{"id":3826,"date":"2013-04-07T18:03:07","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T02:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/wordpress\/?p=3826"},"modified":"2024-12-14T21:53:29","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T05:53:29","slug":"413-rewrite-rules-pcalc-leaving-google-plus-make-your-own-mac-vpn-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/413-rewrite-rules-pcalc-leaving-google-plus-make-your-own-mac-vpn-server\/","title":{"rendered":"#413 ReWrite Rules, Pcalc, Leaving Google Plus, Make Your Own Mac VPN Server"},"content":{"rendered":"

First I’m going to take you on an adventure where Belgium, Canada, and Ireland help me to get cool new social media links for the show. Then Allister Jenks is going to challenge the RPN Calculator fanatics with his favorite iOS Calculator Pcalc<\/a>. Then George from Tulsa is going to explain why he had to leave Google Plus. In Chit Chat Across the Pond we’re going to have LOTS of fun – Donald Burr will be on to teach us how to create a VPN Server using our Macs. Enjoy the ScreenSteps Tutorial<\/a> on how to do it yourself!<\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/nosillacast\/NC_2013_04_07.mp3<\/a><\/audio> \"itunes\"<\/a>
\nmp3 download<\/a>
\n
\nHi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias. Today is Sunday April 7, 2013 and this is show number 413. This is going to be a fun packed show. First I’m going to take you on an adventure where Belgium, Canada, and Ireland help me to get cool new social media links for the show. Then Allister Jenks is going to challenge the RPN Calculator fanatics with his favorite iOS Calculator Pcalc. Then George from Tulsa is going to explain why he had to leave Google Plus. In Chit Chat Across the Pond we’re going to have LOTS of fun – Donald Burr will be on to teach us how to create a VPN Server using our Macs. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, partly because it’s just good clean geek fun, and partly because I’m too cheap to buy one of the online services for VPN since I only need it a few weeks out of each year. Donald is highly skilled at taking complex things and making them sound easy and doable. After Donald was done explaining it to me, I went back and followed his detailed written instructions, and I made you a GIANT ScreenSteps tutorial<\/a>. I suppose he would call it a tutorial of doom, right? As always it’s under the Tutorials tab on podfeet.com if you ever get your nerve up to try this one!<\/p>\n

On top of all that excitement, Steve has been hard at work creating cool NosillaCast logo stuff over on Zazzle. Bart and Stu created cups for the International Mac Podcast through Zazzle, and using Bart’s recommendation Steve got to work. Now we WANTED to make these items so you could buy them and we would not make any money off of it, but unfortunately the lowest you can make is 10% off the items, so that’s what we went with. It’s not too bad but we didn’t want that to be the purpose. Steve started with mugs, and they came out just gorgeous. They have two NosillaCast logos on them, front and back (again Bart’s recommendation so that you AND other people both get to see the logo) and they have a black rim on the edge that really makes it look classy. He also had Zazzle create embroidered caps with the podfeet logo (the full logo is a bit intense for embroidery). I’m a big fan of white, zipup hoodies (I think I have 5 already) so he made up one of those for me. I got a medium and it was a bit small so I’d go up a size if I were you. The hats are $20, the mugs are $17, and the sweatshirt is $40. <\/p>\n

\"zazzle<\/a>
\n
\nIf you don’t like exactly what we picked out, I just noticed that under the image for each of the three items, you can view the logo on other items – like there’s 92 other shirt kind of things you can have printed with the same logo for less than the sweatshirt. Oddly they all become called “NosillaCast Zipper Sweatshirt” even if you pick out a tank top. If you start poking around on Zazzle and see something you’d like, say a dog vest or an apron or a pillow, just let me know and I’ll get the logo designed for that product. Anyway, Steve and I are having a lot of fun with this so let us know if you buy anything – send us a picture of you with it and we’ll post it on the show. You can go find the logo stuff at zazzle.com\/nosillacast<\/a>. Ooh, maybe I should go create a ReWrite rule for that? Anyway, big thanks to Steve for setting this up, I think it’s a really fun way for people to show off the fact that they’re true NosillaCastaways.<\/p>\n

Social Media Links<\/h3>\n

I was listening to the Knightwise podcast (an excellent show on sliding between platforms, making technology work for you) and KW was plugging all of his social media stuff with these cool links. He said follow us on Google+ at knightwise.com\/googleplus, follow us on Twitter at knightwise.com\/twitter. I got jealous and asked him how he did that. He said that KDMurray<\/a> did it for him, he had no clue how it was done. I thought about just bugging this random guy I hadn’t ever talked to before, but even for me that sounded a bit rude.<\/p>\n

