| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Sun 08 May 2005 All the World's a WebCategory : Commentary/PFETigerReview.txt It's been a week since I released Postfix Enabler for Tiger. I was amazed that withing a minute of my updating the server, I had a sale! How did these people know? The only thing I did was to mention it here. Plus, place a banner on top of the old Postfix Enabler for Panther page. And that was all that was needed to get the downloads going. The web's a truly awesome phenomenon. Sun 01 May 2005 The WorldCategory : Commentary/PFEFlags.txt
Now that I am able to map IP addresses to country codes, I have a better idea of where Postfix Enabler (or any of the other software that I've put up for download) is being used. These are some of the countries I've found, when I made a list from my server log this morning. Of course, I wouldn't know if it's used in Paris, New York, or Tokyo. But you get the drift. It's a weightless world. The bits go where they're wanted. And the money flows into the bank. Like the rain, the clouds, and the wind. No matter how hard it gets sometimes, I've always felt that it's a privilege to be doing this - we're in the midst of some significant changes in the way we choose to live and work. There's no better way to understand the changes than to dive in and participate. Take credit card processing as an example. Just two or three months ago, we wouldn't have been able to do that. We would have been banging our heads against the barriers put up by WorldPay or Planet Payment, supposedly new-age companies with old-world mindsets. When PayPal made it possible for any business to receive credit card payments without opening a merchant account, we waited anxiously to be offered the same service outside the US. Hai Hwee didn't just wait. She thought through the workflow, so that when we got that email from PayPal that we're on, she had the system set up in a couple of days. Every time we get a payment, I think about how technology has made it possible for two people to trade with the whole world, from the comfort of their homes. Sat 30 Apr 2005 Postfix Enabler for Tiger - Back AgainCategory : Technology/PFETigerUpAgain.txt
I think it's okay to put this back up again. The response has been great. Postfix Enabler for Tiger - UpdateCategory : Technology/PFEforTigerUpdate.txt I think I've solved it. A few things essential for Postfix to run were missing from the final Tiger release installer. Postfix Enabler for Tiger will check, and if they're not there in the system, it'll attempt to put them back. Postfix on Tiger seems to work fine again on my test PowerBook. But we're going to do one more round of testing before we release the update. It'll be version 1.1.1 now. Basically, the entry for MAILSERVER was missing from /etc/hostconfig, plus a couple of other things, and these confused Postfix Enabler because I wasn't expecting that. Actually I had made sure to test both a fresh install and an upgraded system using my developer release of Tiger, which was updated up to December or January. The changes must have come after that. Never ever again will I attempt to release something the same day as Apple's OS launch. It's just not worth it. And maybe, try not to ask me for free serial numbers unless you've contributed something like $50. My mood's changed. This is really hard work. Postfix Enabler for TigerCategory : Technology/PFETigerNotWorking.txt I've had to hold this. I've just found that the retail version of Tiger hasn't got a couple of things that were on the developer version. This is making Postfix Enabler not work for those who're using a totally fresh version Tiger. It seems to work OK for those who're upgrading. Will try to fix this problem now. Postfix Enabler for Tiger UnleashedCategory : Commentary/PFEForTigerUnleashed.txt Okay, this is out. It's at http://cutedgesystems.com/software/postfixenabler. I'm keeping this low-key because I've only had my pre-release version of Tiger to work with. All the people that I'd sent this to for testing reported that it works okay. But until I get my own retail copy of Tiger, I wouldn't know for sure if anything has changed to throw things into disarray. If this gets picked up slowly, I would have time to fix any problems. But I hope it works for everyone and that they'll love it. This is the first time we're really charging for its use. It's the first version of anything we ever did that requires a serial number to use. The problem with things like Postfix Enabler is that it may sometimes not work if the user has made his own custom modifications to system files. After all, its just a stupid program. It'll never be as smart as a human being in figuring out all the variations. So if it doesn't work for anyone, we'll refund the money. That's the policy we'll be taking. Also, I'm most appreciative of the people who've taken the time to send me donations even though they didn't have to to do it. That's really kept my faith in the human race. You know who you are. Just drop me a note and I'll be glad to send you a complimentary copy of Postfix Enabler for Tiger. Fri 29 Apr 2005 Tiger's come a little too fastCategory : Commentary/TigerComeTooFast.txt It's Tiger's launch and we've just finished getting Postfix Enabler for Tiger ready. But I'm going to get some sleep before releasing it. Come back in six hours and it'll be up. Actually, I feel Tiger's come a little too fast. For weeks I've been thinking about how I can make Postfix Enabler work remotely. Tiger was the furthest thing on my mind. I've finally found a way to make it all work exactly the way I want. This will make its way into a future version. Mon 25 Apr 2005 Flu bug - with love from ShanghaiCategory : Commentary/flubug.txt I've been been down with flu ever since I got back from Shanghai. In a place where people spit on the floor within two feet of you in a restaurant, I guess that's to be factored into as a travel risk. But I shouldn't be complaining. I had a really great time there. You go to each place to learn - about all its idiosyncrasies, about why it is what it is, and all that adds to your world view. Otherwise don't go anywhere. I really hate it when foreigners gripe about Singapore, especially the very ones that Singapore welcome as "foreign talent". Instead of criticising, try understanding. Don't do unto others, etc... This is the world's most populous nation on the move. Gucci, Calvin Klein, Prada. Surely this is not the face of communism. How did it get to here? There's a fantastic energy about the place. I came back