Wired Sage

I have updated the Facebook Ad Removal Glimmer Blocker Filter. Details follow…

Facebook went through a Facelift the other week, and with the changes they made, a few advertisements slipped through. I have updated my filter to deal with the new changes. You can click on the colored ball (green or blue as pictured below)

Glimmer Blocker Subscription

after the filter name to update your subscription manually, or set it to update automatically (pictured below).

Glimmer Blocker Subscription Update

The source of the file is published below.

See my earlier Glimmer Proxy post for more information.

In my quest to upgrade my apple experience I have tried to leave Firefox behind and use Safari in Snow Leopard. One of the things I loved about FireFox was AdBlock. I can’t tell you how much Internet advertising annoys me. Well, I could try to tell you, but you’d get bored and stop reading, so I’ll spare you. Let’s just say it REALLY ANNOYS ME!

Nowhere does it annoy me worse than on facebook. If you use facebook, I’m sure you see the ads every time you view a page. The ones that irk me the most are the photos of girls in bikinis for the sites that say, “Who’s been googling you?” As if girls in bikinis are googling you. Ha!

So, to remove advertising using Safari on a Mac I installed GlimmerBlocker Proxy. Installing it creates an entry in your System Preferences.

Glimmer Blocker in System Preferences

Glimmer Blocker runs a proxy on your local machine and sets Safari up to use that proxy to connect to the Internet. It’s a wonderfully elegant setup because it doesn’t hack Safari to do the ad removal. Inside the Glimmer Proxy configuration you can subscribe to several default filters which makes getting setup quick and easy.  You’ll be blocking most advertisers immediately with little to no effort at all.

Subscribe to default filters

What it didn’t do well out of the box, so to speak, is block the advertising in facebook.  I investigated and saw that Glimmer Blocker could do transformations — change the content of websites before sending the data to Safari.  What I didn’t find is an easy way to rip out the <div> tags that surrounded the Facebook Ads.  An email to the developer got me on the right track.  Instead of transforming the data, adding cascading stylesheets and javascript entries could stop the ads from displaying.

I have created my own personal filter to remove Facebook Advertising and I’m publishing it here for you to benefit from.  All you have to do is select the top little gear icon under the Filters and choose Subscribe to filter.

Subscribe to my Facebook Filter

In the window that opens just type in “http://wiredsage.com/Media/facebook_filter.xml”.

Subscribe to my Facebook Filter

Important Note: you should trust me before doing this! So, I’m putting the contents of my rule here for you to see:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<filter-data name="Facebook Ad Removal" format-version="3" gb-version="1.4.4">

<rule rule-id="950390245" priority="5" host="facebook.com" host-type="domain" type="modify" whitelist="1">

<css><![CDATA[.adcolumn { display: none; }

.ssponsor { display: none; }

.pagelet_adbox { display: none; }

.emu_sponsor { display: none; }]]></css>

<js placement="head-end"><![CDATA[function(){

var a = document.getElementsByClass('UIHomeBox');

while (a.length) {

if (a[0].parentNode)

a[0].parentNode.removeChild(a[0]);

}

var a = document.getElementsByClass('emu_sponsor');

while (a.length) {

if (a[0].parentNode)

a[0].parentNode.removeChild(a[0]);

}

}]]></js></rule></filter-data>

Keep me honest.  Download the file first to see if it matches.  Or download it and make your own.  I’ll probably update the file in place, since the actual contents of the XML file are published here as a historical record of what the file used to look like.  If you don’t want to get updates, choose the appropriate radio buttons on the last screen above.

I hope someone finds this useful.  I know I personally like facebook much better without the annoying, misleading and uninteresting advertising.

Booting from External Hard Drives

I installed Snow Leopard on an external hard drive a few months ago to give it a once over.  My daughter then received a Macbook from Santa for Christmas and I got more exposure to the OS.  I felt it was time that I took the plunge and migrated all my data over to Snow Leopard.  I stopped using Tiger and started using Snow Leopard exclusively this past week.  I have a 750GB Seagate drive that currently has Snow Leopard on it.  Tiger is still installed on a mirrored RAID set composed of the internal 250GB drive and an external 250GB drive; so, if I needed to, I can roll back easily.

