I have several clients who have intranet applications running on servers that live behind a firewall. General there are firewall rules in place that allow me to access these servers via SSH (over port 22). But I need a way of using a web browser to test applications I’m developing on these servers.

Here’s a brief explanation of two ways I can do this, using Mac OS X on my end, and Linux on the remote end.

First, and easiest, is to use Apple’s new X11 server beta to use a browser running on the remote machine. To do this, I simply start up an X11 terminal client, use SSH to connect to the remote server, and then run Mozilla. To do this requires that X11 Forwarding be enabled on both the client and the server. On the OS X end, you need to uncomment the line ForwardX11 yes in the file /etc/ssh_config. On the remote end, make sure that the line X11Forwarding yes is uncommented in the file that’s probably located at sshd_config. Running Mozilla over a remote connection isn’t as fast or responsive as running a local browser, but it’s much snappier than I expected.

The second method is to use SSH port-forwarding and a local browser. Let’s say your remote host, behind the firewall, is called remotehost.com, it’s running a server on port 80, and your account on the remote machine is called myaccount. To port-foward on your OS X machine, simply call up a Terminal session and enter ssh -l myaccount -L 8080:remotehost.com:80 remotehost.com. Now you can call up a local browser, and browser to address localhost:8080. and you’ll be surfing the remote website.

From TahitiGuide. com comes the best explanation for my disposition this week:

“Je suis Fiu” est une expression souvent entendue en Polynésie Française, difficile à traduire simplement, il exprime une sorte de lassitude, qui pourrait se traduire approximativement par “ Farniente ”. Surtout il justifie l’arrêt immédiat de toute activité, voire le manquement à une promesse de rendez-vous. C’est une sorte de sentiment d’abandon général, parfois dû à une bringue (une fête) de la veille, ou parfois également sans aucune raison particulière.

News from Australia about the other Prince Edward Island. Pirates. Intrigue. And a devastated fishery.

In a serious case of re-spurning, Catherine and Oliver and I went out to Charlottetown Toyota to test drive the new Echo Hatchback this afternoon.

Regular readers may recall that we rented the European version of this car in Spain back in May, and waxed about it.

Fast-forward two months, and what does crazy Steven Garrity do (as briefly revealed here) but take up the gauntlet, and actually go out and lease one.

After a high-level secret meeting of the web intelligensia this afternoon at Cora’s, Steven drove me home in his new Echo and, feeling our street cred sliding away, we had no choice but to test drive ourselves.

Here’s the weird thing: the test drive cars have (a) no radio and (b) no air conditioning.

Now I’m not an expert, but I can tell you that 99% of people, when test driving a car on a hot summer day, will immediately do two things after adjusting the mirrors: crank up the stereo and crank up the A/C. I would imagine, given the Echo’s target market of young rockers, the percentage for the Echo demographic is more like 99.9%.

But because both radio and A/C are “dealer-installed options,” the cars on the lot are barren of these features until post-purchase, and so the car you get to test drive feels like some sort of Government-issue proto-car, stripped of all its toys.

Weird.

Anyway, not in any way to detract from the tiny wonder of a car that is the Echo Hatch (esp. compared to its Sedan brother, which is almost archetypically ugly), we realized that much of our attraction to a tiny perfect car had to do with the tiny perfect life we lived in Spain. We three are a big lot, physically and stuff-wise, and as much as the idea of zipping around town in a fuel efficient dynamo appeals to me, I think we’ll stay committed Jetta owners, at least for a while.

In the meantime, if you see a sleek silver Echo Hatch prowling around Charlottetown, piloted by a gallant young web-buck, give a wave and a nod to Steven. Who knows, he might even offer you a ride home!

While Ian is lost in the wilds of Pennsylvania, various of his family members are filling in on his blog. Last night it was his mother’s turn, and she wrote what is perhaps the most honest, touching, heartfelt summary of a modern someone’s life I’ve ever read. It makes me want to ask my mother to do the same for me, but I’m afraid at what might come out.

I am torn between two lovers today: my workstation is connected to the Internet over new ISN connection. The servers in the basement are connected to the old Aliant connection.

As a result, although I am physically about 8 feet directly above the webserver, traffic from me to the to server goes halfway to hell and back to travel those eight feet.

I just finished moving a whopping big file from the desktop down to the server, and it turtled along at a crawling 88 Kbps, despite nominally having a super big high speed snazzola pipe on both ends.

Labour Day has been set aside for the big de-Aliantification, and at that point to bifurcation will end and client and server will again be united by an 8-foot string of network cable.

A public service announcement for fellow Island homeowners: the next installment of your property taxes are due on August 31, this Sunday.

Longtime contributor to the misty forests of DISCUSS here, Rob MacD now has a weblog. Let trumpets ring out.

Here’s a record of an email exchange with Cadbury in the U.K. My initial inquiry was as follows:

Can you tell me when the chocolate bar formerly known as the “Wig Wag” became known as the “Curly Wurly.” Or, indeed, am I talking about two different products?

To which Cadbujry replied:

What country are you e.mailing from as we have never had Wig Wag in UK?

To which I replied:

I’m emailing from Canada. Do you still have a Curly Wurly there in the UK? Can you describe it to me?

To which they replied:

Curly Wurly is a flat latticed bar of caramel coated in chocolate.

I believe this provides conclusive proof that the Wig Wag and the Curly Wurly are based on the same platform.

I note, with some interest, that the name of my correspondent at Cadbury was “Charlie,” who, I imagine, works near or at the Chocolate Factory.

Last night was something of a miracle: for the first time since we returned from Spain in May, Oliver spent the entire night in his own room, on his own bed (actually, his own couch, which is where he prefers to sleep, and we’re not going to argue with him on that preference).

The technique that led to this? Well, perhaps it’s random chance. But the night before we “laid down the law.” We didn’t lock Oliver in his room — that suggestion from others, while effective for them perhaps, struck us as a little too draconian. But every time Oliver got up and came into our room, we simple told him to go back to his own room.

He made the trip about 25 times that night, and sometimes he would simply stand in front of Catherine or I for 20 minutes, thinking we would relent. But we didn’t.

Yesterday, Catherine followed the suggestion of a very smart and helpful chap at C.H.A.N.C.E.S. and, with Oliver’s help, prepared a series of pictures that laid out the process of going to bed. There’s one in the kitchen that shows having some toast, having some juice, reading a book, kissing Pete goodnight. There’s one upstairs that shows brushing teeth and washing hands. And the progression ends with a picture of Oliver sleeping in his own bed.

Whether it was our insistence, the diagrams, random one-time chance, or simply Oliver’s independent wishes, we’re all quite happy about this.

The irony? Both Catherine and I woke up several times in the night wondering where Oliver was.