My RSS feeds on trick77.com don’t get refreshed in my Google Reader account anymore. Usually, new posts on my site show up in Google Reader within minutes or hours. It looks like the problem started in February 2011 and my site isn’t the only site affected, according to this thread and another thread in Google’s support forum. New posts are automatically submitted to Pingomatic from WordPress and are visible in Feedburner. The feed also passes W3C’s feed validation. I don’t do any shady SEO stuff and I don’t spam Pingomatic with updates. What gives?

This site’s feed does have a couple of Google Reader subscribers, would you mind leaving a comment if you see this post showing up in your Google Reader? Thanks a lot!

Update 3-3-2011: Google is caching a completely outdated version of the front page of this site. It dates back to the beginning of February. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, it must have something to do with my feed not updating in Google Reader. Interestingly, newer posts can be found in Google’s index, it’s just the main page that seems to have some kind of an update ban on it. Weird!

Update 3-4-2011: A closer look at my site’s Google Webmaster Central report revealed that this site served almost two thousand 404 “NOT FOUND” HTTP response codes for pages in the gallery area. The gallery pages look fine in a web browser though. Googlebot gets the 404′s while at the same time in my web server’s log file a HTTP 200 “OK” return code is being logged. An outdated flickr photo gallery plugin is responsible for these errors, the plugin isn’t compatible with the latest WordPress version anymore and obviously does some really weird stuff with the response headers. My theory is that the ratio of good and bad (not found) pages seen by Googlebot was so bad, that Google decided to flag my site. I fired the outdated flickr plugin and installed another flickr gallery plugin called slickr-flickr. So, over time, everything should be back to normal, even though that’s probably gonna take a while. To speed things up a bit up I requested Google to remove the old 404 gallery links from the index so Googlebot won’t crawl those non-existing pages anymore.

Update 3-9-2011: Everything is back to normal, Google Reader caught up all missing posts just a few moments ago. Looks like I was spot on with my assumption.

AFP network connections to many Linux-based NAS units aren’t working in Mac OS X Lion 10.7 developer preview. After hitting the connect button a message pops up saying:

The version of the server you are trying to connect to is not supported. Please contact your system administrator to resolve the problem.

The Time Machine backup feature present in many NAS obviously isn’t working as well because it’s based on AFP too.

You may say that this is a developer preview, things will change for the final release. That’s obviously true. But my source also says that this connection problem most likely has to do with Apple discontinuing support for DHCAST128 (or DHX) authentication in Lion because it was considered insecure. Instead, the successor of DHCAST128 should be used: the more secure DHX2 user authentication module. DHX2 is supported since Mac OS X 10.2 and supports up to 256 characters for passwords (hell yeah, that should be enough). It relies on CAST-128 in cipher block chaining mode for encryption.

I checked my QNAP NAS for available afpd/netatalk UAMs and DHX2 isn’t present, so it most likely wouldn’t work with Lion. Well, if it weren’t for Time Machine, I could always resort to SMB.

[/usr/local/etc/netatalk/uams] # ls -la
drwxr-xr-x      1024 Jan 31 23:08 ./
drwxr-xr-x      1024 Feb 25 20:14 ../
lrwxrwxrwx        14 Feb 25  2011 uams_clrtxt.so -> uams_passwd.so*
lrwxrwxrwx        18 Feb 25  2011 uams_dhx.so -> uams_dhx_passwd.so*
-rwxr-xr-x     10959 Jan 31 23:08 uams_dhx_passwd.so*
-rwxr-xr-x      5304 Jan 31 23:08 uams_guest.so*
-rwxr-xr-x      6996 Jan 31 23:08 uams_passwd.so*

AFP authentication might work if a uams_dhx_2_passwd.so authentication module was present and configured. It may not be a bad idea to raise this issue with your NAS vendor if you plan to use Lion in the near future.

