Smoking Associated With Lower IQ

Interesting article found on digg.com:

Smokers often say that smoking a cigarette helps them concentrate and feel more alert. But years of tobacco use may have the opposite effect, dimming the speed and accuracy of a person’s thinking ability and bringing down their IQ, according to a new study led by University of Michigan researchers.

read more | digg story

How I got my digg.com back…

For a few weeks now, I have been unable to access digg.com through my work’s internet connection. I have been unable to determine where the problem lies, so I decided to access it via an SSH tunnel. Here is the command I used:

sudo ssh -l *_username_* -L:*_localport_*:*_remotehost_*:*_remoteport_* *_tunnelhost_*

With all the blanks filled in, here is my final command:

sudo ssh -l seppler -L:80:digg.com:80 epplersoft.com

Then, I modifyed my /etc/hosts file to and added the following line:

127.0.0.1 digg.com

Now, I can access digg.com from work and home via my SSH tunnel.

…And that’s how I got my digg back.

Griffin RoadTrip

I purchased a Griffin RoadTrip a few days ago and so far I’ve been _loving_ it. It works extremely well in my Toyota, and ‘ok’ in the BMW Z3 (it gets in the way of reverse and blocks the stereo controls).

So far it seems to be built very well and works great in every car I’ve tried it in (except for the BMW).

I’m not too worried about it not working in the BMW though – I plan on getting an Alpine 420i installed soon.

Griffin RoadTrip

Graphite iMac Stuck in Target Mode

I ran into a problem today where a graphite iMac was stuck in target mode. Resetting the PRAM did nothing, doing the normal NetBoot shortcut (holding down ‘N’ at startup) did nothing, so I was stuck – for a moment.

To fix this problem, I booted into Open Firmware (using Command+Option+O+F). Then entering these commands allowed the machine to boot from the network:

setenv boot-device enet:10.0.0.2
mac-boot

Of course, substitute “10.0.0.2” for your NetBoot server – if you’ve got one. Thanks to Mike Bombich’s Netbooting Across Subnets page for the help.

Easy file sharing on Mac OS X

“SharePoints is an application or a preference pane that makes it easy to add and delete share points like in the old Finder. In Mac OS X, by default, you are limited to sharing only what is in your public folder in your home directory. This program makes it easy to share any folder.
In addition SharePoints also brings back users and groups management to Mac OS X as well as easy configuration of AppleFileServer (AFS) and Samba (SMB) Server properties.”

Download SharePoints

Tasks for October 7th

  • Compacted our DMS Image to fit on older iMacs with 6GB hard drives
  • Found SharePoints program to create custom shares on Mac OS X
  • Determined NWEA will not work on Win98 machines with our setup
  • Added NWEA loadset to Crawford command file
  • Created a Radmind Installer Package for our network imaging process
  • Help Jensen fix an iMac that was stuck in target mode