X-Mas Snail Mail Spam

Even in real life (IRL) I get spam. X-mas cards from people I don't know (and don't want to know), and to make it even more real; even the recipients address (mine) is wrong (most of the time)....

This could mean three things;

1. The Internet is adapting to the real life
2. People sending X-mas cards are just plain stupid....
3. The mailman is drunk

Anyway, I treat it the same as the Internet spam.... Straight to /dev/null (a.k.a. the trashcan). Because I can't be bothered playing a mailman. It's not really a (sexual) fantasy of mine.

So, if you're missing out on some x-mas cards..... ;-)

SSH Connection to Juniper Devices

While in the mids of my Juniper exam preparation I ran into a problem with my Apple equipment. Managing the Juniper firewall (SSG5 in this case) with SSH was not possible from OSX. The connection itself would work, but after entering the password the connection was closed by the remote host (the firewall).
Trying this from a Windows laptop (with SecureCRT) everything worked as expected.

Some searching revealed that this is an OpenSSH bug. To manage your Juniper with SSH from OSX you need to add a parameter to the ssh command (or edit the SSH config file).

Parameter to add:

-o ControlMaster=auto
e.g. ssh willem@127.0.0.1 -o ControlMaster=auto

Or add the following line to the global SSH config (/etc/ssh_config) or the user config (~/.ssh/config).

ControlMaster auto

Juniper has a knowledgebase article (KB12409) on the issue.

New MacBook Impressions

The new aluminum MacBook arrived this week. This time no Pro verion but the cheaper (and smaller) MacBook. Initial impressions are good... really good.

The only drawbacks are directly related to the fact that I was too cheap to buy the more expensive version. The keyboard color is white letters on black keys (this was black letter on 'silver' or white keys). This makes it harder to read them in low light conditions. So not having the backlit keyboard is a bit annoying.

Also, the lack of an USB port on the right-side of the MacBook is annoying. The cable of my mighty mouse is too short to get from the left-side USB port to the right-side where I use it.

MacBook for LeftiesBest (free) configuration option is the US keyboard. Finally a 'normal' keyboard on the MacBooks.

Adobe Camera RAW update

Adobe released an update for Adobe Camera RAW. The update adds RAW support in Photoshop for the following camera's;

• Canon EOS 5D Mark II
• Canon PowerShot G10
• Panasonic DMC-G1
• Panasonic DMC-FX150
• Panasonic DMC-FZ28
• Panasonic DMC-LX3 :D
• Leica D-LUX 4

The Camera RAW update dosn't include the RAW capabilities for Lightroom. The upcoming Lightroom v2.2 update (scheduled for December 2009) will incorporate the RAW capabilities for these camera's.

CS4 Action Script Compatibility

Scripts made in Adobe CS3 may not work in Adobe CS4 product. I tried an evaluation version of Photoshop CS4, and found out that my watermarking action 'crashed'.
The crash is triggered by the CS3 version of the 'Fit Image' script/command.

So much for backwards compatibility...

UPDATE: I've updated the watermarking action. This one works with CS4. For CS3 you need this one.

UPDATE 2: New CS4 Watermarking Actions