Migrating Data and Configurations

Most people will find that the Migration Assistant, found in the Utilities Folder (⌘-shift U shortcut in the finder application), will be able to handily migrate average user accounts and machine preferences from one disk to the other, or from an old computer to a newer one.  I first used this automated way to migrate the ‘other’ users of my system, my wife and children.  I chose to migrate my data manually because my home directory had 82GB of data in it.  60GB of which were in my iPhoto Library.

Program Migration

I had hundreds of programs installed in my Tiger OS that I just never used.  I’m going to install my programs on an As-Needed basis.  Currently, I have the software I use daily installed.  iLife ’09, Gimmer Proxy for Adblocking in Safari, CyberDuck, and a half dozen other programs I use regularly.  I think I’ve covered 80% of what I need currently.

Migrating iPhoto Data

Migrating iPhoto was the easiest task possible.  In your home directory /Users/YOURNAME there is a directory called Pictures.  Within the Pictures directory there is a special item called iPhoto Library.  It’s actually a directory that Apple has labeled as a package — you can right click on the item and “Show Package Contents” to navigate into it, but trust me, you don’t want to.  The only thing I had to do to move everything in iPhoto was to move this iPhoto Library file from one disk to the other.  Just place it in your /Users/YOURNAME/Pictures folder and you’re done.  Fire up iPhoto ’09 in Leopard and it automatically upgrades your iPhoto Library and you’re done.

iTunes

I have all my music on an external mirrored RAID set. I just needed to fire up iTunes, change the preferences to where my music library is, uncheck copy music to location, and in finger select all the subdirectories in the iTunes subdirectory and dump them into the Music Library area inside the iTunes program.  I lost all my ratings and such, but what are you going to do?

iMovie

I have all of my movies on an external mirrored RAID set also.  I only had to fire up iMovie and it found all my movies and optimized them automatically.

Mail Data Migration

So, this is a little embarrassing.  I have almost every email I’ve ever received going back about 15 years or more.  Again, a lot of data to move and the safest way to do that is to do it manually.  This was only slightly more difficult.  There was one folder, and one plist file to move into place.  The mail folder to move was /Users/YOURNAME/Library/Mail and the plist file was found at /Users/YOURNAME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist.  After those files are moved to the new system, you fire up mail, and if you’re moving from Tiger to Snow Leopard, it automatically upgrades your mail archive.  You will have to type in your passwords again, but all your other settings, filters, signatures, etc. are saved.

Printer Configurations

I’m no where close to the bleeding edge on this migration.  As a matter of fact, I’m well behind the pack for a good reason.  I wanted other schmucks to figure out the difficult tricks to getting the supported peripherals in Tiger to work in Snow Leopard.  I had a slight issue with my Samsung ML-1710 Laser printer as it was no longer supported in OS X 10.6.  Not a really big deal, right?  Apple said, “see the manufacturers site for the updated driver.”   So, I moseyed over to Samsung and started searching and didn’t find a thing.  There was a “Live Chat” option, so I asked.  Nope, not supported.  The help desk person would send it up the food chain, as a request, but I needed to print now!  The printer doesn’t even support PCL or PS.  So I couldn’t even use a generic PCL4, PCL5 or PS driver.  Crap.  That was that, right?  Well, I don’t give up that easily… ever.

I kept searching.  Looking for cheap wireless print servers.  Thinking about tiny linux machines that I could use as a NAS and Print Server.  And then I found it.  A site that had instructions how to install foomatic print drivers in Mac OS X 10.5.  I thought to myself, it’s worth a try.  So I downloaded the links on the page.  Sadly there were broken links.  But I didn’t give up.  I copied the links, removed the filenames, and searched the internet directory looking for similar files.  Luckily, there were updated files!  I downloaded all three files, installed them, and my printer, which was not supported by either Apple or Samsung is now working again.  I saved these files to my site here so you’ll never run into broken links!

internet link: gplgs-8.64so-ub.dmg local link:  gplgs-8.64so-ub.dmg
internet link: foomatic-rip-4.0.2.211.dmg local link: foomatic-rip-4.0.2.211.dmg
internet link: samsung-gdi-1.816.2.dmg local link: samsung-gdi-1.816.2.dmg

I installed the above files in order.  First the GPL Ghost Script package, then the Foomatic package, then the Samsung drivers.  Afterwards, I opened System Preferences, clicked on Print & Fax, unlocked my preference panel, pressed the little + button in the middle on the left, and added my printer.  The driver automatically selected and came up as Samsung ML-1710 Foomatic/gdi.

