After wearing a simple Pulsar analog watch for years, and then not wearing a watch at all, I convinced myself a month ago that an Apple Watch 8 would be an improvement. Part of that decision was based on my hipster IT colleagues being surprised I was not wearing a smartwatch. I also noticed my girlfriend practically can’t live without hers, and then I saw this endless stream of youtube videos with raving reviews of (lets be honest) pretty biased people.
Category: Apple
macOS Sierra SSH “Permission Denied”
If you used DSA keys to log in to your SSH server and have upgraded your client machine to macOS Sierra (or OSX Sierra if you like), you probably ran into this problem:
client$ ssh -p 8123 george@10.0.0.10 -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa Permission denied (publickey).
The answer to this problem is replacing the DSA key with an RSA key, but how do you do on the server when your only means for connecting is the OSX client machine you just upgraded? Here’s how:
From the Finder to the Shell (and back)
A quick tip for OSX users out there who frequently need to open a Terminal window for the current location in the finder, or the other way around:
Install the free application from the App Store: Go2Shell. It will give you an icon on the toolbar of your Finder, and pressing it will open a Terminal window and automatically change it’s directory to match the Finder’s location.
The other way around is easier; you can already do that on any Mac. Simply type “open .” (that’s the word “open”, followed by a space and a period). This command will open a Finder window for the directory location your Terminal window is in.
Bonus tip: Also check the “open -t [filename]” command, it will open your system’s default text editor with the given file.
iOS7 hidden features
If you’ve just installed iOS7 and like it as much as I do, you are probably interested in all the new features of it, and where to find them. On behalf of Apple, I’ll be happy to point out where all those neat new features are, and share my happiness about this wonderful new magical market-leading mobile OS.
Open letter to Keith Lang about Skitch
Dear Keith,
I read your letter about Skitch and would like to respond to all that has happened from my end-user perspective.
I am a long-time Evernote user and fan. Evernote changed note taking by being truly searchable. I can confidently drop all the websites, receipts, todos and ideas in there, and clear my mind of the “I must remember that” burden. The OCR of Evernote works beautifully on photos of whiteboards, making even my whiteboard notes searchable.
In 2010, I discovered Skitch. The simplicity and razor sharp focus on anotating a screencapture and share the anotated image by dragging it anywhere was sheer brilliance. My daily work includes making annotated screenhots and mailing them to team members to discuss improvements. Skitch changed this ugly capture-save-edit-save-attach-send cycle to pure poetry in motion. Dragging images into Evernote even made my screenshots searchable. It instantly became second nature and my go-to image tool.
Make your buildserver talk
Have you ever started a shell script which takes a while and you keep monitoring that window because you really need those results? If you are working on a Mac, you can use the Mac’s power of speech to tell you a command is finished. Here’s how:
./yourreallyslowbuild.sh; say "really long build is finished"
With a little curl and shell scripting magic, I told my Mac to constantly monitor our Jenkins buildserver, and bug everybody in the office when the hourly build is failing:
Steve Jobs’ yacht launched, named “Venus”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZh4aSszD5k
Today Steve Job’s yacht was launched from a dock a few miles from my house. I went there with some friends and we shot some awesome footage of this incredible ship. Through the glass, we could see the 7 iMacs which are used to control the ship. There are also large doors on the side and the back, I suspect these will be used to launch boats or jetskis into a nice warm Mediterranean water.
Toyota (Corolla Verso) iPhone Bluetooth connection
My sisters in law bought a beautiful 2006 Toyota Corolla Verso. They could not get the iPhone to pair with the car’s Bluetooth system. The dealer told them that this was an iPhone problem, but after some fiddling, it turns out there is a simple workaround. If you want to pair an iPhone to your car, and the car says “pairing failed” as soon as you tap on your iPhone, this simple trick might help for you. This article contains detailed steps for the Toyota Corolla Verso, but on other cars this might work too.
How to make customers blog about you
An informative article for webshop owners this time, all about how to make people blog about your company. Everything you need to know about online customers, the power of the internet, and how good old moral values still work and can be leveraged to your advantage. Or not.
Mortgage Awareness
This weekend I tinkered around with Apple Keynote. I thought I’d make something useful. In this video I’m trying to show you how much money the bank makes on your mortgage. Banks like you to pay a low monthly fee on your mortgage because it keeps the loan higher for a longer period of time. This way the bank can cash in on the interest rate, and then cash in again at the end of the mortgage contract, when you are still hopelessly in debt.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI6N583mBEw]
“Financial advisors” working for the bank will throw sand in your eyes, saying that keeping your debt high gives you all kinds of tax breaks. But in the end, it’s them who get better of that construction, not you. Don’t fall into this trap. Understand your mortgage contract, learn how the model works, and check your model against the bank’s model (without that financial advisor or the lady at the helpdesk talking to you). You have more room than you think. Use it.