Apostrophes and the Ubuntu Font on OS X

Since I’ve breathed a bit life back into this blog, I was playing around with using Google Fonts, deciding to use the Ubuntu font as an example.  It turns out that this was a singularly unfortunate choice for testing!

There is a known issue (without an apparent resolution) which under certain circumstances can cause problems with rendering the apostrophe character.  In my case I was seeing small superscript 9 characters instead of apostrophes.

There is an example of the issue appearing in a different context on the Xojo forums.

The easiest solution in my case was simply to use a different font.  I wasn’t a big fan of how Ubuntu renders minuscule w anyway.

Getting SlickrFlickr to use the Flickr TLS API

Now that I’ve converted the site to use TLS, I’m going about replacing my old homebrewed Flickr plugin to use SlickrFlickr since it seems to be maintained and has similar, but extended, functionality.

I switched mostly so that I wouldn’t have maintain my own plugin, unfortunately I discovered after I finished setting up SlickrFlickr that it only returns the http scheme and not https scheme for the Flickr API.

Not to be too discouraged, I’ve created a simple fix for this and even though it’s a freemium plugin, I may submit a patch to the developer because it’s so simple.

There are three variables that contain the URL scheme in them:

# the variable $url in phpFlickr.php sets some image locations
sed 's/\$url = \"http/$url = \"https/g' wp-content/plugins/slickr-flickr/phpFlickr.php
# these strings also need to be changed in slickr-flickr-api-photo.php
sed -e 's/\$this->url = \"http/\$this->url = \"https/g' -e 's/\$this->link = \"http/\$this->link = \"https/g' wp-content/plugins/slickr-flickr/slickr-flickr-api-photo.php

I’ve actually implemented it as a check in my own local copy of the plugin by verifying the Apache server variables to figure out if the connection is HTTPS.  I just don’t currently have this implementation in patch format.  I will post it soon.

TLS for Everything

I’ve not posted in quite some time (I cringed when I realized it had been more than three years), but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been maintaining the software around these parts. It’s been strange, what little time I’ve made for non-recreational use of computers has been almost completely consumed with mundane details. Definitely the tail wagging the dog!

Anyway, I just thought I’d announce that I’ve converted everything on this domain to use TLS. Heartbleed made me realize that it was time I really tightened things up. I’ve been running the currrent configuration since 2008 with very few changes to the underlying platform. I’ve made two changes to implement this feature.

First, I’ve moved all of the HTTPS accessible content to https://quay.net/ and have removed all of the historical subdomains for different services (e.g.: the RPM repository — more on that in a future blog post). This is necessary unless you want to buy a wildcard X.509 certificate, which I don’t.

Secondly, this has resulted in a restructuring of the URLs for the aforementioned content. In most cases there is an automated redirect or error message, but if you’re searching out something that you have bookmarked let me know and I’ll help you out.

Writeup on the Dangers of a Nuclear Meltdown in Japan

I just came across a long writeup regarding the probability of a serious nuclear catastrophe in Japan that might be worth a read.  In my opinion we’re spending a lot of “news” cycles speculating about a situation which poses a small risk instead of focusing on the actual tragedy that has already happened.

If you want to make a donation via the Canadian Red Cross follow this link.

MacOS X 10.6 Desktop & Screen Saver Bug

I came across an odd bug a couple weeks ago with MacOS X 10.6.6 and the “Desktop & Screen Saver” System Preference pane. Seemingly out of the blue, when I attempted to modify my screensaver, it would just hang indefinitely and when attempting to click it again it would (usually) crash with EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV) errors. At least anecdotally I seemed to be experiencing crashes of other applications, incl. Steam and Safari (Flash plugins) as well. I could be completely out to lunch, but it seemed as though this issue just manifested for the first time in January after working fine for months. After running through a long list of diagnostics and fairly extensively researching this issue with Google and on Apple’s support forums, I finally called Apple Care to see what they thought.

To make a long story short, after visiting an Apple Store to demonstrate my mystery bug, we discovered that what apparently happened was that I reinstalled the operating system using the retail MacOS X 10.6.0 DVDs rather than the MacOS X 10.6.3 DVD that shipped with my Mac Pro when I purchased it last summer. As best we could tell, even though the installer appeared to work without issues, I ended up with the incorrect drivers due to the fact that the 2010 Mac Pro (5,1) didn’t exist when Snow Leopard originally shipped.

I’m posting this primarily because there was nothing online related to this issue and hopefully if somebody else comes across this problem they can save themselves some effort and headache. This problem is particularly nefarious because you can still apply the 10.6.6 update without any evidence that there are issues but you will still have the bug despite being completely up-to-date.

First thing tomorrow, I’ll be calling Apple to order replacement reinstallation media.

Nathan Rogers

I figured I’d take a quick moment to share some of the music I’ve been listening to lately. Back in October I spent a couple of days in the Eastern Townships on union business. Because it’s so close to the US border and CBC Radio 1 reception can be sketchy I usually find myself tuning into NPR Vermont and while I was driving back to Montréal on Sunday afternoon to catch my train back to Toronto I happened to catch a programme covering modern folk music. I immediately recognized Stan and Garnet Rogers when I turned the radio on, but jammed between them there was a Stan Rogers song I didn’t recognize. I thought that was odd because as far as I know I own everything he ever recorded and the recording certainly didn’t sound like a bootleg. As soon as the host came on after the set he explained my confusion by crediting Stan’s son Nathan for the middle song in the set: “Jewel of Paris”.

To say that he sounds eerily similar to his father is quite an understatement. I’ve done a bit of reading on his background and accomplishments as well as the requisite crawling through Youtube and Google to catch clips of my performing live. I’m sure he’s trying to carve out his own niche, among other talents he is an accomplished throat singer who has studied with indigenous groups in Mongolia and Nunavut, but releasing a first album, “The Gauntlet”, that is reminiscent of his father is not a bad way to start.

I can’t find an online version of Jewel of Paris but here’s a live cover on Youtube of Stan’s famous “Northwest Passage” which is a good sample of his voice. Happy Winter Solstice!

A Shadow of Phobos

I saw this very cool animation of the shadow of Mars‘ moon Phobos passing over a dust storm. Apparently an enterprising enthusiast combed through online archives of photos taken by the Viking 1 probe back in ’76 and found this sequence. It’s kind of cool to see that people are still finding new information this much later. If you’re an astronomy nerd like I am you’ll probably find it worth checking out!