How Dropbox Found My Stolen Laptop

Are memes still cool?  Anyway, thought this guy would fit.

I was away at a conference when I got the call from my wife.  It was about 6pm, and my wife and 6-month-old son had just gotten back from a 2-hour play date.  Our apartment door was hanging off its hinges, and our electronics, including my wife’s MacBook, were gone.

Being the average Americans we are, we hadn’t written down any serial numbers.  Being the average 20-somethings we are, we had our lives on our laptops, including all our son’s baby pictures other than the handful we’d put online (and unlike most parents you may know on Facebook, that wasn’t a whole ton). There were no fingerprints, no witnesses, and no leads.  Basically, there was no hope, and the police weren’t bashful about saying it.  If only, we lamented, we had installed some kind of tracking software on the laptop! We had renter’s insurance for our stuff, but it wouldn’t replace the pictures or the frustrating lack of justice.

After the painful process of hunting down serial numbers and filing police and insurance reports, we turned to sanitizing our digital lives.  Her laptop auto-signed her in to just about everything, so e-mail and website passwords had to go.  She had Dropbox installed, so we figured we’d clear out the files and deauthorize her old laptop (though I did toy with the idea of planting some honeypot-esque security program in it for a while.  If only I had more free time!)  We got on my computer, Chromed over to dropbox.com, and headed to Dropbox’s security settings.  By now, it was about 4 days post-theft.  Sure enough there in the list of devices was “White MacBook”, most recent activity… 3 hours ago?!  Her laptop was still signed in!

Now, in case you didn’t know this yet, here’s a tip: Dropbox not only tracks the devices that have accessed your account, but shows you the IP address they accessed it from.  Not only had our thief not wiped the hard drive, he/she hadn’t bothered to turn off Dropbox.  (I suppose if they were tech-savvy sorts they probably wouldn’t spend their afternoons bashing in apartment doors). Dropbox was now our secret laptop-tracking software.

A few minutes on Google told me the IP was a local address held by Time Warner Cable.  I called them and asked if they could link their IP addresses to street addresses, and they said they could, at least for a police officer with a subpoena.  Fortunately, I had watched enough Law and Order to know what that was, so I hung up and called the police.  The first guy I talked to didn’t sound too enthused, but we wrote it all down nonetheless.  Then we waited.

Monday we got a call from a detective who sounded a bit more tech-savvy; he had asked to be assigned to our case.  By this time, the IP address had changed, so we gave him both IP addresses and the number to call at Time Warner.  He called us again to say he’d filed the appropriate subpoenas.  Then we waited.

About a week later, our detective told us the subpoena had been served and he’d investigated the address.  It was some auto shop that “didn’t even have internet.” (How that makes any sense I don’t know.  It’d be like getting a call from a number and the phone company tracing it to a barn with no phone.  But hey, I’m no detective).   He was still waiting to hear about the other address, so we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  We checked Dropbox about once a week to make sure the IP address hadn’t changed, and we waited.  Finally, months after we’d given up, we got another call.  The subpoena for the second address had been served, and this time it was residential.  They got a search warrant, and told us they would be going in soon. 

Two days later, they had our laptop, some other gadgets, and an arrest.

A few signatures in a book downtown, and we were headed home with our stuff.  Our pictures and video on the laptop?  All still there.  Our insurance had already payed out and we had already replaced our stuff, so the recovered items are all headed to our insurer.  But not before we save the 10 months of pictures and video we just got back.

Now you might be thinking right now, ‘Wait, what if it was some poor college kid who bought the stuff on craigslist not knowing it was stolen? Poor kid…' Well, the guy had not just my wife’s laptop, but some of our other stuff as well, and more or less confessed to knowing it was stolen.  Given the cost of our stuff, that’s a felony offense of receiving stolen property.  On the other hand, he seems to be keeping quiet about who he bought it all from, so we’ll see where that investigation goes. The detective tells me he also had a very lengthy criminal record and a half-million dollar house, so you can save your sympathy.  Was this the guy who bashed in our door?  Maybe, or maybe not.  But whether we caught the burglar or just a partner in crime, it feels good to have a little justice in the morning.

Fix Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client and Mac Lion (10.7) and Mountain Lion (10.8) Connection Problems

After upgrading my Macbook Pro to Mountain Lion and setting it up, I noticed I suddenly couldn't connect to my school's VPN server.  This meant no online textbooks, journal articles, etc.  After searching far too many message boards, I finally found an answer.

I finally found the answer in a blog post from an Indian news site. Apparently, Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client and Apple's "Back to My Mac" feature don't play nice with each other, so fixing it requires turning off Back to My Mac if you have it set up.  Score one for Indian tech support!

