My New Laser Pointer - Ouch!
Holy Fuck! I did not understand what I was purchasing. I mean, seriously, I thought I was getting a very nice, super bright green laser pointer that I could perform cool tricks with, and still use while giving a presentation. I expected this pointer to be about the size of a Mini-MagLite, maybe slightly larger.
Instead, received a large device, about the size of three “C” batteries placed in series, and wrapped in duct tape. This <50mw green laser pointer is so bright, you cannot use it indoors. At least not safely. Anybody who may be around is going to get back-scatter off of whatever surface you decide to lase. Yes, you can get safety glasses (and this particular laser came with a pair) but it is a little rediculous to ask an entire audience to wear the safety glasses during a presentation. Not to mention, if the presentation is longer than 10 minutes my arm will get tired of using this hefty beast.
All joking aside, I got exactly what I ordered from Wicked Lasers. I did think I was getting a much smaller laser, and I had no idea of the power of <50mw. I mean, I understood that the dime store laser-pointer keychains are usually <1mw, and a good expensive laser pointer can be around <10mw… I think I just wasn’t prepared for what <50mw really equaled, in terms of brightness and blinding energy.
I love this laser, it is well made and super great. But I am not sure what I am going to be able to do with it. I mean, aside from retinas <50mw won’t burn much, so I don’t have to worry about setting the world around me on fire. I stood on my roof deck tonight and shined it on the side of my friend’s house, 738.2 meters away. He said that there was a 7 foot diameter green dot on the side of his house… 738 meters away!! Wait, just so you get the gravity of 738 meters, let me convert it something you might understand… I mean we are in the USA right…
403.6 Fathoms (for my sailing friends)
7.80257e-14 Light Years
14.76 Olympic Swimming Pools
2.09248e+6 Points (for Andrew who only understands PostScript)
433.71 Smoots (for anybody who has ever lived in Boston!)
0.399 Nautical Miles (also from my sailing friends)
1383.83 Mesopotamian nil_cubits (for Tom Collins, my wife, and social studies folk)
Oh and for the rest of you…
807.3 Yards
0.46 Miles
I have no idea what to do with this thing… It might actually be less useful then it was in my dreams.
UPDATE 06/09/2010: If you want to try out blindness, at least throw some cash my way and use this link.
http://www.wickedlasers.com/index.php?refer=61013
Thanks.
Macintosh OS X - Active Directory Integration
Having an interesting issue with and OS X/AD integration. I have a Windows 2003 domain with many servers. I also have an OS X server running Open Directory. The OS X server is bound to AD, and all of the Macintosh clients are bound to both AD and to OD. This forms Apple’s “Golden Triangle” and allows users to login to a Mac using their AD credentials, while allowing you to specify “preferences” for the machine via the OD server. These preferences can be though of as Group Policies for Macs, however they are nowhere near as detailed as the catalog of settings you can enforce using Group Policy on the WIndows side.
Anyway.. I have a small issue with this system, and I am not yet certain where it comes form. My users all have a home directory mapped to the drive letter P:. This is specified in their AD accounts in the form of \\fileserver\users\students\user_name.
Recently, during a MacBook deploy to a small group of students I discovered that none of them could log in… or more specifically, they were able to log in, but received a message as the Mac tried to mount the sharepoint. I don’t have a copy of the message here, (its on my desk at work) but essentially it said that the sharepoint was not available. The students clicked OK to this and the machine proceeded to log them out.
A head scratcher indeed.
The machines are also running BootCamp with WIndows XP, and the students were able to log in and access their mapped drive under XP… so what gives. Also… I was able to login to a student computer as myself and get my network home folder mapped to my dock.
With a little bit of thinking, and some experimentation by one of my coworkers, we discovered that if we used the server’s correct hostname, rather than the generic “fileserver” CNAME that had been assigned to the machine, the student’s could log in.
None of this explains why for the past week we have had faculty (who have little more in the way of privileges than the students) able to log into their newly deployed Macs, pulling their network home form the same server, using the same CNAME, with absolutely no problem.
I can see that I will need to do a good bit of testing to see just what permission level the faculty has, that grants them access to the fileserver by it’s CNAME record rather than by it’s A record. It would make sense to me if this failed for users, but that it only effects a subset of them makes me wonder what kind of magic is working behind the scenes.
I will update this as I come up with more info.
In Boston - Whipple Hill Users Conference - 09
I am in Boston. Home. It’s pretty great to be home. It’s even better that work paid for me to come home this summer. I will have to see if I can make that work out again in the future. I am here because we use Podium from Whipple Hill to generate our web content and to manage our student information system. It’s OK. It has it’s quirks. The conference is designed around orienting us to Podium and learning the tricks to make it do what we need it to do.
One of the most exciting things I will take home with me, (home on the West coast, not in Boston) is the idea that Social Media is something we, (the school) have absolutely no control over. Run a Google query similar to this: “My Company Name” -mycompany.com and tell me what you find. The query, for those of you who don’t use the advanced features of Google, will provide you with all the Google indexed content that mentions your company by name, yet doesn’t come from your company’s website. See… people are talking about you in ways you have zero control over. Well… the only way in which you can control this type of interaction is to behave ethically as an organization. If you do this, people will talk positively about you. If not… not so much.
You can check out what people are saying about the conference on Twitter.
Tethering BlackBerry Storm to Mac OS 10.5 over Bluetooth
Finally I can tether my BlackBerry to my Mac and get a connection. Here is the how to.
1 Pair the BlackBerry to your Mac via Bluetooth
2. Set up the modem for dial up using the following settings:
Dial Number #777
Account Name : .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (Example: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address))
password vzw
In advanced setup, under bluetooth Tab choose the following
Vendor : other
Model: Verizon support (PC5220) I have also read that the 5320 profile works.
Enable Error Correction
Wait For Dial Tone
I have heard reported that if you want to do this via a USB cable, you must go to http://www.vzam.net/ and download the Verizon Access Manager for pairing the Mac with the Motorola Q. Haven’t tried it yet, but I think I will give it a whirl in the upcoming days.
Sally Finds a Stray - I want one too!
Browsing through my feeds today and Dooce provided me with this wonderful link to a fantastic shirt. I am sure this comes form a story, of which I know nothing, but I can think of several people that need this shirt.
Lets not even get started on the G10 further down the page.
