The logo at the top of the [...]]]> I just finished re-designing this site. It’s drastically simpler, and there will be some more interesting and newer content up soon, interesting old content will be re-organized into a “projects” section, and ramblings and news will be left where they belong… right here on the blog.

The logo at the top of the page, was a self portrait that turned in to a useful design element. Adobe Illustrator’s live trace function is a bit picky, so I ended up turning up the contrast, and the editing the face into two segments for live trace to digest (see mangeled photo).

The site is running on WordPress. Nothing new, but I did buy a copy of PageLine’s PlatformPro to keep myself from completely reinventing the wheel. It’s a great theme, it probably does 90% of what 90% of users want right out of the box, but you still need to know some basic wordpress hacking to squeeze that extra 10% out.

Paste Interview, and new tune download

A new project I’ve been involved in, Wages, just finished up the first round of mixes. Another project with Hank Sulivant producing.  I’m the engineer, bass player, and even have a song that I wrote and co-sing (Nick Campbell lends his voice to make me sound legit).  James Dedakis [...]]]>

A new project I’ve been involved in, Wages, just finished up the first round of mixes. Another project with Hank Sulivant producing.  I’m the engineer, bass player, and even have a song that I wrote and co-sing (Nick Campbell lends his voice to make me sound legit).  James Dedakis on the drum kit. Check out all of the tunes here.

What’s more astounding is that we weren’t [...]]]> I had the pleasure of engineering the Colour Revolt’s upcoming release with Hank Sulivant producing. Everyone involved where such pro’s, we really had a well oiled machine running in the Church at Echo Mountain. 7-days , all of the basics live to 2″ tape, tracking done.

iPhone Photo Credit: Daniel Davison

What’s more astounding is that we weren’t rushed, and there was a good deal of creative decision making going on despite the tight timeline. My favorite kind of session. I can’t wait for the release date so that I can share the finished product.

Mac OSX comes with SSH, so setting it up wasn’t too hard, and I found a new VNC viewer JollyVNC that is really top notch. The author also has a really inrteresting VNC based product called “screenrecycler” that turns any spare [...]]]> So I had to figure this out this week, and it’s quite cool.

Mac OSX comes with SSH, so setting it up wasn’t too hard, and I found a new VNC viewer JollyVNC that is really top notch. The author also has a really inrteresting VNC based product called “screenrecycler” that turns any spare computer/display in to an extra monitor.

Setting up the SSH Server

This site has a great overview

http://www.stocksy.co.uk/articles/Mac/ssh_on_mac_os_x/

and Redhat Magazine has details on customizing your setup, just ignore some of the paths they reference for linux, all of the Mac OSX config files are in /etc/ .

Basically, you just enable Remote Login and OSX turns on the SSH server. Make sure your firewall will forward this port.

Edit the sshd_config file found in the /etc/ directory to suite your servers needs. Recommended security, set “AllowRootAccess no” and “AllowUsers ” to only allow users that have a strong password, also you can change the SSH port number from the defualt 22 to something more obscure in the “services” file. See Adam Knight’s Blog on Mac Geekery for more security tips.

Tip: sshd_config is the server side config file and ssh_config is the client side config file.

Setting up the VNC server

I use Vine VNC server, it’s opensource, free and is easy to setup. Set a Password and a Port, and you’re good to go.

Configure The Setup

I had a couple of VNC servers behind my firewall, so I setup one of them as the SSH server. After you tunnel in you can connect to any of the computers behind the firewall. It can be very helpful to define a ssh_config (local client) config file for your remote network to streamline your Tunneling. You can then run it using “ssh -F CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE_HERE RemoteHost”

The config file below will define a remote host, and then define the relationshp between a few local ports, and remote computers behind the firewall. This same setup can be used for any server/port on your network not just VNC.

#Define tunnel to Remote Machine
Host RemoteMachine
    #Define Remote Host
    #SSH Server to Initiate Tunnel
    HostName ssh.XXX.net
    Port 22
    User SECUREUSER

    # Forward Local Ports to Remote VNC ports
    LocalForward localhost:5910 192.168.1.10:5900
    LocalForward localhost:5911 192.168.1.11:5900
    LocalForward localhost:5912 192.168.1.12:5900
    LocalForward localhost:5913 192.168.1.13:5900

#End Config

If you save this in a new config file, for example “homeTunnel_config” you can run “ssh -F homeTunnel_config RemoteMachine”. Much simplier than running SSH on every machine and tunneling to each individually using for example “ssh -L 5910:127.0.0.1:5900 SECUREUSER@ssh.XXX.net”.
To make it even easier put the config file in your user’s preferences folder, and write an AppleScript to automate it all.

set PrefPath to path to preferences folder from user domain as string
set ConfigPath to POSIX path of PrefPath & "homeTunnel_config"

tell application "Terminal"
	activate
	do script "ssh -F " & ConfigPath & " RemoteMachine sleep 30"
end tell

A terminal window will popup and you enter your password, you have 30 seconds to utilize the SSH tunnel or else it will close, after the application using the tunnel quits, the connection will close.

Connecting

So, after you open the SSH tunnel, run your VNC client, since you are tunneled in and have forwarded the local ports, you just need to connect to the appropriate local port. So in your VNC client you can enter “localhost:5910″ or whatever the appropriate port number is.

I mocked up a jtm45 chassis in SketchUp for Mathew at Suspect Device Audio. He’s working on an awesome marshall jtm45 offset prototype clone, sometimes called the “kitchen” amps, because jim marshall built them in his kitchen. It should be pretty cool, I’ll post pictures of the faceplate and chassis when we get [...]]]>

I mocked up a jtm45 chassis in SketchUp for Mathew at Suspect Device Audio. He’s working on an awesome marshall jtm45 offset prototype clone, sometimes called the “kitchen” amps, because jim marshall built them in his kitchen. It should be pretty cool, I’ll post pictures of the faceplate and chassis when we get them back.

UPDATE: Long overdue, but just in case. Matt built a couple of these bad boys for Echo Mountain Recording, and they sound killer.