To fix it, open System Preferences, click iCloud, and deselect Back to My Mac.  It's that easy!

Unfortunately, until Cisco and Apple work with one another it looks like an either/or situation with the two services.

Find iPod's Serial Number (no iTunes backup required!)

After a recent break-in/theft, I had an iPod Touch stolen from my apartment.  Unfortunately, it was locked with a passcode, making trying to find it with Apple's "Find My iPhone" app nearly impossible as it needs WiFi to find itself.  Anyhow, I thought it would be nice to at least be able to tell the police a serial number in the astronomically low chance they find the scumbag culprit.  Problem: I did not know the serial number, and as it was my wife's, I did not have a backup on my computer (it was on hers, which was also stolen).  BUT!!! I had connected it to my computer before for charging and such, and despite iTunes's lim ited memory, the information lives on in your computer.

Finding the Serial Number Without iTunes

Your Mac keeps a record of all iPods it connects to.  I mean, it must to remember which ones to automatically sync and which ones not to, right?  The file can be found at:

Macintosh HD > Users -> [your user name] -> Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.iPod.plist

If you open the file in TextEdit or something it might get messy.  Just do the quick view by pressing spacebar and you should see lots of stuff that looks like this:

< key > SomeKey < /key > 

< string > Cool Technical Jargony Thing < /string > 

Look for the line after "< key > Serial Number < /key > ", and it should look like this:

< string > [your serial number here] < /string >

example:  < string > G8312CO150D4 < /string > 

And that, my friends, is your serial number.  There will be a separate entry for every iPod you've connected so if you own more than one, keep looking until you find the one that doesn't match the ones you have.

Not sure if this will ever actually help anyone recover a lost device, but happy hunting!

Tutorial: Make your desktop picture match the current weather

It changes with the weather!

I've had a problem recently.  I go to campus at 8am and sometimes don't leave until late afternoon or night.  And there are no windows.  Going in when it's sunny and coming out to find snow somehow makes life a little more depressing than it has to be, not because I don't like snow, but because I don't like the idea of being 100% cut off from the world.

Solution: By throwing together a little Unix code, AppleScript, and a free program called GeekTool, I make my desktop picture change to reflect the weather outside.  I use GeekTool to automate running the script at hourly intervals.  You could do this a lot of different ways with plists or other programs, but since I use GeekTool anyway it was the easiest.

What happens is that once an hour, GeekTool executes a Unix shell command that opens an AppleScript script.  The script (using a shell command) gets your current weather from an NOAA website, and sets a JPEG on your computer with a name that matches the weather as the desktop.

End result: your desktop picture matches the weather outside.

The How-To Part:

1. Make a folder in your Pictures folder called "Weather"

2. Open the "AppleScript Editor" application, make a new script, and copy and paste the code below into it:

--

--  DesktopWeatherman.scpt

--  2011.2.25

--  Mark Sawyer

--  bioquizzical.blogspot.com

--

#Find your weather region by going to www.weather.gov and clicking where you live.  The 3 letter code at the end of the new URL should be your region (ex: FOO)

#Change all instances of "CLE" to the weather region you're in (ex: /data/FOO/RWRFOO)

#Change "HOPKINS" to the city you're in (look at www.srh.noaa.gov/data/FOO/RWRFOO to find out what it calls your city)

#For example, if your region is FOO and you live in YUBA, the URL in the code should say "http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/CLE/RWRCLE | grep YUBA"

#NOTE! Your region might not have a RWR file.  If so... good luck!

# Also, your region might use slightly different weather codes. Look at www.srh.noaa.gov/data/FOO/RWRFOO to find out what codes it uses. 

set current_weather to do shell script "curl -s http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/CLE/RWRCLE | grep HOPKINS | awk '{ print $2 }'"

if current_weather is equal to "LGT" then set current_weather to do shell script "curl -s http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/CLE/RWRCLE | grep HOPKINS | awk '{ print $2,$3 }'"

set localFile to "~/Pictures/Weather/" & current_weather & ".jpg"

tell application "System Events"

tell desktop 1

set picture rotation to 1

set picture rotation to "never"

set picture to POSIX file localFile

end tell

end tell

It should look like this by the end.

3. Save the script in your "Weather" folder as "DesktopWeatherman.scpt".  You'll need to edit it to match your region and city.  Everything in the code immediately after a "#" is a comment. Follow the instructions in the comments.

