Phillip's Ponderings

Senile Agitation

2008-09-12T17:20:57Z

Inspired by: Creepy Ads

Presidential Aging

2008-06-25T15:25:31Z

Being president is a stressful job and as you can see, it can have a real impact on aging the President prematurely. Maybe Obamba may turn into Morgan Freeman, but what will McCain turn into?

Stirring All Natural Peanut Butter

2008-03-06T15:04:17Z

The problem with all natural peanut butter is all that tasty peanut oil comes to the top of the container. When I tried to stir the oil back into the peanut butter some of the oil would slosh out of the jar. A friend suggested a good way to combat this was to store the peanut butter container upside down in the pantry when you get it home from the store. When you open it, all the oil is at the bottom and easier to stir in without sloshing. Once it is opened up we stick it in the refrigerator right side up and it pretty much stays combined.

Claw for Candy

2007-10-14T02:29:03Z

We were out to eat tongiht a a mediocre burger place and noticed they had a claw game. But this one enticed you with candy instead of toys. We were seated near it and many people attempted to buy a candy bar but non succeeded.

Symfony PHP MVC Framework

2007-10-07T19:02:38Z

I just recently heard about Symfony, an MVC framework for PHP. I've been going through the tutorials and it seems pretty well put together. They have an online book with a ton of documentation. The tutorials seems very well done and professional. Checkout the 24x1 hour 'advent' tutorial for creating a Yahoo Answers type application, askeet.com.

Mail.app IMAP with SSL over SSH Tunnel

2007-10-07T18:49:22Z

I recently tried to get Mail.app in OSX 10.4.10 working with IMAP with SSL over an SSH tunnel and ran into nothing but problems. I had an ssh tunnel setup mapping a port on my local network to the IMAP SSL port. Since I am not starting tunnels as root, my local port has to be >1024, so I picked 2993 locally forwarding to the remote IMAP SSL host on port 993. Mail.app appears to let you specify a Port in the Advanced tab in Accounts configuration. However, it seems to not have any effect. Running tcpdump on the host with my tunnel confirms that Mail does use the port specified at least initially, but it doesn't use it for communication. Regardless of what you put in the Port #, if you have "Use SSL" checked it will force itself to use tcp port 993.

I don't know of a workaround in Mail itself. I tried checking the prefs files by hand and the custom port is listed properly but just is not used. My solution was to setup netcat to just forward the port 993 on the host where the tunnel is running to the tunneled port.

My tunnels run on a debian linux machine so I just setup an inetd entry like this:
imaps stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /bin/nc localhost 2993

If you run your tunnels on OSX directly, check out Lingon (an open source utility for creating launchd config files) and setup a launchd entry to run netcat for you.

Helicopter Advertisement

2006-12-27T05:55:15Z

This is an ad on the DC Metro (subway). I'm not sure why they think a helicopter needs advertising. Is this something commuters consider buying? Perhaps this is why defense contractor budgets are so large.

google it on Yahoo!

2006-09-13T15:04:37Z

Tired of googling it on Google? Try googling it on Yahoo! instead.

Ugly Car

2006-01-20T21:56:45Z

Today on our walk with Lazlo we came across one of the ugliest cars I have ever seen. !/pdm/humor/uglycar/left.jpg! Read further for more photos. !/pdm/humor/uglycar/right.jpg! !/pdm/humor/uglycar/rear.jpg! I wonder if the spike makes it faster? !/pdm/humor/uglycar/spike_detail.jpg!

Safari2Yahoo

2006-01-19T04:33:58Z

*Description* Safari2Yahoo is a simple AppleScript application that is workaround for a bug in Safari that doesn't allow you to change the search engine from Google to something else. Safari2Yahoo creates a copy of Safari.app named SafariYahoo.app and modifies the files in the bundle such that the SafariYahoo.app will use Yahoo! search instead of Google search. For now it only uses the main yahoo.com search and not any country specific search. It has been tested on both OS X 10.3 and OS X 10.4. *Changes* * *01.18.2006*: Works on OSX 10.4. Some string labels got moved to new files * *04.15.2005*: no longer version dependent, makes a copy of Safari instead of editing original * *06.09.2004*: updated for OS X 10.3.4 * *03.16.2004*: updated for OS X 10.3.3 * *02.25.2004*: Initial release *Known Bugs* On OS X 10.4 I am unable to find a way to change the contextual menu that pops up when you select text on a page and control-click or right click. It says "Search in Google" still, but it will actually use Yahoo! instead. *Download* "Safari2Yahoo.zip":/pdm/code/Safari2Yahoo.zip

Photo album upgraded to Gallery 2

2005-11-12T22:11:33Z

I've upgraded our photo album to use Gallery 2. Some cool new features are you can have image blocks that show most recent image or albums, and also random images and albums. "Check it out":http://gallery.ruminate.net/ .

