Two films this weekend

Watched two films this weekend. One quite good. The other monotonously weird.

The first I chose because it was a film noir mystery from the early 40s and it was a newer release from the Criterion Collection. The second because it was a David Cronenberg film, where he also wrote the screenplay.

Ministry of Fear:

Fritz Lang was the director of Ministry of Fear; an adaptation of Graham Greene's novel - written just a year or two earlier. Although not a classic film noir selection, I'd still recommend it to get an idea of a film noir piece placed within the context of World War II and Nazi spies. 

Cosmopolis:

"All wealth has become wealth for its own sake." This is a quote from one of the characters in the film during the first third of the film.  Maybe the film is the same way. It's too self indulgent and slick for its own sake. I think the self-indulgence is too much dialogue and the ostensibly, invariable ploddingly slow pace of the movie. I also believe the talk is too monotone with dialogue that just doesn't propel whatever plot there is to begin with at the start of the movie. Regardless, it still has some the telltale signatures of a Cronenberg film: general weirdness, plenty of violence, and examinations of fringe characters that may not represent mainstream society.

It's nothing if not a concept film

Ministry of Fear: B to B+

Cosmopolis: D+  to C

Fiddler debugging tool with HTTPS

I"m using Fiddler to look at HTTPS traffic between different application servers.

HTTPS isn't setup by default and the Fiddler2 website has information on setting it up correctly and exporting the certificate for Firefox to use.

I have some brief instructions below (for my own future reference and anyone else out there).

Start Fiddler 2.4x

The steps are to go to Tools, Fiddler Options > HTTPS. Check 'Decrypt HTTPS Traffic," under "Capture HTTPs Connects," and click Yes for the scary dialog box. This exports a root certificate for you Windows machine to use.  I then chose ...from browsers only from the pull-down menu because I'm looking at HTTPS traffic only. Check the 'Ignore Server Certificate Errors,' too.

To make Firefox work with Fiddler I choose 'Export Root Certificate to Desktop.'  Launch Firefox and go to Tools > Options. Select the Advanced tab and then the Encryption (or Certificates) tab and click the 'View Certificates ' and choose Import. Import the root certificate from the desktop.

Also, when I wanted to inspect traffic in Fiddler, I used the Inspectors view on the right and WebForms > WebView to see HTTPS browser responses. That wasn't as intuitive when I first started using the program, but was quite helpful when I needed to look at HTTPS html responses

stopped 'filter' failed (Macbook Pro to Toshiba)

I tried to print today to a company Toshiba printer from my Macbook Pro.

Using this link apple support forum, I was able to delete the current printer list and add the Toshiba printer again via it's IP address and was able to print again.

You just need to go to System Preferences > Print & Scan > Right-click on your printers and choose Reset Printing System. Select OK for "Are you Sure...," and then reinstall the printer via the IP address and you should have success.

Not sure what might have happened. CUPs update?

IPV6 Testing

Doing some IPV6 testing this week with our application server within a clustered setup.

IPV6 addresses can be a little intimidating.

For example would you like to connect to server with an address like this?

fe80::d12d:7656:6d3b:7e37

I can certainly remember 192.168.1.xxx a lot easier or a whole host of other IPV4 addresses compared to what in store for us down the road.

Thanks to DNS I won't have to remember too much, but still, it's nice to have some IP addresses committed to memory.

When I use the IPV6 I also have to put it in square brackets when using it in a browser.

For example

https://[fe80::d12d:7656:6d3b:7e37]:8888/

a little cumbersome.

Also there a %11 that needs to be appended to the address for Windows machines, it seems, in the hosts file.

Otherwise you might not see the machine when you try to ping it

fe80::d12d:7656:6d3b:7e37%11

Ping on the command line is also different


ping -6

instead of classic ping that doesn't have the dash 6.

3rd Flatiron Climb

Did the 3rd Flatiron in Boulder today.

After a long hiatus I got to finally get back into climbing with an easy 5.2 to 5.4.

