud storage. For now, this is basically a $1300 Web browser with a puzzling target group.

I made a website that lets you create YouTube playlists easily – and share them, too.

Everybody is online nowadays. Nobody uses CDs anymore. So at parties it’s common to see a laptop hooked up to a stereo where people go up and select songs on YouTube during the night. It kinda sucks though:

• Music starts and stops randomly as people get drunk and start searching for songs while another is playing.
• You need to get up and change the track when it stops.
• It’s too hard to make a playlist on YouTube. You can’t really make one on the fly.
• What’s more, you have to be logged in with your Google ID to make playlists. I don’t want random people to mess with my account (e.g. Gmail), especially drunk people.

Sure, there’s Grooveshark. But people who aren’t nerds can’t figure out how to use Grooveshark and will just go to YouTube instead. It’s too easy to interrupt a playlist, especially when you’re drunk. The add to playlist button is easily missed.

Grooveshark is also missing many songs due to silly record companies.

Other sites exist, I know. But no matter which one you use, people will inevitably go to YouTube because it’s got all the content and it’s what people know and love.

Even other “Youtube DJ” sites exist. I’ve been through a few. They either a) require login, b) are hard to use, c) can’t autoplay, d) don’t work.

So I got fed up with all this and made InstaDJ. It’s a dead-simple Web site where you can add YouTube videos to a playlist on the fly. Even drunk people get it.

InstaDJ allows you to search and queue YouTube videos, using a simple interface everybody understands, in a way which doesn’t interrupt the music.

What it does

• Search YouTube videos
• View user uploads and favorites
• Queue YouTube videos
• Auto-selects HD video if available
• Generate URL to playlists
• Share playlist
• It’s free and there’s no ads
• Easy to use, minimalist interface

I even find myself just using InstaDJ instead of playing music from my iTunes library.

Don’t you want to try it out? Just click here to go to InstaDJ.com.

For the technically interested, it’s built with the YouTube API, Twitter Bootstrap and jQuery. Enjoy.

In this article I’ll be reviewing the Zotac ZBOX ID41, which is an inexpensive mini PC from Zotac that particularly appeals to media center owners and budget-constrained customers.

It doesn’t have a built-in tuner, but ships with the ION 2 chipset that allows it to play Full-HD video, rendering it a great PC for HTPC.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I’ve had some trouble with a few applications — mostly Premiere CS5.5 and After Effects CS5.5 — crashing on startup, others not. Sometimes it worked after a reboot, but mainly it didn’t.

But now I’ve found the solution: You (probably) have bad RAM.

You can try downloading the Memtest boot cd, burn it with Disk Utility and launch it on boot by holding down the alt key. Memtest is a very sophisticated tool which checks your RAM for errors. As it turned out, it reported that I had over 300.000 errors. I’m not a RAM expert, so I don’t know if that’s a lot (probably is though), but I quickly took them out and replaced them with some old sticks, which Memtest didn’t report any errors with. After that, the programs worked fine.

I didn’t find relevant results on Google for EXC_BAD_ACCESS, so now people can hopefully solve this issue quickly.

The MacBook I’ll be using in this article came only came with 2 GB ram and a 120 GB harddrive. By todays standards, that’s painfully little for a professional laptop. To get a little more life out of it, I decided to upgrade it to 8 GB ram, a 1TB HDD for storage and a 60 GB Vertex 2 SSD for OS X and applications.

An optibay

So how do you fit two disk drives in a 13″ laptop? More after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

iOS is the operating system of Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices. On YouTube and other sites, you can see UI designers coming up with ideas for the next version, iOS 5. However, this one from Swedish firm Color Monkey is probably the best I’ve seen. I really hope Apple incorporates these ideas. They’re seamless, don’t clutter the interface and, most importantly, have the somewhat same style as the existing iPhone interface.

You can tell there’s some talent behind this video. It’s beautifully made, too. The examples are really great and animated in a beautiful, smooth way. I don’t like the “hanging sign” effect they used on the smaller text, but that’s a matter of taste i suppose!

Interested in how iOS 5 might look? Take a look:

Films like those of director Guy Ritche and Green Street Hooligans came to mind when watching this fake trailer spoof the British film industry. I found it really funny! Favorite part: “Why is there so much space over my head?”.

