#mac

How Not to Use Default Gateway on VPN (PPTP) in Mac OSX

· 1 Comment

Well, after search­ing for hours and hours, I have finally found a solu­tion to a small but trou­ble­some prob­lem. The prob­lem (if you call it that) occurs when I tried con­nect­ing to my work’s VPN. Rather than not using my work’s gate­way when con­nected, OSX does this by default. Hence, you can see and hit your inter­nal IPs but not resolve the rest of the internet.

In Win­dows XP, this may be dis­abled via the following:

  1. Open Net­work Connections
  2. Under Vir­tual Pri­vate Net­work, open the Prop­er­ties of your connection
  3. Click and open Prop­er­ties for “Inter­net Pro­to­cal (TCP/IP)”
  4. Click on Advanced
  5. Dis­able “Use default gate­way on remote network”
  6. Hit OK, OK, and then you’re done

Although it’s easy in Win­dows XP, I couldn’t fig­ure it out for OSX. I searched and search to finally get this arti­cle from macosx­hints, Avoid Cre­at­ing PPTP Default Routes. The hints at the very bot­tom of the com­ments helped some­what, but didn’t get me to view my inter­nal IPs—which was the reverse of the orig­i­nal prob­lem. Luck­ily, with a lit­tle bit more search, I landed on this arti­cle page by Chris­t­ian Stocker on Chang­ing default routes on OSX on VPN. Though it was the same as the pre­vi­ous page from macosx­hints, I saw this short and sweet reply which hap­pen to have fixed everything:

lon­nie @ 22.08.2006 19:22 CEST
Inter­net Con­nect 1.4.2 has

Con­nect Menu -> Options…

|X| Send all traf­fic over VPN connection

Uncheck­ing should do the same.

I hope this arti­cle could be of help, and save those who are look­ing for the same solu­tion san­ity and time.

Top 2007 WWDC Stories

· Comment

If you aren’t sub­scribed to any Apple/Mac-related newslet­ters, here’s a cou­ple of aster­isks to add to Apple’s his­tory and/or time­line (dur­ing this WWDC 2007 next door, from Mac­world newsletter):

So What’s New In May?

· Comment

Hey, hey, hey. May 1st has come and gone and those who have promised them­selves to Reboot were either suc­cess­ful, or behind. One of the sites I’m curi­ously await­ing to check out is Bryan Veloso’s new ren­di­tion of Aval­on­Star.

So what the heck am I doing this early in the morn­ing? I can’t damn sleep, and have been try­ing to fig­ure out how to orga­nize my shiznit a bit bet­ter. I have too much stuff going on (as usual), and need to com­plete tasks I have set in my to-do list. But it seems that that list just keeps get­ting big­ger and wider (in terms of those URL-bookmarks).

Any­ways, just wanted to catch-up with this writing-thingy-majig. Maybe some­one out there can help orga­nize things with some cool advise and/or refer­ral gift =)

Speak­ing of which, here’s some cool things that have inter­ested me in the past cou­ple of days:

  • Mac­Book Pro — yeah, I’m a “switch-hitter” now
  • Text­Mate Basic Tuto­ri­als — this will prob­a­bly change my devel­op­ment work­flow for work and on-the-side
  • Com­pil­ing new “points of inspi­ra­tion” from the Reboot-ed sites, new and old
  • … and the list goes on—but it seems that I should be catch­ing some Zs now as I hear some people’s alarm clock going off; at least I think I’m hear­ing it

From my mind to yours, keep learning.

Mac OSX Read and Write to NTFS Drive

· 1 Comment

Just in case you guys are try­ing to use one exter­nal drive for both Win­dows and Mac envi­ron­ments (as in my sit­u­a­tion), here’s some­thing that will save you all the grief and hours of sit­ting in front of your Macs

  1. Down­load the lat­est Mac­FUSE Core DMG file and restart
  2. Down­load the lat­est NTFS-3g + Mac­FUSE Tools (and Unin­staller if you want) from Fill­ing the Gap NTFS-3g page via NTFS-3G for OS X Revived Blog
  3. Plug-and-play with your exter­nal. It should show up mounted auto­mat­i­cally. If not, do a quick restart.

Hope that helps.

PS. The steps above is more updated that what was posted over at this MacOSX­Hints arti­cle.

Update 2007-04-28
Grab Win­Clone if you’d like to backup/restore your Boot­Camp par­ti­tion. Great if you’d like to try out Par­al­lels using that WinXP NTFS partition.

Update 2008-08-13
Step #2 above has been updated, which links to the lat­est NTFS-3G for OS X development.

So Which Should Come First, the Laptop or the Desktop?

· Comment

It’s been a great year for lap­tops I’d say. After send­ing ginor­mous rip­ples through­out the tech-world with Apple announc­ing that its going to be con­sum­ing some Intel baked goods, com­puter enthu­si­asts looked more closely at the prac­ti­cal idea of buy­ing a Mac.

Well, let me clar­ify that last state­ment… more “PC” enthu­si­asts liked what they heard, that the sim­ple Mac can do their bid­ding. Any­ways, with sec­ond quar­ter almost to a close, I’ve been see­ing a lot of deals espe­cially on note­books. Dell always have them but when you hear IBM/Lenovo have an annual sale to cel­e­brate its first year, you just can’t help but to look at what they’re offer­ing the T42 for 42%-off.

Entic­ing ain’t it. I mean, its a IBM/Lenovo Cen­trino lap­top. The thing just oozes with great qual­ity and build. But it’s still $1100+. Then again, its an “IBM”, or should I say “Lenovo” now. That, and Ronald­inho seems to like them.

Mean­while, the Mac­book is just sexay but expen­sive. Not to men­tion, the need to buy new soft­ware. Oh deci­sions, deci­sions… One ques­tion that keeps bounc­ing off in my head would be, “will I even use a lap­top when I get home?” Granted, I can use it when I’m in the liv­ing room down­stairs but that just takes away from loun­gin’ and relaxin’ with the roomies.

Blah. I shouldn’t even be think­ing about this. I should be con­cen­trat­ing on get­ting a good deal on Hawaii tick­ets in August. Damn. Did I men­tion, sav­ing up money for Japan (Novem­ber) and P.I. (Decem­ber) as well? When will we hit that lotto jack­pot? One can hope I guess.

PS. Here’s what Google Trends have to say in terms of the pop­u­lar­ity in search of the key­words: desk­tops, lap­tops and notebooks.

1234