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All posts for the month January, 2013

CPAN Modules in OSX

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.29
Posted in: Programming. Tagged: , , . 1 Comment

Mac OSX comes pre-installed with Perl.  This is how you install CPAN modules into the bundled Perl.  Don’t know what Perl or CPAN is?  This article isn’t for you. 😛

It needs to be done as root, so use sudo.

  • Open Terminal.
  • Launch the CPAN shell and enter the password when requested:
sudo perl -MCPAN -e "shell"
  • Download the CPAN library you want to install (example is Mac::iTunes::Library):
get Mac::iTunes::Library
  • Install the library:
install Mac::iTunes::Library
  • Exit the CPAN shell.
q

Now you can include the module in your Perl application as so:

use Mac::iTunes::Library;

Breaking from Google Series, Conclusion

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.28
Posted in: Google. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

OK, so I didn’t completely free myself from Googles’ grip.  But I did manage to migrate at least 75%.  I could meet a higher number if:

  • I could find a replacement web calendar that supports Outlook 2010 synchronization (for a single work calendar)
  • I was willing to let old forum posts that have linked pictures die with “image not found” for other readers.

So the bottom line is I am still using Google Calendar (for a single calendar), Google Talk (for a few friends instant messaging), Google Picasa (for old forum posts) and Google Voice (because it happens to be awesome and irreplaceable IMHO).

Here is an overview of where I moved everything:

  • Google Mail -> Apple Mail (iCloud)
  • Google Calendar -> Apple iCal (iCloud), except for 1 work calendar
  • Google Contacts -> Apple Contacts (iCloud), except for those used by Google Talk
  • Google Talk -> AIM, except for a few friends
  • Google Photos -> Flickr (Yahoo)
  • Google Bookmarks -> Delicious
  • Google Reader -> subpug
  • Google Docs -> Microsoft SkyDrive
  • Google Plus -> Facebook
  • Google Sites -> Evernote
  • Google Voice -> Google Voice
  • Google Video (YouTube) -> Vimeo

Since the migration I have been completely happy with Mail and Calendar synchronization and alerting, which is the one thing that was most frustrating before.  In Jobs-speak, “it just works”.  And it reality it does.

What am I missing?  Nothing really.  The single sign on aspect of the Google provided services was nice, but the features I gained at the competing services (especially with iCloud, SkyDrive, and Evernote) far out-weigh it.  Single sign on becomes a non issue when you use services like LastPass which can securely sign on for you.

 

Takes A Licking, Keeps On Ticking

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.27
Posted in: General. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Today I resurrected a 31 year old digital watch.  I’ve meant to do this for quite some time.  I got it long, long ago in 1982.  I don’t think it has been worn since about 1985 or 1986 when the Swatch craze hit.  I wasn’t even sure it would work after all these years.  I’m referring to the Timex Timebar seen below, with no model number inscribed anywhere on it.

TimexTimebar

The first order of business was locating a battery for it.  The battery had long been removed, but the case is marked with “S Cell”.  Good luck figuring out what that equates to in todays terms.  Timex doesn’t event list the battery type.  I’ve looked on and off, for quite some time, and been unable to find a replacement.  I stumbled across it today on a UK watch site buried a couple of pages deep in search results.  The replacement is a SR721SW or 362.

After getting a new battery in it I was delighted to see it come to life.  The next objective was to set the date and time.  This watch has a single button or Timebar as they call it.  I held down the left side until the seconds started blinking.  Lucky first shot!  Advance to hours, set, advance to minutes, set, advance to year, huh?

Imagine my surprise when it started flashing 1/1/70.  Wow!  My immediate thought was “I hope it works past 99”.  It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen any clock have a default date older than mid 90’s.  I pushed the right side of the Timebar excitedly and was relieved when it rolled past 99 to 00 and onward to 01!  Timex thought ahead!  Onward to 13.  07, 08, 09, ruh-roh 70.  I guess Timex didn’t think that far ahead.  So how do I get the dates to roll correctly?

