Let’s say, hypothetically, that you are a designer, and are working on a design comp for a Christian Science church or reading room, and you wanted a high resolution vector version of the logo to use in your mock-up so you didn’t have to chop out background garbage out of some low-resolution version of the logo you found on the web somewhere. What should you do?

In the Cross and Crown trademark licensing documentation, you will find the following instructions:

Two approvals are necessary:
(1) for your type of use (sign, etc.) and
(2) for the actual form of your use (how the sign appears).
Therefore, if you already have a sample or mock-up of the proposed use, please send it by e-mail or regular mail along with the Request Form, so both approvals can be done simultaneously. It will save you time later.

Unfortunately, they do not currently provide any links to a high-resolution version of their logo for purposes of laying out a design, which would be very helpful to all the designers out there trying to help their clients prepare a mock-up of the proposed usage.

Or do they!??

Interestingly, they do happen to include the logo in their announcement PDF about the licensing terms. If you are a designer, and are in need of a vector version of the logo, you should have no problem saving the linked PDF, opening it up in Illustrator and copying the high-resolution logo artwork contained therein for use in your comps.

Once you’ve copied it out into a new document you may need to release two clipping paths to get at the actual logo paths, which you can then change the color of as needed, resize, save as an .EPS or .PDF, place in Photoshop, etc.

You still need to get their permission to use the logo in a final production setting, but now when you submit your design mock-up at least the logo will look as crisp and correct as it can.

Popularity: 15% [?]

It’s super simple: Click this link, then join the Facebook Causes group for Monteverde Conservation League and donate any amount.

Right now, if we can get another 7 donors in the next 22 hours the Children’s Eternal Rainforest will get $1,000 for free. So your tax-deductible $10 donation could help save another $1,000 worth of rainforest in Costa Rica.

Check it out, and give a little if you can:
Join the Children’s Eternal Rainforest cause on Facebook

Popularity: 7% [?]

As part of getting an upgraded server set up and transferring sites from the older server, I had to re-install PEAR XML_RSS. One of its dependencies is XML_Tree.

Normally, this command should have worked with no problems:

pear install XML_RSS

It downloaded XML_RSS just fine, but then choked on XML_Tree, which was a required dependency.

Initial output:

# pear install XML_RSS
Did not download dependencies: pear/XML_Tree, use --alldeps or --onlyreqdeps to download automatically
pear/XML_RSS requires package "pear/XML_Tree"
No valid packages found
install failed


My next try was to specify installing XML_Tree:

# pear install XML_Tree
WARNING: "pear/XML_Tree" is deprecated in favor of "pear/XML_Serializer"
downloading XML_Tree-1.1.tgz ...
Starting to download XML_Tree-1.1.tgz (4,826 bytes)
.....done: 4,826 bytes
XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line 10
Download of "pear/XML_Tree" succeeded, but it is not a valid package archive
Error: cannot download "pear/XML_Tree"
Download failed
install failed


After some troubleshooting, here is how I fixed this problem:

1. Change directory into the PEAR download cache directory: cd /tmp/pear/cache/
2. Clear out all the old cache files: pear clear-cache
3. You should see the downloaded file: XML_Tree-1.1.tgz
4. Extract the files: tar xvfz XML_Tree-1.1.tgz
5. Now edit the extracted package.xml file: vi package.xml
6. Go to line 10 and change the ö to an o. This is the character that is causing the XML validation of the package file to fail. Next, save the file (ESC :wq)
7. Next, remove the old .tgz file: rm -rf XML_Tree-1.1.tgz
8. We’re going to recreate the package: tar cfv - package.xml XML_Tree-1.1/ | gzip > XML_Tree-1.1.tgz
9. Next, we’re going to install this package and not use the network: pear install -O XML_Tree-1.1.tgz

XML_Tree is now installed. You should now be able to continue installing XML_RSS normally.

Popularity: 12% [?]

I’ve been enjoying using my Apple AirPort Express to stream music from my laptop to our living room speakers using iTunes. The other evening I wanted to watch a DVD and use the good speakers to get the best sound, but you can’t do that without using a helper program.

I found a program that lets you route any audio signals to your AirPort Express — it’s called Airfoil (free to try out, $25 to purchase) and is made by Rogue Amoeba. It’s very simple to install and run. When I tried playing a DVD, though, the audio didn’t synch properly with the video.

This is the solution I found to fix the audio synchronization problem using VLC to play back the DVD and by adjusting the preferences and using VLC’s ability to buffer audio and adjust the synchronization settings.

