Schwie’s Pad

I wanted to bring the Macworld Keynote to a buddy of mine who’s in a nursing home right now. He doesn’t have internet access there, so I thought I’d just bring it to him by saving a stream from Quicktime… Quicktime doesn’t allow for such shenanigans, but the venerable VLC does.

To do this, fire up VLC, and open the stream for this year’s keynote by choosing “File->Open Network…” and enter the address of the stream: “http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jan/j47d52oo/m_8848125_650_ref.mov”. Test the stream by playing it. Nice…

Let’s use the Streaming/Exporting Wizard to save the stream. Press “Apple+Shift+W” to launch the Streaming/Exporting Wizard and then select “Transcode/Save to file” and click “Next”.

Click “Existing playlist item” and select the stream in the window below followed by clicking “Next” to continue.

On the next screen, just click “Next” to continue, leaving both options blank.

Leave “MPEG PS” selected and click “Next” to continue.

Name the stream what you want it called and click “Next” to continue.

Click “Finish” to begin downloading the stream.

It should download at the pace of your connection, I believe, but mine only came down at real-time – maybe due to traffic…

The data connectivity has been a hassle with some new 8703e’s and Verizon that we now have in the office. Here’s a couple troubleshooting steps to check for or establish connectivity with Verizon. To check for basic data connectivity:

1. Send a PIN to yourself.
2. Go to “Options”, “Status”, copy the PIN (using the scroll wheel and pressing to copy), go back to “Messages”, press the scroll wheel to compose a PIN, in the To: line press the scroll wheel to paste in the PIN, and then type “test” in the subject and body fields.
3. Press the scroll wheel to send the message.

If you received the PIN, the issue is with your IS department and their BlackBerry Exchange Server. If you didn’t receive the PIN in your inbox, re-establishing the routing functions of the BlackBerry:

1. Go to Options->Advance Options->Host Routing Tables.
2. Press the scroll wheel and choose “Register Now”.
3. Return to Message to check your inbox for a message that says “Device has been registered.”

Return and repeat the first half of these instructions to check for connectivity. If you still aren’t receiving emails or able to surf the web on your BlackBerry, call Verizon.

So, for over a year I had my personal certificate for signing/encrypting email working just fine in Mail, but today I got cute and tried to update my personal certificate to include my GMail account. When I deleted my old Thawte personal email certificate from Keychain Access, I screwed up and deleted the personal certificate ALONG with the X509Anchors entries for Thawte. This was crucial, because when I created the new/updated certificate at Thawte and went to import it back into Keychain Access, it imported fine, but Thawte didn’t replace my X509Anchors entries. Hence, when I fired up Mail, the padlock S/MIME icons weren’t appearing for signing and encrypting individual messages. After pulling my hair out for too much time wondering why the buttons weren’t showing up, I finally got smart and hopped on another Mac I have and I exported the Thawte certificates from the X509Anchors in Keychain Access and imported them back on to the machine that I impaired.

After doing this, my new/updated certificate now works flawlessly (and I switched to CACert now too, so we’ll see how this goes). Figuring out the X509Anchors deal helped me to get CACert certificates working as well. The signing/encryption buttons don’t show up in Mail unless you have corresponding entries in the X509Anchors keychain for the Certificate Authority you wish to add personal certificates for…