(maybe it's your proxy?) Cisco AnyConnect: Secure VPN connection terminated locally by the client. Reason 403: Unable to contact the secure gateway.

[from 2010, bit me once and stole an hour or two of my time..]
Caution:  technical networking discsussed

From the Cisco AnyConnect vpn software:
Secure VPN connection terminated locally by the client. Reason 403: Unable to contact the secure gateway.

This was from WinXP running in a vm on my Mac.  Worked under two other vm's fine.

I could ping the VPN host fine. This WinXP machine was setup with some port forwarding and squid, because they took away the Mac client for no reason. So, this VM was my gateway (application-level routed..).

I tried rebooting; updated the VMware tools too; I thought this might be the issue. Updated the VMware tools on another machine, it was fine. Checked for any other DTLS (datagram transport layer security--basically, SSL over UDP) vpn clients that might work with Cisco but didn't find any.
I was about to start sniffing the traffic to see what was actually happening at the wire level.

I decided to just uninstall it; after all, it couldn't get more broken that it already was.
Uninstall was successful, so I started a browser to make the SSL connection which automatically downloads and installs the client. Right away, an error in IE: 'Check your Internet connection'.

The proxy! I forgot all about it, and hadn't started it because I didn't have the VPN connection up, and without the VPN, the proxy was of little use... I only use the proxy for tunneling to the one internal network that I access via VPN by use of a pac (proxy auto-config) file.

However, I had set IE in the VM to use the proxy, not for access, but for timing analysis by checking the squid access log. And then I left the configuration in, and got hit when AnyConnect tried to next connect.

I wouldn't expect it to use the proxy, but there is probably an initial connect check that it does over TCP.

keyboard shortcuts: Disable front row (OSX), NetBeans

I use the keyboard far more than mouse..

• cmd-tab to switch applications
• cmd-` for windows, Aquamacs buffers
• ctrl-tab for tabs in browsers, buffers in NetBeans

Occasionally I miss and hit cmd-ESC, which does the worst thing -- stops my music, fades everything to black,
and then brings up the front row icon. Luckily hitting ESC again makes it go away, but it's an annoying interruption. Every time I say "I have to disable that..." and put it off.

No more.

Cmd-space keyboard to access System Preferences.
The shortcuts come up, Front Row is the fourth icon for me;
select, click checkbox on the right,
done!

Now, cmd-ESC is the same as ESC.. I thought there would be a good shortcut to use this for, but I can't think of a better one.

Links:

• Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts - Article: HT1343 (last Modified: June 25, 2010)

• Top 10 NetBeans IDE Keyboard Shortcuts I use the most
  a little old, but has some ideas.

Any other favorite shortcuts ?
New tools?
Been meaning to look into ubiquity...

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to Control iTunes Using Custom Keyboard Shortcuts (maketecheasier.com)
• Keyboard Shortcut to Open Mac OS X System Preferences (tantek.com)
• How to Manage Your Touchpad and Avoid Unnecessary Typing Errors (maketecheasier.com)
• Use Sense-Lang To Learn Touch Typing & Improve Typing Skills (makeuseof.com)
• imabonehead: NetBeans Platform Testing Tutorial (platform.netbeans.org)

org-mode says: Warning: Bug in outline-mode: it forgets to call `run-mode-hooks'

Warning: Bug in outline-mode: it forgets to call `run-mode-hooks'

I just encountered this error when visiting a .org file and finding I was in outline-mode.
No changes to any of my init files...  M-x org-mode gave the same error.

This error is pretty uncommon apparently, and only occurs under the conditions as listed here:
https://groups.google.com/group/aquamacs-devel/tree/browse_frm/month/2012-01/5da332defbd6a9f0?rnum=211&_done=/group/aquamacs-devel/browse_frm/month/2012-01?&pli=1

In aquamacs 2.4, I found that if I opened a remote file using tramp, and then open an org file either locally or remotely, org mode will fail to start.  If I restart the org mode, aquamacs will report that certain features from outline mode are missing.

The problem can be fixed if one reload the outline library again by hand using M-x load-library: outline, and then restart org mode.