Then I noticed KD was answering my tweets, and showing up to the live show, and I figured what the heck? He gladly said he’d help me and sent me some really well written instructions. Since it was Sunday night when I got the instructions, and the show was all buttoned up for the week, I thought now would be a PERFECT time to mess with my website. Well somewhere in there I boogered things up and on Monday morning George from Tulsa was the first (of many) to point out to me that podfeet.com was down. What was I thinking messing with the site on THE most important day of the week, just the day everyone goes to the site to check out the new show???<\/p>\n

I was at work so I put vacation time on my timecard and put out emergency calls to Bart and KD to rescue me. We piled into a Titan Pad to work on the problem. Let me take a quick intermission here from the main plotline and explain what Titan Pad is. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to the plot soon enough.<\/p>\n

Years ago there was a tool called Etherpad. It’s a website you could go to where multiple people could edit an online document a little like Google Docs became later on. You get a list of who is editing, you get a little chat area to have conversations, the document is color coded by who is editing. You can even push a button to play back what has changed over time, and you can export and import the documents on the fly. One day Etherpad sold themselves to Google, and became part of the Google Wave thing\u2026which crashed and burned and sadly that was the end of that. The GOOD news is that when Etherpad sold themselves, they heard the call of the community and put their code out as open source. From that sprang a whole lot of other tools with essentially that same capability, the most stable of which is Titan Pad<\/a>. So next time you want to compare notes on anything with another person, try going to titanpad.com and push the button to create a new pad, and then get to work on it together.<\/p>\n

Ok, side plot done. KD and Bart joined me in the Titanpad and they tried to figure out what I’d botched up. I flung around trying to recreate what I’d done, and had a lot of trouble retracing my steps but eventually between the three of us we got the site back up. Or so I thought. Late in the afternoon I started getting tweets from people saying that podfeet.com was there but if you clicked on any posts on the site, you’d get a 404 error. ACK! Back on with KD and he quickly solved THAT problem.<\/p>\n

Ok, now we’re successfully back where we started, but I’m not as cool as Knightwise yet. On Saturday KD agreed to do a screenshare session with me where we’d experiment with how to do this. Back when he and Bart were working on it in the Titanpad, KD was showing him how he was using redirects to take the user from say podfeet.com\/googleplus to the long gloppy url that is the NosillaCast community on G+. One downside of that method is that for some reason I have to create empty folders for each redirect, so one for googleplus, one for twitter, etc. Bart suggested a better way to do it using ReWrite Rules. Lest you think I understand pretty much any of this, let me disuade you from that viewpoint right now. I am, with blind faith, typing into the Apache Server file called .htaccess, commands I do not understand, from someone I’ve never met. Yup, that’s how I roll. I know, you’re shocked I borked it up earlier, right?<\/p>\n

Well ANYWAY, after about an hour, KD was able to crack the code and figure out how to make the ReWrite Rules work. If you’re interested, I pasted the code block from my root level .htaccess file into the shownotes os you can see how it was done:<\/p>\n

\nRewriteEngine On
\nRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?podfeet.com$
\nRewriteRule ^(\/)?$ wordpress [L]
\nRewriteBase \/
\nRewriteRule ^twitter$ https:\/\/twitter.com\/podfeet [R=301,L]
\nRewriteRule ^facebook$ https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/nosillacast.podcast [R=301,L]
\nRewriteRule ^googleplus$ https:\/\/plus.google.com\/communities\/117336672755291339814 [R=301,L]
\nRewriteRule ^itunes$ https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/ca\/podcast\/nosillacast-mac-podcast\/id81677867 [R=301,L]
\nRewriteRule ^subscribe$ http:\/\/phobos.apple.com\/WebObjects\/MZStore.woa\/wa\/viewPodcast?id=81677867 [R=301,L]
\nRewriteRule ^youtube$ http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/nosillacast [R=301,L]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nNow that we’ve gotten the geeky, cool, how did you do that part out of the way, the important thing is that now you can find the NosillaCast social stuff everywhere without remembering long complex urls. podfeet.com\/twitter, podfeet.com\/facebook, podfeet.com\/googleplus, podfeet.com\/itunes, podfeet.com\/subscribe, and podfeet.com\/youtube. How easy is that? If you forget, just type podfeet.com\/whateveryouthinkof and it will probably get you to what you want. I’m so proud of myself, as I was writing this up, I added a new one, if you go to podfeet.com\/iosapp you get directly to the NosillaCast app in the iTunes store. If you don’t have it already, it was written by Donald Burr, and it’s an awesome way to join the live show from an iOS device giving you the audio feed and the ability to chat in the live chat room. It’s a universal app for both iPhone and iPad. You can also use the NosillaCast app to listen to past shows and read along in the shownotes. Just so you know, all proceeds for the app go to Donald, not me so support our developer!<\/p>\n

