Category Archives: Tech

iOS Mail.app: when text doesn’t wrap while you’re writing an email

2 Comments

Writing email is one of those fundamental things most of us have to do, so you’d expect doing it on your iPad or iPhone to be pretty painless.

Lately, this hasn’t been my experience at all. I’ve found that text wraps fine when I’m reading emails, but when it’s time to write one (whether by replying or starting from scratch), I’m writing into a window with a horizontal scrollbar, which makes it impossible to see all of my text (or, for that matter, the text I’m replying to) without continuously swiping left and right to see the beginning and end of each line.

It’s like Mail.app is enforcing a message width wider than the window it’s giving me to write in. Super frustrating, especially for correspondence that isn’t pithy.

It doesn’t seem to be a new phenomenon, and none of the workarounds I’ve found on forums have worked for me:

  • rotating the device
  • power cycling the device
  • disabling “Increase Quote Level”
  • removing and re-adding the account
  • using Gmail instead of IMAP (I noticed the same behaviour on both types of accounts)

The only “solution” that “works” is dropping my iPad text size to the smallest available setting. But that makes text tiny across the entire device, and I’m too old for that.

I had just about given up on Apple’s Mail app when I noticed that hitting “Send Again”–on an email I had just sent with the wrapping issue–brought up the exact same message without the wrapping issue.

It turns out my fancy HTML signature (not actually very fancy–just a table to keep things aligned) was causing the whole thing. I’ve deleted my iOS email signatures and wrapping works perfectly.

Apparently Mail on iOS doesn’t know what to do when email signatures contain HTML tables. I’ll have to figure something else out. Meanwhile, hopefully this discovery (that took me far too long to make) will help someone else.

RPN mode in macOS Calculator

Leave a comment

If you’ve spent an unhealthy quantity of time with me, you already know that I have a bit of a thing for RPN (performing calculations without an “equals” operation at the end), HP calculators (even though they’re not built like they used to be), buttons with the proper tactile response, and other Very Important Considerations related to choosing a calculator.

It’s not important that serious calculators pale into insignificance beside modern smartphones and tablets. I will always cherish the memory of my HP32SII and no, I’m not weird, you’re weird.

Anyway, I discovered something in the built-in Calculator app in macOS High Sierra the other day: RPN MODE. Which means one doesn’t need to run the very excellent PCalc to confuse everyone who doesn’t understand RPN.

Seriously. Just press ⌘R.

Why wasn’t this mentioned during a keynote, Apple?

Update: it looks like this feature has been available since OS X Tiger. I’m shook.

Did you lose your Ubuntu 16.04 “Unity” desktop after apt-get dist-upgrade?

On 15 February, an update to compiz was pushed out by Ubuntu that triggered the removal of ubuntu-desktop, unity, and (on my system, at least) unity-tweak-tool.

The result: rebooting after doing an apt-get dist-upgrade leaves you with no desktop environment.

The fix: use aptitude to trigger a downgrade of the relevant compiz packages (first you might need to use Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get a terminal session, and you might need to install aptitude too).

Here are the commands I needed:

$ sudo apt-get install aptitude
$ sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop unity unity-tweak-tool

Reject the first “solution” offered by aptitude, and when it offers to downgrade compiz, accept. Then, if needed:

$ sudo reboot

Using your keychain with ssh-add on macOS Sierra

You might have noticed that macOS Sierra doesn’t offer to store private key passphrases for SSH in your user keychain anymore. It doesn’t automatically add SSH identities from your keychain, either.

Result: you need to enter the passphrase for each of your SSH keys at least once per session, where previously you could enter it once and never type it again.

Given the security implications of making it too easy to open an SSH session without authenticating yourself, I can’t fault Apple for this. But if you’re a heavy SSH user, you might agree that it’s more painful to work with now.

Thankfully, there is a workaround. I’ve just added this to my ~/.profile file:

if [ "$USER" != "root" ]; then

    if ! ssh-add -l | grep -q 'id_rsa.lkrms'; then

        ssh-add -A

        if ! ssh-add -l | grep -q 'id_rsa.lkrms'; then

            ssh-add -K "$HOME/.ssh/Keys/id_rsa.lkrms"

        fi

    fi

fi

Now, every time I open a terminal, ssh-add -l is grepped for id_rsa.lkrms. If it’s missing, ssh-add -A is called to add SSH identities from my keychain. If id_rsa.lkrms still hasn’t appeared, I will be prompted for my passphrase, and it will be stored in my keychain for future use.

