How I fixed my Wireless At Home

For months I have had a bizarre problem with wireless access. Every time I described it to networking folks, it baffled them. This was the situation.

My main pc is a 17" MacBook Pro running Lion. When I take it anywhere, wireless works perfectly. There are no issues at all. When I plug it in to a wired connection, it works perfectly. Nothing special….yet. At home I have a few Windows-based machines that are on my home network, but they are all wired connections. All of them also work without any problems. I have 2 iPads (1 and 2) and an iPhone that connect wirelessly, again, no issues.

When I run my MacBook Pro at home on a wired connection, there is no problem. But wireless had a problem. Everything works everywhere, except the MBP has a problem with wireless. Well, actually, thats not true.

The MBP connects without a problem to WiFi. It just cannot get out of my network. So the only problem is when on WiFi, my MBP (and only my MBP) can see my internal network but cannot get out onto the internet. Bizarre, right? It gets a little harder to troubleshoot, though. If I run a command like host www.google.com from the terminal…ready for it…. it works. But Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Entourage, Tweetdeck, etc cannot see anything outside of my network.

Bizarre, right?

So here is what I did to fix it. I went into the DHCP config on the access point and disabled all the DNS settings. Then on my Mac, I created a Home location and hard coded the DNS settings. Thats it. Everything on my network and beyond now works for my MBP. I absolutely do not understand why this is, but now it all works. And now that I have documented it here, I can completely forget about it and live happy!

EDIT: November 14, 2011 - I made a change this morning because I got tired of hard coding a DNS server for each client. I have an old ASUS EEEBox running Linux in a closet. So far it was just a DNS server. Now its also DHCP and everything is perfect. Gradually I'll move more services onto that little Atom-powered box.

Three Finger Double Click is Magic

The three finger double click gesture in Lion is pure magic. It took a while for it to sink in, but when MacSparky mentioned it, the neurons in my brain finally processed it. And today it came in really handy. One of my pet peeves is seeing a word show up in a sentence multiple times when a synonym would be much more interesting. I especially hate it when it's my writing. But sometimes I just have to stare blankly at the wall for a few minutes to think of a good word to use. Either that or get my lazy ass off the chair and walk over to the thesaurus on my bookshelf. Like the three finger double click, the existence of a thesaurus in the Mac had never quite sunk in either.

So today I was writing up a script for a video I am about to record on sending a fax with Outlook Web Access. I bet I know what you're thinking. You are thinking that that video will be FREAKING AWESOME. You are right my brother, you are right. Well, I wrote a sentence that had me staring at the wall for a few minutes and just as I started to glance over to the Roget's on the shelf, I remembered the secret gesture.

Up popped the mini dialog you see in the picture to the right. In the words of Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle….MMMMMAGIC!!! Unfortunately, the results it gave me weren't that helpful, but clicking on the Thesaurus in the dialog opened the full Dictionary app and I found the word I needed. MAGIC SQUARED!

I think this is the pivotal point in my life where I will finally remember that gesture…..whats next??? Triple shot macchiatto double click….mmmmmm….uh oh, Macchiatto isn't in the dictionary?!?!?

Is the iPad perfect?

Today a friend of mine asked me what I thought of the iPad. Well, I think I love it. It really is a cool device, as long as you understand what it can do and what it cannot. In the two or three weeks that I have had it, I have seen that most of the thoughts I had about the device were confirmed and there have been a couple of surprises as well. I am using it at work as well as for fun and it definitely has a place in both scenarios. And I am writing this blog entry on the iPad as well. It seems to be working out really well.

What makes this device special is that it's portable, has a great screen, and the battery life is spectacular considering what it is. I am using it as a notetaker, an RSS reader, a PDF reader, a magazine platform, a music maker, a remote control, a cookbook, a gaming platform, a timer, and a mail tool. So I think one of the really great features about this device isn't really a feature of the device but the fact that Apple has built such an incredible application marketplace which 3rd parties have joined.

