NOTE: an alternate version of the show has been created that fixes some of the audio problem towards the end of the show. thanks camuel! click to download or listen.

Back to My Mac either just magically works or it doesn’t at all. There are several reasons why it doesn’t just work:

Older Router
Configured incorrectly
Double Router 
Weird wired or plugged into the wrong connection.
ISP or BOFH blocking ports.

Back to My Mac users guide.

The secret to getting it to work is to use an Apple router like a Airport Extreme or a Airport Express. However, other routers work just fine. here is a list of compatible routers listed by Apple. just because your router is not on the list doesn’t mean that it won’t work.

A case for not using Back to my Mac and more thoughts on that. and here’s redux.

Apple article on Back to My Mac security. A list of all the ports in use or might be in use on a Mac.

Back to my Mac ports include UDP port 4500 & 5900 and TCP port 443. [one missing port goes here]

general steps:
some gateways are dumb as rocks and just pass on all requests. others are full on firewalls that may or may not allow you to configure them. sometimes there will be nothing you can do and your only options is to upgrade to a new gateway.

if you have a single router connected to your gateway or your gateway is also the router:
Turn on UPnP.

if that doesn’t work
some internet gateways are actually routers. some of them don’t allow you to poke holes in them. they might also be very old and don’t support UPnP. in that case you may need a newer router. but before you do that: upgrade the firmware on your router and or upgrade the firmware on your wireless router.

manually configuring your router:
the documentation for your router will give you the steps you need to enable specific ports. you can always find it online.

other problems
double routers
cable plugged into WAN side on the second router.
one router that doesn’t have UPnP turned on
firewall turned-on without specifying the BtmM ports.
some internet service providers block ports automatically to prevent “server like things” from being run. check your TOS, EULA or tech notes. calling or emailing support might be a good idea as well.

when all is lost
bribe your BOFH with his favorite beverage.

[more notes go here]

Making a business around Macintosh can be fun and profitable. Just because Apple as a store doesn’t mean that you can’t make Mac the center of your business. There are many ways that you can can make money from Macs: support, training, service, or making things with your Mac.

Remember, don’t quit your day jorb.

Every business needs a phone number. If you already have a cell phone that can be a place to start. Google “Grand Central” offers a phone number and voice mail system that is very powerful. This service is in beta so you need an invitation to sign up for it. If you don’t mind a number that isn’t in your “area” there’s K7.net which offers a free voice mail and fax service. Anyone that calls the number can leave a message which is delivered to you email as a WAV file and includes the number that called.

Business cards are essential. You can easily make your own. Or you can use one of thousands of services. One of the best “card making” tools happens to be Pages. You can have cards ready to go in less then 20 minutes. The guys at Etsy use a Cosco 2000 stamp to make cards. Go to your local paper store, find some interesting card stock, cut it to card size and stamp away. Simple.

If you don’t have a web site you can make one in an hour. While you can use one of the hundreds of “free” services we think that it’s better to have your own domain. Email is the same way. Why advertise somebody else’s service when you get your own for “free” with your domain. If you aren’t sure where to start in all the domain hosts to choose from start here.

The book that we talked about is “Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki. If you don’t like reading there’s a video of what amounts to the first 60 pages. Guy says “Think BIG” but we say “think small.” Laziness is a feature not a bug!

Open Sign credit.

[more as we think of it]

Why hack a G4 into a NAS drive. First off, NAS means Network Attached Storage. It’s basically a big hard drive you can use from any of the computers on your network. After years of service the G4 is nearing the end of it’s life. Apple raised the bar with Leopard dead-ending the earliest machines requiring 768Mhz and a modern GPU. With two exceptions (yikes and sawtooth) the G4 line has gigabit ethernet which gives you fast file transfers if you wired network supports this speed. Many commercial NAS products don’t have gigabit ethernet or charge a premium for the faster model.

An old G4 is essentially free. Okay, I paid full price for it in 1999. And I bought a dozen or so more of them over the years. My last G4 was a Mirror Door that got donated to a kid and we skipped the Wind Tunnel because we’d moved on to PowerBooks in my company. But that’s another story. I’ve seen used G4 machines of all sizes and various states for free on Craigslist or on various mailing lists I’m on. If you have to pay for one, don’t pay lots because they are nearly a decade old. Because of the age and the cost this Mac it’s highly hackable.