Scanner Configuration

I know I’m going to have the same problem with my scanner, a Canon Canoscan LiDE 30.  It’s a great little scanner that I picked up years ago for $30.  I don’t want to upgrade it.  it does everything I want it to and it does it fast enough for me.  I’ve found a program that solves all my scanner problems, VueScan.  I just downloaded the demo and tested it out.  It supports my scanner without the need of installing drivers in Snow Leopard.  Can you ask for more?  And at $40 for the program, it’ll save me at least $30 and 2 lbs. of land-fill-guilt from my alternative of junking this scanner and buying another one.

Mission Completed

Upgrade completed.  I now have Snow Leopard installed on an external drive.  Now, I have to break my mirrored RAID set and reformat my internal hard drive (keeping the external hard drive intact with all it’s data for backup for right now).  This will allow me to image my current external drive to my internal drive moving my Snow Leopard disk into my iMac and finishing off the process completely.

This is the scary part.  I think I’ll sit on Snow Leopard for a week or so before proceeding, just to be safe.

Santa Clause brought a new 13″ macbook for my eldest daughter this year.  He was kind enough to set up most of the laptop for her, but left a few tasks for me to tackle after the holiday.  One of which was email.

Apple Mail has some wonderful Parental Controls allowing the parental units to define a white list of who the child can exchange email with.  Fantastic Stuff!  But my problem was my daughter has an email address from one of my google apps domains.  I needed to figure out a way for her to ONLY use Apple Mail and not login to Google via the web to circumvent those Apple parental protections.

I decided just on a monster password that she doesn’t know.  One that she will not be able to remember or type in.  We’re talking 35 characters long, upper case, lower case, numbers, and special characters.  It’s not a perfect solution.  The password is saved in the Keychain, and she can get it out of there, when she figures it out, but it seemed like a good compromise for now.

I could blacklist the URL for gmail so she can’t access her email via the web on her computer.  But, that won’t stop her from accessing her email  from another computer if she can figure out how to get the password off her macbook.

I’ll do some more investigation around this later.  It would be nice if Google allowed an account to ONLY be accessed via IMAP.  I’ll look into if that’s an option today, and if not, I’ll ask Google for the feature.  I think it would be a nice option to have.

Yesterday we also set up iChat, so now we have a video intercom in our house.  It’s funny to video chat when your kids just down the hall.  She is completely enamored with the Alpha Channel options in Snow Leopard’s iChat.  We need to get a green screen now.

HP Photosmart D5160

Talking with a friend of mine a while back I mentioned I was converting my old Digital8 tapes and burning them to DVD. He told me he had old Digital8 tapes but no longer had a Digital8 camcorder. So I offered to convert his tapes too.

I’ve been capturing them with a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 950 and Eye-TV. It’s really nice, you press play on the camcorder, record in the Eye-TV program to start. Two hours later (or whenever the tape ends) you stop recording, wait a few minutes for Eye-TV to compress the stream, add chapter markers, and send the newly captured program to Toast with a simple right click. Out pops a DVD with your old movie on it.

So, I’ve been going through my stack of non-printable DVDs hand writing the tape titles directly onto the DVD with a felt tip sharpie until I ran out of non-printable DVDs. Not a big deal, I started using printable ones. But, when the first printable DVD was burned and ready I couldn’t bring myself to write on it with the sharpie, it just seemed… well, wrong. If you’re going to do it, do it right. I fired up my HP D5160 ink jet photo/DVD printer, clicked on the HP Create application and the “%$#@*&” program didn’t work properly.

I decided that reinstalling would be the fastest road to recovery. So that’s just what I did, I reinstalled the print driver and software after uninstalling the same to no avail. I then did my research, searching the web for some occurrence of this happening before with no luck. I scoured HP’s support site, nothing. So, I figured I’d have to resort to emailing HP’s technical support. But, before I did that, I wanted to provide as much information as possible. Mostly because I didn’t believe it was happening — it’s a freaky error. So I made a movie. Yes, that’s right, I made a movie of the odd behavior as proof I wasn’t a stark raving lunatic that just likes to email random, anonymous, tech-support, people to have email chats. I created a screen capture with Screenium, which is a fantastic program, and then compressed the quicktime movie file with MPEG StreamClip, another program no one should be without.

The movie is dull, boring and embarrassing. I start off with “Hi my name is Andrew, and I have an iMac.” Like I’m speaking at some AA meeting. Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, a two minute video should be worth ten thousand. Here’s the movie if you’re so inclined to watch it.