It always happens when tramp is loaded before the org-mode. If a org file is opened before tramp, then subsequent tramp does not break the org mode.

So, there's the cause:

• Calling tramp before org-mode
  (apparently only loads certain pieces of code that makes org-mode think outline is loaded, though it isn't)

And the solution:

• M-x load-library outline
• M-x org-mode,  or normal-mode,  or visit the .org file again

Is it fixed in later tramp / orgmode / aquamacs distribution ?

Comparing computer benchmarks

[this post was previously mangled into markup garbage somehow.]

Get the geekbench program--

this will give you some kind of performance number for your laptop/desktop/server:
http://www.primatelabs.com/geekbench/

Also you can view results others have posted here:  http://browser.primatelabs.com/
(search by model, processor type, etc. and view the range of results expected.

This type of metric is much more meaningful for comparisons than 'GigaHertz' -- processor speed.
Going simply by CPU speed is like comparing a sports car to a semi-trailer truck.
Your specific needs will depend on whether you just want to get somewhere fast, or have a lot of stuff to haul.

tab sweep, 2012.01.22 part 1

I had the idea of doing a tab sweep before I ever heard it called that, but having found this name, I might as well use it.  Sharing is better than not (unless it's crap(), links are the spider silk that holds the web together, and writing a one-line review will help me remember it better than simply adding it to another bookmark folder etc.  And it may inspire some discussion and knowledge sharing, or at least serendipitous clicking...

• http://www.codemaps.org/ -- apparently has been around for a couple years; there are some diagrams of open source packages like Lucene... okay, on closer look it appears this is mostly(?) advertisement for an eclipse plugin from Architexa that does UML diagramming for mostly java.  Which is fine.  But like other academic spin-offs, it is unclear how much backing and (business) drive behind, balanced against how much more useful it might be if it were given away, and how much more it might be adopted.
  And the related business issues:  "How do we make money if we give it away?"  ".. but then N-times more people will use it, a small portion will result in sales/licensing/training/customization" etc.
  There is some paper on something called 'codemaps' that might be a visual studio plugin..
  As with mindmaps, UML diagrams seem to have a useful life only during part of the learning curve; after you are familiar enough with the terrain, the map is no longer useful.  Or you need a different, showing different information, at different scales.
  I am also interest in 'active' maps -- I'm not sure I've seen a UML diagram displaying runtime activity or stats, except maybe special purpose in some academic papers.
  For UML diagramming while learning code / class relationships and similarities,
  ArgoUML is pretty nice.  Read in your source files and then you can drag-n-drop classes of interest and it automatically adds the relationships.  Hmm..  how to handle updates?
  UMLGraph is free and can be automated; there is an ant task that can add diagrams to your javadoc too, but since it's really a diagram specification, and GraphViz handles the drawing, it is not tied to any language or tools or formats..
  
  I like the concept of being able to 'visualize software' but haven't seen the magic bullet yet..
  
• Tracking the Trackers: Where Everybody Knows Your Username from Stanford Law School
  not particularly new for me, because I have been at one of the top online ad companies, and took part in design of a project that would receive user info from the ISP (income, demographic profiles) and join it with other information providers than had credit scores, household buying info, etc.
  There are a number of links and tools there to follow, and also a well-described methodology.  I am somewhat inspired against to work on a rule-based rewriting proxy that can persist my browsing history or be use for spidering / heuristic search, and also answer / collect info on topics like
   - how many sites use X (where X is some package, framework, software version, hosting provider, technology feature, etc.)
   - what ad networks does this site use, and the reverse query
   - what is this cookie format?  how is it decoded?  and, (if multiple users shared this) how does it vary per user?  can it be hacked?
   - how often is this (html) tag actually used?  who uses it (a package, a tool generator, a design firm)? 
   - trend analysis (when did this term first appear / reach some threshold), latent semantic tools
   - general IR capabilities, because information is easier to retrieve when you have information.
  
  Something like muffin (a customizable proxy with plugin architecture), db storage, a simple rule base handles a lot of this..

.. that was only like 2.5 tabs I had; to be continued.