Internet.  Bing to be exact.  I spent a large part of my life writing code.  I also know a thing or two about dates and date manipulation due to that work.  I realized I just needed to find a calendar year that was similar to 2013 (start on the same weekday, have the same number of days, and end on the same weekday).  Yes, yes, the year would display wrong, but I’m interested in the month and date.  A quick search in Bing yielded this page which has compatible calendar years.  Thank you timeanddate.com.

TimexYears

I picked 1985 from the list.  That should allow the watch to keep running for another 24 years.  1985 is 28 years ago.  Playing with the year I found that each year until 2020 you can just subtract 28 years and have a compatible calendar.  Maybe more, but I stopped at 2020 (which is compatible with 1992).  Of course the floating holidays like Memorial Day may not match up, but the days and numbers will.

With the year set, I moved to the month, day, then weekday.  It is now correctly display the date and time for today, some 31 years after the watch was released by Timex.

If you have any old electronic watches or other devices with dates that don’t reach to the current year, now you know how to set them so they will match up.

 

Breaking from Google Series, Search

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.27
Posted in: Google. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Google Search

The grand daddy of all Google services, Search.  For the past 15 or more years Google has been the defacto standard of search on the web.  It has also been turned into a verb – Google it!  A common household name to say the least.

Even before Google rolled out Plus to the masses and started customizing the search results with data from your social network (which you can turn off), I started noticing the results were becoming less and less relevant.  I increasingly found myself looking beyond the first page of results for information.

After I concluded the migration from all the Google web services, I was still using Google for search, even though it was producing less relevant results.  So I started looking at other search providers.  What I found was surprising.

I did side by side tests of several providers.  I started with Yahoo!, but was still unimpressed with the results as I was when Yahoo! was in its former glory.  Since I have started to hear a lot of good things about Microsoft Bing, I decided to give it a try.  I was sure there was no way Microsoft could compete in this space.  Well, guess what?

I was wrong.  Side by side comparisons showed me that Bing is providing the results I want to see (usually on the first page of results).  Just what I am looking for!  I started a trial of Bing using only one web browser on one device.  After a short while I enabled it on another, then another, and then all.

Just as Microsoft quietly built the best online Office suite, they also built a top-notch search engine.  Microsoft is gaining more and more respect in my book, but I still won’t use Windows. 😛

You should give Bing a try as well.  It may just surprise you too.

Here is how to switch the search provider on several browsers.

OSX Safari:

  1. Open Safari.
  2. Select Safari > Preferences from the menu.
  3. Select the General section.
  4. Next to “Default search engine” use the drop down to select Bing or whichever provider you choose.

SearchOSX

iOS Safari:

  1. Open Settings > Safari > Search Engine.
  2. Select Bing or whichever provider you choose.

SearchiOS

Windows Firefox:

  1. Open Firefox.
  2. Click the down arrow button next to the search providers icon.
  3. Click Bing or whichever provider you choose from the list.

SearchFirefox

Windows Internet Explorer:

  1. Open Internet Explorer.
  2. Click the down arrow next to the magnifying glass icon.
  3. Click Bing or whichever provider you choose from the list.

SearchIE

Next up: Conclusion

Breaking from Google Series, Reader

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.25
Posted in: Google. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Google Reader

Google Reader may be one of the best RSS feed aggregators out there.  RSS is how I get most of my daily news, tech, world, local, or otherwise.  In my quest to be Google free, I looked at several alternatives.  One very good one is NetVibes, but ultimately I decided it is too busy and too feature rich for my needs.

So I moved all my RSS feeds to subpug, a very lightweight, very clean, login-less, aggregator.  Yes, login-less. There is no signup, no login!  The feed information is stored in a browser cookie, and you can email a link to yourself so you can view the same feeds in another browser on another machine.  subpug maintains the feed lists and what viewed and not viewed so you are in sync across browsers / devices.

subpug also lets you filter some articles out of a feed.  For example, you like GeekDad (http://www.wired.com/geekdad),  but don’t like the “Dork Tower” articles.  subpug allows you to filter them out.

