Apex81

So, my shuffle officially died today… well not 100% dead, but the buttons no longer work for the audio player. I can still use it as a flash drive i guess. But this thing was rugged as hell. I put it though the wash three times accidentally. Dropped it down a flight of stairs 4-5 times, and even lost it in a couch for two weeks, a god knows nothing escapes that couch alive. Some how it lived through all that… but at my time of need (I started to jog again) the damn thing dies 3 days in.  Grrrr….

I was hoping this shuffle would hold out until apple officially drops the iphone, but it looks like thats not going to happen.

Officially Ripped.

… I love you.

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. I’ve been super busy. My school work is starting to catch up with me. Between school and these web pages i’ve been designing I’ve been super busy. Its starting to look like I’ll be spending some time on the road implementing a couple os OS X servers for a school board in Oshawa, ON. Sounds pretty exciting. It’s going to be a bit of a challenge, but definantly as step in the right direction businesswise. I’ve also got potential clients lined up in Maryland, and Texas. Hoping I don’t have to travel to those locations, well, Houstan could be exciting, but Maryland… we’ll I don’t know much about it, so who knows.

On the wedding front, things are starting to get put into order. Appointments and down payments are being made, reservations and decorations are well underway, so it looks like everything is on schedule. Hopefully we’ll get the invites out soon.

Anyway, I need to jet to a meeting with a photographer in Ottawa regarding a website. So, I’ll post a better update when I get back.

Oh and if you want to waste huge amounts of time check out justin.tv, talk about a cool, yet bizarre project.

So, I was just checking the NSA security guides for a number of operating systems on my network, notably Windows XP, and OS X 10.4. I can not believe what they have posted for both of these operating systems.

Apple Mac OS X “Tiger”

As part of a change in our development strategy for security guidance, the National Security Agency does not intend to publish separate security guides for the Macintosh OS X operating system beyond that which was produced by the vendor, beginning with Tiger, OS X version 10.4.x. The recommendations in Apple’s “Mac OS X Security Configuration For Version 10.4 or Later” and “Mac OS X Server Security Configuration For Version 10.4 or Later” track closely with the security level historically represented in the NSA guidelines. It is our belief that these guides establish the latest best practices for securing the products and recommend that traditional customers of our security recommendations use the Apple guides when securing Macintosh OS X 10.4.x and Macintosh OS X Server 10.4.x.

It’s pretty much the same of XP as well. Talk about ironic. I doubt that both of these vendors have the same security levels, and frankly I doubt that XP comes close to the OS X framework. But, that could just be my bias speaking… I’m going to go through the manuals and checkout which one requires the least amount of work to “secure”. Until then I will reserve any judgements…

So, that new project that I’ve been working on has had its docs dropped on the latest podcast at The Weekly Roar , so I figured I’d fill you all in. Jaimie (My finance) and I have created a new review site for music and books. It’s called The Smart Fool We were hoping to get a bunch of reviews and posts up before we went public, but looks like we’re out of the hat now. Anyway, check it out. Drop us some recommendations. We’d appreciate it.

It has been by far the busiest/non-productive week this year. I’ve been working non stop on a couple of websites–some new, some old–and some how I feel as if I’m not further along then I was at the end of last week. Craziness. I think I’m going to dedicate a whole week primarily to school work this week. I’ve fallen way behind and I’m starting to fear that I will be unable to catch up. It’s time to do what I do best–cut corners. Skip readings, rush through articles, barely take notes. Yup… now that I think about it. I’m right on course for the par. hah! *Sigh* Read the rest of this entry »

I’m in the process of setting up a new review site for Jaimie and myself.  It’ll have music and book reviews. It should be good.  I’m in the process of setting up the content management system and tweaking the adsense accounts.  I’ll drop you the url once i get everything going.

Out of the box, the Apache Web server that comes with OS X does not take any notice of .htaccess files (used to set passwords, rewrite URLs, point to custom error pages, etc).

The first step to getting .htaccess working is to edit your httpd.conf file. Open the Terminal, go to the Apache config directory and open httpd.conf. You will need to supply your admin password:

cd /etc/httpd/
sudo pico httpd.conf

Use ctrl-w to find �Override�. You need the second instance of the term so search twice. You should see:

# This controls which options the .htaccess files in directories can
# override. Can also be “All”, or any combination of “Options”, “FileInfo”,
# “AuthConfig”, and “Limit”
#

AllowOverride None

Change the setting to AllowOverride All then exit and save. Each site has a conf file that would need changing too. Back in the terminal, move into the sites directory and get a file listing:

You should see a .conf file for each site on the system. As before, open the conf file for your username and change AllowOverride All:

Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

I’ve been thinking a lot lately how music has changed over the years for me.  In the beginning when I had my first job, I spent tons of money of cd’s.  I’d say about 60% of the funds from my paper route went to buying new cd’s. Today, i’m lucky if I buy 5 albums a year.  Sure, downloading has a lot to do with it. But, that’s not the point i’m trying to make here, and probably deserves a post on its own.   Since the mp3 was created my  music consumption process has changed.  I don’t think I really appreciate Read the rest of this entry »

So, I stumbled on this documentary today, and I thought I would share it with you all. It’s called On Piracy and I’m downloading it right now. You should check it out. It’s free by the way, so that means the copright holder has given permission for everyone to download it. Check it out. Sounds likes its gonna be pretty good. Worst case scenario download it just to piss off your Internet Service Provider. We all know they hate downloaders… but what about legal downloaders?  I’m willing to bet they feel the same way about them as they do pirates.