Carl Hutzler's Blog

When I initially upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5 I had no trouble continuing to use my Motorola V3m (Sprint) as a modem via bluetooth. But due to a hardware failure on my old MacBook Pro, I had a different experience the second time around.

This time, I had a brand new machine. It shipped with 10.4 and an upgrade disk to take you to 10.5. I did the 10.5 upgrade as a fresh install and then used the Migration Assistant to move my user directory, applications, network settings, etc from my old drive.

All seemed fine until I tried to pair my Motorola V3m again and set up my Mac to use the phone as a modem. After pairing, I tried the connection and kept getting connected to Sprint but then immediately disconnected with an error. The messages in my console were similar to this:

pppd[681] MPPE required, but MS-CHAP[v2] auth not performed.

I scoured the web and found a few people having similar issues when the upgraded to 10.5. I also saw a number of people saying they were doing just fine. I tried a few changes that people suggested to this modem script and that, but nothing seemed to work. The curious thing for me was that I knew I had used my phone as a modem under 10.5 with my old machine…..hmmm.

So I plugged my old hard drive (from the old machine) into my Mac via USB and told the Mac to boot from this drive. Even though the operating system was technically for a previous version of HW (Core Duo instead of Core2 Duo and a different graphics card), the drive booted the new machine just fine. I tried the dial-up connection to my phone and it worked just fine! So under 10.5 (actually 10.5.1 in this case) the dial-up worked without a problem So just to be sure I wasn’t crazy, I took screen shots of the bluetooth networking set-up and I booted back on the laptop’s internal drive and again tested the dial-up and it failed with the MPPE error. I compared the settins to my old drive and they all looked identical. I even compared the modem scripts and they were the same. Hmmm.

So I decided to completely re-install Leopard on the internal HDD of my new MBP. Once it was installed, I did not migrate any data and instead tried the bluetooth pairing to the phone and the dial-up modem to Sprint. It worked! I migrated my user data again from my old HDD but this time I made sure I did NOT migrate my network preferences. This time I would only migrate my data and applications.

My bluetooth as modem continues to work reliably under 10.5. Although I have not extensively tested the issue further, I believe the Migration Assistant has a small bug where in if you migrate network settings, it will somehow make your bluetooth as modem not work 100% of the time. One way to maybe prove this is if you are having this MPEE error, try creating another user account and setting up bluetooth dial-up modem under that account. I bet it will work. Not sure how to fix your primary account other than starting over with 10.5 and being careful with the migration assistant. But perhaps someone smarter will figure that out.

I read Ken’s site regularly and list him on my blogroll. His site has an interesting collection of camera equipment reviews and tips along with his own exquisite style of very saturated, colorful images like this one he recently took in Yosemite. Click to see a larger version on his page.

What I like most about his site is that he regularly gives tips on how he made various images. He has taught me several tricks with my Nikon DSLRs and flash attachments. And in this shot below, he showed how useful a graduated neutral density filter can be (wish I had one along with an 77mm –> 82mm step-up ring).

For those who don’t know what I am talking about, this is a glass filter that attaches to the front of the lens and has a grey area which fades into a clear area. For this shot Ken likely put the grey area on top where the sky was very bright and was able to preserve some detail in the shady stream area at the bottom. Otherwise he would have had to exposure for either the sky or the stream and the other one would have been completely dark or way over exposed.

Another way Ken could have done this was to bring a tripod along and do both of the exposures – one for the sky and one for the stream – on two separate frames and then combined them in Photoshop using the HDR (High Dynamic Range) feature. But Ken even said in another gallery that he hates carrying tripods. I agree.

Check out his other recent work from California’s Eastern Sierra.

First things first!
This is a tutorial on how to rip DVDs you own and not how to steal movies!

That said, there is a legitimate need to be able to take DVDs you own and turn them into files that can be streamed/played, installed on your iPod or iPhone, or used with an AppleTV or other media device. This is a tutorial on how I do it for one of my clients along with a script I customized to make the whole process easy.

The set-up I have for one of my clients is a central Mac Mini server (headless – no keyboard/monitor/mouse) which we use for the iTunes server. It runs iTunes all the time and does not do much of anything else. We have a number of AppleTV’s on the network and each of them is paired with the iTunes library on the Mac Mini server. This set-up allows my client to play/stream any music or movies in the iTunes library on any AppleTV. This works well for their purposes.

The issue I needed to solve for my client was to make it easy to rip all of their media/content into iTunes. Automating the music ripping was easy as iTunes has built in preferences for automating the ripping of music. Just go to iTunes preferences and tell it to rip a music CD when one is inserted in the Mac Mini and when complete, eject it. Done.

