Yet Another IT-related Blog

Just in case you ever wonder how to “eject” an SD card from a slot-in DVD drive like the one found in an Apple iMac. Yes, I know, why would you? Well, in case you end up here googling how to, you already know why. This post here is just to note that a 2 mm. thick ruler can make the trick.

This tool makes the trick!

Insert it as deep as the SD card length and a bit more and then slide it from top to bottom. You should be touching it now, otherwise your card decided to go for a free tour inside the DVD charger. In that case you might want to rotate your iMac 90º clockwise and let the gravity position your card in the desired location :-). Just don’t expect it to fall magically and also avoid shaking it… it won’t fall. The ruler procedure works better and the DVD drive shouldn’t get damaged by it. No responsibility assumed here in case it does!

Good luck with it!
P.S.: No, I won’t disclose how and why I found out this procedure.
P.S.2: The procedure might be useful as well to eject other strange bodies from your DVD drives. Just avoid inserting the ruler too deep inside it or you might end up breaking it or even worse: With a couple of strange bodies inside!

Hi there, this is another post motivated by my newest personal project, substitutefor.com. By definition pet projects are the ones you cannot afford giving much time to, essentially because you already have a life and a job with their respective schedules. So when it comes to taking design decisions, it’s very likely that you end up using your guts instead of the analytical process you’d use in your daily work.

It’s also very likely that at least you try to gather some information, which is usually the easy part, and then blog about it: Let’s see what other people thinks about the matter.

And the matter here is OpenID, would you use it as default registration/login schema for your website? I will even go further, would you remove any other login mechanism in favor of it?

There are three issues that make me worry about the adoption of OpenID:

1. Usability problems
2. Only known by tech savvy users
3. Convenience of having a user’s database

The first document I’ve found about the matter comes from the yahoo developer network [1]. And from a quick overview my worries about usability got confirmed. Ey, a good suggestion from these guys:

Promote the utility, not the technology

The fact that’s only known by tech savvy user’s is something that from now I can only suppose, but assuming it’s true, the main advantage of avoiding the user the need to register losses it’s value. Even more, if your website is the responsible of making a user create a new openID account, the process will be longer and more confusing for him than simply creating a local account in your site. You’re not only asking to register, but to learn something else first. And also diverging the attention of the client to a third party provider in the process.

The third issue, on the other hand, is probably less problematic, since there is still the possibility of storing local user’s data or preferences in your site and link them to its openID. There are also some interesting developer’s opinions here [2].

[1] Yahoo! OpenID Usability Research

[2] Stackoverflow: What reasons are there NOT to use OpenID?

So, this is it, third post about substitutefor and no official presentation yet, :-). Ah by the way, my guts taken decision was to discretely allow openID, but use native registration/login as default option.

Videoconferences have proven to be a pain to me. Some years ago I used netmeeting, which worked fine almost 50% of the times I needed. Afterwards, I made some changes to my network and there was no way of making it work… Besides I’m a Linux user in my workstation, so it was time to change but neither gnomemeeting nor Ekiga gave me good impressions.

Probably Ekiga is nowadays a pretty good videoconference client, but I didn’t manage to configure both my webcam and microphone quite well. And even more difficult was to ask my friends and relatives to install it. So I couldn’t dedicate enough time to enjoy it.

So I remembered I’m also a MacOS X user and many people around me were using Skype… Yes there is also a Linux version but it doesn’t support videoconference. So it was time to give it a chance. The problem was that Apple doesn’t allow third-party manufacturers to add support for OS X in their cameras (generally)… You know, it’s all about hardware control and minimum quality requirements. And I wasn’t going to spend more than 25€.

But there is this project: macam, which is a collection of drivers for hundreds of webcams to work in OS X. There is a compatibility list, so it seems to be an easy task to choose the right one. Well, not that easy. Some webcams have different revisions and the product id is not printed on the box so…

After some time looking in the store I decided myself for the Creative Webcam Vista rev. A, since it was on the compatibility list, but it didn’t work! The problem was that the rev. A printed in the box was the one listed in the list as Webcam Vista (D)… Ovislink 519 chip, which seems to be supported for some cams but simply not that one.

This guys at Creative have a passion for making hundreds of revisions of the same products… There is no way of identifying exactly the model without opening the box so I searched for another brand. There were almost 20 webcams in the store and finally the Hercules Classic webcam was in the list, no revisions, only one version… And the same chip!!! The OV519, but this time it works.

So this time, being an OS X user hasn’t saved me from the hardware incompatibilities which we Linux users have to suffer. Lucky me it has saved me from the software incompatibilities

In Spain, there are some regulations for public administrations regarding Technological Neutrality (Observatorio de Neutralidad Tecnológica) and maybe therefore this year the programs aiding informative declarations are “multiplatform”. Meaning that, supposedly compatible with Windows, MacOS X and Linux. For this great purpose they have used a JVM and an InstallShield .bin installer.

I will not get into the point that Java is not really portable, since there is no descent JVM for some platforms like my laptop’s PowerPC + Linux combination. This post goes for the difficulties using InstallShield installers in x86_64.

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