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I have found numerous posts suggesting that using ssh to open a forwarded port and manually reconfiguring the CrashPlan client is the best way to configure. I wasn’t successful using that technique. (Later I realized it’s because my server was on CrashPlan 4.3.3 and my client was on version 4.4.x.)

Instead I installed Xvnc by typing `sudo apt-get install vnc4server` then I created a password file called vncpassword.file like this: `vncpasswd vncpassword.file`. Finally I started the VNC server with `Xvnc -PasswordFile vncpassword.file` and let that run.

Then in a second ssh connection to my server I enabled X by typing `export DISPLAY=:0.0`. Then I started CrashPlanDesktop with `/usr/local/bin/CrashPlanDesktop`.

Now on my Mac I connected to my server by going to the Finder, choosing Command-K (The “Goto” menu) and entering “vnc://my.server.name” (My server has a DNS entry — you could also use the IP address).

Then I saw the CrashPlan UI over VNC. That’s also where I noticed that it was having trouble updating to the latest version. I found a log dir in `/usr/local/crashplan/log` and one of the recent files had this message: `This client requires one of these JREs: 1.7 1.8. Exiting upgrade`. I was able to install Java 7 using `sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre` and then `sudo update-alternatives –config java`. Finally, restart the CrashPlan back-end with `sudo /usr/local/crashplan/bin/CrashPlanEngine restart` I haven’t (yet) uninstalled Java 6.

Note: When you’re all done, be sure to kill your VNC server. I suspect it’s a security hole to leave it running…

Do you have an iPhone or iPad? Try my new Box Game. It’s inspired by “Uncle Lester”, a magician from the early twentieth century who had a passion for puzzle boxes. My version has a few levels (4 or 5) and no instructions. It’s designed to entertain you for a few minutes and that’s all. Leave comments here if you have feedback.

If you like it: that makes me happy. If it gives you trouble or you don’t like it… well, at least it was free.

No matter how tired you are of putting on your long johns and your flannel lined jeans and your down vest and your insulated snow pants and your wool scarf and hand-knit hat and thinsulate gloves and micro-fiber parka and felt-liner muck lucks … Put them on. It’s cold outside.

I was surprised to see that Xcode does not make it easy to build all the various icon files for AppIcons for Mac OS and IOS. A few tools have been whipped together, but I’m not a fan of needing to install a whole new GUI app just to solve a simple problem. I’m also not a huge proponent of python, but it’s one of the scripting languages that natively supports JSON — which is part of how Apple’s implemented .xcassets (look inside you’ll see a file called Contents.json). So here is my solution — you’ll need to customize it for your own project. This particular project has two different AppIcon.appiconset entries in the xcassets file.

Note that this script re-writes the Contents.json file, to normalize the file naming. By default if you drag-and-drop files into Xcode it just adds -1 and -2 etc.. to the name, which is lame.

Whenever you update the icon (hardcoded here as a file called ‘icon.pdf’) re-run this script and the icon for you Mac and/or iOS app will update!

import re
import json
from subprocess import call
from pprint import pprint

for iconset in ['Design Show Server/Images.xcassets/AppIcon.appiconset', 'Design Show/Images.xcassets/AppIcon.appiconset']:
	json_data=open(iconset + '/Contents.json')
	newdata = []

	data = json.load(json_data)
	for img in data["images"]:
		size = int(re.sub(r'x.+$','', img["size"]))
		filename='{idiom:s}_{size:d}_{scale}.png'.format(idiom=img["idiom"],scale=img["scale"],size=size)
		filepath='{iconset:s}/{filename:s}'.format(iconset=iconset,filename=filename)
		if img["scale"] == '2x':
			size = size * 2
		newdata.append({ "filename" : filename, "size" : img["size"], "idiom" : img["idiom"], "scale" :img["scale"] })
		print('{filename:s} {size:d}'.format(filename=filename,size=size))
		call(['sips', '-s', 'format', 'png', '-Z', str(size), '-o', filepath, 'icon.pdf'])
	json_data.close()
	contents_file = open(iconset + '/Contents.json', "w")
	contents_file.write( json.dumps({ "images" : newdata, "info" : { "version" : 1, "author" : "andy's python script" }}) )
	contents_file.close()

Here’s a gist:

I’ve read that you’re supposed to be able to use git rebase to move commits from an old repo to a one after using git filter-branch. But I couldn’t get that to work.

The backstory: Our repo was bloated because we started by forking a different project, and then deleted unneeded parts. This was an easy way to get started, but we ended up with all the history of the old project. So I ran git filter-branch and some other tools to clean up the history and remove empty merge commits. While I was preparing that, the rest of the team kept working on the old repo.

So I had to move those commits the rest of the team made onto the new, filtered repo. I used git format-patch and git am. Like this (assuming cwd is the new repo):


( cd ../old-repo; git format-patch --stdout -k commit id on old-repo of last shared commit ) | git am -k


Edit ~/.ssh/config


Host git git.mycompany.com

Hostname git.mycompany.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_rsa


A new phase in my life starts…

Leo (short for Leonard, in honor of Leonard Nimoy) on the left, and Chester on the right.

Me with Leo (Leo has the science-officer blue collar).

These best buds comforted each other on the scary ride from the farm outside of New Ulm where they grew up.