Rumor has it that some NAS vendors intentionally disable DHX2 in netatalk because it’s a lot more CPU intensive. This could lead to longer login times when accessing AFP shares on NAS’ units with slow CPUs.

Update 2-26-2011: It has been verified that Lion is able to connect to a Linux host running netatalk 2.1.2 supporting the DHX2 UAM in afpd.

Update 7-15-2011: Check out this post for a status update on Time Machine support in OS X Lion 10.7.

A 100% reliable source sent me this output from the System Information utility (yep, it’s not called System Profiler anymore) in the Mac OS X Lion 10.7 developer preview.

APPLE SSD TS128C:

  Capacity:	121.33 GB (121,332,826,112 bytes)
  Model:	APPLE SSD TS128C
  Revision:	CJAA0201
  Serial Number:	        902A515CK0YK
  Native Command Queuing:	No
  Removable Media:	No
  Detachable Drive:	No
  BSD Name:	disk0
  Medium Type:	Solid State
  TRIM Support:	Yes

Yes! While this doesn’t mean we actually get TRIM support in the disk driver, it’s certainly a strong indication that Apple is finally implementing TRIM support in its upcoming Lion operating system. It’s about time.

Hey, I just brought my Apple TV 2 back from the living dead. After a botched firmware update all it did was flashing the white LED fast (about 3 times a second).
I followed the official reset instructions using the Apple remote but that didn’t help at all. Then I came across a few posts that said that by hooking up Apple TV 2 to a Mac using just a micro USB cable, you could actually restore it in iTunes. Those posts explicitly said that you have to disconnect HDMI and power and just plug in the USB cable. Read more »

It’s pretty straightforward to (incrementally) backup all emails in a Gmail account to a QNAP NAS. There’s a QNAP NAS solution using Getmail but it comes with some limitations. I prefer to use Gmail-Backup. It doesn’t need any configuration files and it doesn’t have a 100 messages per session limit. It stores all mails in the .eml format, which not only works on Windows PCs but is compatible with Apple Mail as well. You can even restore deleted emails using Gmail-Backup from the NAS back to a Gmail account.

Here’s how I installed Gmail-Backup on my QNAP TS-439 PRO II+. This tutorial should work with all Intel-based QNAP TS-* models but obviously I only have the 439 to test with. I’m looking forward for your feedback if it works on your QNAP NAS model as well. Please make sure you enabled IMAP in your Gmail account settings. Gmail-Backup works for “Gmail for your domain” (it’s part of “Google Apps” now) accounts as well.

The tutorial is divided into three parts. The first part shows how to install the Optware QPKG on the NAS. This package installer is needed in order to (easily) install Python on the NAS. The 2nd part deals with the installation of Gmail-Backup and the third shows how to automate the backup using cron. It probably is helpful to have some command line skills. Read more »

Here are a couple of popular camera-settings related mishaps when using pop-up or studio flashes. The result is always the same: the flash visibly fires but the image is either way too dark or too bright.

Pop-up flash fires but photo way too dark/underexposed?

For this post I’m assuming you already know the limits of a pop-up flash (e.g. you probably can’t properly light a subject 20 feet away with a small flash). Here’s list of camera settings to go through. I’m using a Nikon DSLR body with a built-in pop-up flash, so the settings’ names may be different on your camera. Read more »

Are you’re still waiting for SSD TRIM support in Mac OS X? Well, it won’t come in OS X 10.6.7. Here’s some output of my 2nd generation MacBook Air Serial-ATA System Profiler page:

APPLE SSD TS128C:

  Capacity:	121.33 GB (121,332,826,112 bytes)
  Model:	APPLE SSD TS128C
  Revision:	CJAA0201
  Serial Number: 80PB54G7K1WK
  Native Command Queuing: No
  Removable Media: No
  Detachable Drive: No
  BSD Name:	disk0
  Medium Type:	Solid State
  TRIM Support:	No

As there’s no TRIM support for Apple’s own SSD technology obviously there won’t be support for it for my Intel SSD in my Hackintosh rig. But just to make sure:

INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GN:

  Capacity:	80.03 GB (80,026,361,856 bytes)
  Model:	INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GN
  Revision:	2CV102HD
  Serial Number: CVPO942300DA080BGN
  Native Command Queuing: Yes
  Queue Depth: 32
  Removable Media: No
  Detachable Drive: No
  BSD Name:	disk0
  Medium Type:	Solid State
  TRIM Support:	No

Nope.