But it's not all perfect. While it's battery life is amazing, it's battery life is one of it's biggest weaknesses. 10 hours on a charge means that the Kindle will always be with me for fiction, long reads, and newspapers. Plus reading on the Kindle is just a nicer experience for most things. Another major problem is that the USB cable only gets a slow trickle charge when plugged into the Mac. Although the power brick is tiny, it means another thing to pack (and accidentally leave behind in the hotel room). While the device is small, it's not quite thin and light enough to compete with the Kindle, which is another reason I won't be leaving the Kindle at home for any trips. And while it's overall design is gorgeous, the one mistake they made was not including a hardware switch for adjusting the brightness. I guess they could have skipped that had they made it sense the brightness in the room, but they forgot that too.

As I mentioned, I think it's the apps that make this thing really shine. So what are the apps that I am using? Obviously there is Safari and Mail. And unlike their counterparts on OSX, these don't suck. For some reason there is no ToDo list on the iPad, but IMExchange2 does a wonderful (free) job of showing me my tasks from Exchange. I love Manton Reece's Tweet Library to get a handle and search through all my Twitter traffic, although I often use Tweetdeck for more day to day usage. Reeder is my current RSS reader and it's integration with Instapaper (which is also installed) makes it even easier to skim through my feeds. GoodReader is an almost perfect PDF reader and it's integration with DropBox, GMail, and other cloud services makes it easy to get documents onto the device. In fact I think this app means I won't be carrying my Kindle DX anymore.

But wait, didn't I say that the iPad is not a replacement for the Kindle??? Well, yes I did. And it's not. I have two Kindles: a DX and the newer smaller device with 3G and WiFi. I get the New York Times on that smaller device and that will continue to be with me where ever I go. But the larger DX is something I thought I would still use for larger PDFs from work. Although the Kindle is great for longer reads, those work PDFs are more for reference. And searching them from the Kindle is a bit more painful than on the iPad.

So what else do I use? TeamViewer is a great way to access to my home machines remotely as well as the parental tech support duties I have. SimpleNote allows me to see the same notes on my iPad that I see in NotationalVelocity on the Mac and Notes on the PC. I now even have an app on the Blackberry that syncs with that system. And I am writing this blog in it too. The Sonos remote app is an absolutely incredible way to control my music at home. I hadn't used Zinio in years but it's now on the iPad and it's a beautiful way to read full color magazines. World Clock Pro HD is a wonderful multiple time zone clock app I use to figure out when i can call my manager in Seattle. And Digits Lite is a delightful free calculator app with a nice history on the left. Those are all the apps that I use almost every day and are on the home screen on device.

Other apps that I use a fair deal include Epicurious, USAToday, Marvel Comics, BubblesHD, Cut The Rope, iSequence, iElectribe, ThumbJam, and Kayak. And then a whole lot of others that are on there but not getting used everyday. In all, there are 100 apps and counting.

As for accessories, there is one that is absolutely required: a case that props the iPad up at an angle. I got the MacAlly Bookstand and it's perfect. Yesterday I couldn't have typed this out since I didn't have the case yet. I am amazed at how much different typing long texts can be when it's angled on a sturdy platform. The SD card adapter is also absolutely required for getting files off my card from the camera and audio recorder.

You might have noticed that I did not mention the iPod app. Well, that's because I haven't really used it for listening to music. My main music platform is still the Zune because the whole music ecosystem on the Zune is just so much better. I would love to see that change, but I am not holding my breath. That said, I have started using my iPod Touch recently because the Connect system in the new Nissan Qashqai that I got does a great integration with the iPod. Because of that I am making my way through all the back episodes of Core Intuition during my drives.

I really enjoy this iPad and am very glad that I picked one up. Unlike the Mac, this is something I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone and everyone. Apart from the downsides I mentioned above, it's nearly perfect and I look forward to using it for the next few years.

How Apple Improved Usability With A Single Mostly Ignored Software Update

In six months with this MacBook Pro, I think I have acclimated pretty well to this other way of doing things. But there was one particular action or behavior that I hated. One reason that the package that is a MacBook wasn't as complete as the competition, specifically a Thinkpad. That one action was the method for clicking and dragging.

