My daughter’s friend has an iPod with a forgotten the screen lock combination. It had a bunch of photos on it that she’d like to keep too.

So we searched for a fix and finally came up with this simple hack on Windows XP. It should work on other flavours of Windows, and should also work on Linux and Macs.

1. Connect your iPod to a PC and enable disk mode in iTunes. You can also manually put the iPod to disk mode
2. Open My Computer in Windows Explorer and open the iPod drive. In addition to a drive letter it will also be called the name you gave the iPod e.g. Paul’s iPod
3. If you can’t see a folder called ipod_control, enable show hidden files and folders. This is accessed from the Windows Explorer menu Tools > Folder Options… > View tab
4. open the ipod_control folder then the Device folder
5. delete the file that starts with the name _lock
6. Right-click on the iPod drive letter and eject. Alternatively use your normal Safely remove device technique.
7. The iPod is now unlocked but to finish the process, reset it by holding down the Menu and center buttons on your iPod. Once it restarts your iPod is unlocked while all you music and media is still there.

Thanks to 0wxw0 on YouTube for his great tutorial. Let me know in the comments if you need additional help or just say thanks.

I find a lot of contradictory information like, my grandmother is reportedly older than her mother, and I see that a headstone is the source of Gran’s birthday and her mother’s source was a drunk uncle.

I create a source called Family Stories and link it to all unverified information that I remember or am casually told at family events. I link that to events like births, marriages, divorces, deaths, immigration and adventures. I can tell at a glance when a new source is more/less reliable. Items linked to the Family Stories source is also a checklist for research for better sources (e.g. Newspaper obituaries, Registers of Births, Deaths and Marriages, military service records).

Interviews with family members get their own separate Source record. Even if I didn’t record the interview and only took written notes – that’s a source. I try to record all interviews, but sometimes that isn’t possible.

Always put the URL of any website as a source where you found something or someone. Later on you’ll want to check something again and the URL will be right there. I missed doing that a couple of times and it took ages to find the data again via my bookmarks and other notes. I eventually had to use Google again and wasted about two hours.

Get a copy, printout, recording or photograph of all sources where possible. I then copy or scan it to my media folder and note its location in the source record. You don’t want to go to a library a second time just to confirm spelling of a middle name on newspaper microfilm archives.

I’m using the brilliant GenealogyJ to catalog the information. It’s a standards based, cross-platform, open-source genealogy data viewer/editor (whew!). That means it reads and writes GEDCOM standard 5.5 or draft 5.5.1 data files for easy data sharing with software and other family researchers. Many other programs out there have quirks when it comes to sharing data with others. Modern genealogy research requires data portability.

There are other free and paid options available and I’ll list some I’ve tried at a later date. Comment below if you can’t wait for that post.

In the meanwhile I’d like to note a best practice method for genealogy research: Document sources as you go. Even if the source is personal memory. Include that in every individual record so you know where you stand. When a cousin provides birthday information, make a note of the source alongside the birthday entry. When the National Archives offers evidence of an ancestor’s birthday – note the source.

As you gather more and more evidence of an event, you can weigh the quality of the sources and the data. This is especially useful to researchers who build on your work. One day some cousins kid will ask for a copy as a basis of their work. Give them a break and note your sources. Also it’s a reminder down the track of why you thought your great-great-grandmother was four years younger than her mother.

The rest of this post gets technical and is for researchers and my personal notes. Let’s say you want to save the audio interview with your Grandmother as supporting evidence for a number of people and events.

The GEDCOM standard 5.5 allows you to link an INDIvidual or EVENt record to an embedded binary file as a  Level 0 Multimedia OBJEct in a BLOB item. This is a text-encoded form of the picture/recording/pdf/whatever your file is. So wherever you use Nanna’s recording you might be tempted to link to that original recording so that you can access it immediately.

Two problems. 1) My experience is that text-encoding binary data is very bad. 180 lines of text in a Word document will become nearly 1,000 lines once it’s text-encoded. It is not efficient. JPG’s and Audio files are much worse. So you want to keep the recording as a MP3 (or whatever format) in a media subdirectory outside your main genealogy program. But 2) the GEDCOM standard does not allow a Level 0 multimedia OBJEct to have a FILE attribute. You can force it but you will no longer comply with the standard and so you don’t know how your data will interchange with others.

The correct way to do this under GEDCOM 5.5  is to create a SOURce record for Granny’s interview and then add a Level 1 multimedia OBJEct to that SOURce record (so the OBJEct is contained in the SOURce). Then you can add a FILE item and point to the external .\media\ subdirectory. Now your data should interchange well with other researchers if you also give them your .\media\ subdirectory

GEDCOM 5.5.1 was a draft and never ratified to a standard. However you can add an external FILE item to a Level 0 multimedia OBJE. However 5.5.1 is not supported by as many programs, so you run into the data portability problem again.