4. Download and install GeekTool.  Make sure to click the "Enable" box when you install it!

5. Make a new Geeklet by dragging the "Shell" icon onto your desktop.  It doesn't matter where you put it.

6. In the "Properties" window in GeekTool, in the "Command" box type

osascript ~/Pictures/Weather/DesktopWeatherman.scpt

7. Still in the "Properties" window, in the "Refresh every" box, type 1800 (the weather site only updates every hour, so checking more frequently doesn't really make a difference).

8. Fill your Weather folder with pictures to match each possible weather status.  The name of each picture should be the weather status followed by ".jpg".  The status names might vary by region.  Follow the comments in the code to see what your region uses.  In most regions, the possible weather codes (I've seen) are:

SUNNY, FAIR, MOSUNNY, PTSUNNY, MOCLDY, PTCLDY, CLEAR, DRIZZLE, LGT RAIN, RAIN, FLURRIES, LGT SNOW, SNOW, FOG, MIX PCPN.

I'm not clear on exactly what some of these mean either, but this might help.

The directory should now look something like this:

I don't have files for every weather condition quite yet...

If it loads some default Mac picture instead of one of your weather pictures, it means you don't have a picture to match the current weather status.

9. To make it show the weather status in words on your desktop, make another Shell geeklet and in the "Command" box type:

curl -s http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/CLE/RWRCLE | grep HOPKINS | awk '{ print $2 }'

Of course, you need to change "CLE" and "HOPKINS" just like you did in the AppleScript.  The font I use is called "Trade Winds" and from Google Webfonts.

And that's it!  For obvious reasons this will only work in the USA, and you might have to tweak things to get it to work in your weather region. I guess outside of the USA you could still have it match the weather for a US city, I just have no idea who you would do that.

Anyway, enjoy your window to the world!

Attribution: The picture I used for my backgroup in the title was on so many scores of websites that I could not find the original owner.  Please let me know if you can!

Why I won't care about 4K resolution until I have a bigger TV

So along with the OLED wave coming, 4K TV seems to be coming.  4K TV is roughly 4 times the pixels of 1080p: 2x horizontal and 2x vertical.  Now, I think a bajillion pixels per inch would be cool, but would it really matter for the average viewer?  To be more specific, would anyone sitting 6 feet from a 47" TV display even notice a difference between 1080p and 4K resolution TVs?

Let's get some numbers and do some quick geometry.

Fact 1: According to Wikipedia, a healthy (20/20) human eye can discriminate two points that are 1 arc-minute, or 1/60 of 1˚ apart.  How this translates to width depends on the distance between the viewer and the points, as will be discussed.

Fact 2: 1080p means "1080 pixels tall by 1920 pixels wide",  4K means "2160 pixels tall by 4096 pixels wide".

Fact 3: A 47" TV is 23" tall and 41" wide. (This assumes a 16:9 aspect ratio.  If you are really good at mental math, you'll have noticed that 4096:2160 is a 256:135 aspect ratio.  For the rest of this, I'll just pretend that everything is 16:9).

Okay, now the geometry.  We know the minimum angle your eye can resolve, and we're assuming you sit 6 feet from your TV, so we can calculate the minimum distance between points (x below) your eye can resolve.

So, at a viewing distance of 6 feet we know that your eye can distinguish points as long as they are 0.021 inches apart.  What we want to know now is whether the pixels on some TV are far enough apart that your eye can tell the difference.  Instead of pixels per inch, we really want to know the inches per pixel, which we can calculate like this:

Now, let's look at the pixels on the 1080p standard on a 47" TV.  If we just take the horizontal axis, 1080p means 1920 pixels horizontally, and 47" TVs are 41" wide, so we can calculate the distance between horizontal pixels as follows:

So how would it look if we had a 47" 4K display?

The Verdict

The goal for a good TV is to get as many pixels as possible close together, but once you pass the threshold where your eye can't tell the difference any more, it does you no good!  So the test is this: is the distance between pixels on a TV smaller than the distance between points your eyes can distinguish?  

For a 47" TV from 6 feet, pixels are about 0.022 inches apart, and your eye can only distinguish points 0.021 inches apart.  So, if you, like me, are watching a 47" TV from 6 feet, then congratulations!  Your TV has about as many pixels as your eye could ever care about!  So smile and relax, knowing that if someone swapped your set for a 4K display, you wouldn't even notice!  Unless you are sitting closer than 6 feet, you have it made!

If, however, you catch your shows on a 65 incher, or you really like to sit close when you play Halo, be excited for the 4K future of TV!  Of course, at 4x the file sizes, can you imagine how much buffering you'll sit through watching 4K videos on YouTube?!