On the Thinkpad, there is the Track Stick, Pointing Stick, whatever its called. Most people don't spend the time required to get used to it, but once you do, it seems to be the most perfect pointing device. In fact, given the choice of an external mouse or the pointing stick, I will dump the mouse any day. It is so much more precise, quick, and useful that nothing else really could compare. The fact that I could have my index finger on the stick and my thumb on the mouse buttons allowed me to make intricate masks in Photoshop, drag and drop with ease, and select just the text I needed without any overlap.

Move over to the Mac, and that simple integration of man with machine was broken. Clicking and dragging became a chore. I had to either dumb myself down in Photoshop, or start carrying an external mouse. My knuckles were aching from pushing down that massive trackpad and dragging to grab a short piece of text. I was thinking I might have to get one of those external Thinkpad keyboards to get that efficiency back with the Mac.

But then a month or so ago, Apple changed the game. With a single feature that most people probably didn't think twice about. Three Finger Dragging makes my one big complaint about this hardware just disappear. And I didn't even pay attention to it until just a few minutes ago. I had been using it since the day the update was released and it came so natural. Its really incredible!!

Last night, I painted with a brush in Photoshop. With three fingers swirling around the Trackpad, I covered the area I needed just perfectly. Changing brush sizes with the keyboard shortcuts and back to dragging and I got exactly what I intended. Selecting text to copy into emails and documents works the first time with no sore knuckles. I was dragging files between folders in a Windows RDP session so effortlessly that I wasn't missing that track stick at all.

Of course, now I wish the TrackPad was a little bit bigger, but the fact that I can leave the three fingers on the pad, then use the index finger of the other hand to continue the behavior means that the trackpad really has an infinite width and height. It has turned a pretty good piece of technology into what could be the most perfect pointing device ever, all with a single, mostly ignored software update.

MacBook Pro, I think I love you.

Now Apple, if you could just add the three finger tap to give me a middle click without having to use add-ons, I will be over the moon.

How To Keep Your Notes In Sync, Where Ever You Are

I absolutely adore developers who realize that their platform isn't the only platform. Developers who know there is something else out there and are OK with it. A lot of devs think their platform is the best, and that if the customer doesn't feel that way, well they just don't get it. That's true on both the Windows side and the Mac side. But when the dev goes a bit further and enables the opposite platform to integrate, well that's just perfect.

SimpleNote is just one such application. I guess it started with the iPhone app. And if they ended it there, I would know nothing about it since I don't own an iPhone. But they also have a web app at https://simple-note.appspot.com/index.html (shown here). I am not a huge fan of working in the cloud: having the content up there is fine, as long as I can edit on the platform I care about. So if they ended it there, I would still probably not know anything about it. But the magic came when they opened up that web app for other developers to integrate in with.

What got me interested was Notational Velocity. And I am not really sure why I got interested. After all, the Notational Velocity website is terrible. After reading the page, I had no idea what it did. But for some reason I ran it on my Mac and I got it: a text-based non-relational database with a query interface so frickin easy that anyone can use it. Just start typing. If there is a note with that text, the title will show in the list. Keep typing to narrow the search. Arrow down to select your note, or just press enter to start a new one. Give it 30 seconds and it will totally click.

At that point I checked out the web client. It worked pretty much the same way and now I really saw the value of having it up there. This is probably the right time to check out the Extras page at SimpleNote. There are Windows-based apps that work with it as well. So I installed ResophNotes.

While it doesn't have quite the same level of ease of use as Notational Velocity, I was quickly able to get the sync going and see all my notes there as well. I edit on Windows, see the notes on Mac, make some changes on the web site, see them on Windows. It just works, and it works on most of the platforms I care about. If there was a Blackberry app as well, I would be in heaven.

Now you might look at this and wonder why I would get excited over a simple notepad app. After all, Evernote does all of this and more, right? While its true that Evernote is an amazing application, it never sucked me in quite as well as this. I personally feel that Evernote is trying to do too much, at least for me. SimpleNote and its derivations are just what I need when I want to make a quick note of something, and then find it easily where ever I am right now.

Remembering NeXT

In most books that you will find about Cocoa on the Mac, there is a brief blurb about its beginnings with NeXT. NeXT was that company that Jobs ran before coming back to Apple which made ridiculously cool looking computers. I have never touched a NeXT Cube, but I wanted to from the first time I saw one. In fact, it was one of my goal for the first job I ever had. When I turned 16 I was able to get a job at the local camera shop, Bristol's Camera on Key Biscayne near Miami. This job allowed me to fund my photography habit: buying chemicals for my darkroom, getting new lenses at cost, and more.