Anyway, I thought this whole exercise was cool on so many levels. My buddy Knightwise in Belgium had something I wanted, he directed me to his buddy KD in Canada, we got my buddy Bart from Ireland in on the game, we used Titanpad to write code, and because of all that, my ReWrite Rules are currently cooler than Knightwise’s redirects (but KD will be fixing that soon\u2026)<\/p>\n

PCalc from Allister Jenks<\/h3>\n

Links:
\nPCalc (iOS, universal)<\/a>
\nPCalc Lite (iOS, universal)<\/a>
\nPCalc (OS X 10.6.8 or later)<\/a><\/p>\n

Hello Allison and the NosillaCastaways. Allister from New Zealand once again, with a problem to be solved.<\/p>\n

\"pcalc<\/a>In episode 401, Donald Burr waxed lyrical over RPN calculators and emulators of such for iOS. I was in the chat room during recording and despite someone claiming I was a part of the club I had to deny such geek cred – I’ve certainly played with them but have never succeeded with one. <\/p>\n

Oh, I’ve done assembly language programming on 6502 and ARM2 processors and I know how stacks work, but my brain seems to work better with mathematical problems when they’re following order of operations, cavorting amongst brackets and generally behaving like the many years of learning I gained at school.<\/p>\n

My favourite calculator in high school was a Casio. I don’t remember the exact model, but it could do all the trigonometry, statistics, fractions and constants I needed and my favourite function as a budding programmer \u2013 converting between radial and rectangular coordinates. Many years later I tried to purchase an equivalent model but have never been happy with the newer designs which remove some functions or place them on silly membrane buttons in the flip out, soft case.<\/p>\n

Roll on some more years and I began looking for the perfect iOS calculator. After several attempts, I’ve settled on PCalc from TLA Systems Ltd. The developers bill it as the best calculator and I’m inclined to agree with them. They’ve really spent time on it since it was released in the early days of the App Store.<\/p>\n

It operates well in portrait or landscape. It does everything any scientific, engineering or programming calculator does. Trigonometry, powers and logs, decimal, hexadecimal, octal and binary bases, bitwise operations, unit conversions including currency, constants, special functions including tax calculations and more. It has a multi-line display, multiple memories and registers and a paper tape you can view and also send by email. It even has undo and redo.<\/p>\n

To personalise it, there are 11 themes that substantially change the look of the calculator \u2013 including one that looks quite like my beloved Casio. You have a choice of 7 fonts and 9 colours for the display digits, and you can even set the volume of key clicks and choose from one of six different sounds! There are settings for layouts, decimal places, thousands separators multiple memories and more. And then there are the 28 advanced options.<\/p>\n

Oh, and one more thing. It has an RPN mode \u2013 which I have turned off \u2013 and amongst the advanced options there is one that says “HP48 style RPN”.<\/p>\n

You can try out the free Lite version<\/a>, which includes RPN mode, and you can then buy additional features as in app purchases, or buy a bundle to upgrade to the full version. If you want to take the plunge on the full version, it’ll set you back $9.99<\/a>. It’s universal so will work great on your iPad, too. And there’s also a $9.99 Mac version, available in the Mac App Store<\/a>. The best calculator? I reckon so \u2013 by a mile. Or indeed, 1.609 kilometres.<\/p>\n

George from Tulsa on Google Plus<\/h3>\n

I quit Google Plus rather than give Google my real name to replace the \u201cGeorge Fromtulsa\u201d persona I\u2019ve long used on the Internet. In real life, I\u2019m my employer\u2019s public face and identity. There was no gain, and some risk, in Google having my real name to link \u201cGeorge Fromtulsa\u2019s\u201d sometimes-idiosyncratic Internet comments to my employer. <\/p>\n

\"george'sQuitting Google Plus proved difficult. I was addicted. How addicted? I checked my feed first thing in the morning, last at night, and, thanks to my always-connected phone, more times during the day than I consciously controlled. It took me three weeks to work through the stages of grief from losing Google Plus: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, and Depression, all before reaching Acceptance when I realized Google had actually done me a favor by kicking me out, cold turkey. <\/p>\n

In retrospect, what\u2019s most interesting is how Google Plus came to be so addictive in the first place. Blame brain science. Back in the 1950\u2019s scientists discovered how to activate a brain feedback loop in which stimulation creates an insatiable craving for more stimulation. Rats given switches that controlled their own jolts of stimulation gave up food, water, and sleep so they could flip their little switches 24\/7—until they fell over dead. (WikiPedia: The Brain’s Pleasure Center<\/a>)<\/p>\n