It was the classic standard route and I got to lead all 6 pitches. It had been awhile since I led a pitch but this was the perfect reintroduction to climbing at an appropriate experienced yet rusty level.
Although I did feel a little intimidated on the first two pitches due to the longevity of the rock climbing hiatus I started to feel my chops come back to me after the 3 to 5th pitches.

I'd definitely do this climb again; although not as much as the guy who has a plaque dedicated to him at the top where it said he climbed it 101 times.

Notes on upgrading to Mac OS X Lion

In the engineering wing of my company a majority of us have upgraded to Lion from 10.6.8.

One of the reasons we upgraded was that we could use the new 1.7.x JDK offered by Oracle instead of using the 1.7.x OpenJDK from Google.

Unfortunately there's some work to be done and new ways of doing things in Lion that have changed from 10.6.8.

Some of the tasks you might have to work on, or feature changes you'll need to be aware of, will be:

1) Install more RAM.

     After the install I needed to go from 4 Gigs RAM to 8 Gigs RAM. An additional update. With the new Mac Book Pros with flash drives built in the last few months, 16 Gigs of RAM is even more desirable so I would recommend going to 16 Gigs if your IT department can afford it.

2) Installing the latest JDK 1.7.x from Oracle

     This is an easy download and install from Oracle. There seems to be a new path for the JDK and you'll have to work on your Java Preferences to reenable old Java versions.

3) Getting used to the new virtual desktop layout in Lion.

     Unlike prior versions, the virtual desktops are laid our horizontally and you add more from left to right, instead of classic cardinal direction layout having four desktops arranged in a square like pattern.

4) F8 doesn't seem to work to see all your desktops.

     You'll need to use F3 to see your desktops and add new ones by mousing to the upper right and clicking the plus sign.

4) Using Lion's VPN client instead of Cisco's VPN client

     Cisco seems to not have a VPN client for Lion yet. It stopped working for me once I upgraded to Lion.

5) Getting used to Lion's ostensibly slower user experience

     Lion is definitely slower and if you have encryption features turned on that could also cause additional slowness.

6) ITunes not working anymore if you have an earlier Lion DMG file since it doesn't automatically update ITunes to the latest version.

    Since you might get a Lion DMG installer from a few months ago the ITunes that gets installed could be a few months older and your ITunes will not launch anymore so you'll need to manually download ITunes and reinstall.

7) Having to work on password timeout settings since those will be overwritten. I had a 30 second timeout for a screensaver on my MacBook Pro, which would automatically lock my user session.

     You'll have to update your preferences under System Preferences for Desktop & Screensaver and Security and Privacy.

8) Vertical scrollbars are not automatically enabled.

     This was definitely a huge annoyance for those of us who like using scrollbars instead of the new gestures. Under User Preferences > General I selected Always for Show Scroll bars.

Perry Canyon to White Rock Trail and back

Did a new ride just south of Brigham City today with my sister-in-law.

I found the ride on utahmountainbiking.com under Ogden Area rides. It's at the bottom of the page.

We rode in monsoon (raining or slight drizzle) weather for 90% of the ride so it was a change from what we did the day before when it was sunny and in the low 90s on Snow Basin mountain.

The trail is certainly hard to follow at points but the website is pretty good in giving directions. It would help if there were a couple more signs but we made our way around the loop in about 4.5 hours with plenty of breaks.

You're cautioned in that the trail is a little overgrown - especially when wet - and that parts of the trail are not well worn and can be considered primitive or faint since it seems to be one of the newer loops on the Wasatch front. Thankfully, the fainter parts of the trail are on the lower sections and the upper sections, whether on the Perry Canyon or White Rock Trail are easier to follow, the higher you go.

I would recommend doing it counter-clockwise like they mention on utahmountainbiking.

Also, follow the single-track up from the parking lot and you'll see the turnoff for White Rock inscribed on a tree limb with Grizzly on the left if you'd like to try clockwise.

Don't use any of the roads up to this point; unless you need to cross them to follow the single track. You should only have to cross the creek once in Perry Canyon too and that's in the beginning - within the first half mile.