Dull, boring, embarrassing and completely bizarre isn’t it?

So I filled out the HP website with the details bellow:

problem area : installation and setup
operating system : Macintosh OS X 10.4
How is your product connected to your PC? : USB Cable
error message : No message
problem description :

When I open the Create Program to print/label a printable DVD, on the left the templates and layouts do not load. The screen is just gray. I have an old boot drive archived and tested it by mounting the image and it works when I run the program from the mounted image. But when I run it from my current boot drive, nothing, not even when the archived image is mounted.

troubleshooting :

I have a screen capture video (2.3MB DivX AVI) which illustrates this. I think once you see the problem I’m having and the comparison of the two programs on different partitions, you’ll be able to either tell me what files need to be fixed or copied over.

setting changes :

This has never worked since I reinstalled my OS from scratch last month. I reformatted by hard drive and installed OS X 10.4 from original media. I did not IMPORT the previous settings from the old OS. I then reinstalled the HP driver suite,downloaded fresh from your website, and Create has not functioned since.

I then got an automated ‘we got your email’ email and waited. To my delighted surprise I had a reply with fantastic, detailed instructions in email when I got home the same day.

Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.

Please follow the steps below to do a full manual uninstall/reinstall of the printer software in order to resolve this issue.

1. Remove the HP Print Drivers installed.

NOTE: If you have any other HP printers they may have to be reinstalled.

a. Open the hard drive volume (by default labeled Macintosh HD).
b. Select Library.
c. Select Printers.
d. Single-click on the HP folder and drag it to the Trash.

2. Clearing Preferences:

a. Click on File at the top of your screen.
b. Select and click on Find.
c. In the search box at the top of the window type in com.apple.print.
d. Highlight all the contents and drag them to the Trash.
e. Close the windows.

NOTE: The items appear to remain in this window, but have actually been moved to the Trash.

3. Once the HP folder has been removed it is important to repair the disk permissions. Please complete the following steps:

a. Open the hard drive volume (by default labeled Macintosh HD).
b. Double-click Applications.
c. Double-click Utilities.
d. Double-click Disk Utility.
e. Single-click on the name of your hard drive located on the left (usually says Macintosh HD).
f. Click the FIRST AID tab at the top.
g. Select Repair Disk Permissions.
h. The process takes about 10 minutes depending on your system.
i. Restart the Macintosh by selecting Restart from the Apple menu.

4. Download and install the driver from the following website.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=mp-55651-3&lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&os=219&product=1155996&dlc=en

5. Adding the printer into the printer list:

a. Open the hard drive volume (by default labeled Macintosh HD).
b. Double-click Applications.
c. Double-click Utilities.
d. Double-click Printer Setup Utility:
1. If the printer is listed, highlight it and press the
Delete button at the top of the window.
2. Click the Add icon.
3. Click once on the name of the printer, then click Add.
e. Once the printer is on the printer list, close the Printer
Setup Utility.

This should resolve the issue. If you need further assistance, please reply to this message and we will be happy to assist you further.

You may receive an e-mail survey regarding your e-mail support experience. We would appreciate your feedback.

Sincerely,
HP Total Care

I originally used AppZapper; but, I’m sure it didn’t remove all the “com.apple.print” drivers as HP suggested. With high hopes, I followed the instructions above to the letter and still the same problem. Frustrated, I sent one more email and walked away from the computer.

Thank you for the detailed instructions.

I’m sorry to say that I’m still experiencing the error. The steps below did not solve my issue. Attached is a screen capture of what is happening.

I’m going to keep trying while I’m waiting on a reply. I know I’ve got to be missing something small and simple.

Thank you. I’m really looking forward to HP’s reply.

I did other busy-tasks and mindless-things, quieting my thoughts, reaching for that zen state where you’re not actively thinking yet all the while the whole of your brain works on the problem. In many way’s it’s like backgrounding a process, especially when it’s done; the answer just jumps right out at you. When my answer hit me, it hit me hard. I raced back to email.

Could how I have my drive formated be my issue? I’m a UNIX
administrator so when given the option I formated it “Mac OS Extended
(Case-sensitive, Journaled).” Could this be my issue? And, if so,
is there a workaround (file rename script, symbolic links) or will I
have to reinstall my OS because of this?

Thank You again!