It’s simple. Just navigate to the question via your profile and click “Unvote”, per the picture below. Then your answer will disappear from your Facebook “Questions” profile category.

So, if you search for Helvetica on Google today, this is what you’ll get:

I’m a bit of a typography nut myself, and I thought this clip was just great. It shows short tidbits of how movie titles were made throughout film history, and I definitely think he included the most important movies.

My favorites are probably the titles from Pink Panther, Reservoir Dogs, Seven, Catch Me If You Can and (of course) Enter the Void.

From the author:

Here’s a short film I put together for the opening of the SXSW “Title Design Finalists Screening” – an event that happens tonight in Austin, TX at the Vimeo theater in the convention center.

Very much looking forward to seeing my fellow jurors Jenny Lee (formally of Shadowplay Studios,) Kurt Volk (Troublemaker Studios,) Ron Pippin (Shiny Object,) and Tommy Pallotta (representing for Watch the Titles.)

You can visit the Web site at artoftitle.com.

Why I like Behringer

What do you do when you want a cheap sound system with lots of power that sounds great? You buy studio gear. Not only do you get a great system, but its cheap too. Why? You don’t pay for the brand name, or the design. The German audio firm Behringer is a great example. It designs audio equipment in Germany, produce it in their own factory in China (“Behringer City”) and sells it for the lowest price possible.

About MON 800

Behringer MON 800 MINIMON is a cross between an audio mixer and preamplifier, but much smaller and with many features stripped away. And it’s cheap too. I got mine for DKK 300. That’s $55.

Read the rest of this entry »

We released this little video at my internship today. It started out as a camera test when we wanted to test our new camera rig, and it turned out pretty good, so we decided to release it for everybody to see.

We shot it in a couple of takes using a Xoom portable microphone, a Canon 7D, a DV cam and a DSLR rig.

Stay tuned for more videos!

When I have guests over, I want to share my Internet connection, but it shouldn’t be a security risk. People on a shared network would be able to interact with my machines behind the firewall.

The best way to combat this is creating an entirely separate virtual WLAN (Wireless network). That way, there’s 2 SSIDs and my own data is encrypted while I’m sharing my internet with others.

I’ve made a tutorial on how to do this with DD-WRT. In addition, I’ll also show how to enable Quality Of Service and prioritizing my own data so the public network won’t affect my data traffic.

You need DD-WRT to set this up. DD-WRT is a free firmware package that can be installed on a variety of off-the-shelf routers. I’m using a D-Link DIR-600. Here’s my tutorial on YouTube.

Today Apple updated their MacBook Pro line of notebooks and adding several substantial features. I think the biggest of them all was the introduction of ThunderBolt. A new, high-speed port that allows the user to daisy chain 6 devices. The port is more than twice as fast as USB 3.0 with its 10 Gbit transfer speed.

What makes ThunderBolt great is that by daisy-chaining, up to six can be linked up from a single port, and with simple adapters a Thunderbolt connection can be turned into HDMI, VGA, DVI, gigabit ethernet, FireWire or USB.

This means you could plug 6 DVI ports, connecting 6 displays to your notebook, where you could previously connect just 1 extra display. We’ll see if this will actually work when the first reviews begin to appear on the web.

In other news, a developer preview of Mac OS X Lion has been released today with several exciting features, including multitouch support, global auto-save, backup, versioning and fullscreen support. I can’t wait for it to be released this summer!

My Internet router uses a software called DD-WRT instead of the default firmware. DD-WRT is an open-source alternative to the factory-installed firmware for some routers.

Basically, it allows me to do more and have more control over my router.

Today, however, I read about a location vulnerability in the DD-WRT Web administration interface.

Using a DNS rebinding attack, malicious Web sites can track your location fairly accurately using the routers MAC address. For example, when you visit a malicious Web site, people can find out where you live.

Securing DD-WRT by enabling password-protection of the info-site

I don’t want anyone to know my location without my permission, so I found out how to disable the information page where the routers MAC address is shown.

By accessing the administration interface, and enabling password protection of the info-site, you can shut malicious users out.

Click the screenshot to learn how to enable password-protection.

Great TED Talk about the 3 ways design makes you happy.