As any fanboi-fule know, since at least OSX Tiger (10·4), Apple has built LAN-based control of other macs into the OS. (In 10·4, it’s known as Apple Remote Access; in 10·5 upwards, it’s known as Screen Sharing.)

This week I’ve been exploring its abilities and limitations. It works just fine for controlling my other macs from SURGE, my main machine. It can even control my beat-up, second-hand PC laptop, on which I’ve installed TightVNC server. (I did try RealVNC – the original VNC software – but I couldn’t achieve connections.) This isn’t a surprise – ARA/SS is built on VNC.

Within my LAN, it just works, allowing me to have an ergonomic set-up with the laptops on shelves above my desk. But there is a caveat:

• If PISMO is connected to my DVI monitor via PISMO’s extra videocard and my KVM device, the Screen Sharing display has an interesting hue, even though the external and internal displays are normal. (The displays aren’t mirrored, so I can make the most of the 20″ DVI monitor.)

I’m puzzled that the same doesn’t occur with HEXIE, who has an external VGA monitor to make up for her very small internal monitor.

If HEXIE is outside my LAN, thanks to BackToMyMac (and regardless of whether ‘official’ VNC port-forwarding is enabled on my router/firewall/ADSL modem), HEXIE can connect directly to SURGE’s volumes, allowing me to copy files back and forth. This means I don’t need to carry all my data with me: I can just grab what I need when I need it. Also, SURGE stays at home so he’s backed-up hourly to our TimeCapsule. Better, HEXIE is much lighter than SURGE, which saves my back.

Better still, so long as the ports used by VNC are forwarded by my router/firewall/ADSL modem to SURGE, Screen Sharing allows me to directly control SURGE. This means that HEXIE can tell SURGE to work on SURGE’s own files (which hence remain safely backed up), without risking having multiple versions of files on different computers. Also, although I’ve not tried it yet, I believe that SURGE could process files on volumes connected to HEXIE, thus relieving HEXIE’s less impressive processor, HD and RAM, without the files ever really leaving their homes.

If HEXIE is connected to the internet via my O2 mobile broadband dongle, only Screen Sharing is available. But that’s enough to allow me to email files to myself, so this slight lack isn’t an issue provided I copy the results back to SURGE.

If VNC port-forwarding is switched off, then HEXIE is restricted to BackToMyMac-enabled direct connections to SURGE’s volumes and files. (So, if VNC port-forwarding is switched off and HEXIE is connected to the internet via the O2 dongle, HEXIE has no remote access to SURGE.) I’ve not found a way to remotely access the router to switch on port-forwarding (or do anything else to the router, for that matter). This is natural result of security, so I’m not worried. It’s just up to me to remember to do switch on port-forwarding when needed.

However, what if both my hostess and I both want remote control of our home machines? Accessing SURGE from my hostess’s PowerBook would then allow her to tell SURGE to BackToMyMac into her desktop machine across our LAN. But this means giving her unfettered access to my main machine and all my data. Good job I trust her! The other obvious limitation is that only one of us can have useful access at any time. Both local machines could observe SURGE but if my hostess is using SURGE to access her home machine, then the image of SURGE (on both local machines) will be completely occupied and we’d be fighting over control of a single cursor!

This also raises a serious question: how do real tech-support folk access multiple machines on a LAN behind a router/firewall, without changing the target of VNC port-forwarding on the router/firewall?

• Leaving the security set-up open to outside manipulation seems wrong.
• Relying on the presence of a drone within the LAN’s building seems equally fraught. Would you really want to encourage lusers to guddle with security software?
• Even worse, what if the building containing the machines to be accessed is unstaffed?