No more HTTP: implementing Let’s Encrypt certificates

Once upon a time, SSL certificates were expensive, and getting them required multiple days of lead time.

Signing authorities have improved in both areas (i.e. cost and turnaround), but Let’s Encrypt has taken it to a whole new level. Their free certificate service moved out of beta earlier this year, and with my one-and-only SSL certificate coming due for renewal, I thought I’d take it for a spin.

Let’s Encrypt issue 90-day certificates (commercial authorities typically offer 12-24 month certs), so their service is designed to be consumed by automatic certificate management software rather than end-users. This means there’s no user-facing front-end – another departure from traditional CAs.

You’d be forgiven for thinking all of this sounds terribly complicated, but with certbot, it couldn’t be much easier (assuming you’re running your own server). You just download and run the certbot-auto script and follow the instructions. In my case, as an Apache user, getting this blog running on HTTPS was as simple as:

$ certbot-auto --apache -d lkrms.org,www.lkrms.org,arms.to,www.arms.to,lukearms.net,www.lukearms.net

This command looked after reconfiguring, testing and reloading Apache. Then I dropped the following into /etc/cron.d/certbot:

42 2,14 * * * root /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto renew --quiet --no-self-upgrade

Now, as my Let’s Encrypt certificates expire (or are revoked), they are automatically renewed. Twice daily.

Suck on that, NSA / metadata retention agencies / ASIO / AFP.

NO DATAS FOR YOU.

Installing Homebrew on El Capitan when SSL won’t give you a handshake

1 Comment

If you’re trying to do a clean install of Homebrew using the instructions on http://brew.sh, you’ll probably you might get this error:

curl: (35) Server aborted the SSL handshake

Apparently something is currently broken about accessing GitHub-hosted raw content via https://raw.githubusercontent.com. It’s probably nothing do with your curl version.

Here’s an alternate install command that worked for me:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://github.com/Homebrew/install/raw/master/install)"

You’re welcome.

UPDATE: it’s possible I was experiencing this issue due to intermittent problems with Telstra’s network.

App update notes

2 Comments

App update notes

Ben Brooks on The Brooks Review:

Stop wasting my time, stop wasting everyone’s time. If you want to write something cutesy, put it on your blog. Release notes should be clear, concise, well structured, and helpful.

Once upon a time, I thought it was great when creative/hilarious release notes appeared in my App Store updates tab. Now, I’m with Ben. Make them useful.

Developing for painfully slow Internet

5 Comments

Developing for painfully slow Internet

I’ve meaning to link to this piece for a while, but in my new role as a web developer, it takes on additional significance. Even for developers who aren’t targeting “third-world” users, the reality is that sometimes Internet links are slow, and building websites and web-based products that function admirably when bandwidth is severely limited should be one of our priorities. Click through for some good ideas on how to do this.

Running Ubuntu on a laptop? Annoyed by your flashing WiFi light?

This is such a serious #firstworldproblem you probably don’t even know what I’m talking about.

That’s OK. Wait for the next post. Google will bring my Linux desktop-loving geek friends to this one.

It’s a pretty easy fix on Ubuntu 14.04. Create a file called /etc/modprobe.d/wlan.conf with this inside:

options iwlwifi led_mode=1

And reboot. Your WiFi LED should stay on when you’re connected. Without blinking.

Thank you, other blogger.

Why Android still sucks

4 Comments

This is the second post in my November writing challenge series.

I’ve been an Apple convert for a few years now (I started to see the light in 2010-ish), but every 12-18 months, I grab a Google-endorsed device that can run the latest version of Android and put it through its paces.

I do this because I feel obliged to speak without ignorance on the advantages and disadvantages of the major mobile platforms. Also because playing with new tech is fun.

There’s more to it than the UI

When it comes to Android vs. iOS, the differences are much bigger than user experience. Apple’s business model is completely different to Google’s, which impacts on everything about its hardware, software and online services.