I just combo-updated my Hackintosh rig to Mac OS X 10.6.7 (dev release 10J860) and everything is still up and running after the mandatory reboot. As usual I had to reapply the custom AppleHDA.kext in order to get sound back. From an ASUS P6T standpoint, this update should be considered safe.

Can’t use the new “multitasking” finger-swipes on your iOS 4.3 beta iPad? That’s probably because you updated your iPad in iTunes. You have to restore it in Xcode’s Organizer and click “Use Development Mode” to get the new four and five finger-swipes. You need a valid iOS SDK developer account to do this, it’s not enough to have the iPad’s UDID registered with someone else’s dev account. Read more »

Most major NAS (Network Attached Storage) manufacturers claim their NAS units support the Time Machine backup feature for Macintoshes. What they usually don’t tell you in advance is that this support is somewhat limited – at least if you plan your NAS to backup multiple Macs with Time Machine. Read more »

Do you own a Wake-on-LAN (WOL) capable NAS (network attached storage) unit? Is your computer a Mac? Want to save on your energy bill?

The consumer NAS units you can buy these days are actually small Linux computers with a software RAID and a bunch of S-ATA hard drives inside. Depending on the make and model, some NAS units consume a considerable amount of energy even in standby mode. For instance, my QNAP NAS still consumes around 25W after all disks spun down. However, once I shut my NAS down, it only consumes 1W in deep sleep mode. It just keeps its network adapter barely alive so it’s able to “hear” a Wake-on-LAN signal.

Read more »

I have a whole bunch of photography tutorials I converted from Flash video format (.flv) to .mp4 so I can watch them on my iPad. Since those tutorials are broken down into a myriad of .mp4 episodes it makes it much harder to watch them in the right order. I needed to find a way to merge several episodes into large movies. This is where Squared 5′s MPEG StreamClip for Mac comes in handy. While this free video conversion tool allows you to convert alls sorts of video formats to .mp4, it also allows you to merge multiple .mp4 videos. Here’s how to do it. Read more »

I have a bunch of photography tutorials in the Flash video .flv format which I want to watch on my iPad. As you may be aware, everything with the name Flash in it doesn’t play too well on Apple’s iOS devices. VLC Media Player for iOS is able to play the .flv format but Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party software devs to use the built-in H.264 hardware acceleration for video playback. As as result, .flv videos usually don’t play very well on iOS devices. Besides, I prefer to manage my video collection in iTunes instead of dragging every clip onto an app icon.

Read more »

I just finished installing the 10.6.5 update on my 2010 MacBook Air using the Software Update utility. The installation process went smoothly but my 2 week old  13″ MacBook Air didn’t come back to life after the restart. It’s dead. No picture, no Apple logo, no chime, zilch! The only thing I hear is the fan when I press the on/off button long enough. During the update process the fan came on (until then I didn’t even know there was one). Maybe some component on the main-board overheated? Just speculating here.

I’m still in the process of trying all sorts of keyboard combinations to reset PRAM and stuff but so far, none have worked.

Dank Rainer Ullrichs ruKernelTool kann man sich ab sofort eine neue, internationale Firmware auf die schweizer Version der AVM FRITZ!Box 7390 herunterladen und anschliessend auf die Box flashen lassen. Im Firmware-Filter des Download-Reiters einfach 7390 eingeben, dann sieht man die neue Version sofort. Read more »