1. Open preferences in VLC
2. Click on Advanced tab on bottom of screen
3. Select Input/Codecs
4. Select Access Modules
5. Select DVD with menus [Note: to make this same adjustment when you are playing back regular files as opposed to DVDs, simply select File instead of DVD with menus and continue with the rest of the instructions]
6. Change the default value (300 milliseconds) to 6000. This will increase the amount of audio data buffering to 6 seconds, which should be enough to synchronize the audio playback.
7. Click Save to activate your changes (you may need to quit VLC to ensure the settings become active).
8. Re-open the DVD using VLC and click Play.
9. Click the “f” key repeatedly to adjust the amount of audio synchronization offset. It adjusts the audio offset downwards by 50 millisecond increments. I had to set mine to around -4900 milliseconds to correctly match the audio with the video output on my system. Press the “g” key to increase the offset in the other direction. Watch the actor’s lips and adjust the offset until it matches perfectly.
10. Enjoy listening to your DVD audio through your speakers, streamed wirelessly!

Download VLC (Free Open Source video player)

Download Airfoil

Popularity: 19% [?]

Question: What do scientists consider to be valid evidence for a theory? How should studies be conducted to prove efficacy of treatment options? How can we tell, scientifically, if something really works or not?

• Scientific method
• CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman
• Mistakes in Experimental Design and Interpretation
• Randomized controlled trial
• Placebo effect

Popularity: 7% [?]

Update: It turns out that the reason my laptop had this problem in the first place was one of my 1GB sticks of RAM that had gone bad after running with zero problems for over a year. The kernel panics happening on a totally clean install of OS X was a clue, and then using the hardware test CD that originally came with the laptop confirmed that it was indeed bad RAM. Bad RAM sucks!

I had an unfortunate thing happen today — my trusty Powerbook decided that it had had enough and that it was going to lose it’s mind. It froze while I was working on the new version of Kristin’s website (not up yet…)

At first I was like, hmm, that’s annoying. That feeling turned into, oh crap, my laptop is broken when it wouldn’t finish booting up.

A quick Google using my Treo reminded me of the OS X startup key command to enter single-user mode (it is CMD+S). First, though, I tried the command for a verbose startup so I could see what the problem was (CMD+V). Verbose startup indicated that something was wrong with the hard drive meta data. So I decided to try starting up in single-user mode and then ran fsck -f to see if it could fix the problem. No love there.

This is the error message that showed up:


localhost:/ root# fsck -f
** /dev/rdisk0s3
** Root file system
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extants Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
Keys out of order
(4, 23212)
** Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
** The volume New Hotness could not be repaired.
localhost :/ root#


CRAP!!!!

At this point in time, I am VERY grateful that I had recently (~3 weeks ago) made a full backup of my entire drive (over 60GB of applications and data). All of the source code for my work projects are under version control (Subversion) so I’m pretty good there even without backups. But what about the new work that I had been doing on Kristin’s site? That wasn’t backed up, hadn’t been checked into version control yet, and had considerable amount of work done that was stored in the MySQL database.

After doing some research about possible ways to fix this error (going to go into the Apple store tomorrow morning to see if they have a DiskWarrior disk that we can use to try to fix the Catalog B-tree problem), I thought it would be a really good idea to get Kristin’s site source code onto another machine so I would have a backup of that. Oh, and maybe also it would be a good idea to copy the 1+GB of China pictures that I hadn’t backed up yet (but had deleted off my camera!). Also, email inboxes, and other home directory files that I knew weren’t part of the 3 week old backup.

Mounting my laptop in Firewire Target Disk mode (hold down T during startup) didn’t work (it didn’t mount when I plugged it into Kristin’s laptop). Booting up using the install CD only gave me options to install a fresh system or use Disk Utility, which didn’t give me the options I was looking for.

So, the problem that I now faced was this: How do I mount a drive or get network access using Single User Mode?

Lots of searches didn’t turn up any solid answers, until I found this command on the MacOSHints forum archives:

/usr/libexec/kextd
/usr/sbin/configd


So first I ran mount -uw / to mount the root filesystem in writable mode. Next I ran the commands that I found. The kextd command output a few errors, but exited cleanly otherwise. The configd command got networking running. YAY!

Once that was running, I plugged in an ethernet cable between my laptop and Kristin’s, and turned on the built-in SSH server on her laptop using the System Preference panel (Sharing > Remote Login > Start). I was then able to successfully SSH into her system and copy over all of the needed files.

Hopefully I won’t need to utilize these backups, but it is a great relief to know that I have them if needed.

I hope this can be helpful if you get in a similar jam.

My System Specs:
I’m running the latest version of OS X 10.4.9, have 2GB ram and an upgraded hard drive in a 15″ PowerPC Powerbook.