Most of this era Mac will have seen lots of use making it very dusty inside. Be careful when cleaning. Removing dust can cause static which can zap chips. When taking things apart to clean them go slowly. Make sure you remove every screw. If you have to force something to move it means you haven’t found all the screws. Clean the Mac with a household cleaning product like a blue window cleaner or 409. Don’t spray it directly on the inside of the case instead spray it on your paper towel. Be careful when using isopropyl alcohol to clean a case as diluted isopropyl alcohol can melt plastic. Use it with care.

Dust Off or compressed air can work magic. But it can also put dust every where. Don’t use it until you have clean a majority of dust out first. Static is always a concern. We’ve seen motherboards not work after being gunned with compressed air. When using Dust Off (or other source) use short bursts of air directed at concentrations of dust. Long blasts are wasteful. Use it outside or in your garage. We like to wait for the dust to settle before turing on a blasted Mac.

Choosing drives is a bit of hearsay and voodoo. Everyone has a preference which is based on the brand that has failed them the least. Personally we don’t care so much about brand but other things such as warrantee and power consumption. You might want to consider cost per gigabyte for determining which size to buy. For the G4 NAS talked about in the show 500G drives were the best buy. 6 months from now 1T drives will likely be the way to go.

Because of limitations on the PATA bus we need purchase and install a SATA card. There are a number of them that will work for this job. In Part 1 we choose a dumb as rocks PCI card that controlled two drives. More expensive cards have built-in RAID 0, 1, 5 but we don’t need that feature for this project. Plan to spend around $50.

After you’ve cleaned the case, installed drives, and controller its time to fire up the Mac. Format the drives using Disk Utility. Copy files to them, delete things giving them a good work out. Once you are certain things are working well go back to Disk Utility to format them as a RAID 1. Follow the steps here.

It has been pointed out to use that SoftRAID may be a better product then the RAID built-in OS X.

The Apple RAID software does zero monitoring. It’s a good idea to use a product to tell you the state of your disks like working, failed, about to fail, etc.. Two programs RAID Monitor and RAID Alart will monitor and report the status of your disks.

As my G4 NAS is sitting in the corner next to the phone system I use Chicken of the VNC to control it. You can use built-in Mac remote desktop screen sharing or a VNC Server to accomplish this. I use a VNC server because I wanted to change the default port for sharing. It makes my server just a little more secure.

If you aren’t using OS X Server there isn’t much control over what is shared and to whom. Normal user permissions, frankly, allow too much access. Use Share Points or Shift Share to give you absolute control over who gets access to what.

 

[show notes to follow as usual. please stand by.] 

Learning programming is fun and for the most part easy to do. You need to set your expectations to meet this task because for some people it will be a hard road. But fear not, there are lots of ways to learn and examples to follow. Whether you learn in a more traditional classroom or on your own it will take a while for programming to sink in. Mostly because people aren’t used to thinking this way. Because everyone knows how to use a list it’s not a big jump to make something more complex.

 

Programming a Mac offers lots of different choices. The best part is so many things are free to use without restriction.

 

The outline and links mentioned in the show are just a click away. 

hello world in 199 languages

http://www2.latech.edu/~acm/HelloWorld.shtml

biggest hello world on earth

http://www.flickr.com/photos/82727621@N00/sets/72057594129393836/

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=10691

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/getStarted/application/index.html

 

history of languages poster

http://www.oreilly.com/news/languageposter_0504.html

http://www.levenez.com/lang/

http://wiki.oreillynet.com/languageposter/index.cgi

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/linux/news/linuxanatomy_0101.html

 

unix 

http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html

http://www.levenez.com/unix/

 

okay where to start?

there are 2500 languages to choose from

http://people.ku.edu/~nkinners/LangList/Extras/langlist.htm

 

every language is the same fundamentally

math

compare

branching

looping

variables

 

teaching yourself is possible

i learned by typing programs from a book

rote learning

forced to learn to debug

first programming experience was from 100 BASIC games

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/books/basicgames/

http://www.swapmeetdave.com/cc.htm

creative computing

http://www.moorecad.com/classicbasic/index.html

 

some people need a class

its more structured

learning is forced

you have homework to do

 

cribbing your code

search for just about any thing. 

copy paste programmer!

 

take something apart to learn how it works.

old Apple II games were often in BASIC meaning you could read the code

modern programs aren’t always visible.

 

I want to make a [insert thing here] is the best way to learn

you have a goal

it’s something you want.

 

Flash

 

BASIC

chipmonk

future BASIC

all those emulators

 

 

use the example of 3B

parser

variables

math engine

turtle graphics.

 

 

Links

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/realbasic.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/torquegamebuilder.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/smile.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/greenfoot.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/smile.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/dim3.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/squeak.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/eggplant.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/powermops.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/torquegameenginesdk.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/regexpress.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/revolutionstudio.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/supercard.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/virtualhostx.html

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/revolutionmedia.html

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/arcadeengine.html

http://www.sawbladesoftware.com/

 

Why not.

