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By Matthieu, 2009-12-17 22:51

I don’t think this week can get any better. Today we had a fantastic Christmas breakfast at work, and were treated to a big lunch at Congee Time.

And even better than that, after running into my friend on Tuesday, I called her and we arranged to meet up for dinner on Wednesday. She had to work until 8:30pm, so I stayed late at work and met her at Yorkdale afterwards. We were both tired and hungry, so we settled on dinner at Moxie’s because it had the shortest wait time, and delicious white chocolate brownies. I had a great time, couldn’t ask for a better night. Good company, good conversation, good food… fantastic.

By the way, Emma, hats off to you for surviving all those 10-hour work days. You deserve better :).

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By Matthieu, 2009-12-16 11:08

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=33678

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By Matthieu, 2009-12-15 16:30

Today I finally started working out again. After much coaxing from a couple of my colleagues, I headed over to the weight room for the first time in quite a few months. I must say, it isn’t so bad, it was actually a nice change from all the sitting around I usually do…

After that, I decided to head over to Yorkdale for lunch, because I was craving some Thai Express. I figured that while I was there, I’d pay a visit to the good old Apple Store. On my way there, I passed by Santa’s “Castle” (which was actually more like three large cones made to look like trees using LED lights) and was admiring the flashing lights when one of the girls working there caught my eye, but then went into a back room. She looked very familiar, so I decided to wait around and see if she would come out again. Eventually, she did, and I realized that it was a very good friend of mine. She didn’t notice me and looked really busy, so I decided to go and buy her a nice hot tea latte. I came back to give it to her, but there was a Global TV reporter and camera in the way. I waited until they left and then went up to the counter to give it to her. She was surprised to see me but unfortunately was quite busy, and I myself was late for work, so I rushed off.

Lessons to be learned today: Working out is GOOD. and not unpleasant. Also, going out for lunch can lead to interesting things.

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By Matthieu, 2009-12-15 01:08

Lately my blog has been essentially a pell-mell repository of random procedures and other technology tidbits. The reason for this is that lately, work has been quite busy and the social life has kinda been on the down-low. I did accomplish some pretty cool things though.

Last Monday I got to meet up with some friends for the first time in a little while. It was a really nice “chill” night; we watched some YouTube and I was coerced into trying some shisha and mint tea. I couldn’t fall asleep until quite late, so the next day at work I was quite tired, but I have no regrets.

Anyway Christmas is fast approaching. It’s strange, it didn’t really register in my mind without the usual exam period stress. In any case I am now quite aware of it and am both stressed and excited. The holidays will be a welcome break after these long months of work and an opportunity to meet up with friends and family! On the other hand, this year is the first year where I have a real job so I feel like I should be buying some slightly bigger gifts… and I have no idea what to get for anyone.

A nice little thing this year is that our little church will finally be getting proper church benches in time for Christmas. Should be interesting to see the chapel’s new, more permanent look.

Winter, however, is a different story. Last week we got our first snow of the year in Toronto, and winter seemed to have arrived in full force. The rest of the week was quite frigid, requiring gloves and hats and scarves. This week so far seems pretty mild though. Gotta love climate change.

Today I also finally started working out at lunch again, after much encouragement by some colleagues. It feels great to have gotten back into it, although my arms are kind of tired.

Well, now it’s getting late and I’m losing track of my ideas. So I guess it’s time for bed.

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By Matthieu, 2009-12-14 21:44

My home PBX was installed and working well. However, today I discovered that my VoIP provider started blocking outgoing calls from the Asterisk user agent. The fix is to edit /etc/asterisk/sip.conf and change the useragent line. However, the distro I chose was very much a PBX appliance. No SSH, no shell, only Web UI access. But, I knew it was a Linux box, probably CentOS or RHEL based. So i decided I’d try my hand at retaking control of the system.

First step was to boot into single-user mode. This was quite easy. Just interrupt GRUB and add “single” to the kernel options.

Once at the shell prompt, you might want to add a regular user.

adduser matt

Then, try changing the root password.

passwd root

Unfortunately this does not work. It fails with “Authentication Token Manipulation Error”. To fix this, use pwconv. (Thanks to mohammedz)

Then try passwd root again, it should work this time.

Next, enable ssh. Run chkconfig sshd on.

Now, edit /etc/asterisk/sip.conf and change the useragent. 🙂

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By Matthieu, 2009-12-12 10:10

CBC News Photogallery.

A beautiful set of pictures from around the world showcasing current events.

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By Matthieu, 2009-12-09 21:40

Today was the first snowstorm of winter 2009/2010. Made for a fun drive to work… Apparently the City of Toronto figured there was no point in sending out snowplows.

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By Matthieu, 2009-12-06 17:29

run a sudo port install vpnc

then cd to /opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/vpnc
tar xzvf vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz

then cd to vpnc-0.5.3 and edit the Makefile. find and uncomment the lines pertaining to OpenSSL GPL violation:

# Some distributions like Suse and Fedora seem to think otherwise.
 
# Comment this in to obtain a binary with certificate support which is
# GPL incompliant though.
OPENSSL_GPL_VIOLATION = -DOPENSSL_GPL_VIOLATION
OPENSSLLIBS = -lcrypto

matt@matthieu-imac:/opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/vpnc$ sudo mv vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz vpnc-0.5.3-GPl.tar.gz
matt@matthieu-imac:/opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/vpnc$ sudo tar czvf vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz vpnc-0.5.3

sudo port uninstall vpnc
sudo port clean vpnc

Now, you’d think you can build vpnc using macports. however, running sudo port install vpnc gives:

$ sudo port install vpnc
—>  Computing dependencies for vpnc
—>  Fetching vpnc
—>  Verifying checksum(s) for vpnc
Error: Checksum (sha1) mismatch for vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz
Error: Checksum (rmd160) mismatch for vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz
Error: Target org.macports.checksum returned: Unable to verify file checksums
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

Macports checks the checksum of the tar.gz to ensure that your download isn’t corrupted. So open up a new Terminal window.

$ cd /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/net/vpnc/

$ sudo nano Portfile

Find the current checksums:

checksums           sha1 321527194e937371c83b5e7c38e46fca4f109304 \
                    rmd160 6f3926901e75dc98762f6ef45782930f2fb76a2f

Back in your other Terminal window,
matt@matthieu-imac:/opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/vpnc$ shasum vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz
22feb011388d0d7d1ef2c81ff2f1fb22039c475a  vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz

Replace the sha1 checksum with the one you found using the shasum command. Then delete the \ and the whole rmd160 line.

Now run sudo port install vpnc. it should now build with OpenSSL support!

Now only one thing left, install the TunTap driver from http://tuntaposx.sourceforge.net/.

And vpnc works! edit your config file in /opt/local/etc/vpnc.

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By Matthieu, 2009-12-04 16:08

Translation Party.

I was bored today. I wonder what Himeji Castle is?

Update: This is Himeji castle. Who says silly web games can’t also be educational? Another good one: #5532295