DISCLAIMER: I’m pretty sure that my laptop is really screwed up right now, and has kernel panicked and segmentation faulted a couple of times during transferring of files. If you find yourself following these directions, then you are probably already screwed too. But know that I am not responsible for what you do and also I don’t know if my copying over these files may have in fact screwed things up even more than they already are. So, your mileage may vary, proceed at your own risk, etc.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Evil hackers attack!

Some customers of mine recently reported some suspicious behavior on one of their sites. I discovered, with dismay, that a number of months ago there was a nasty cPanel exploit that some evil hackers had used to insert a malicious line of code into the bottom of every HTML page on this server. After verifying that the cPanel installation had been fixed, I used grep to search through all the files on the server to see if any other files had been touched by the hackers. I found over 4,700 individual files that had malicious code added and knew that something needed to be done immediately to address this problem.

Not the best way to start my day…

(more…)

Popularity: 17% [?]

DiddleBug Extractor 2.1

Drawing pictures on your Palm

I use an excellent free Open Source program called DiddleBug on my Palm Treo 700p for doing small black and white drawings. The latest version of DiddleBug creates 320×320 pixel size drawings. These are referred to on their site as “high-res” pictures instead of the 160×160 pixel size drawings that older versions of the software created.

Getting DiddleBug pictures off your Palm

I used to use a nice converter on my Windows laptop called WindleBug but wanted to be able to just use my Mac laptop by itself instead.

The DiddleBug FAQ mentions using a Perl script called Didcon on Windows, Linux and OS X which hadn’t been updated yet to extract the new 320×320 pixel sized images. When I ran the Didcon script for the first time, it saved out a 160×160 graphic that had weird lines running throughout it, due to the fact that it wasn’t reading out the data for a 320×320 pixel sized graphic.

After hacking at it for a little while, including researching how to correctly indicate the pixel size of an image in a Windows bitmap in the header of the file, I managed to get a working script that correctly outputs a 320×320 .bmp file.

This is the modified script, and I’m also including a second script that you can double-click in the Finder to run the extraction process.

(more…)

Popularity: 21% [?]

Howto check Google Pagerank using Safari:

1. Go here Searchball - Google Pagerank checker for Safari and add the bookmarklet to your browser bookmark toolbar.
2. Click the bookmarklet whenever you want to know the Pagerank for the site your are viewing
3. A small window will appear telling you the Pagerank.

I just finished making some adjustments to Searchball. This is a small little service that gives you a bookmarklet that lets you check the Google Pagerank for any site simply by clicking it. This is really nice if you are using Safari or any other browser that doesn’t have a Google Toolbar or browser extension (like Firefox) that supports showing you the Pagerank of the site you’re viewing.

Check it out: Searchball - Google Pagerank checker for Safari

Popularity: 10% [?]

If you’ve ever tried to get your website featured on the front page of a site like digg, reddit, or Slashdot you might have felt frustration when you didn’t get the right number of votes to make it.

There is a site called RSS2.com that will automatically put your website’s content directly on its homepage.

How to get onto the homepage

Here are the 3 easy steps for you to take to get your website featured on the homepage of RSS2.com:

1. Go to the site and make sure that your RSS feed is in the database. The easiest way to do this is to paste in the URL for your RSS feed into the “Read a Feed” input box at the bottom of the page.
2. Verify that your existing site RSS feed was imported correctly. You should be forwarded to the page that shows you your feed’s page on RSS2.com if it was imported successfully. (For example, the page for this site is http://rss2.com/feeds/Gabriel)
3. Publish a new item on your website. RSS feeds are updated every 5 minutes so you should only have to wait for a minute or two. Refresh your feed page until you see your new item appear. Now check the homepage. Your new item should be at the top of the list, and will remain until 9 newer items are published by other people in their RSS feeds.

Bonus tip #1 - how to get into the top 30 feeds list

If you want to make it into the top 30 feed list (featured at the top of every page), all you have to do is tell people about your RSS2.com page that features your feed and increase your view count. The easiest way to do this is to use the RSS feed stats widget at the bottom of your feed page (copy and paste the HTML into your blog sidebar or another HTML page) — note that your site must allow <script> tags to enable the live updates of your RSS2.com feed stats information. You can also promote yourself to the top 30 by linking to your feed page in your blog roll and by sending the link to your friends.

Bonus tip #2 - Pretty site icon

To have your site icon show up nicely in the all feeds page and in the explore lists make sure you have a favicon installed for your website. RSS2.com will look for that and use it for your site icon. If it doesn’t find one, it will use a generic one that doesn’t set your site apart from any of the other ones. See the Wikipedia entry on favicons for how to get one installed for your site if you don’t already have one.

So, 3 easy steps to get your website content promoted on the RSS2.com website.

Try it for yourself: Submit your site to RSS2.com

(P.S. It usually accepts most Atom feeds as well as RSS feeds.)

Popularity: 8% [?]