One Machine not 3.

On a MacBook you have all your environments.

What?

That one thing you need to run for legacy.

Compatibility Checking

Some fun game.

Anything really.

Reviews are already WILDY out of date

http://www.macworld.com/article/55484/2007/02/vmwarevsparallels.html

Why an emulator and not BootCamp?

BootCamp requires a partition.

Emulators don’t need a physical disk.

Side-by-Side

Use Spaces to hold a whole window.

What choices are there for emulation

vmWare

Parallels

DOSbox

Cross Over

http://www.virtualbox.org/

Wine

MAME

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33091

https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=176560

SCUMM

What runs?

Windows

Linux

Solaris

DOS

Installation

licensing

Windows XP

Vista

Windows installs faster than Windows on hardware.

Performance

http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.24/24.02/VirtualizationBenchmark/

Zork 1, 2, 3 .exe

http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html

Visicalc

http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm

Asterisk

http://asterisk.org/

Gizmo Project

http://gizmoproject.com/

on more then one Mac (up to 5)

Sharing music on

one computer

the home and office computer

more then one computer in the same house hold

Airport Express

Squeeze Box

http://www.slimdevices.com/

Turning on Sharing in iTunes.

doesn’t sync music just allows you to play it.

Syncing iPods. 

http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/

itunes spelled backwards

iPod Extractor

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12739

floola

http://www.floola.com/modules/wiwimod/

an extensive list of other tools

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iPod_Managers

Conversation about drm’d AAC files

Consolidation (thoughts)

use the old Mac to store all the music.

set up VNC screen sharing

or load Leopard on it to screen share to it.

Macs are toys not good for “real work”

origin: Mac 128

changed: Mac II

today: UNIX based architecture very versatile.

Mac’s are for dummies.

origin: it’s really easy to use a mac. real computing is done with the command line

now: most of todays work is done with a GUI. 

http://lowendmac.com/lab/75.html

Mac is Expensive

origin: Mac’s were expensive. Quadra 950 retailed for $8K

now: there will always be cheaper alternatives to a Mac that on the surface seem cheaper. if you compare similar spec’d computers you will find a similar price. 

Market share isn’t big:

origin: Wall Street analysts that see success only as home runs

now: market share is a huge myth

look at specific markets to get an idea of true share

graphics development

movie industry

multimedia development

web development

_______ doesn’t run.

origin: lots of titles don’t run on a Mac.

now: Once you go Mac you can go Back and run whatever you want

depends on what you are doing.

content creation – no need to have two platforms

accounting – runs better in windows

Emulation can be done with:

Parallels

vmWare

CrossOver

<a href = “http://www.dosbox.com/”>DosBox</a>

2 Button Mice

origin: One button mouse.

now: second button and scroll wheel supported since OS 9 with the introduction of USB.

no standard ports: no parallel. no 9 pin serial.

origin: the 8pin serial port wasn’t hobby-ist friendly. hacking parallel is easy.

now: more input options then ever before.

usb to parallel

    to serial

    various controllers

http://sourceforge.net/projects/k8055mac/

Velleman K8055 USB I/O

    midi

    USB overdrive

http://www.usboverdrive.com/USBOverdrive/Information.html

    X10

    Xbox 360 driver

http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controller/OsxDriver

    KeySpan

http://www.keyspan.com/downloads/

Big Sponsor Plug

Not good for accounting.

myth: Macs don’t have accounting software

now: check with your accountant first.

acctvantage

http://www.acctvantage.com/

MYOB

Inuit

You need Mac Specific _insert_whatever_here

hard drives

displays

printers

RAM

Mac is not compatible with the corporate network.

origin: NetBIOS, Novel, VINES and other networks didn’t have Mac drivers

TCP/IP doesn’t care what you are.

http://www.macvspc.info/websitePDFs/MACvsPCCombined.pdf

Mac’s are chatty on a network.

AppleTalk Phase 2, included with System 7, reduced the chattiness significantly.

  http://www.mac-guild.org/appletalk.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleTalk

Don’t play games.

origin: the Mac had a Black and White screen until the Mac II which cost about $5K when it was released. so there weren’t that many games. 

dark castle, glider, solitaire, flight simulator.

truth: Mac’s don’t allow writing to the metal

now: lots of games but not always the newest games.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/games/

DS, PSP, xbox, ps3, ps2, Wii, Cube, N64… may be a better choice.