But what about DVD movies? Read more

(see down below for Al’s recommendations)

1. Rylan started buying compact florescent bulbs. We use them as the old tungsten bulbs burn out. They are really nice. The only downsides are that they take 20 seconds to “warm up” to their full brightness and I don’t think you can use them on dimmers.

And these downsides are not terrible. The warm up phase is nice when waking up the kids in the morning….its not immediately bright when you switch on the recessed lighting in their room. And the dimmer thing is no big deal. We just keep tungstens in the lights that we dim. They tend to be lights we use less frequently anyway.

2. We don’t have any outdoor lights to speak of.

3. I have a heat pump and everything I understand says that a programmable thermostat is not recommended for a heat pump system.

4. I changed my furnace (blower) air filter from one of those electrostatic ones to just a huge filter (20 x 24 x 4″). Not only does it last for a whole year! but it also is more efficient from an air flow perspective. If you have one of those electrostatic air filters, you might look into it.

5. I guess I should get a blanket for my hot water heater. Home Depot, here we come :-)

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Mac OS X comes with a built in ability to mac an “alias” to a file or folder which is different than a true symbolic link. By simply holding down the OPTION and APPLE/COMMAND keys at the same time and clicking on the file or folder, you can drag and create one.

Once you have this “alias” you can locate it anywhere you like. It is basically a pointer to the original file and for the most part acts as though it is the original file or folder. If you double click the alias, the original file or folder opens up just like you clicked the real item.

OK, none of this is earth shattering. But the alias capability does not work with some things. For example, EyeTV is a video recording and playback application usually called a PVR. It records shows to a default location inside your home folder. But what if you would rather have these HUGE video files recorded to another location, say on an external drive or a NAS drive. Well EyeTV does not give you an option to change the location it stores files.

But you can trick it…. Read more

OK, maybe this is not earth shattering news by itself, but it gets a little better.

• The music is $0.10 less per song than iTunes and the albums seem to be about $1 less than iTunes.
• The music is DRM free. No more pain in the ass restrictions on what I can do with my music
• The MP3 files are encoded at 256 kbps which should translate into very high quality listening
• Files work on just about any device that can play music as it is just a regular MP3 file.

I do not buy much of anything on iTunes mostly because I can usually find the CD for the same price at BestBuy or Target and I hate the DRM crud. No, I don’t steel or provide illegal music, but the DRM stuff is just annoying and inconvenient especially on iTunes video files. With Amazon providing high quality, DRM free, MP3 (as opposed to Apples AC3) format, for LESS money, the choice is clear for me.

The only downside I can see is that Amazon only has two major labels right now – EMI and Universal among many other smaller labels.

Note: There is a small “downloader” application which Amazon recommends installing. They have a Mac and Windows version. I don’t think you need this but it does sound convenient as it will auto add the music into iTunes for you.

A bit off topic, if you are looking for one of the best pure “rock ‘n’ roll” albums out there, spend $9 on this one and you will not be disappointed. Its one of my favorite all time albums.

Ryan Adams: Gold $8.99

First let me say that I am not a network engineer. I understand a lot about networks and how to string stuff together. But my experience is mostly on the end user side of things without knowledge of Cisco routers, IP Tables, Firewalls, etc. So if I get something technically wrong, you have my disclaimer :-)

That said, I have been experimenting with those small routers you buy at Circuit City for $50 or so made by Linksys, Buffalo Technologies, etc. What you do is buy one of these gizmos (make sure you get one that is compatible) and then “upgrade” the firmware in the router to an open source firmware called DD-WRT. To be fair, DD-WRT is not the only game in town. Open WRT, Tomato, and others do exist and may even be better in some ways. But I have found that DD-WRT has very good documentation and wide-spread use and support. I like to use what other people are using as they help me by figuring stuff out and publishing the “how to’s”.

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Ever wonder what the best glue might be for a specific repair or project? This site seems fairly good. Although it still does not always help with all the different types of plastics out there. But at least they give you some options to try. http://www.thistothat.com/

My brother, Paul, is currently driving from his home in Seattle, Washington to Skagway, Alaska with one of his friends. While this may seem like a wonderful summer vacation and a chance to see the great Northwest, trust me, its not what it seems. Read more

For the last year or so, I have been inspired to learn how to light things…people, things, scenes, anything. By light, I mean the purposeful introduction of light into a photograph to get a desired effect or a look.

I have concluded that learning how to light is hard!

Without backlights (left) With backlights(right)

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