Potential answers seem to be

• a very secure tunnel to the accessees’ router/firewall, so that the inside-LAN end of the port-forwarding tunnel through the router/firewall can be securely changed from outside
• multiple tunnels from accessees within the LAN, through the router/firewall, to the tech-support staff. After all, VNC works by VNC servers on the accessees serving monitor images and choosing to receive mouse-clicks and keyboard commands from VNC clients on the tech-support machines. If the accessees close the holes in their internal firewalls that allow VNC commands to reach them, the tech-support staff would be powerless, no matter what port-forwarding exists on the LAN router/firewall.
• Or just maybe I should have realised something from my work’s firewall being a separate box from the ADSL box, sitting between the internet connection and the switches that connect our desktops to the outside world.

Comments gratefully received!

Also, my current system relies on the macs running OSX. I have a game that works best on native OS9 (hence on PISMO) and yet totally borks if PISMO connects to the big monitor, which would otherwise enhance game-play. I hope that an OS9-happy VNC server would get around this but I fear that VNC was developed on *nix, then ported to Windows while giving older OSes a body-swerve. More investigations to come.

After countless millennia, Dundee at last emits something good

(OK, my brother’s girlfriend and her family escaped first, but were then marinaded in Worcestershire to produce the final heady brew.)

I learnt today that an old friend of our family was interred today. (I think mum first met her at Birmingham University, when she was an undergraduate.)

I’d heard she had inoperable illness at the end of 2009. While she was in no state to receive visitors, I did phone her, and I’m glad of that. However, I heard no further news until today when I chanced to phone my parents. She’d died about a week ago, and was today interred in a tree-burial in Worcestershire. She was a doctor in Birmingham, a gynecologist if I’ve understood correctly. It seems fitting that her way of passing is about continuing life. I’m going to Worcester tomorrow so her physical resting place will be on my itinery.

L’Chaim, Eva. It was a privilege to know you.

I should also make mention here of her earlier-deceased husband, David. My first is him is of as a tall, incredibly intense, yet wise and kind man. Quite an encounter for an under-5! Also a privilege to have known you – and thank you for publishing mum!

There was other sad news today but I don’t think I can blog about it (yet).

However, I’ve tagged this post as optimistic because such folk and my friends remind me how great humans can be, even when my eyes want to leak. And please rest assured that all the humans, geeks, electronica, cuddly toys and other denizens of Servants’ Quarters are fine and very pleased to be under the same roof.

A reasonable amount of pleasant stuff occurred:

• Book group met on Friday evening at the Canny Man’s. Discussed The Unbelievers: the author was due to be there but was called away to a family emergency at the last moment.
• On Saturday morning, I caught up with emails from friends in India. In the evening, we went to one of my hostess’s friends 40th birthday parties. I managed to dress suitably ‘glamorous’, thanks to my hostess’ aesthetic sense, and not be offensive.
• Today, I slept in enough to not wake up feeling drained. Then
  1. We cycled to Leith to buy ingredients for our Indian cookery class at Rajah Supermarket. At first we thought it was a simple corner-shop. Then we asked about buying saffron and were directed around the back into a huge treasure-trove of foodstuffs and cooking equipment. Bought almost all we needed apart from a pestle and mortar and normal supermarket items. I didn’t find an idli pan but I’m sure all I needed to do was ask.
  2. We cycled back to Servants’ Quarters, where I prepared a tikka marinade and put lightly fried plain tofu to infuse flavour. We don’t have a grill so I hope this will work in the oven.
  3. I cycled to Craigleith and bought normal supermarket stuff and a large-capacity pestle and mortar.
  4. Back at SQ, I made veggie-mince chilli, flavoured with wine and nicaraguan chocolate.
  5. I jury-repaired my rear mudguard. The middle stays ‘wanted’ to be at about 45° (taking vertical as 0°) but were fixed to the mudguard at about 30°. Eventually the metal holding the stays to the actual mudguard parted company from their rivets. Fortunately this metal has a central hole just wide enough to take an M6 bolt (of which I have more than I’ll ever use). So I just needed to drill a Φ6 hole at 45° around the mudguard and insert a bolt, add a nut and washer and tighten it all. Much easier than buying taking off the mudguard and rear wheel, and zero expense. There’s about 15 mm extra of bold sticking up from the mudguardbut because it’s almost under the carrier rack, it’ll do no harm.

