Security

With the help of Proximity (http://reduxcomputing.com/proximity.php) and this the little applescript below I now have my screen saver locking within 10 seconds of me walking away from my mac. No need to trigger the screen saver or press a button, its taken care of. Very cool.

Script:

-- Silly little screen locker

-- to be used with Proximity: http://reduxcomputing.com/proximity.php

display dialog "iPhone not nearby, locking screen. You have 5 seconds to cancel" buttons {"Continue", "Cancel"} default button "Continue" giving up after 5

do shell script ("open /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app")

SSH Access

Since i've been complaining about Leopard, here's a plug. You can now
skip SSH keychain managers and have OSX remember your SSH passwords.
See this URL:

http://www.wand.net.nz/~smr26/wordpress/2007/10/28/mac-os-x-leopard-built-in-ssh-agent/

If you were using SSHKeychain before for keychain management you may
need this helpful tip:

http://garrickvanburen.com/archive/sshkeychainsocket-error-on-rake-remotesetup

Then you can setup a cron job to sync some remote (work?) machine to
some other (home) machine like this:

30 00 * * 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 echo "Starting rsync..." && rsync -avz -e "ssh
-p 1234 -i /Users/aUser/.ssh/aUser_home" --delete --
exclude="*Trashes" /Users/aUser/Documents/ aUser@aUser_home_machine.bounceme.net
:/Users/aUser/Documents/Work_machine && echo "rsync complete"

Make sure you setup SSH on your home machine behind some decent
security. For me, its behind a NAT, only one port is open and its not
well known and it only allows my user name in and it requires a ssh
key (username/password not allowed).

I used to do all the above before Leopard, but now I got to drop
SSHKeychain and do it more natively. Thanks Apple!

Hey Apple

Deleting my crontab files on the upgrade to Leopard was not nice. I
consider that data loss. Who does your QA?

Time Machine

So Time Machine basically doesn't support File Vault. I was very
disappointed to see this. It will only back up your home directory if
you're logged out and then all the magic "go back in time" stuff is
disabled. In the days of ever increasing need for security Apple
really dropped the ball on this one.