and found this book in the library - "Big Dragon - The future of China: What it means for business, the economy, and the global order" by Daniel Burstein and Arne de Keijzer. Been quite interesting reading... Postfix Enabler for Tiger?Category : Technology/PFE-Tiger.txt I've had so many questions about this that I stopped being able to give an answer to each one. So, there will be a Tiger-compatible version of Postfix Enabler. Come back again to these pages when Tiger ships. I think the NDA still applies but I've had to re-do quite a bit of my shell scripts in Tiger because of a change in AppleScript. I then decided that I'd try to keep as much of my old scripts as I can, and so I rewrote the interface in Objective-C to emulate the behaviour I had in Panther. Plus, I wanted to be able to have a shot at creating an interface that can do the configuring remotely. Not quite there yet, but a Postfix Enabler that will work with Tiger will be ready on the 29th. Not sure if I want to give this away free this time. I believe it's proved its worth. So get your 9.95 ready. Sun 10 Apr 2005 Books - Valerio Massimo ManfrediCategory : Commentary/manfredi.txt Just one book recommendation before I go. I've discovered books by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. I picked up "The Last Legion", not knowing what to expect, but I enjoyed it tremendously, and so I've started on his Alexander trilogy and, so far, it may not be as good, but it'll be with me on the flight. I love reading history (a whole lot more than I enojoyed my engineering books). Novels like these help you feel how things could have been, and there are ideas that will make you think while you're being entertained. But I really got to pack... Do I or do I not bring my iBook. If I don't it'll be total radio silence for ten days. Let the mail pile up. ShanghaiCategory : Commentary/shanghai.txt I've been shanghai'ed. By my wife and kid. Dragged off my work to Shanghai for a week. We're leaving in the afternoon and I've got my head still wrapped up in code. I've realised that it's not quite so easy to make Postfix Enabler work remotely on a server. For a variety of reasons, it's turning out to be quite intricate. But the solution, if and when it does unveil itself, will need to be clean, simple, and precise. Otherwise, I can already see where and how it won't be reliable. Along the way, I've had an education on the subtleties of using quotes on Unix shell scripts. By the way, I've got a version of Postfix Enabler that should work with Tiger. I re-wrote it in Objective-C, so I could get more control over the execution of the shell scripts and so that I could dream of making it work remotely. But it's not quite ready. Just found a bug. Anyway, back to Shanghai. This is from the Lonely Planet guide, and I'm looking at this page : "Whore of the Orient and Paris of the East; city of quick riches, ill-gotten gains and fortunes lost; the domains of socialites and swindlers, adventurers and drug runners, missionaries, gangsters and pimps, all owing more to Marlene Dietrich than Mao Zedong - Shanghai has a history so impregnated with myth that it's hard to decide whether it was once a paradise or an all-emcompassing evil." One such history that I've quite enjoyed was "Shanghai" by Harriet Sergeant. My wife would scoff that I read history books on China written by Westerners, Jonathan Spence & all - unlike her, who could read the sources. She's effectively bi-lingual while I'm hopelessly mono-lingual. I tell her that there's a historical precedent. The late medieaval Europeans emerging from their Dark Ages, recovered the works of their Greek intellectual forebears from the Arabic, the ascendent culture at that time, to which these have been translated and preserved, while their own lands fell into ruin at the fall of the Roman Empire. Like them, I feel we're emerging from our own dark ages. I'll have to make do with what I can find. So to Shanghai, I go. Time to pack. Sun 03 Apr 2005 How Soccer Explains the WorldCategory : Commentary/SoccerExplainsTheWorld.txt I've just finished this book, "How Soccer Explains the World" by Franklin Foer, subtitled, "An {Unlikely} Theory of Globalization". It didn't seem to get great reviews at Amazon, but I enjoyed it all the same. (One man's meat and all that...) I'm soccer-mad (or at least I used to when I played it regularly but those days are long gone) and it did set me thinking. For example, Foer describes a scene from a Celtic-Rangers game where Rangers' Italian defender Lorenzo Amoruso (who's now with Blackburn) celebrated a Rangers goal by turning to the Rangers' supporters and egging them on in their chanting and baiting of Celtic's Catholic supporters. I know, as most soccer fans do, that Celtic and Rangers occupy opposite ends of the Catholic/Protestant divide. I've watched that scene on TV. I've often been transfixed by the intensity of the commitment, these Glasgow derbies, and I've been lucky to catch the games a couple of times when the soccer was so much fun. Now what I didn't know, though I should have guessed, was that Amoruso was Catholic, as Foer mentioned in his book, and he also described what Amoruso's Rangers/Protestant fans were chanting at that time. I couldn't hear it, of course, on the TV. So it was interesting to have the scene described from this other angle. What must have been going on in Amoruso's mind? This book may not have reached anywhere near its goal - of explaining the state of the world through soccer - but it's a good book to read for a soccer fan who has at least an interest in the rest of the world. It's a different kind of soccer book, for sure. Sometimes I think I know all about the Catholic/Protestant divide, having been brought up by Protestant aunts, ruled over by a staunch Buddhist matriarch for a grandmother, and, to complete the triangle (and my utter confusion), parents who were Catholics. In the midst of this three-cornered fight, I learnt to trip safely through the minefields of the religious wars from an early age. That's how I ended up a Taoist. I walk the middle path. And I attended Catholic schools all my life! So it's with some sadness to mark the passing of the Pope. May he rest in peace. Read more ... |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server, a Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks:
all set up using MailServe, WebMon, DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, VPN Enabler, Liya and our SQL installers, all on Mavericks. |
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