Helene

When importing mp3 to ITunes, the files is automatically added to the music library. All it takes for making the mp3’s into audiobooks is the correct settings. Search up the files in question and mark them. Right click on the marked files –> Get Info –> Options –> Media kind –> Audiobook.

The files will automatically be transfered from the Music Library to Audiobooks when “OK” is pressed.

I work at a Linux company, and it seems like most of my co-workers (including myself) use ubuntu as their operating system. With that as my background, I find this video very amusing.

60 minutes had an episode once about the difficulties in understanding and using technical manuals. In this new technological era we all experience technical problems. This can range from setting up the new television or printer we just brought, some software on out computer fails, or just understanding the words in a menu. We read the manual, written by engineers in a language that aren’t suited to non-technical people, and we get more and more frustrated as things just doesn’t behave in the way we expect them too. At the same time we get afraid of doing something irreversible, that just fucks up everything.

There’s a South Park episode that is hilarious in that regard. Chef and the boys are sitting in front of the tv to see “The Russel Crowe Show”. Chef wants to show off his new TV which has “more features than a space shuttle” and in his confusion he manages to enter “H.E.M” - Human Eradication Mode.

South Park: The Terrance & Phillip Movie Trailer, Season 6 ep.5

It’s sad to say it, but I had my first incident of spyware… on nothing less than my macosx.

I found out because I had these popups that came up when browsing in firefox:

It always pointed to the same ip adress 216.255.186.11. At first I thought it was something wrong with popup blocker in firefox, so I installed adblock in hopes that it help. It didn’t. That was what pointed me in the right direction.

I installed MacScan, and what do you know. It found a Trojan called DNSChanger..

I have managed to stay ahead of the game so far by being careful about what I install. Obviously, that didn’t help. So I guess… no more gay porn for me. (Hey, JUST KIDDING!)

Unfortunately, after many trials I discovered that MacScan didn’t do their job properly to remove the file. It only removed a file named plugins.settings, but there was a lot more than that happening. I started searching out more information about the problem and found a site containing analysis of what the trojan does. So, here is what one must do to remove it:

Crontab contained this line:
sudo crontab -l
* * * * * “/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/QuickTime.xpt”>/dev/null 2>&1

I removed it using this command (DELETES ALL CRONTABS FOR ROOT) : sudo crontab -r

Delete: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/plugins.settings
Then I deleted /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/QuickTime.xpt

After this session - No more popups for me !!! *Celebration*
Previous history:

Update: DAMN! That popup is still there !!! So what in the hell is it? Firefox is in “show no popup” mode.
So I tried this solution and set privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins = 3 (instead of 2). Hopefully that helps..

Update2: Apparantly, that didn’t help as well. Now I’m really baffled. And it makes no sense, because it pops up randomly on different sites.. *thinking hard*

Update3: My last desperate act is to search through all files on my harddrive looking for the ip adress in question (though time consuming). A tip is to delete all history files (clear browser history etc) where the ip adress might appear.
sudo find . -exec grep ‘216.255.186.11′ {} \; -print

I got a hit on these files:
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/7kojvnaz.default/places.sqlite
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/7kojvnaz.default/places.sqlite-journal
So I renamed the file too places.sqlite-journal.old.The files is used for preserving Firefox browsing history. In my case - will not be missed. That didn’t help - the popup is still there.

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/7kojvnaz.default/sessionstore.js
Firefox session data

Frustration solved! Finally !

I have had my mac for about 10 months, but I still hadn’t figured out where to find those programming keys like curly braces, square brackets, straight vertical (pipe) and tilde to name a few on my keyboard.

The solution was easy when I found it, but it wasn’t intuitive for me. After all, it took me 10 months.

These works for norwegian keyboard layout (and probably some more):
~ = Option + ^
| = Option + 7
[ = Option + 8
] = Option + 9
{ = Option + Shift + 8
} = Option + Shift + 9
\ = Option + Shift + 7

Google have now added support for accessing your calendar and even your friends from iCal and Outlook.

Instructions for iCal
Instructions for Outlook

For me, which is addicted to iCal, it’s a nifty feature.

Remember how I vowed never to take a certification again… It seems like I need to learn to just shut up.

The same day as I passed my Linux certification, my department manager came up to me wondering if I wanted to take a Scrum Master course which gives the “Certified Scrum Master” certification by Scrum Alliance. The requirements for this course: Pay 17 000,- for a course and recieve a certification. In other words, it takes a lot to be able to fail !

But I`m very happy. It was a very good course and hopefully, in time, I will actually become a Scrum master (a more recognizable word for scrum master could be project manager/leader) at a project in my company. So this is very exciting.

So far I`ve worked in two scrum projects and I`m very happy with the scrum framework. Finally it seems like I`ve found a project management that actually works for software development. It`s easy to track and view progress, change according to customers whims, and thereby making the customer happy. It has even more important (positive) implications for the developers, but I`m not going to talk about that now. Basically, it works!

So, now my fourth certification is in box. Damn, I`m good.