A re-invented slot machine was likely the first real world product to successfully create, and make money from, insatiable craving. Quoting MIT Professor Natasha Dow Schull:<\/p>\n

“Every feature of a slot machine — its mathematical structure, visual graphics, sound dynamics, seating and screen ergonomics — is calibrated to increase a gambler’s “time on device” and to encourage “play to extinction,” which is industry jargon for playing until all your money is gone . . . \u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Natasha Dow Schull writing in Washington Post<\/a>, Natasha Dow Schull – Gambled Away: Video Poker and Self-Suspension<\/a>, Psychological Aspects of Gambling Addiction<\/a>, Your Brain On Gambling<\/a><\/p>\n

Bring to mind how feeds in Twitter, Facebook, and yes, Google Plus, work? It should. And of course, network television, video games, and, yep, that Smartphone in your hand? They\u2019re all trying to maximize your \u201ctime on device.\u201d Some, especially games with In App Purchase, can even invade your wallet as effectively as a casino\u2019s one-armed bandit. At the least, they\u2019ll monopolize your valuable time, and the more time you spend the more money the service you\u2019re using makes.<\/p>\n

Humans who call, text, email, and, yes, check social media while driving are causing hundreds of thousands of wrecks and hundreds of deaths every year. (National Safety Council – 2010 – Cell Phone Crashes<\/a>, National Safety Council – 2009 – Death by Cell Phone<\/a>, Car & Driver: How Dangerous Texting While Driving Is
\n<\/a>, USA Today Texting News March 2013<\/a>.) Remind you of those poor dead rats? <\/p>\n

ScreenSteps<\/h3>\n

In the Chit Chat Across the Pond you’re going to hear Donald Burr teach us how to create a VPN server using a Mac or your own router. I don’t have the right kind of router so I went down the path of using a Mac and it was super fun. His written instructions are great, and I was able to follow along but I thought it would be fun as I did it to use ScreenSteps to capture the screens and make it as clear as possible. I ended up taking 66 screenshots, so this is not a path for the faint of heart, I assure you, but I think using the ScreenSteps tutorial along with Donald’s great instructions, you’ll be able to follow along. It wasn’t that much more work to take the screenshots and annotate them, throw a note or two next to the images and keep moving. In fact there were a few steps where you have to wait for things like Xcode to download, so I made use of that wait time by doing the annotations. If you find yourself teaching other people how to do things like I do, check out hat’s going to wind this up for this week, many thanks to our sponsor for helping to pay the bills, Blue Mango Learning at bluemangolearning.com<\/a> makers of ScreenSteps and Clarify. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at allison@podfeet.com<\/a>, follow me on twitter at @podfeet<\/a>. Check out the NosillaCast Google Plus Community<\/a> too – lots of fun over there! If you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com\/live<\/a> on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed. and Clarify at BlueMangoLearning.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chit Chat Across the Pond<\/h3>\n

Donald Burr of <\/p>\n

otakunopodcast.com Otaku No Podcast<\/a> joins us to teach us how to create a VPN server on our Macs. He’s also the creator of the NosillaCast iOS App<\/a><\/p>\n

\nThe internets are a scary place. More and more, you need to protect yourself, especially while out and about. The tools<\/a> and software<\/a> to perform sophisticated attacks are inexpensive (often free) and readily available, and are pretty much “point and click” easy to use (meaning just about any idiot\/script kiddie can use them). An excellent way to protect your Internet traffic while away from home is by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). <\/p>\n

A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is basically an encrypted, private connection from you to another network, whether it is your home network or a corporate network. The connection goes across the public Internet, but since it’s encrypted, nobody knows what is being sent on it, so your data is safe, nor can it be tampered with while in transit. Even if someone were snooping the network you’re on and capturing data, it would be extremely difficult for them to decrypt it. Also, the connection is virtual, meaning that, as far as your computer is concerned, it appears as though you are directly connected to the remote network, meaning you can access resources on that network directly, without needing to deal with messy and complex port forwarding, NAT traversal, and so on. Think about it as kind of like a Wormhole from Star Trek: it connects you to distant galaxies as if you were right next door, yet you are isolated from normal space so the Romulans can’t attack or spy on you. <\/span>The Lab Rats have a <\/span>pretty hilarious video<\/a> explaining all about VPNs. (Yes it’s one of their infamous Food Demos.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Why set up a VPN?<\/span><\/p>\n