I just spend some part of a week trying to successfully receive PayPal IPN requests. Sent out from the IPN simulator. I got stuck when it (the simulator) kept saying it couldn’t deliver the IPN request: Bad Request. Indeed… bad request!
Hunting down the differences between two servers — the second one receiving the IPN requests just beautifully — I came upon the module “HttpRequest”. I can safely say that had nothing to do with it. But it did let me trigger another thought: this server uses mod_security — good for generating a ton of error messages in the log file, and, apparently, blocking IPN requests.
So I don’t know why I didn’t check it sooner, but when I tailed the apache error logfile for the site, and triggered an IPN request from the simulator, there it was: the request was Access denied! Read more ›
Jul 18 2011
Filed In: poem
Out of a thousand year old man
Erupts like a volcano dedication, and a plan
The blossoms of a heartshaped vile
Float on by to escape the nation, like they can
Forcefields wither, leaping strong
Tension building from realization, amidst the sun
Mollifying what just appears
Like an ape in disguise from the tree on the run
Volcanoes are strong, erupting the snake skin
Forging the new without being forged
Thanking the old shackles, taking it all in
Existing as one without being forced
Jul 02 2011
Filed In: poem
No need looking up
In all directions there is God
No need looking down
In all directions there is Love
No need looking away
In all directions there is You
The meaning of life is to experience.
God created this dimension, permeating all and everything with the Force. This also caused a reaction, a counter force: the Pull. The Force grows; the Pull shrinks. The Force nurtures; the Pull smothers. The Force is a spacecraft filled with settlers; the Pull is a huge planet’s gravity. The Force is the red pill; the Pull is the blue pill. The Force creates; the Pull destroys. The Force is divine; the Pull has a divine reason.
The reaction to the Force created Pull. The Pull is not the Force. They are not two instances of one essence. They are two separate things.
The Force and the Pull result in struggle. Experience is based on this struggle. The essence of experience comes forth from this struggle.
What did you come to experience this life?
Feb 11 2011
Filed In: poem
it is hard to depart
from the ways you did things
with your heart from the start
’cause you pick at your heart
confidence teared apart
shattered goals on the card
trying just to be hard
and determined to start
the creation of a
second path on the chart
this is art
did i mention your heart?
Presupposition for the above
Every choice
anyone makes
is the best choice
available to that person
at the time of making the choice.
come in the moment
of every moment
the moment you realize
your attention’s bend
and you do not own it
in this moment
you’ll see in a moment
it is oh so potent
to be at the core
every fiber a provant
of information
in perfect formation
supplying the nation
which is you
no exaggeration
every nerve cell
is able to tell
a story so quell
which your brain will dispel
and of course you as well
but group them together
you’ll get serious weather
one’s like a feather
but now all together
you notice! — that’s better
so one’s not enough
but all synaptic coughs
allow you to feel
translating touch
to an energy meal
allowing you now
to feel here and now
just to be in the now
allowing somehow
amazement and wow
so just own the moment
you’ll have a covenant
and transcend the blend
suspending the dead end
no pretend — apprehend
is your life well spend
i’d say yes every second
with intend to mend
the befriended trend
of being true to your end
Are you kidding? You can’t do “control-enter” in Excel 2011 for Mac while editing a cell, and get a newline or line break within that cell. Sure, you can press the key-combo, but the result is exiting the edit mode (with the edited cell still selected, so, to be sure, the functionality IS different from just an ordinary “enter”, which results in exiting edit mode and selecting the cell below the edited one).
Nope, in Excel 2011 you gotta hit “command-option-enter” to get a newline. Curiously “control-command-enter” seems to work too.
These little things, for me, are the hardest part switching from Windows to Mac…
Oh, just to give my real first annoyance: hitting “F2” in Excel 2011 doesn’t get you in the cell’s edit mode. Nope, you must use “control-u” to do that. Elementary, my dear Watson.
Feb 03 2011
Filed In: blog
Vroeger in de studententijd hadden we al een auto. Lekker scheuren, heerlijk. Verkeerslicht, wachten, rood, wachten, rood, wachten, groen, pats! Wegwezen, scheuren, planken. Nooit haast, altijd snel. Na de eerste bocht eens even blikken in de achteruitkijk spiegel. Tientallen meters achter ons een zee van vrije ruimte. De andere auto’s beginnen net aan de bocht. Nice game, alleen niemand deed mee.
Dik tien jaar later. De auto’s zijn zwaar geupgrade, ruim over de 200pk. The game is still on.
Nog steeds doet niemand mee.
Op dit moment ben ik weer “Tai-Pan” aan het lezen, van James Clavell. Ongeveer halverwege, maakt de hoofdpersoon (Dirk Struan) een punt om criminelen niet meer te brandmerken, omdat ze dan nooit meer een tweede kans kunnen krijgen in de maatschappij.
Goed punt, natuurlijk. Fast-forward naar vandaag de dag… fysiek brandmerken gebeurt al lang niet meer; dat is namelijk vervangen door grote systemen met databases waarin alles wordt vast gelegd. Ik vraag me af hoeveel “tweede kans” er tegenwoordig eigenlijk bestaat.
So there you go… Loving Parallels, but being stuck with co-workers stuck on Windows. So these poor saps are using VMWare Whatever, never mind. Being the usual suspect who peeks above the generic field of likemindedness, or rather, lackmindedness, you go your way ensuring that the co-worker-peeps won’t have to point fingers at that Mac user who can’t handle a VMWare image. Blasted! I’ll install VMWare Fusion and be done about it.
Alas, the storie continues. Becuase this storie is about running Parallels and VMWare side by side. Why the heck do I need Parallels? Because I use Novell Designer. Which doesn’t run on OSX (yet?). It almost seems it does though, but nope, try installing it, and it will fail. Enter Parallels, which picks up my bootcamp Windows 7 partition, which is a charm running it in “Coherence mode”. Lovely! Enter the co-workers: we use a VMWare image running the server software. Not wanting to convert every VMWare image they throw at me: enter Fusion, which is a next-next-finish-openexistingimage-imovedit-finish kinda thing. And you’ve got your image running.
Now… when you tell Designer (running in Parallels) to deploy something it reeeealy wants to be able to chat with the server (running in VMWare) for a bit. Which means network access from the one to the other. That is: from Parallels to Fusion, and back. It took me some time, because I’m not a guru-expert in networking, but I got it up and running! Both VM’s can “see”, ping and chat with eachother. Here’s how:
Don’t use Parallels, and do all your VM-ing in Fusion. Me, sorry, no-can-do. I’m weird like that. Parallels just feels better (for you tactile people) handling my bootcamp Windows. I can see it (for you visual people) integrating more cleanly with OSX. I can hear it (for you auditive people) generating heavenly chimes when using it. Fusion just was less of an experience. So again, here’s how:
To understand the various network types Parallels and VMWare both have, this is an excellent overview. Building on that explanation, I’ve set up VMWare Fusion to use NAT. Once that was running correctly, I configured Parallels — which has more fine-grained network configuration options compared to Fusion. I can configure Parallels to use a bridge mode to a named network, in this case VMnet8. So I set up Parallels to bridge to the NAT network of VMWare. Because it is in bridge mode, it’s just as if it’s in the same network as the Fusion virtual machine, which is nicely on it’s own network subnet behind my Mac. Et voila! Designer and the server dig each other totally, saving the day.
Read more ›