June 2007

ReefCentral thread

For those interested in following the events related to my 480g project, take note that I sometimes write stuff on ReefCentral that I do not repeat on here. So feel free to visit my thread there.

Blog Categories:

Parallels 3 for Mac and Java 1.6

If you run a Swing application under Parallels for Mac v3.0, and are using Java 1.6 and your direct draw extension is enabled you will find the application never draws (render) it's canvas.

It is not a bug in your code - just turn off all graphics acceleration in XP.

Blog Categories:

Apple Mac OS X and input/output errors while copying a file

My wife's Parallels broke today. For some reason it just died when starting up - no matter what mode we tried to start Windows XP in. We tried repairing Windows XP by means of the installation CD, but this caused even weirder errors.

So I ran a Disk Repair and Permissions Repair - neither working.

I then decided I am going to try and upgrade the disk image to the latest Parallels - 3.0. Well, whilst copying the .hdd file this happened:

Blog Categories:

Mac OS X 10.4.10 broke VPN!

So yesterday I upgraded to 10.4.10 only to discover my Cisco VPN is not working anymore. It gives an Error 51... That was real bad since I have a client that I support using VPN.

I tried everything to revert to 10.4.9 but it is not that easy to roll back a service pack. Eventually I stumbled across an article on Parallel's forum indicating that my problem might be related to the fact that yesterday I also upgraded from 4124 to 4128...

I did the following to fix it:

Blog Categories:

Merger

Seems I like consolidating things... I have just merged my reef blog with my main blog - I just hate all these billions of small sites floating around.

I'd much rather have one place where I can blog about everything and people can filter based on the categories they are interested in.

Hope this works better for everyone.

Blog Categories:

I've got copepods!

About four days ago I started seeing very faint signs of diatoms on my glass - and knew it was not long before the pods would start showing up. Well, three days ago I started noticing them - thousands of tiny copepods.

This is a good day.

Blog Categories:

Determining socket owners on Mac OS X

In the Linux world one has netstat and fuser to figure out which PID has opened a given socket. In Mac OS X, netstat does not provide PID's and fuser is missing...

I found this interesting article on how to solve this dillema.

Basically you use the lsof utility that displays a list of open files (a socket is handled as a special file) and the owner PID's:

Blog Categories:

Mac OS X, Microsoft and VPN

I needed to connect to one of my client's VPN networks today. They used some form of Microsoft VPN server - they could not tell me exactly what version...

Since I am running on a Mac, I tried to use the built-in VPN client from Internet Connect. Since this is a Microsoft VPN it would most probably be PPTP based and not L2TP. So I created a new connection and tried... No luck - I got an authentication error, even though my credentials were perfect.

Blog Categories:

An update on my reef

I have not posted any pictures of my reef aquarium in a long time, so here goes:

 J8T0992

Blog Categories:

Some pictures from the 480g

My 480g tank is doing quite good... I am starting to have good micro algae growth so the snails should be happier.

Here is a shot of my Chocolate Chip Starfish eating some juicy mussel:
 J8T0968-1

Blog Categories:

Pages

Back to top