So GEDCOM 5.5 would look like this:

  0 INDI @I001@
   1 BIRT
    2 OBJE
     3 FILE                (recommended)
    2 OBJE @O001
  0 OBJE @O001@
   1 BLOB                  (not recommended)

And GEDCOM 5.5.1 can do this

  0 INDI @I001@
   1 BIRT
    2 OBJE
     3 FILE                (possible)
    2 OBJE @O001@
  ...
  0 OBJE @O001@
    1 FILE                 (possible as well)

Comment below if you have questions.

I moved full time to a Mac a year ago. Here’s part 1 of my occasional series Your New Mac: a Guide for Windows Users

Things to do with Your New Mac

1. Download the Skype client for mac and for chat use Adium http://www.adiumx.com/ multiprotocol on Windows Live Messenger, GoogleTalk, ICQ, AIM, Jabber, QQ, Gadu-Gadu etc. Both are free.
2. Running Windows: Bootcamp is faster than parallels because bootcamp runs windows on your intel mac hardware, but you’ll have the stability and security issues of windows all over again. Bootcamp ships with Leopard
3. Create another folder in you “home” directory in finder and call it Applications – this is where you should drag and drop application that you install and test out. Keep your normal “Applications” folder for Apple default apps or stuff that must live there. Add/Remove programs is as simple as drag ‘n’ drop to your Applications folder. To remove drag the icon to the trash.
4. Email importing. If you were using POP3 with outlook or outlook express, copy your mail folders to a USB drive then mail.app should be able to import them. I moved via thunderbird and that imported my mail into the windows version of Thunderbird and then I dragged and dropped into mail on the Mac. see Moving Email from PC Outlook to Apple Mail for a brilliant guide
5. .mac is available as a 30 day free trial. A friend swears by it – I’ve never used it.

I’ll add to this series as time goes on. In the meantime comment below and I’ll answer your questions.

Firefox on Mac OS X does not clean up temporary files in the same way as the Windows version. When you right-click a PDF file and view it (instead of save) Firefox downloads it and then runs the browser helper application. Firefox has no way of knowing when you’ve finished with the file, so by design it does not delete it.

This can leave your desktop cluttered with PDF files and other assorted detritus of the web.

The location for saving temporary files from the Open with command is set by your Safari preferences on the General tab. Change Save downloaded files to… and pick something like Documents | Downloads | Temp. Firefox will now download files there with you chose Open with instead of Save. Your default Save location is still set in Firefox preferences.

Thunderbird also displays this behaviour.

The fix is

1. Go the the URL about:config (type it in the address line of Firefox)
2. Right/Control-click anywhere on the page and select New > Boolean from the context menu
3. Type or paste browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit as the preference name in the dialog box that pops up and select True for the value

Firefox will now automatically delete these Temp files when it exits.

For Thunderbird get to the config editor via Thunderbird > Preferences… > General > Config Editor… and add the same Boolean preference

If the old machine still has windows on it I use Craig’s PCI Programs to determine the Vendor ID and Device ID. I then go to PCI Database and look up the vendor ID/device ID pair. This works best for video drivers.
Alternatively I look up the Etherboot database to determine the best network driver.

If you’re keyboard-oriented, go into System Preferences | Keyboard and Mouse | Keyboard Preferences and Turn on full keyboard access. Now you can deal with dialog boxes the way you’re used to, as well as accessing menus and toolbars with the keyboard.

There is even a hint on getting the home and end keys to work more like Windows users expect them to. I’m struggling with their Mac behaviour, but I’ll perservere for now. Check out the Windows Centric tips

I got frustrated today when I went to a customer service PC and discovered it sitting at a windows 98 logon prompt and the boot CD missing. Now this machine will never work on the network from Win98.

I went to Alexandre Heinze excellent All drivers Etherboot floppy and How to Install Etherboot to a Hard Disk and followed his instructions. Using the floppy I created a 5MB partition and installed Etherboot with auto-detection of the NIC.

That machine will never boot to Windows again. And until the hard drive fails, we wont have support problems with it for a long time.

I’ve had some problems with PXE boot on this site so I don’t think that will be a fix for a while. But eventually I will get PXE working here and the standard build will change. When that happens we’ll remove hard drives from the PC’s and install a PXE enabled NIC. In the meantime, the client is happy.

Boot from Disc 1 (of 5)

Hit enter to boot into Anaconda, Fedora’s graphical installer. You can cancel out of the installation at any point up to Required Install Media. Nothing is written to the drive until after that step, so if you get lost (or need to check something) just reboot and start again.

