Makerbot - Getting Better Adhesion

Warping and Curling

I was struggling to get some large parts with small features to stick to the build platform since I installed a Z-Axis minimum probe.  The height of the head was too perfect and objects that extended near the border of the heated build platform were curling up due to a lack of adhesion.  Since installing the Z probe, overall quality of my prints and the accuracy in the height of the object has gone way up.
The lack of adhesion was driving me nuts, but I have since created a SkeinForge profile that "smooshes" the first layer to achieve better adhesion.  This could cause a problem if the object needs to be a certain height, but for my current project, the overall height didn't matter.
If you are struggling with prints pulling away from the HBP without a raft, or having adhesion problems try the following SkeinForge settings after the jump

Streamlining HMA VPN Under Linux

HMA,  Hide My Ass VPN service, while awfully named is a pretty amazing service.  The Mr. VPN writeup for HMA gives it some of the highest marks among VPN services in North America.  I've found the OS X and Linux support to be universally great.  The OS X client is easy to use and feature rich.  The Linux client works well, but isn't terribly easy to use.
The Linux script doesn't always connect successfully and didn't provide any good logging behavior.  I wrote the scripts below to help start the service and to allow it to be shutdown gracefully.