Things you should know about Chuck Norris

2005-11-12T22:09:19Z

Someone has collected some key things you should know about Chuck Norris. Originally posted "here":http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=407546 I have copied them here for everyone's edutainment. # Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. # Chuck Norris built a time machine and went back in time to stop the JFK assassination. As Oswald shot, Chuck met all three bullets with his beard, deflecting them. JFK's head exploded out of sheer amazement. # Chuck Norris recently had the idea to sell his urine as a canned beverage. We know this beverage as Red Bull. # Rather than being birthed like a normal child, Chuck Norris instead decided to punch his way out of his mother's womb. Shortly thereafter he grew a beard. # Chuck Norris lives by only one rule: No Asian Chicks. # Takeru Kobayashi ate 50 and a half hotdogs in 12 minutes. Chuck Norris ate 12 asian babies in 50 and a half minutes. Chuck Norris won. # The original theme song to the Transformers was actually "Chuck Norris--more than meets the eye, Chuck Norris--robot in disguise," and starred Chuck Norris as a Texas Ranger who defended the earth from drug-dealing Decepticons and could turn into a pick-up. This was far too much awesome for a single show, however, so it was divided. # Chuck Norris was the fourth Wiseman. He brought baby Jesus the gift of "beard". Jesus wore it proudly to his dying day. The other Wisemen, jealous of Jesus' obvious gift favoritism, used their combined influence to have Chuck omitted from the Bible. Shortly after all three died of roundhouse kick related deaths. # Chuck Norris's girlfriend once asked him how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. He then shouted, "HOW DARE YOU RHYME IN THE PRESENCE OF CHUCK NORRIS!" and ripped out her throat. Holding his girlfriend's bloody throat in his hand he bellowed, "Don't **** with Chuck!" Two years and five months later he realized the irony of this statement and laughed so hard that anyone within a hundred mile radius of the blast went deaf. # To prove it isn't that big of a deal to beat cancer. Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong. # Chuck Norris once shot a German plane down with his finger, by yelling, "Bang!" # When Chuck Norris's wife burned the turkey one Thanksgiving, Chuck said, "Don't worry about it honey," and went into his backyard. He came back five minutes later with a live turkey, ate it whole, and when he threw it up a few seconds later it was fully cooked and came with cranberry sauce. When his wife asked him how he had done it, he gave her a roundhouse kick to the face and said, "Never question Chuck Norris." # Chuck Norris frequently signs up for beginner karate classes, just so he can "accidentally" beat the **** out of little kids. # Chuck Norris took my virginity, and he will sure as hell take yours. If you're thinking to yourself, "That's impossible, I already lost my virginity.", then you are dead wrong. # Chuck Norris can make a woman climax by simply pointing at her and saying "booya". # Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, until Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked her into a glacier. # When Chuck Norris plays Oregon Trail his family does not die from cholera or dysentery, but rather roundhouse kicks to the face. He also requires no wagon, since he carries the oxen, axels, and buffalo meat on his back. He always makes it to Oregon before you. # In one episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Chuck Norris replaced Carlton for one scene and nobody noticed. # Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month. # Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits. # Chuck Norris punched a woman in the vagina when she didn't give him exact change. # Chuck Norris has every copy of National Geographic in his basement. He also has the ability to lift every single one of them at once. # Chuck Norris ruins the endings of Harry Potter books for children who just bought one for the hell of it. When they start crying Chuck Norris calmly says, "I'll give you something to cry about," and roundhouse kicks them in the face. # Chuck Norris found out about Conan O'Brien's lever that shows clips from "Walker: Texas Ranger" and is working on a way to make it show clips of Norris having sex with Conan's wife. # Chuck Norris once tried to sue Burger King after they refused to put razor wire in his Whopper Jr., insisting that that actually is "his" way. # Chuck Norris once went to a frat party, and proceeded to roundhouse every popped collar in sight. He then drank three kegs and **** on their floor, just because he's Chuck Norris. # At the end of each week, Chuck Norris murders a dozen white people just to prove he isn't a racist. # Chuck Norris doesn't have normal white blood cells like you and I. His have a small black ring around them. This signifies that they are black belts in every form of martial arts and they roundhouse kick the **** out of viruses. That's why Chuck Norris never gets ill. # If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away from death. # The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain

New photo blog

2005-07-18T20:10:44Z

I've setup a photoblog where I can post images of mine that I really like. My gallery pages have more images some of which have less 'artistic' quality, as my gallery is intended for family and friends to view. Please check it out and give me comments about my images if you wish.

OS X Tiger 10.4 process limits solution

2005-07-10T03:15:24Z

I had high hopes that OS X 10.4 would ship with a higher default maxproc. My "old post on this subject":http://ruminate.net/pdm/mt/os_x_tips/a_solution_for_mac_os_x_103_process_limits.html still worked for 10.4 but what a pain that is, and you have to redo it after some System Update operations. I just finished reading an "article on launchd":http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20050620071558293 over at "AFP548":http://www.afp548.com and he mentions launchdctl for controlling launchd. One thing this utility allows you to do is set the resource limits for things that launchd launches. One of the things that launchd starts is WindowServer! So, you just need to have launchd launch processes with a higher limit. If you run: @launchctl limit@ right now you will see the maxproc is set to 100. To change this you need to create /etc/launchd.conf file if it does not already exist and add the following line: @limit maxproc 512 2048@ The first number is the soft limit and the second number is the hard limit. You can pick different values if you want. *NOTE* I"ve seen mentioned some place that I can't remember, that if you did an upgrade install to 10.4 your system might not be running launchd. This working depends on launchd being PID 1 and thus launching WindowServer. If init launched your WindowServer I'm afraid the "old method":http://ruminate.net/pdm/mt/os_x_tips/a_solution_for_mac_os_x_103_process_limits.html will have to be your work around.

Funny Duck

2004-09-15T19:10:28Z

I just got a Canon 70-300 DO IS USM lens the other day and went out to take some pictures and caught this crazy upsidedown duck. I thought it was pretty funny.