I was hoping they had a lab and could test and reproduce the issue. Then it dawned on me, I had an external firewire drive that I could reformat and test with. I had the lab. I had the issue. I could test it. So I did without even waiting for the automated mail from HP to hit my mailbox.

This is what I did:

Open Disk Utility
Highlight the boot partition
File, New, Disk Image From disk0s2, (partition name)
Select a Name and a Location and Save
Wait for the image to write to disk
Highlight the Firewire partition
Select Erase, Volume Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled), give it a name, and press Erase
Select Restore
Press Image… select the image created above
Drag the Firewire partition into the Destination box
Press Restore
Wait for the image to write to the new firewire partition
Open System Preferences
Select Startup Disk
Chose the Firewire disk as the new boot disk
Reboot the machine to the new image

I now had a perfect bit for bit copy of my boot drive on my firewire drive — that in and of itself is impressive, let alone that it’s only 16 simple steps to do it! Once I was in the new “insensitive install”, I went right to the HP Create application. I opened it up and it worked fine. Just like my old “Mac Boot” image that I had mounted in the video above. Proof that the Case sensitivity caused my issues.

So, I wanted to let HP know that I had identified the issue: sloppy code — some programmer who thinks that a=A, which every UNIX programmer knows is just wrong. I really wanted a code fix, or a script to rename the offended files, or a script to create aliases to the offended files with the case that HP was expecting. It was so frustrating not being able to find this issue online that, at the very least, I wanted them to put this into their documentation or on their website: “Do not use Case-sensitive file systems.” I sent another email.

I formated a fire-wire drive I had laying around without the Case-sensitivity option. Imaged my current boot partition, and restored it to the newly formated fire-wire drive. I then booted from it, and HP’s software is working fine now.

I now need two (2) things from you:

1) Is there a workaround? Possibly a script to rename the offending files to uppercase or create uppercase aliases to the lowercase files so it works? If not, I’m going to have to format my internal hard drive without case-sensitivity and restore the image I just made. Which I can do, but it will take several hours and I’d rather not do it.

2) At the very least, I would appreciate it if you could document the fact that this software REQUIRES this type of formated boot partition — although ideally, it would be really nice if you would submit this as a bug and have your developers fix it.

Thank you for your help. You provided the right information and empowered me with the knowledge to resolve my problem. I really appreciate it. I’m looking forward to your reply.

Take care

I thought about this a little and guessed that HP had no clue that their code was so bad — in my judgment of course. Their website had little or no on-line documentation at all. The time it would take for a code review and someone to create a script, if it were a top priority, would be a week or more and honestly I knew it wasn’t a top priority. I realized I wasn’t interested in waiting around that long.

With a twinge of fear and anticipation I reformatted my primary boot drive, installed the image I created just hours before, changed my boot drive back to my internal hard drive and resolved the issue.

But then I got these e-mail messages and I felt I needed to share this whole experience with the net because HP didn’t commit to changing anything or even documenting it for others to find.

Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.

I don’t think that it was the way that the hard drive was formatted, but it appears that you are going to need to reinstall the operating system at this point.

If you need further assistance, please reply to this message and we will be happy to assist you further.

You may receive an e-mail survey regarding your e-mail support experience. We would appreciate your feedback.

Sincerely,
HP Total Care

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.

We do not have a workaround for the issue that you are experiencing and this is not a common issue as most customers do not have the experience to do most of the things that you are obviously capable of. Unfortunately your only option would be to format and then reinstall.

If you need further assistance, please reply to this message and we will be happy to assist you further.

You may receive an e-mail survey regarding your e-mail support experience. We would appreciate your feedback.

Sincerely,
HP Total Care

So what is the moral to this story? For the Mac consumer reading this, is it “don’t buy HP”? For those with enterprise or corporate interests, is it “always code with case sensitivity in mind”? Or for those who like to tinker and make things the best they possibly can be, is it “don’t do things differently?”

You tell me.

I’ve been critical of Apple in past Journal entries. I feel I need to give credit where credit is due. All of Apple’s code works perfectly with a case-sensitive formated drive. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, this isn’t just an issue with HP. My Cannon LIDE 30 Scanner wouldn’t scan when installed on the boot partition formated with case-sensitivity.

All of this transpired because I wanted to print to a DVD. After everything above, I opened up the HP Create application that came with my printer and put the title of the Digital8 tape on the DVD perfectly centered with a drop shadow and it looks much better than my hand writing.

These are the lengths I’ll go through to do things my way!

If this article helps you, please comment below and let me know.