I think that’s enough for one weekend.

 When The Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin from IV (Rating: 0)

You may know that Servants’ Quarters has been without a complete set of walls for over a year now.

1. At the start of last year, during the world’s longest-ever complete domestic rewiring job, the lounge walls were left full of gaps which I temporarily fills with MDF.
2. Late last year, during the flat’s complete replumbing, the lounge walls and the hall ceiling were necessarily ‘brutalised’.

Over the last two days, some of the pipe-work has now been covered by professionally-cut and fitted plasterboard.

I’m going to miss the sheen of new copper pipes.

 Nothing by A from Supercharged (Rating: 0)

This evening saw the first of a series of Indian cookery classes. I know know the ‘official’ way to cook pakora. Next week will feature chicken tofu tikka.

Not quite the level I was was expecting but fun nonetheless. I trust it will get more complex. The teacher is a native of Kolkatta (north-east). I hope we get to try some south-indian dishes.

The class was in a school home economics/cookery classroom, of which the most interesting features was that the teacher’s cooker was against the wall. So when cooking, the teacher would have his or her back to the students. And yet they could be doing all sorts of mischief with hot pans and sharp knives!

 Nothing by A from Supercharged (Rating: 0)

(pauses to check)

Yes it is. However, in a response to a recent implicit request, I’m back.

I’ve not had much to say, I suppose, that doesn’t impinge on my hostesses’ stuff, about which she is understandably private. However, I don’t think it will do any harm to say that we, in common with poetry-fans and poetry-clueless everywhere, whether Scottish, Sassenach, worse or better, celebrated Burns night this evening.

Of course, because I chose it, there were some departures from tradition, but since it’s a made-up tradition, I feel no shame at such departures.

The haggis was ‘piped’ in to the strains of Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.

The appropriate ode was recited, then the haggis was stabbed with my Swiss Army knife.

The haggis itself wasn’t traditional, but a vegetarian/vegan version made by Simon Howie’s. It was less dry than other vegetarian haggis I’ve tried, and so didn’t need me to break into the emergency bottle of ketchup that was on standby.

And in completely unrelated news, I’ve experienced Windows Vista running native for the first time recently. Explanation and bruce-drivel about this may be in future posts.

A bientôt, mes braves!

It appears I didn’t put anything on LiveJournal in 2009.

My hostess can touch-type without even looking at the screen. To test this, I declaimed the following as it came into my head:

How much is that doggy in the window??

The one with the belchily tail?
How much is the square root of an irrational number?
I do hope that surd is for sale.

She was looking at me all the time. Her only mistakes were the repeated question-mark and double-return at the end of the first line.

I’ve already lost count of the times I’ve had to correct my typing in this entry.

The perils of moving in…

Part 1
We have no normal broadband, pending our chosen telecoms company pulling their fingers out of their collective orifice and reconnecting us. Then we’ll be able to get our ISP of choice to supply broadband. The relief in all of this is that SIOJ (my MacBook Pro) has just accepted that it does indeed have a mobile broadband dongle in its USB port and will connect to the interweb. Until about 10 minutes ago, my hostess’s Powerbook G4 would connect via the dongle but SIOJ wouldn’t.

Part 2
When my hostess bought this flat, a minor part of the deal was we kept the white goods, including a not-too-old-looking washing machine. I emphasis ‘looking’ because the machine’s drum came off its bearings the first time we used it. So we hied ourselves to John Lewis to purchase a brand-spanking new one. John Lewis offered delivery, installation and removal of the old one as part of the deal. So I arranged to be in the flat today to receive the new beastie.

At this point it’s worth knowing that the only water stopcock in the flat turns off the water to not just this flat but to the three above us as well. Now there’s power!

