I was really happy with the new one, except for one thing – on my old keyboard I made heavy use of the numeric keypad, so I realised that neither the new keyboard nor the Macbook Pro keyboard itself offer a feature which was there on my older PowerBook G4: the availability of a numeric keypad equivalent by pushing the fn-key and 789/UIO/JKL/M.

Fortunately, I ran into a nice software by Takayama Fumihiko – KeyRemap4MacBook. It will activate the old functionality, and what is more, it has to offer all kinds of custom key remappings as well as customisation of key repeat rates and whatnot, just in case you need …

Luckily, I found the problem really quickly. How?

I logged on from another local computer using the Server Admin Tools. I could access the server! What the problem came down to is this (the image does not depict what was the case!):

In the Server Admin Settings, there’s a tab to control service access. Per default it is set to “For all services” and “Allow all users and groups”. But before the reboot, someone (and I am not going to tell who) ticked “allow only users and groups below”, while the field below was left empty. That meant that no user had access to the login window, at least that is what I assume to have been the problem. I changed the parameter back to “Allow all users and groups” and bob’s your uncle again!

There is a workaround/patch which allows building Macport’s OpenCV 1.0.0 on 64bit architecture, however, without any QT/Carbon support.

See here on the issue:
http://trac.macports.org/ticket/21014
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/OpenCV/message/65895

A ticket is filed at OpenCV on Sourceforge, too:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2859071&group_id=22870&atid=376677

Update:
#21014: OpenCV 1.0.0 does not build on snow leopard
——————————————-+——————————–
Reporter: grundmann.matthias@… | Owner: ryandesign@…
Type: defect | Status: closed
Priority: Normal | Milestone:
Component: ports | Version: 1.8.0
Resolution: fixed | Keywords: LP64
Port: opencv |
——————————————-+——————————–
Changes (by ryandesign@…):

Updated and fixed in r64069.

Adding the freshly set-up server to Server Monitor only produces the following error messages:

“Software not installed properly on server”
and
“CANNOT_LOAD_BUNDLE_ERR”

There are some posts about this issue on the web, so I wanted to let you all know what I found out.

One reason for the error can be a faulty DNS configuration. Check this by entering
$ sudo changeip -checkhostname
in your terminal. This might tell you if there’s a DNS problem. You might then refer to the Network Services Administration document on the Apple website, which gives some basic but useful information about DNS configuration.

Another reason might be the following: The Server Monitor tool only works together with a Mac OS X Server operation system that is installed on an XServe. It won’t work with an OS X Server installed on different hardware (as a Mac Pro, which turned out to be the problem in my case).

Please leave a comment.

Still, this is not easy to realise. I will try and explain it as clearly as possible, so that anyone should arive at getting it to run. However, you should be familiar with the shell (called ‘Terminal’) – if not, start reading about it now.

So lets do it. What we need is four pieces of software. The first is Colloquy (http://colloquy.info/, which we install just the usual way in our GUI environment). Second, we need Macports (www.macports.org, which is just a software managment software. We only need it to download and install the following two programs). Third, Tor (https://www.torproject.org/, the software for connecting to proxy mixes). Fourth, Socat (http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/, which is a software that can act as a network connections interface between other programs).

What we will build might look like the following:
(Colloquy) — (Socat) – (Tor) – (Tor Proxy)
The first three brackets show software which will run on our computer. As you can see, Socat will establish the connection between Colloquy and Tor, which will then connect to the Tor proxies on the web.

Now to the installing, configuring and running:

1. Get Macports and install it. You can get helpful info here: http://guide.macports.org/.

2. Via the shell, install Tor and Socat using Macports:
:~ sudo port install tor
:~ sudo port install socat
Both installation processes will take a while.

3. Configure and run Tor: See whether there is a file /opt/local/etc/tor/torrc. If there only is one called torrc.sample, copy it to the name of torrc:
:~ cp torrc.sample torrc
Then, run Tor:
:~ tor
The process should tell you something like:
“Tor has successfully opened a circuit. Looks like client functionality is working.”
Leave that terminal window open and get another one (cmd-n). You can stop the Tor process by ctrl-c.

4. Run Socat by entering:

:~ socat TCP4-LISTEN:6666,fork SOCKS4A:localhost:SERVERNAME:6667,socksport=9050

At the place of SERVERNAME, you have to enter the name of the IRC server you want to connect to.
Leave that terminal window open, too. You can stop the socal process by ctrl-c.

5. Configure Colloquy
Right-click in the Connections window to make a new connection. For the server name, enter ‘localhost’, and 6666 as the port number.

6. Chose that connection and click ‘Connect’. Now you should connect to the required server. Go into any room (or open one yourself), right-click on your user name and click ‘get info’ to make sure your IP and hostname are those from the Tor proxy you use (i.e. not those ones that your ISP provides you with).

See info on this issue on the web:
http://www.learnsecurityonline.com/index.php?option=com_mamboboard&Itemid=69&func=view&id=997&catid=41
http://blog.oneinsane.net/?p=14
https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#head-1793e1e8a4701ba463b5b82b33f59e787ff752f9

Suguru Goto, from a technical, artistic, and philosophical perspective, investigates the body as a distributed phenomenon which involves questions about the other, identity, and postmodern culture. Deleuze and Guattari come to mind, but also topics as embodied, distributed cognition, action-perception loops, cyborg culture or posthumanism.

If you’ve been reading some Deleuze/Guattari, you might have met the idea of the Body without Organs, and also that of the Rhizome. In this context, it could be not too wrong to express the interest of Augmented Body and Virtual Body II – netBody like this:

A body cuts into the streams of de- and reterritorialisation. By this, it constitutes a block the specifity of which lies in that it is not only subject to an actualisation of the virtual in the process of de- and recodings, but also the subject of such an actualisation (the brain as a body, or as a special image under other images, as Bergson put it – my body is part of my brain). To me, identity seems to have a lot to do with a system experiencing that its parts makes a whole just in the sense that e.g. the hand you can observe do all these things for you simply does not leave you (this maybe is opposed to a constitution in the sense of mirror stage).

Thus, the body seems to be double: On the one hand, it constitutes a natural kind, a system demarkating itself in constantly performing a homeostasis. Mechanism connects here. On the other hand, there is meaning (maybe not signs in particular, but see the notion of the body as double in Sybille Krämer: Does the body disappear? In: Seifert, Kim, Moore (Eds.) Paradoxes of Interactivity, Bielefeld: transcript, 2008 (in print)). Social processes which actualise themselves in this peculiar domain are bound to ideological conceptions. By that, one can say that it is also ideas that cut into the streams, viz. in the order of language (which is the main topic of Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense).

This is the field on which Augmented Body and Virtual Body II – netBody plays. You might have a body that is not completely yours. It functions in the context of nature as well as culture. E.g., bodies are defined by natural neccessity and possibility, as well as by social images of the order of representation, but also here there is possibility (e.g. performance), and the very processes which constitute its meaning. Now, technology sets a starting point for bringing the interactions between these two orders to attention. Conceptions of physical and social identity, physical and social alienation are spotlighted the moment that your body is not yours.

Being opened to the outside means engaging in processes which can control you, which might hurt you. You feel. Your body is controlled from the outside. You are a cyborg. You are a machine (D&G, but also Wiener: Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine). What is this that happens to you? And what do you have to do with it?

Let me elaborate on the net-aspect another time ^^;

I can only tell you this much: If you’re too far away (or just too immobile to attend ^^), you can also see the whole thing on Second Life (no exclamation mark, although this is an interesting aspect). Projections from Real Life will be seen in Virtual Reality, and Projections from VR will be seen in RL. You can get there by this link: netBody on SL. Also, feel free to take a look here Rob’s blog, and here Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

^^ Some of you might have got that already, so here’s another piece of that from the last couple of months.

I mentioned this Robotic Exoskeleton in the foregoing post, so let me tell you some more about it. It is part of a perfomance artwork by Suguru Goto. I was, together with a couple of other persons, involved in the development of the shoulder mechanism. What we did was figuring out how a wearable, computer-controlled mechanism could be achieved that would allow for a human shoulder joint to be externally controlled. We did some research into anatomy, mechanics/mechatronics, did work out some ideas, built some simple prototypes, and finally came up with what we got now. It is quite a simple mechanism consisting of two motors per shoulder. Lots of testing and adjustment followed. Then it had to be integrated with other parts, i.e. elbow-, wrist-, and head control. Suguru came up with a lot of that. Here’s him and the Exoskeleton in an in-between stage:

The performance will be next Monday, a post on this is following soon. Everybody will be invited!