After graduation from high school, I went on to college at FSU, but every time I came home for holidays and breaks, I would go back to work at the camera shop. At that time I started saving the money I earned. Some of it would go towards buying CDs at Vinyl Fever in Tallahassee, but what I didn't spend on music got saved away for a much bigger, more expensive item. That item was a special computer that became available the year I left high school. The NeXT. Ahhh. I only saw pictures of it in magazines. Looking back, I am not exactly sure why I wanted one. Maybe it was this article in Byte magazine. It was the top object of my desire.

My big disappointment came however, when I was approaching enough savings to buy one: they got out of the hardware business. The same year, I graduated from Florida State and got a real job at PC Docs. I drifted away from the idea of getting involved with NeXT and its not until the last few months that I return. I wonder how things might have been different had I a little more money back when I was 20. I wonder what would have happened had I bought that Cube, way back when.

That Magic Pad Thing

I know what you are thinking. Over the last few days, this blog has gone all Mac....whats up with that? I don't know...just what I am thinking about these days. Well you have probably seen that Apple released some new stuff yesterday. One of the items I am actually pretty excited about and will probably order. The Magic TrackPad looks to be pretty awesome, but I don't think my plan for it is the same as the intended use.

I think the intended use is to sit there on your desk next to your keyboard and act like, well, a trackpad. But thats not what I want it for. I see it as an awesome presentation remote. When I do a presentation, I mix it up with a few slides and lots of demo. Using a mouse, either a regular wireless one or a fancier gyroscopic doodad is always a bit tough when wandering the room. But a device like this could be perfect. I could stand in front of the audience, holding this guy in my left hand, while mousing around using my right hand. Not so good for programming demos, but when I just have to guide a user through the interface, this is soooo perfect.

And its going for only 69 dollars? I need this. Where's my wallet????

MarsEdit, you have just sold me on your product

I have lots of excuses for not maintaining this blog with some regularity. One of those excuses was an easy to use offline editing platform. I guess solutions existed for a long time, but I was reluctant to plop down cash. Well, I gave in when writing up a recent post and decided to search out for a tool. The two that seemed to get the most recommendations were Ecto and MarsEdit.

If you look at the homepage for Ecto, its not exactly inspiring. Looks like a page that was created in 1995. So they turned me off before I even tried it. The MarsEdit page looks like it was from this century and as a bonus, the product had been updated in the last 3 months. I downloaded it and gave it a shot.

I added my two blogs (technovangelist and chromagenic) and it recognized Squarespace right away. The first post was a new entry on my Chromagenic.com photoblog. These blog entries are a short paragraph followed by a picture that is hosted on Flickr. Without thinking about it, I went to the Flickr page for the next photo and copied the link. Now I had to figure out how to insert it in the right way to get the formatting correct.

When you edit a post in MarsEdit, there is a little Media icon in the toolbar so I clicked that. I was amazed to see an option for Flickr right there. So after authorizing, I was able to see my images.

I clicked one of them and had it inserted. But when the post published, it looked wrong. Looking at the source for this post and the previous one, I saw that the Squarespace editor inserted a special set of tags, while MarsEdit added a different set of tags. When I selected the picture to insert, one of the options was a dropdown called style. The four items in the dropdown weren't all that useful for me, but I was very happy to see an edit option. Selecting that opened a small edit window where I could add my own set of image tags. Perfect!

I have only been playing with this tool for a few minutes and keep finding neat little features like that. I am quite impressed so far and I can't think of any reason not to buy the software.

Six Months Into Using A Mac

Wow, it's been six months since I started using a Mac and things have changed quite a bit. I find myself enjoying it a lot more than I did at the beginning. I found a lot about Mac usage to be frustrating at first, but I think it is starting to click. Of course, its not all rosy, but there is quite a bit I really like about this machine. I much prefer using this over the corporate Thinkpad. That said, if I need to get something out the door quickly, I will still go back to Windows since I am still more familiar with that toolset.