When the John Lewis folk arrived, I turned off the water and ran the taps to drain the system so that they wouldn’t get a soaking when they disconnected the old machine. However, they took one look at the place where the old one was and refused point-blank to install the new one. Their reason was that the old one had been connected to the water supplies by extension pipes and they weren’t allowed to install except directly onto the mains supplies. ‘No problem’ I said. ‘I’ll disconnect the old one, then you can take it away.’ So I grabbed a washing-up bowl, held it under the connections between the old machine’s pipes and the extension pipes and undid the standard fittings. The John Lewis-ites then picked up the old one and took it away, apologising for not being allowed to do their job because they weren’t plumbers and promising that my hostess would get back the £25 she’d paid for the installation.

About this point I noticed that the new machine only had a cold-water input. The old machine had had both hot- and cold-water inputs so I was left with a fateful choice: either keep the whole building’s water supply off or turn it back on and flood this flat. I also realised that electicity had reached the old machine via an extension cable whose outer sheath was missing in places. Water and electricity isn’t that good a mix. So I really couldn’t care less about the £25 and was rather glad to see the back of the unhelpful deliverers. As the saying goes, ‘if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate’ and who needs that all over the place?

So I thought I needed a plumber to come round and rapidly cap the hot-water supply. (The cold one could of course be connected to the machine.) At this point, the above-mentioned lack of internet became an issue – I couldn’t google for Edinburgh plumbers. However, I could phone someone who did have the internet: my dad. (I have a jPhone, I could have googled on it, I realise now but consternation appears to have fuddled me.) While dad was twiddling, I started to apply thought – or at least curiosity to the issue. The extension cables disappeared into a wooden home-made cabinet fixed to the wall. I found I could lift the lid off it and trace the extension cables back to the mains supply. And much to my relief the mains supplies each had their own wee taps. I turned them off, then restored our neighbours’ water-supply for lo! I am a benevolent weevil.

Meanwhile my dad had been googling away and had found plumbers within half a mile of here. He’d also discovered that while gas is a third of the price per energy-unit than electricity but most makes of washing machines only have cold-water inlets. (This has boggled both of us. Surely it would be sane for washing machines to get whatever hot water they need from gas-heated boilers. If the hot water is too hot, surely it’s not beyond the wit of Miehle, Bosch, etc to dilute a suitable amount of hot water with cold water and hence use the minimum amount of cost/energy? After all, most modern heating systems involve combi-boilers [such as the one in this flat] which heat water on demand, rather than heating up a tank of water which is then left to go cold if it’s not used straight away. I can’t believe that two-thirds of the heat will be lost between the boiler and the machine. [Well, maybe I can in this flat!])

So now the wave-form of the above moral dilemma collapsed into a two simple questions:

1. do I connect the new machine directly to the mains, or shove the new machine into the under-stairs cubby where the old machine had been and continue to use the extension pipes?
   Leaving the machine where it is now takes up a lot of utility-room floor area but actually frees more floor area that had been inaccessible behind the old one. Putting the new machine back into the under-stairs cubby would necessitate continued use of the extension pipes and would risk scratching the sides of the new machine.>
2. who can permanently cap off the hot-water supply so that I don’t have to rely on a wee tap?
   I have a potential solution to this one: I’d also phoned my hostess’s piano teacher because she was likely to be in, likely to know decent trades-folk and had a brain. She suggested that her husband (who also has a brain and a wicked sense of humour) could do the job, having done the same sort of thing several times. At the very least, he’d be strong enough to help me move the machine into the cubby if my hostess decided on that option.

So now I have tidied all of the stuff that had been in the utility room into the I-don’t-know-where-it-goes-yet-atorium, mopped up the drips, installed hanging-rails in the wardrobe , removed an unwanted mirror from the bedroom wall, got back onto the interweb, written up notes from a visit by a sparky (but that’s another story).

And a big thank-you to my dad for being such a star!

Now I’m comparing the merits of Lochranza (a blended whisky from the Isle of Arran distillery) and Black Bush (Bushmill’s blend of their own grain and malt whiskeys) brought by my hostess who was in Belfast this week. So far the Antrim contender is ahead on points…