All posts by kobaan

Archive, Operating System

Mac Mail application speedup,cleanup

For those of you experiencing
slowdowns on Mac OS’s Mail application over some time, this might
be a cheap trick for you to get back speed and disk-space.
Mail, is keeping track of mail message subjects in a database, to
quickly scan, search and organize threading in your
mailboxes.The good thing is: once you delete a mail, it is also gets deleted
in the database…
The bad thing is: a database needs to be maintained, and this is
not done automatically…

What does this mean now….
…your database deletes items by reference, but it does not free
up the allocated disk-space, thus blowing up your overall database
size which leads to longer access times as more (empty) data needs
to be parsed through.

The solution:

While your Mail application is NOT running…
…use a terminal and go into “cd ~/Library/Mail”…
…open the database with: “sqlite3 Envelope Index”…
…and free up the already deleted database disk-space using:
“vacuum subjects;”…
…et voila, quit sqlite3 and you’re done.

Mail will be quite fast again, and your disk capacity should show a
few more free blocks.

Archive

PayPal transaction token keyoffer

Today I got my PayPal trasaction
token.
DSC02850Using a token generator is much more safe than using traditional
passwords, as they generate a time based one-time valid
token-number which is then used to sign a transaction.
Phishing of useraccounts and passwords might still be possible, but
of less use, as the token code is only valid for a short time, and
one-time only.
DSC02857

Compared to the token of my bank account, PayPals token is a little
bit smaller, and uses a button to activate itself other than
pulling the left side on the other token.
The number of digits is equal, but usually a secondary secret PIN
is used to complete the code.
For example you may need to enter: tokencode+PIN or PIN+tokencode,
or even PIN1+tokencode+PIN2(or a displayed session number)
DSC02856

Finally PayPal also delivers a nice laminated note with a top ten
of essential security behaviour rules, as well as a shart manual on
usage of the token, and helpdesk information.
DSC02853DSC02851

All in one: I really appreciate PayPal going this direction, what a
great idea, I just hope lots of banks will follow PayPals example
on how security can be increased efficiently, as there is a big
demand for this on the customer side, but only a few banks or
transaction providers offering such a service.

Get your token now from PayPal’s special offer: “Der PayPal
Sicherheitsschlüssel.” (search on PayPal.com for offerings in
your language/country)

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Archive

It’s a couch potatos dream

Imagine, you’re sitting on your couch
after you found your most comfortable position, watching your
favorite game on TV, your throat gets dry, and the tension is
rising more and more so it’ll be impossible to get up and get you a
cool drink. Woman are already more than adequately emancipated they
wont even pay attention to your desperate situation….
…but this could be the answer to all of your problems:

A cooled beer can throwing robot companion, ready to serve you
whenever you’re busy elsewhere.

Archive, Operating System, Security

Mac – Eve of destruction

So less bytes and so deadly:
maceve
524946464407030057415645666D7420
1000000001000100007D000000000000
000000006461746120070300

I’m starting to get angry now, as I filed in this bug 1 year ago,
and there’s still no fix for such a trivial bug.
Also I filed it in as a security issue since you can crash every
Mac from remote with these little numbers, but Apple degraded it to
be cosmetic only as it is not possible to alter or execute
code.
I guess they’re not anymore interested in fixing Tiger, as the
Leopard is waiting for its victims…..

Hint: Check for zero values before dividing…..

Archive, Japan

What about the Tanuki ?

You might have heard it or not: A
Tanuki, seen almost everywhere around temples in Japan,
is a famous native japanese animal there. To be more precise it’s a
racoon dog.
While looking around for a nice picture of a Tanuki for my website
layout I just found an explanatory figure to better understand the
eight lucks a Tanuki is a symbol for.
tanukitanuki-statue

Archive, Hardware, Japan

Plen Skating Robot

This is the newest toy on the japanese
market, its name is PLEN.
And you’ll be surprised how easy this construction is balancing its
movement without any complicated sensors.This is PLEN skating,
controlled by a bluetooth mobile phone:

Here, you can see PLEN
skateboarding, in perfection, he’s a real pro:

And finally PLEN can
also play soccer:

The price for this toy is also very promising its only 2000 US$,
thus being the perfect gift for…. yeah someone you really want
something. Winking
Anyway, try to compare this price with the AIBO
or QRIO
?

Ah, one last thing:

My delivery address is on the frontpage Happy

Archive

More Theme Wrangling

to be continued… not yet finished,
stay tuned.More changes happened as you might have noticed.

The fresh green vine leaves are gone, and finally sakura
cherry-blossom is to become my final layout, for the springtime
at least.
(Hopefully browser-caching didn’t steal my show. So if you’re still
seeing a green/blue layout SHIFT-RELOAD your browser, or clean your
cache.)

I hope you like it, (too).

Kobaan

Archive, Games

MMORPG Fever – Guild Wars – Nightfall Campaign

Almost one week since my last post, so
what happened ?About 1 year ago I build a gaming PC, and the only game I
did play was X3 –
Reunion, well meanwhile getting a bit bored of it, or didn’t
play anything else at all, I decided to enter world of MMORPG
(Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).

Having played Neverwinter Nights a certain time ago, which was a
offline role playing game, I searched for a transition game to
enter the “for myself mysterious” world of online gaming.

And there I found Guild Wars – Nightfall, usually online role playing
games do charge a monthly fee for gaming and storing your data,
while Guild Wars gaming is for free. And the best thing is, the
latest add-on Nightfall, is a complete standalone game, which
further can be played “online”, but without the need to build
guilds with other online-players. An ideal transition for
“single-players” to get into guild playing.
gwn-scr028-lrggwn-scr038-lrg
So within the last 4 days of gaming (yeah right not one complete
week), I’ve already reached level 13 as a
derwish/elemental-magician.
Here are some screenshots
of the Guild Wars World.
gwn-scr043-lrggwn-scr050-lrg
It also has its own wiki in
english and german.
Guild Wars Screenshot 055Guild Wars Screenshot 062
So, what’s next ?

Just in a few days the “non-game-based” MMO-World SecondLife will be released
for the german
market, as it becomes more and more hype recently, I’ll
certainly give it a try, but as of now, I still can’t get the
“sense” of SecondLife other than making virtual/or_real money in a
virtual world without any aims/targets.

May the magic power be with you, and your guild !
Kobaan.