Scrollbars in Ubuntu 11++

Here's how one really gets back to the original scrollbars:

sudo bash -c "echo export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars"

Logout, log back in.

Linux and OS X OCR

Mostly for my notes:

pdftoppm -f 2 -gray AmericanLegion.pdf AL

for i in *.pgm
do
    pnmtotiff $i > ${i%%.pgm}.tif
    rm $i
done


for i in *.tif
do
    tesseract $i ${i%%.tif}
done

Tesseract needs images of decent resolution; e.g.: in PowerPoint it's better to "Save as Pictures" at higher than the default resolution:

iCal alarms for recurring subscribed events

iCal won't alarm on events in subscribed to calendars, such as Facebook.  I guess the originator of the event has to set whether to alarm or not.  So I spent a little time leaning AppleScript, and here's a script that does it.

on run the_calendars
    try
        length of calendars
    on error
        set the_calendars to {"Facebook"}
    end try
    
    set today to (current date)
    set this_day to day of today
    set this_month to month of today
    set to_display to ""
    
    tell application "Calendar"
        repeat with the_calendar in the_calendars
            log the_calendar
            tell calendar the_calendar
                repeat with the_event in every event
                    set the_date to start date of the_event
                    set the_day to day of the_date
                    set the_month to month of the_date
                    
                    if (the_month = this_month and the_day = this_day) then
                        set to_display to (to_display & summary of the_event as string) & return
                    end if
                end repeat
            end tell
        end repeat
    end tell
    
    if (length of to_display > 0) then
        tell application "Finder"
            activate
            with timeout of 86400 seconds
                display dialog to_display
            end timeout
        end tell
    end if
end run

Open up you AppleScript Editor, copy and paste, and save somewhere. Now, you'll need to have it run every day. So I learned a little about launchctl. Save the following script to ~/Library/LaunchAgents. I called mine 'edu.ucar.icalsubscriptions.plist'. You'll need to modify the Program path to where you saved your script, and possibly the time it runs if you don't like 0900. You might also need to change the name of the calendar to match the name of the calendar in iCal -- mine is called Facebook -- and you can have a list of them if you want.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC
     "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
     "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
            <string>edu.ucar.icalsubscriptions</string>

        <key>Program</key>
            <string>/Users/beaty-admin/iCalRecurring.app/Contents/MacOS/applet</string>
            

        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
            <array>
                <string>Facebook</string>
            </array>

        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
            <dict>
                <key>Hour</key>
                    <integer>9</integer>
                <key>Minute</key>
                    <integer>0</integer>
            </dict>

        <key>Debug</key>
            <true/>
    </dict>
</plist>

Passwords

People ask me about security, and much of it is based on having good passwords.  In general, one-time passwords are best.  These change each time one logs in; yubikeys and RSA ids are examples.  Two factor -- typically one reusable and one ephemeral (e.g.: SMS text your cell phone) -- are good too.  When we're stuck with reusable (using the same one again and again), then picking good ones is critical.  Good ones are both long and difficult to guess.  Random is best, as we humans aren't as random as we first appear.  As long and random passwords aren't memorable, we need password keepers.  Firefox will remember passwords for you; I recommend you allow it to do this, but: set a master password!  I also recommend using keepass from http://keepass.info/ for whichever platform you have.

So, let's do a little math.  26 lower case letters, 26 upper case, 10 digits, and 10 symbols equals 72 characters.  Let's say you have 8 character random passwords using each of the character classes and no repeated characters.  So, 72*71*70*69*68*67*66*65 -= 482,590,739,030,400 possible passwords.  Not bad.  Now let's go to 20.  72*71*70*69*68*67*66*65*64*63*62*61*60*59*58*57*56*55*54*53 = 759,184,772,617,383,139,127,116,820,643,840,000 possible passwords.  Good enough for the time being.

Below is a password generator written in JavaScript. This assures the password is generated on you machine, in your browser. Choose how long you want your password to be, and what type of characters it needs to contain. Click "Generate!" and then you can cut and paste it into a password field. I recommend against sites that generate passwords on their server -- they have your address and a password of yours. And remember: you don't have to remember it, have your computer do that for you.

Number of characters	12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Include lowercase
Include uppercase
Include numbers
Include symbols

Password:

Cleaning espresso machines

I'm called on to clean espresso and coffee machines from time to time. I like Cleancaf:

Mix it, pour it in, and interrupt the brewing cycle. Let it sit a in the machine for a few hours. Here's a glass full of murky water that came out of the steam wand of a machine that had been ignored for five or so years

8-port serial board under Linux

I work with a machine that has an 8-port serial board in it.  For Linux to see all the ports, I had to do two things.

1. Add '8250.nr_uarts=12' to the kernal boot line in /boot/grub/menu.lst
2. Turn off ACPI.  That entailed '/sbin/chkconfig acpid off; reboot'

The result of an /sbin/lspci showing the specific board:

07:04.0 Serial controller: Oxford Semiconductor Ltd OX16PCI954 (Quad 16950 UART) function 0 (Uart)
07:04.1 Bridge: Oxford Semiconductor Ltd OX16PCI954 (Quad 16950 UART) function 1 (8bit bus)
07:08.0 Serial controller: Oxford Semiconductor Ltd OX16PCI954 (Quad 16950 UART) function 0 (Uart)
07:08.1 Bridge: Oxford Semiconductor Ltd OX16PCI954 (Quad 16950 UART) function 1 (8bit bus)

Excluding files or directories from Time Machine

There are a number of places that talk around excluding files or directories from Time Machine backups, but I thought I'd share the most direct way.  The global exclude list can be opened using

$ open /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist

but if you want finer-grained control, you can use extended attributes.  The following commands exclude several directories where I have experimental VirtualBox VM's that I don't need backed up:

$ xattr -w com_apple_backup_excludeItem com.apple.backupd VirtualBox\ VMs/Windows\ 7/
$ xattr -w com_apple_backup_excludeItem com.apple.backupd VirtualBox\ VMs/OpenBSD/

To remove an extended attribute, use xattr thus:

$ xattr -d com_apple_backup_excludeItem VirtualBox\ VMs/

To see which extended attributes are set on a file or directory, use the '@' argument to ls:

ls -l@ VirtualBox\ VMs/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 6 beaty-admin  staff  204 Jun  1 13:53 OpenBSD/
    com_apple_backup_excludeItem     17 
drwxr-xr-x  6 beaty-admin  staff  204 Oct  5 15:46 Ubuntu/
drwxr-xr-x@ 7 beaty-admin  staff  238 Oct  6 21:22 Windows 7/
    com_apple_backup_excludeItem     17 
drwxr-xr-x@ 6 beaty-admin  staff  204 Sep 29 21:38 XP/
    com_apple_backup_excludeItem     17 

And: Let Time Machine backup File Vault while logged in