To appease your curiosity,  I'm including some lines from my spreadsheet looking at other TV sizes.  Remember, the 0.021 inches "resolution" of your eye only applies if you sit 6 feet away, and these show the numbers for size and pixels in the horizontal axis (though vertical should be the same ratio).

3DTV is Awesome. Stop the Hate!

Count how many people are grimacing

and/or looking at the other movie watchers. 

Then see point 4 below.

I've seen a lot of stories in the news talking down about 3D in the home, saying that consumers aren't figuratively or literally buying it.  The literal part is somewhat true, and they have numbers to back it up.  But I have some objections.

1) When they talk about 3DTV sales, they always say something like "disappointing" or "less than analysts expected."

*My Objection:  Analysts saw the set, and thought, "This is AWESOME!!!  EVERYONE will be buying these soon, despite the expected higher-than-not-3D costs."  Eventually, however, sales are modest.  Modest, but not nonexistent, and not nonsignificant.

To me, the big predictions are a testament to the awesomeness of 3DTV.

2) When they talk about why people don't buy 3DTVs, people usually start in on a laundry list of 'sometimes reported' problems like nausea, not being able to see it, etc.  The not being able to see it part is pretty clear, but nobody seems to report numbers for nausea, headaches, and so on.  The problem I see is that most every article I've seen in the news, etc.  is written by some random person who saw a demo at a store for a few minutes.

*My Objection:  Remember the seizure warnings on video games?  Some people have serious problems with that.  Some people also have serious problems eating gluten, while the rest of the world lives our happy gluten-filled lives.  MOST people see 3D just fine, no headaches, nausea, or anything of the kind. And that the people hand down a sentence on technology they saw for 1-2 minutes in a showroom is ridiculous.

3) People keep saying 3D is a "gimmick".

*My Thoughts:  Sure!  In fact, I've been meaning to wear an eyepatch around to abolish this gimmickry from the rest of my life too!  You know how it is, it gets so distracting when you're trying to watch a perfectly flat football game on your perfectly flat TV and you suddenly realize that your kitchen appears further away than your sidetable. In fact, I've thought about turning off color on my TV to stop those darned hues distracting me from the powerful human drama that is "Everybody Loves Raymond".

To be serious, sometimes filmmakers put in gimmicky things, like swords in your face.  Some amusement park rides are rollercoasters, where the motion is manipulated to throw you off guard because you find it more exciting that way, and some rides are Ferris wheels where the motion just adds to the richness of the experience.  If my Ferris wheel took a deep dive, I'd think 'Who the heck made this thing?', not 'I've about had it with these moving amusement park rides.'

4) Well those goofy glasses are just so uncomfortable and weird looking.

*My Objections:

A-Uncomfortable? WHAT?  Okay, maybe the active shutter style ones are uncomfortable, but I wouldn't know as I've never used them. My passive ones, on the other hand, I've worn all the way down the stairs and into my car before I remembered I was wearing them.  And I don't wear glasses.  These things are designed to be light weight, relaxed fitting, functional glasses.  Which leads to my objection to the goofiness argument :

B-Remember how people watch movies in the dark?  And they, most surprisingly, watch movies when they watch movies (as opposed to looking around the room judging everyone).  3DTV is for home use.  Home, you know, where you sometimes walk around in your underpants.  Where you get upset about whether somebody did or did not eat out of your tub of cottage cheese.  Yeah, wouldn't want those 3D glasses to cramp your style.  I'm sure, when you're sloshing your bowl of Cheerios on your Spongebob PJs and "I'm With Stupid ->" shirt that isn't pointing to anyone while watching a movie at 10pm you silently think to yourself 'Thank goodness I don't have those glasses, those might make me look goofy!'

5) There's not much content.

*My thought:  Partly true, and what's there is is expensive.  Just like VHS was.  Just like DVD was.  Just like Blu-ray was.  Just like the internet was.

MAJOR EXCEPTION:  Have a PS3?  Great!  A ton of new games are in 3D, and let me tell you that regardless of how you think 3D in movies is, 3D in games is AWESOME times about 10,000 ±2.  And given that (good) games generally last for hours and hours and have excellent replay value, you suddenly have HUNDREDS of hours of wonderfully immersive 3D content.

Conclusions:
   *Anti-3D hype is way more unfounded than 3D "hype", or "recognition of the awesomeness of 3D" as I prefer to call it.
   *Seriously, 3D is really awesome.

Qualifications:
    *I actually OWN a 3DTV, and use it to play 3D Blu-ray and 3D games, both of which are awesome. Both of which I've seen bad examples of, but I could also say that about movies, food, or people in general, all of which I'm still very fond of.