VNC is a very useful program for accessing a computer remotely. These are instructions for accessing a remote machine using OS X, Chicken of the VNC, and Vine Server when there is a firewall in the way.

Normally it is a fairly straightforward process to connect from a VNC client to a VNC server running on a remote machine. A firewall in the middle can complicate the process a bit.

Normal:
MY MACHINE -> VNC CLIENT < - -> VNC SERVER < - REMOTE MACHINE

Behind firewall:
REMOTE MACHINE -> VNC SERVER -> SSH TUNNEL < - -> VNC CLIENT < - MY MACHINE

1. On MY MACHINE, create a local SSH user account and password – call it vnc_user
2. On MY MACHINE, determine my public IP address – go to whatismyip.com (MY_IP_ADDRESS)
3. On REMOTE MACHINE, turn on the Vine Server and set the password
4. On REMOTE MACHINE, open up Terminal and enter the following command:

   ssh vnc_user@MY_IP_ADDRESS -R 5900:127.0.0.1:5900

   where MY_IP_ADDRESS is the IP address of MY MACHINE.

5. Enter the password for the vnc_user. You should now be connected to MY MACHINE over SSH.
6. On MY MACHINE, open up Chicken of the VNC. Connect to localhost and enter the password for the REMOTE MACHINE.
7. You should now be connected to REMOTE MACHINE’s VNC server and be seeing their screen.

Notes:

• Make sure that you are not running a VNC server on MY MACHINE, or that it is turned off
• If you are running a firewall on your own network, you may need to enable port forwarding for SSH to ensure that SSH requests on port 22 are connected to MY MACHINE and not blocked by your own firewall.

Thanks to this article that describes how to do this and also includes an Applescript that makes the connection.

In preparation for upgrading a whole mess of sites to using the latest version of WordPress I decided it was time to finally upgrade my own site and to implement the new design I’d been working on for a while (for over a year now).

Check it out: www.gabrielserafini.com

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.

Google’s new Charts API is very cool. I am interested to see how we might possibly use that with Collabofit to do additional charting.

Here’s the code used to generate that graph above:

cht=lc
&chs=500x300
&chd=s:GabrielSerafini2007
&chtt='Gabriel%20Serafini%202007'%20Using%20the%20New%20Google%20Charts%20API
&chxt=x,y
&chxl=0:|1976|1986|1996|2007|1:||Cool||Amazing||Awesome


Very simple, clean, elegant and neat.

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

The IT Crowd is so awesomely funny. Tonight’s episode is so funny we’re watching it again. Completely hilarious. LOLed for about half the show.

You must watch this now. Run don’t walk.

1. Get Miro (used to be called Democracy) – this is an Internet TV player http://getmiro.com
2. Copy this URL: http://tvrss.net/search/index.php?show_name=The+IT+Crowd&show_name_exact=true&mode=rss
3. Open Miro, then click Channels > Add Channel. Paste in the subscription URL.
4. The latest episode (season 2, episode 5) should begin downloading.
5. Watch episode and ZOMG LOL.
6. Enjoy the earlier season’s episodes and all new ones which will automatically download to your computer.

One of the funniest lines from this episode said by Moss:

Ah, well, prepare to put mustard on those words, for you will soon be consuming them, along with this slice of humble pie, that comes direct from the oven, of shame, set at gas mark egg on your face.

So freaking funny.

Enjoy.

I’m working on a new site relating to Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act compliance (it will replace the useless site that is currently up at grammleachblileyact.com) and was looking for breadcrumb functionality and a better way to manage outputting links from the Blogroll on the links.php page.

I had searched for a good WordPress breadcrumbs plugin a while ago, and the ones I found didn’t really impress me. I’m really happy with the one I ended up finding this time. It’s called Breadcrumb Navigation XT and it does exactly what I was looking for. I’ll be using this probably for any future needs when it comes to breadcrumbs and WordPress.

The second plugin that I found was related to fixing how WordPress currently outputs links using the default get_links_list() function used in most links.php template pages right now. I had used on the XyzAnt.com links page another WordPress function (wp_list_bookmarks()) that only works for WordPress 2.1 and higher, and is still undergoing active development / documentation. That function, however, only allows you to output the description, and doesn’t appear to include the functionality to show notes. Since there is a larger amount of allowable text for the notes field, and that is what I needed, I still needed to find (or write) a solution to outputting all links, ordered by category, displaying the notes field as well as link title, url, image, etc. This is the plugin that I found that does just this (found it after writing about 80% of the same functionality myself). It does just what I was looking for, shows all the categories that contain links and the links within each category.

Plugin author’s latest post about WordPress 2.1 support: Link Library now supports WordPress 2.1

Nice article on ALA about how to create a layout using almost pure CSS where there is a fixed-width sidebar and a dynamically resizing right-hand main content area without using Javascript to dynamically resize the page.

All right, class. Using CSS, kindly produce a liquid layout that contains a fixed-width, scrolling side panel and a flexible, scrolling main panel. Okay, now do it without JavaScript.

Check it out: A List Apart: Articles: Conflicting Absolute Positions

Some excellent articles here about good web building practices.

Welcome to Web Devout! This site is aimed at promoting the health of the Web by providing web developers and the public with the knowledge and tools needed to help the Web move forward.

Check it out: Web Devout

Thanks for the pointer, Ben.

Interesting…

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:

• Store and serve application resources locally
• Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
• Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

Check it out: Google Gears (BETA)