Equipment check – The Flag

My logistics check for my annual mangrove cleanup at Lim Chu Kang mangrove now includes a flag – but here it is:

It’s a large flag, meant for a flag pole and can hardly stretch itself out in my study. I checked it and its in great condition. We must have been quite careful not to muddy it last year. I wrapped it and stored it away in a well ventilated place, and no discolouration has appeared.

Last year it saw a lot of action as I brought it along to the pre-National Day mangrove cleanup [link], cycling with Love Cycling’s National Day ride [link] and the longer tradition of dinner with my kakis on the night of National Day, when watch the parade.

1Password-Typinator conflict rekindles memories of OS 8.6 and Conflict Catcher

In the 90’s I used Jeff Robbin’s Conflict Catcher 8.0.1, from Casady & Greene, to prevent system extensions from interfering with each other. It cost a pretty penny (US$80) but I bit the bullet and bought myself a copy. With it, I reached a wonderful stability despite using a diverse array of extensions.

So much stability it offered that I skipped OS9 entirely, and in 2002 I I leapt into OS X rather dramatically. Conflict Catcher was abandoned with great joy!

All this reminiscing because Typinator failed to work. Thankfully its menubar icon was displaying an odd colour and I clicked to see this message:

I quit my applications one by one and then I realised it must be 1Password. And sure enough it was. So 1Password 3.8.20 inactivates Typinator 5.1. A conflict! Hmph! I thought I left this behind in 2002!

With OS X disabling the “event monitor” as 1Password operated in “secure keyboard mode”, I wonder if this is due to Mountain Lion (update: ML it is, see below), Typinator 5.1 or some thing for 1Password to deal with.

The 1Password webpage FAQ talks about a complication with a Google Chrome password field, but that did not apply here.

So I wrote to the Agilebits forum (which they’ve made easy to do) and hope for a solution eventually. This problem sounds slightly similar to one others had experienced earlier this year.

In the meantime, I simply to shut down 1Password when Typinator complains. I can live with that for now.

Update – Well I wrote that about 3am and there was a tweet, blog comment and email awaiting me at 7am when I woke – Agilebits is certainly responsive!

Apparently this problem emerged with Mountain Lion and I simply have to minimise, not hide, 1Password:

“Hey Otterman,

Thanks for bringing this up.

There is a bug we have tracked down where hiding 1Password will enable Secure Input mode (i.e. selecting **1Password > Hide 1Password** from the menu bar or using the ⌘H keyboard shortcut). We’re investigating a fix, but I don’t have a time frame for a specific release.

In the meantime, if you **minimize** 1Password rather than hiding it, and you should not have the problem. Also, you can switch to another application and use the **Hide Others** command ⌥⌘H to hide 1Password (as well as all other open apps) and this will not trigger Secure Input.

Please let us know if refraining from hiding 1Password doesn’t resolve the issue you were having, and we can look into it more.

Cheers,”

—
Khad Young
Forum Choreographer, AgileBits
http://agilebits.com/support

NUS WebVPN – getting Juniper’s Network Connect to install on OS X Mountain Lion

If you were an NUS OS X Snow Leopard user back in 2009, we experiennced a hiccup with Juniper’s Network Connect which is installed the first time you login to WebVPN.

Eventually it required a geeky moment in Terminal, creating a missing subdirectory the application needed, which I blogged about then.

This time its simpler, as Graham Walsh explained in one line. I simply did this:

1. Go to the NUS Faculty and Staff page at nus.edu.sg/staff and click to enter WebVPN, enter your details.
2. The window attempts to install and run Network Connect and will complain of a missing plugin.
3. Click that and you are promoted about installing Java. Agree to install and you are prompted for your password.
4. Close and reopen browsers.
5. Return to nus.edu.sg/staff and try WebVPN again, you’ll be in!

All this on Safari, mind you. Graham Walsh was stumped in Chrome so suggested this fix here.

Yes, all I really needed to say this time really was “just follow the directions in Safari and all will be well”!

Time to go book that room now…