Some of the differences are less obvious than others. For example, Google’s efforts to retain and profit from its users’ data are no secret, but most people don’t realise just how much of their personal information is being passively disclosed. Apple, meanwhile, draws most of its profit from hardware sales and actively avoids the disclosure and retention of user particulars.

A more obvious difference is in the area of version fragmentation. Android hardware vendors aren’t obliged to provide timely software updates for their devices–even if they contain critical security patches–and most of them don’t. Meanwhile, iOS updates are made available, to all devices capable of running them, simultaneously. You can guess which of these ecosystems is riddled with unpatched, deprecated operating system software.

But let’s talk about the UI anyway

Assuming we’ve made peace with Android’s underlying constraints, the next question to ask is: how does its user experience stack up?

To find out, I tested Android “Lollipop” (5.1.1) on a Nexus 7 (2013 version). I tried to use it productively for about a week, in place of an equivalent iPad.

I accept that without migrating all of my data to Google’s cloud services, my experience of the platform wasn’t completely immersive, but hopefully you’ll agree that it was immersive enough to make a few meaningful observations.

1. Reading and typing

iOS always set a high bar when it came to the display, entry and editing of text, but with Lollipop, Android has caught up pretty comprehensively. Its new font (Roboto) is crisp and appealing; the default keyboard has an improved layout and responds without the lag of earlier versions; and working with text selections is much less frustrating than it used to be.

It’s not just the keyboard that’s more responsive. Animations are vastly smoother, and scrolling is finally on par with iOS. I can’t overstate the importance of these these improvements–they significantly increase user enjoyment and confidence.

2. App updates

Android’s built-in apps receive updates via Google’s Play Store. This allows core apps to be updated without the overhead of a full operating system update (great!), but it also makes for a volatile experience when the Play Store app itself needs updating (not so great!). After factory resetting my Nexus 7, I had the Play Store app crash, then declare it wasn’t installed, before eventually starting to work again. Unfriendly much?

The Play Store also had trouble resolving dependencies between core apps while they were being upgraded. A bunch of “You must upgrade X before you can upgrade Y” notifications were thrown at me after I hit “Update All”. This sort of thing shouldn’t happen ever, much less immediately after a factory reset (i.e. with no third-party apps in play).

3. Settings, settings, settings

The design of Android’s “Settings” app has improved significantly since previous versions, but I still found it relatively cluttered, with too many superfluous “advanced” options offered too prominently. Your mileage may vary.

Enterprise users will be annoyed to find that proxy auto-discovery remains unavailable in Lollilop. Manually entering a PAC file URL is still necessary. Apple has been all over this for years now. C’mon, Google!

Also, disabling those annoying keyboard tap sounds is not a simple task, because settings for “Sounds” aren’t all in one place. (I eventually found the toggle I was looking for–deep in “Keyboard” settings. Argh.)

Finally: IMAP users still can’t configure the stock email app to use custom mailboxes for Sent messages and Trash. Their names are hard-coded into the app.

4. Notifications

I liked that I could turn off all notifications for a set period of time (unlike “Do Not Disturb” mode on iOS, which needs to be manually switched off). I didn’t like that I could allow “priority” interruptions during this notification blackout–simply because it’s not clear what a “priority” interruption is (“Did I configure this? Do I trust my former self to have configured it properly? Is my presentation going to be interrupted by a Facebook message?”) I also didn’t like that the UI for this feature only appeared when I used the volume rocker. It belongs on the main notification panel.

My verdict

Android as an operating system isn’t bad. Like iOS, it has annoying shortcomings in some areas, but overall, it’s fast, beautiful and easy to use. When it’s not, pop-up tips pick up the slack.

So why do I think it “still sucks”?

It’s the apps.

Or, to be more specific, it’s the tablet apps.

Android has been tablet-friendly for years now, but a large of number of app developers (including Facebook) stubbornly refuse to build tablet versions of their apps. With a few exceptions, most of the apps I tried on the Nexus 7 opened as stretched or magnified phone apps. I could access all of my content, but the apps were so useless I couldn’t do anything with it.

The iOS App Store, meanwhile, is full of high-quality tablet apps.

Also, iOS plays nice with IMAP.

Also, Apple doesn’t hunger and thirst for my metadata.