For almost a year I have struggled with VPN on my macbook pro. The problem is that when my laptop goes to sleep while VPN is on (like when I shut the lid) I can no longer connect to VPN again when I open the lid. The error is the less than helpful, “Configuration error. Check settings and try to reconnect.” See the thread on discussions.apple.com for more angst on that topic.

The normal work-a-round are these two commands which restart the racoon subsystem.

> launchctl stop com.apple.racoon

> launchctl start com.apple.racoon

I have now found a better way.

There is a program called sleepwatcher written by Bernhard Baehr. While it’s install is very manual, it works very well. I now have a file in my home dir called .sleep and it runs a few commands when my laptop goes to sleep. One of them shuts off VPN and the other unmounts and external disks.

The script to disconnect VPN is a variation on the one published at Drinking the Apple Juice. The unmount command was from Mac OS X Hints.

It would all be simpler if I had init levels, but at least I have a solution.

To the moon!, originally uploaded by timbu.

This amuses me. Apparently I’m a third of the way to the moon according to Google Latitude.

“I have the theory that news is now driven not by editors who know anything,” the comedian and commentator Bill Maher recently observed. “I think it’s driven by people who are” slacking off at work and “surfing the Internet.” He added, “It’s like a country run by ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’ ”

NYTimes: Texts Without Context http://s.nyt.com/u/ag1

I recently purchased some hot water bags to use at the cabin on cold nights. I know it sounds like something that your elderly aunt, the one with the kleenex in her sleeves, might do. I became a hot water bottle convert on my first trip to India, when I visited DarJeeling. I could see my breath in the room at night and I learned first hand how nice it was to sleep with a toasty warm, hot water bottle.

Here are the instructions printed on the package – I am not making any of this up.

Rubber Heat Water Bag

Direction

1. Heat water bag is used in medical treatment health and common live to get warm.
2. The water temperature that the heat water bag should be around 90C. The water should not be over 2/3 than the capacity of the heat water bag.
3. After filling water, must let the air in the heat water bag out and let the screw tight. Check if there is water leak phenomenon.
4. When baby use the heat water bag, should let the heat water bag a little far from baby.
5. When the heat water bag is used or storage must avert it to be weight on or stabed, not touch sour, alkali, oil and sunlight shoot.
6. Storage heat water bag should fill a little air inside, Put it in shady environment.
7. The dirt on the heat water bag can be washed by soap water than use water wash it clean.
8. The heat water bag should not be put in the display window so long time, especially the display window in the sunlight shoot.

I just watched a Charlie Brown Christmas with the kids. Unbelievable what a fantastic little cartoon this is. I picked up the DVD so I wouldn’t have to watch it out of sync and with scenes cut to make way for commercials. You heard that right, the networks cut scenes in the cartoon parable decrying Christmas commercialism. They also seem to have botched other holiday specials by getting voice and video out of sync or trying to speed up dialog and getting the pitch messed up.

Funny reading the Wikipedia article pointed out that network execs were sure this cartoon would be a flop in 1965. I guess network executives have always been morons.

I’ve been checking out some of the creative apps available for a mac. One that caught my eye is called Ommwriter. It’s a really simple text editor that aims at creating a quiet environment for focusing on writing. It has a nice simple high key photo and you simply start typing in black text. It offers up a hint at start-up that you should wear headphones. This is because it has a sound track for writing. I love the idea of a writing application with it’s own soundtrack. I can start iTunes and play a selection of music I love, but the act of opening iTunes allows me to consider making a new play list or checking out some new music or playing a new album – all of which can distract me from the goal at hand – writing. With the word Omm in the title of the application you can already guess that the music is new age.

After using it for 15 minutes I have to say that they really have struck a nerve with this application. Today’s computer desktop has a ridiculous number of distractions. Each email sound a chime or shows a preview in the corner of your screen and the internet with it’s ridiculous number of distracting time sinks is just one click away.

I give this app a rating of strong potential depending on pricing and stability. If it becomes popular I wonder how they will keep people from requesting the usual slate of features and turning it into a normal application with all the distraction and none of the omm.

I haven’t used a mac of my own since 1998 or so. I think that it was running System 8.05 iirc.

So the new mac laptop seems freaking amazing to me. Here are some items that bowl me over.

• It’s fast to login.
• It’s super fast to switch between users.
• The built-in apps are richer than Windows
• It’s pretty, I forgot how much I missed that.
• The laptop build is amazing.
• Sleep actually works.
• Perl is already installed.
• The dock isn’t butt ugly like the slow start menu.
• Expose is pretty neat.
• It just worked, right out of the box.

Seriously, I have been wrong to be running Windows since the point where a Intel mac laptop was available.

I really hate the old crappy Dell now.

It makes me sad to see this gorgeous 1959 Bel Air destroyed, but it’s amazing to see the carnage.

Still think you were safer with all that heavy sheet metal around you?

I didn’t know there was a Minnesota connection to the game “Oregon Trail” and “Lemonade” – although it’s possible I knew it at one time and forgot.

“The original version of The Oregon Trail(K+T) was created in 1971 by three student teachers at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota,[1][dead link] using a mainframe computer.[2] One of these students, senior Don Rawitsch, had the idea to create a computer program for a history class he was teaching, and recruited two of his friends, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann, both of whom were students teaching math, to help him. In 1974 Rawitsch took a job at Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, or MECC, a state-funded organization that developed educational software for the classroom. He uploaded his game into the organization’s network where it could be accessed by schools across Minnesota.”

The Oregon Trail (video game). (2009, August 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:25, August 28, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Oregon_Trail_(video_game)&oldid=310547795

I played the game on Apple ][ computers. I think my first experience with the game was probably the fifth grade.

I spent a lot more time with other games, but I feel more nostaglia for “Oregon Trail” and “Lemonade” than I ever will for Centipede or Ms. Pacman.

I think I have just thought up a killer iPhone game – containing the best elements of a cross country journey with dangerous dysentary and elements of the sit-com “The Office“. Now I have to buy a mac and get the SDK!