And subpug has the standard fare of sharing options so you can share something you like easily.  subpug is little known underdog to say the least.

subpug does have two flaws though.

  1. It tops out at 100 unread articles. So if you have some busy feeds, you will miss the oldest ones as they fall off the radar.  So you’ll need to stay on top of it or drop the busy feeds.
  2. You cant export your subscriptions should you want to move them to another reader.  So when you import your feeds, hang on to the import file!

How to export your Google Reader RSS feed information:

  • In Google Reader, go to Settings > Import / Export.
  • Click the link “Download your data through Takeout”.  Takeout is short for Google Takeout (a data liberation tool).
  • You will be asked to sign in to your Google account again.
  • Click the “Choose Services” tab.
  • Select the Reader service.
  • Click the “Create Archive” button.
  • Once the download is ready, click the “Download” button.
  • You will be asked to sign in to your Google account once again.  Do so and a zip file should be downloaded to your desktop (or default download location).  It will be name “username@gmail.com-takeout.zip”.
  • On your desktop, unzip this file.  Each service you exported in Takeout will have a folder.
  • Look for the Reader folder and open it.
  • Locate “subscriptions.xml”.  It is an OPML file.  You can use this as an import source at most RSS reader sites.

How to import your RSS feed information into subpug:

  • Open your browser and go to subpug.
  • Click “Read your subscriptions” in the top right.
  • Since you haven’t visited before they should you a quick popup explaining the buttons.  Once you review them, click the “OKAY, LETS GO!” button.

Web-subpug

  • Click the Edit Subscriptions button (far right).
  • Click the “Import OPML” button in the “Add a Subscription” section.  A file browser will popup.  Find the “subscription.xml” file you exported from Google and select it.
  • Click Choose.  Your subscriptions will be imported.
  • Now click the “Normal View” button or “List View” button, whichever you prefer.

That’s it.  To return to sub pug and read more at another time, simply open your browser and open http://read.subpug.com.  The “Edit Subscriptions” page has a section called “View your subscriptions on another device”.  You can put your email address in and click “Send Me The Link” to open your customized subpug feed subscriptions on any other device.  You only need to open the link once per device to set the tracking cookie on the devices browser.  From there on out, it will know it’s you (unless you delete your cookies!).

Next up: Google Search

Breaking from Google Series, Sites

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.25
Posted in: Google. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Google Sites

I used Google Sites as a notebook rather than a website (web sites are what it’s designed for).  It let me create a browse-able categorized container of information that is viewable on any platform that has a web browser. It produces HTML without writing HTML, and allows it to be private with shared access privileges.  I am completely comfortable writing HTML, but the WYSIWYG design makes it completely seemless.  It also has many customization features to change the look.  I originally moved to Sites when Google discontinued Notebook (something they should have kept IMHO).

I also used simplenote, a very elegant, very simple, notebook with tagging.  simplenote also has an excellent iOS companion application.  I used Google Sites for large static notes, like instructions on how to do something technical, obscure command references, etc.  I used simplenote for small notes, like lists of things I want to research, etc.  The only thing I don’t like about simplenote is their implementation of markdown for rich text.  SimpleNote didn’t start life with rich text, it was bolted on afterward – poorly.

I moved everything to Evernote.  Evernote met all my needs, has a good iOS companion application, ability to create notebooks, rich text, and tagging.  They also have something they call Stacks, which is basically another container within a notebook to group similar items.  I re-thought the way I was managing notes and found it was easier to have all the notes in a single location.

I have about 250 notes in various categories, so it took a little bit of effort to get everything categorized into notebooks instead of web pages, but the effort paid off.  You can use Evernote’s iPhone app, iPad app, Desktop App, or browser App to view and/or update your information.