I looked over some of my original blog posts about the Mac and wanted to give an update. The things I loved about the machine are still amazing. Some of the things I did not like have grown on me. Not everything though.

First lets look at the hardware. The edges still cut into my wrists, the trackpad is not as efficient as the pointing stick, and the hard drive is still too small, but almost everything else is pure genius. It feels incredibly solid when holding it from the corner with one hand. The little lights that show the available power in the battery without turning on the laptop are so fantastic. How did they make it so you can't feel the holes for the light to come through, yet they do? The backlit keyboard makes typing at night much more comfortable than the Thinkpad lamp allows for. And the unit stays cool to the touch (in most places) and yet there is no visible grill for air to blow from.

As I mentioned though, the lack of a pointing stick is really tough to get used to. I could do very precise retouching in Photoshop with that while it's a lot tougher with the trackpad. I also miss the integrated fingerprint scanner on the Thinkpad as an alternative for logging in to the system. I know there are addons available, but it was just part of the laptop. But I guess the built in camera makes up for it. I don't use it too much, but I am sure I will take advantage of it sometime.

Now to the software. The biggest problems I had with the OS was a lack of coherent keyboard shortcuts and the inability to resize a window from anywhere other than the lower right corner. I am getting used to the keyboard shortcuts. In fact, its getting a bit tough to keep them straight on Windows. I keep pressing Alt C to copy instead of Control C since the Alt key is where the Command key is on the Mac.  I am finding myself paging up and down, backspacing and deleting, and other performing other typing acrobatics with ease so thats no longer a problem either.

Zooom/2 solved my issues with resizing windows. In fact, once you start uncovering them, there is quite an active community of developers writing little addons for the OS to tweak it in any way you like. I love MiddleClick, InstantShot, SoundFlower, and Alfred, all of which help me get what I need done on the Mac so much easier.

Having access to Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and Entourage has certainly made the transition easier. And I look forward to a real Outlook client coming to the Mac in the next few months. Other big apps that I use include Final Cut Pro which works incredibly well (and has helped fill out my bookshelf with the required books to get me up to speed). I am also spending a bit of time in Xcode. Too early to say much about that, but I am loving the debugging tools in there.

So my state of the mac is very different today than it was just six months ago. I am not sure when things started to click but the fact that its starting to happen changes everything.  I wouldn't consider myself to be a switcher just yet, but I am very glad I made the plunge.

Overcoming My Biggest Hurdle With The Switch

From the time I first touched this MacBook Pro, there was one behavior that annoyed the hell out of me. It's something every Windows and X user takes for granted but is missing from the Mac. Its easy screen management. What I mean by that is that moving and resizing windows on Windows is just easy. Grab any side or corner and drag to resize that window. But that doesn't work on the Mac. I have no idea why this is the case.

Every now and then, I spend some time searching for solutions to this problem, but most mentions of it simply say its something you need to get used to. In fact, some forum posts that talk about the issue claim that it won't bother you after a while. As I have gotten more familiar with Objective C I started looking into how to control this myself. I just noticed how to do this programmatically but I haven't tested it out yet. Maybe I'll figure this out after a few more weeks, but it turns out I don't have to.

There is a developer out there who has already figured it all out. Someone who obviously had the same issue I had and figured out a solution. The application is called Zooom/2 and can be found at http://coderage-software.com/zooom/index_green/index.html. This tool is nothing short of amazing. By pressing a pair of shortcut keys, just moving the mouse resizes whatever window I am hovering over right now. A similar shortcut and a drag moves to window to another location on screen. Its absolutely fantastic.

Its got some other cool features as well. It will snap to a user-definable grid and/or to the edges of other windows or the screen. This is magic when trying to get a few different windows arranged on the desktop. I have heard suggestions that Spaces gives you a more powerful arrangement tool, but that is completely different. I want to see multiple windows on the desktop at the same time. Like when I am in Xcode while wanting to read some docs about whatever I am working on, and viewing the Stanford U Objective C course. Spaces is completely useless for that scenario.

So Zooom/2 from Coderage Software is an incredible tool that I will be buying very soon. Its 19.95 USD and has a 30 day eval, but it only took me about 3 minutes to know that I needed it.