Welcome to Fedora Core Next

Language Selection: English (English) Next

Keyboard Configuration: U.S. English Next

Installation Type: Linux Terminal Server Next

Disk Partitioning Setup: Automatic partition Next

Austomatic Partitioning: Remove all partitions on this system
I’m removing all vestigages of Windows from this server.
Tick Review (and modify if needed) the partitions created Next

Answer Yes to the Warning: You have chosen to remove all partitions (ALL DATA) one the following drives:
/dev/hda
Are you sure you want to do this? Yes

Disk Setup review the partion information. Note the swap partion size is approximately twice the physical memory. If you expect to add more memory to the server soon, change the swap partion to be about twice the expected physical memory. Next

Boot Loader Configuration Accept the defaults for the Grub boot loader. Don’t bother with a password or advanced options. Next

Network Configuration Due to the nature of the networks I support, I don’t use DHCP for external connectivity. Normally the external port is eth1 if it is a PCI card and eth0 is on the motherboard. You can see the MAC addresses for each card by clicking the Edit button. I don’t like manually configuring local networks in the tange 192.168.0.0/24 to 192.168.9.0/24 as there is too great a likelyhood of clashes down the track, especially if you want to set up VPN access for mobile users who have LAN’s at home. Given the class C private range allows numbers to range upto 192.68.255.0/24 I pick an IP address related to the postcode of the server’s location. In this test case it’s 192.168.27.254/255.255.255.0

As both ethernet cards have static IP addresses I give the server a manual hostname. e.g. ts27.zagz.com

Fill in the Gateway (to the internet – either a router or firewall), Primary, Secondary and Tertiary DNS. Blanks are OK for Secondary and Tertiary. Next

Firewall configuration My networks are protected by perimiter and deparmental firewalls. I don’t want to jump through connectivity hoops right now so I select No firewall. This is not a good network practice, but I’m reviewing the network security at the moment so I’ll enable it later.

I also leave Enable SELinux Active. There is a performance hit of up to 7% by doing this. For a small network I’d probably leave it off. On these servers we’ll disable SELinux at the boot menu later. Next

Warning - No Firewall Against my own advice I click Proceed

Time Zone Selection Select the nearest city in your timezone. Check that your selection is correct in the scrolling Location box. Our clocks do no use UTC as local reporting tools can’t all adjust UTC to local time. Next

Set Root Password Do not pick a dictionary word or combination of them. Check your caps lock status especially if you can type without looking at the keyboard. Don’t show off, look and make sure your typing what you think you’re typing. Pick something with upper and lower cases plus numbers. Users can and will break this server if they can guess this password so don’t wimp out here. Next

Package Installation Defaults You can install the default packages, but we need to make some changes. There is a bug in this CD set that crashes anaconda if I select certain individual packages, so I make some minimum changes to get what I want and will add/remove apps later. Skip to the next point if you install the defaults.
Select Customize softwares packages to be installed Next
Tick KDE (K Desktop Environment)
Untick Sound and Video (we’re not enabling that for the thinclient workstations.
Untick Games and Entertainment
Tick Server Confiration Tools
Tick Windows File Server
Tick System Tools Click Details tick ethereal-gnome, rdesktop and VNC, then click OK
Untick Education
Click Next

About to Install Next

Required Install Media will list Fedora Core 4 CD #1 to #4 if you chose my selections. Click Continue

Go get coffee while the drive is formatted, the file systems prepared and things get copied to the hard drive.

Change discs when requested. Fedora like most modern distibutions uses the discs in order and doesn’t ask for the same disc again later.

Click Reboot when the installation completes. Remember to take the disc out of the drive.

After the reboot
Welcome click Next

License Agreement Once you’ve read through the license agreement you can accept it and click Next. You do read any EULA’s that POP up on your systems don’t you?

Date and Time Make sure the current time is accurate. If your ISP provides a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server fill in the details in the tab. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find the Telstra/Bigpond NTP server address. I’ll configure a public NTP server later. Next

Display As we are at the server monitor, I generally go for no greater resolution that 800×600 Millions of colours. But it doesn’t really matter unless someone is going to be working at the server in a pseudo peer-to-peer network. Next

System User You will set up users accounts later. Enter your everyday username here. Whether you will be a normal user or not, create an account here even if it it called “support”. This is so you never log in as “root”. Just don’t do it, it is wrong on so many levels. You’ll do administator tasks via the “su -” command or their GUI equivalents. Next

Sound Card I don’t use sound on Terminal Servers. Next

Additional CDs. I don’t have any. Next

Finish Setup click Next

Fedora Login prompt appears.

Login as a user and install additional software in the folder on your Desktop. Install Adobe Acrobat, Flash and Fonts.

Next follow Stanton Finley’s excellent Fedora Core 4 Installation Notes for Yum to update the installation. Update: Read Stantion Finley’s site but beware of adding the repositories he mentions. It will kill your LTSP installation.
I’ll extend these LTSP installation notes over the next few days as our build continues.

DLINK print servers listen on ports 9100, 9101 and 9102 for multiport models and 9100 for the single port models

So all I have to do is configure my CUPS printing to point to the IP address of the print server and the port numbers are 9100 = LPT1; 9101 = LPT2 and 9102 = USB.

BTW the DP 300U defaults to 192.168.0.10 but if someone else has configured it, the only way to reset it to factory default is to download the D-Link windows software from the D-Link site, connect the PC and the DP300U to a hub and let the software find it. Then you can configure the device.