It’s noteworthy to mention (no pun intended) that I use Evernote for large notes (like instructions), not simple ones (like watch batteries).  For small simple notes, I use the iPhone Notes application.  The Notes app syncs via iCloud so notes can be accessed on the Mac or iPad as well.  When you use Notes sync for iOS, you view the notes inside the Mail app on OSX 10.7 and lower (I know, strange).  OSX 10.8 has a dedicated Notes app.

Next up: Google Reader

Breaking from Google Series, Voice

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.24
Posted in: Google. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Google Voice

There are not many alternatives to Google Voice out there. If you can find one (Skype?) that works like a phone, can call any phone, and offers PBX (private branch exchange) functions that you like better, by all means use it.  The power of Google Voice is too great to dismiss.

I give my Google Voice number out to businesses and vendors.  I give my real number to family and friends.  This way, if a business / vendor becomes obnoxious, I can mark them as spam and never ever hear from them again.  It also lets you screen calls, transcribe voice mail and send it to you in email or text message or both.  It can ring multiple phones when a call comes in, and many other features.  Think personal customizable PBX.

I will be keeping this one.

Next up: Google Sites

Breaking from Google Series, Talk

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.24
Posted in: Google. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Google Talk

In general I’ve never been a huge fan of instant messaging.  It doesn’t convey emotion well, meanings aren’t always understood, and it’s a waste of time.  You inevitably end up spending much more time “talking” than if you had actually placed a phone call.  You can have more verbal communication in 10 seconds that you could instant messaging in 2 minutes.

That said, I’ve kept an AIM account for years, several actually.  A while back I stopped using AIM in favor of Google Talk.  This lasted a long time.  Within the last year I started utilizing both again mainly to be accessible to some people not using Google Talk.

I still don’t utilize instant messaging much at all, except at work and that is a completely different product with only work contacts.  With the prevalence of cell phones, texting is more the norm now.

I’ve elected to keep Google Talk for only those contacts that utilize Google Talk.  AIM will be my normal one, but in reality, texting is most likely to be used now.  But what I really want is simple phone call instead.

Next up: Google Voice

Breaking from Google Series, Google Plus

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.23
Posted in: Google. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Google Plus

While there may be some other social networks out there, a social network doesn’t do any good if none of your friends are there.  Google Plus has a lot of great features and possibly a better interface, but the user base doesn’t compare with Facebook.  Google Plus feels vacant.  I tried to make it work, going so far as to deleting my Facebook account.

I moved back to Facebook, even with all the negatives which drove me to leave in the first place a few years ago.  This time though I made it much simpler.  I am only adding family and friends.  I’m sorry, but if you’re an acquaintance we don’t need to know what each other is doing.  Keeping the network small to just those I care about is working out very well.

There is some science suggesting humans can’t effectively maintain large social networks.  In the 1990’s Robin Dunbar theorized that humans can only manage between 100 and 230 relationships, with 150 being the average.  Here is some background on Dunbar’s number.  There exists an alternate theory by H. Russell Bernard and Peter Killworth which suggests the maximum is 290 with a median of 231.

Next up: Google Talk

Breaking from Google Series, Video (YouTube)

Posted by Ripdubski on 2013.01.23
Posted in: Google. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Google Video (YouTube)

Continuing this series, I now focus on Google Video (YouTube).  Deciding where to move my videos was easy.  I moved to Vimeo .  Vimeo is arguably better than YouTube in regards to rights management, ease of use, and sharing.  Vimeo also has a very nice iPhone app.  With it uploading a video is not as convenient as “Send to YouTube”, but that’s minor.

Migration is simple.  Create an account on Vimeo.  Upload your videos.  Share them as you wish.

Removing the YouTube account is the most difficult aspect.  Depending on when you setup your YouTube account, there may or may not be a “delete account” link in the options.  I had two accounts.  One had it, the other did not.  I still have not figured out how to get the other one removed.  For the latter I just made sure that nothing is shared and there is no content.

Next up: Google +