Here’s the rub: the CLI application for updating MacPorts, “port” likes to have a home environment variable populated. Apparently this happens when executing port from a CLI. When running from launchd, however, $HOME is empty and thus the script dies.

The fix is trivial. You need to add the following to your user daemon (it needs to run as root, so user daemon it is):

    <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
        <dict>
              <key>HOME</key>
       <string>/var/root</string>
       </dict>

Here is the full context. (the path to your user daemons is at:)

/Library/LaunchDaemons
System-wide daemons provided by the administrator.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
        <dict>
              <key>HOME</key>
       <string>/var/root</string>
       </dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.ksk.updateMacports</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/update-port.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <false/>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>43200</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Hat-tip: Arno, here.

Ingredients:

• Animated sequence with a statically uniform background
• Final Cut Express
• QuickTime 7 Pro
• Adobe Media Encoder
• Adobe Flash

For a recently closed project, my customer asked; “Kyle, can you silhouette an animation of a growing tree against a branded gradient.” I give the classic consultant answer; “Of course!” I wasn’t clear on the details, but, as I discovered, it’s relatively trivial with the right tools.

The customer found an animation sequence of a tree growing against a white background. The beauty of this was the consistent background color. I figured there was a way to assign an alpha channel to that color, and Final Cut Express (I’m cheap, remember) allowed me to spec the background color, which intern became the “Chroma Key” or alpha channel for the transparency. To get this transparency assignment, I applied the Video Filters > Key >Chroma Keyer filter to the clip. Then, you simply sample the color which will be the alpha channel color.  There was an interesting issue with this. As the color steps from the assigned color space for the alpha, the nearly-so-but-not-quite white pixes are opaque. I decided, however, that this provided a faux sharpening and helped to accentuate the leaves against the background. Expanding the range of the color key space confirmed this.

Next, I exported the clip as a high-resolution Quicktime Movie, which stores the alpha information. The next trick was to bring the alpha channel into Flash via the flv format. This meant using the Adobe Media Encoder. As I wished to balance resolution with bandwidth requirements, I performed several conversions at several bit-rates to find the sweet spot. I ended up with a 10 frames per second at a bitrate of 150. Yes, on the low end, but satisfactory for this job, and the resulting flash file wasn’t too large.

The penultimate matter was to place the animation on the branded-background gradient in flash. Finally, as there’s some delay due to video size, I added a most rudimentary loader process. I am really tired of the flash model for doing this but it’s transparent to the user here. (No annoying “please wait” widget. I routinely click past those now, the rush of Flash animations now very passe.)

Finally, I load the necessary SWF Tools and swfobject into my Drupal CMS and load the media as per SOP. Viola! A growing tree in the branded colors of my wonderful customer.

You can see the resulting image here.

I’ve been a lastpass user for about a year now, after hearing a favorable review from one of the TWiT shows (Leo Laporte likes it, and mentions it frequently — maybe it was on Windows Weekly?) It’s wonderfully convenient as a simple password keeper. However, Steve Gibson really goes deep and performs a vivisection of lastpass on this Security Now episode. Of the many benefits of lastpass, Steve reminded me of the “security check” tool option, which will grade your overall security effectiveness, using such criteria as duplicate passwords and password strength. I increased my security rating from 55% to 70% using it’s suggestions. The downside is that while financially inexpensive, increasing your password security is a large time investment. That, and fighting off the OCD urge to score 100%. After my 25 percentage point gain, I’ll be doing incremental improvements here on.

I’ve updated my ubuntu 9.10 (insert whatever cutesy alliterative here) laptop to 10.4, albeit in a circumambulatory manner; all of my own doing. I took advantage of a nice, phat broadband connection to perform the update manager facilitated upgrade (these usually go smoothly) when the update process took much longer than expected, over 4 hours (the download was fast, the package update was slow. My watching twit.tv surely impacted performance.) So, hoping that the package installation would not be negatively affected by putting the OS to sleep, I did so and continued on with more interesting aspects of my life. I had figured on continuing the install at home. Only I didn’t. I forgot and returned to a computer that lost it’s power and had turned off. The machine booted into… 10.4, but that was a curve ball, as the core system was updated but not the myriad of packages.

So, back to a classic reformat and install, using the system I outline here. This allows me to wipe out and reinstall the OS without hurting my user data directory; which is very convenient. Here’s the screen shot from my install this morning, which will probably serve me in x months, as the screen shot for the prior link did.

Screen shot from my 10.4 Ubuntu installation

I’ve noticed a Quicken Intuit service for business websites on television. The premise of their ad is simple: they make business web sites simple and cheap. Sure; like everyone else before has. Anyhow, in one scene, a “mom and pop” couple “successfully” upload their site — dramatically and succinctly portrayed, of course. Immediately afterwards, we see the same couple “watching” a Google search window, and, voilà! their site magically bumps to the top. Of course it’s that easy.

So, either Quicken Intuit has paid Google handsomely for this “feature,” (making Google look very unethical) or, more likely, given the perceived importance of SEO by initiates, that’s a bit too much fantasy to stomach.

Wow, this was easier than I expected. Here’s roughly what I did: