I just went through some fun (you can replace fun with eye gouging pain) figuring out how to automatically install iPrint printers on Mac OS X.

The first thing I found out is that any version lower than 5.00 from Novell is totally broken and useless in every way. So if you are using iPrint from Novell, you should definately download that and install it on all your Macs.

Once you get that done you have a lovely iprntcmd utility that you can use for all kinds of useful stuff (we'll get into that later), but you still can't upload Mac drivers with a Mac. How difficult would it be to just make iManager work across platforms for Printing Novell? Hmmmm?

So now you have to... gasp... use Windows XP. Its easy enough to just load up VirtualBox and run a session right on your Mac. You are going to need access to all the print drivers on your Mac anyways so copying the ones you need to your home directory and sharing them out to your VirtualBox VM is pretty easy and useful. If you don't run it in a VM on your Mac, then you will need to share or copy whatever print drivers you will need to upload to your iPrint servers so you can get to them from a Windows XP box of some type.

So upload the drivers already (RTFM on Novell's website if you don't know how to upload and assign drivers for iPrint). I'm really putting this up here so I can remember it anyways and I already know how to do that! :)

Now the fun begins.

To install a printer just type:

iprntcmd -a ipp://iprintserverhere/pathtoqueue

I can't think of a much crappier install than Pinnacle Studio 12 for automated deployments other than perhaps some Adobe stuff. Their msi gives you absolutely no way of filling in the information ahead of time for your serial number and registration information. I wonder if the folks at Pinnacle have heard of a little thing called large friggin workstation deployments! I started down the horrible nightmarish road of having to use AutoIt to manually pump keystrokes into the registration dialogue box. Oh man did I hate that! OK rant over. All that being said, I kind of stumbled upon a solution.

Here is how I got it working.

First I ran the install and manually went through the registration process. Evidently this creates a bunch of files in "c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Pinnacle\Pixie". If these files exist before you start the install process on a workstation, the registration information will already be setup in the registration dialogue. Hmmm fascinating!  

So basically I just setup a little pre distribution script that copies those files down before I start the silent install of the MSI. 

xcopy /y/e/s/i/q/r "\\Network Location\pinnacle-studio-12\Pinnacle" "c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Pinnacle"

The network location is the "Pinnacle" directory that goes under "Application Data"

I have been a huge fan of Leo Laporte for a really long time. The man really knows technology. He is one of the few tech broadcasters that really seems to get it. He has really driven "podcasting" to new levels. I've half stolen his Twit.tv model for my own podcast that I run at Lords of Tyr (a gaming group that I am a member of). Someday maybe I'll be the Leo Laporte of D&D podcasting? I can only dream!

Leo is forever young, which is perhaps why he is so darn relevant. Actually I think he is beyond relevant. He is a pioneer. He was at the Diggnation taping the other day. He broadcasted is live over his Twit.TV network and what did he do? He crowd surfed while filming it! He is the man. End of story!

Look, I don't like to bag on Comcast, but heck this is about the dumbest name ever. If you are going to have infinity in your name, you can't be going around yelling about limiting bandwidth hogs! OK Comcast?

Perhaps they are just referring to the ability for their monthly bill to become infinitely large? Or maybe they want to describe how long you need to wait at home, while missing, work for one of their repair techs to show up? 

I don't get the rebranding at all. I'm pissed that some of my monthly payments was actually used to pay some marketing jock to come up with this horrid idea. Pants on the ground Comcast! 

I Just finished watching the Apple announcement online via live.twit.tv (Over 114,000 viewers!). The biggest piece of information is probably the price point. It is much lower at $499 that I thought it would be. Additionally the $14.99 250mb/month and the $29.99 unlimited price points for data plans with AT&T are lower than I expected as well.

I think all of the so called "ebook" readers out there (Kindle etc...) are in serious trouble. The fact that the iBook store exists is huge. I'm not a big fan of Apple's closed attitude towards their hardware and software, but having the iTunes/iPhone/iBook eco system is very user friendly. Its something that perhaps only Google, at this point, could ever compete with. Certainly Microsoft doesn't have anything close to this as far as content and ease of use.

As an Ubuntu user, I enjoy the easy to use repository of free applications that are available to me without any hassle. iPhone and now iPad users enjoy a similar easy of use to get to applications (those poor Apple fans have to actually pay for a ton of their apps though!). What does Microsoft have? Nothing. They have a huge number of apps, but they are horribly smushed across the Internet in an unrelated uncaring mishmosh. With no useful easy to use eco-system. Microsoft just doesn't have a chance.

So I've been working on getting all the Mac Workstations setup to use ARD at the college that I work for. I ran ARD on our Xserve to search for and capture all the Macs in one of our labs. But since then I haven't been able to remote into the Xserve. I keep on getting the following error.

An administration application is currently running on this computer and will not allow you to remotely control the screen

Well that stinks! Now I have to go way up to the computer room and see what is going on. Or do I? Heck no! I figured that the "administration application" that was currently running must have been ARD. So I can just kill it from the command line. So I ssh'd into the server and ran:

ps aux |grep Remote

That lists anything running with the word Remote in it. ARD is listed as "Remote Desktop". So I copied its PID number and ran:

kill -9 [PID of Remote Desktop]

Then I could once again remote control the Xserve from my desktop. However I wanted to make sure I wouldn't have to go through this all again. So I started poking through the preferences of ARD. Under "Security" I found a check box called "Allow control of this computer when this application is running". I checked it and now I can remote into the Xserve just fine again.

I love ssh!

In other news, the earth is round. Consumerist reports that Best Buy is up to their usual dasterdly tricks. They advertise an inexpensive computer. Then when you go to purchase that computer they only have ones that have been "optimized" by the Geek Squad for $39.99 more than the advertised price.

This is shameful and it should be illegal. Not only because they don't seem to be able to sell an item for the advertised price, but because their optimization service is a monumental joke. At best it will remove a few icons from the desktop (but not the actual crap programs that they point to... Like AOL, Symantec Virus Protection, etc...). At worst, they will lose parts for the PC like power cords or actually make it run slower! Good Lord people!

This just in! Consumerist Reports that Best Buy's Mac Optimisation Service Also Sucks!

How do you avoid this problem? NEVER EVER SHOP AT BEST BUY! Unless you are getting a price on something that makes you feel like you are ripping them off (hardly ever) just run away from that horrid place. There are plenty of other places to buy great computers from. Namely, I would look at Amazon, Newegg, HP, Dell, ASUS, and... well ANY other place.

Microsoft and Fox cooked up a sponsorship of Seth and Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show. Seth and Alex of Family Guy fame. Not exactly your "this sitcom rated for corporations" kind of duo right? I guess South Park wasn't available? Well I guess after seeing a rehearsal of the cutting edge comedy they dropped the sponsorship like virus infected Vista PC and ran back to Seattle.

Microsoft isn't cool enough to pull that off anyways. Especially after seeing horrid stuff like the "Windows 7 Party" video. Microsoft couldn't have pulled off sponsoring reruns of "The Golden Girls" (R.I.P. Bea!). Balmer is not "Steve Jobs" cool. Balmer is a goofball who reminds me of a junior high school gym teacher. I'm sure he's a perfectly find person. He just doesn't seem like a leader or a visionsary type of guy to me. Gates didn't seem to be much of a leader to me either, but he sure had the visionary/schemer thing down. The execution of his visions made lots of money, but never inspired the rabbid loyalty or fandom of the users of his technology.

Ah Drupal! How I think you are the most awesome! Well the White House thinks so too! As of October 25th, 2009 http://whitehouse.gov is now Drupalized!