Mounting SSH on Mac OSX

If you want to stay stay with free tools and mount ssh shares on OSX MacFusion is the tool of choice.

However for me MacFusion quits with an error "Failed to mount" and the log revealed:

(SSHServerFS, phy303.uni-regensburg.de, 29.06.11 19:27) /Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext) link error; check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8).

This is a bug in the current MacFuse version (2.0.3).

The solution is to install the NTFS-3G Project's MacFuse binaries at tuxera.com

Thanks to Jacobs UNIblog

2011 Macbook Pro: State of linux wireless support

Want to use your favorite operating system of your favorite laptop?


The 2011 Macbook Pro uses a Broadcom 4331 chipset for which there exists no driver at this point. And according to the Ubuntu forums NDISwrapper does not work either.

However Broadcom states that:

"We have plans to support the BCM4331, and other new chips, with the
brcmsmac driver. I don't have an ETA, but new chip support is the first
thing on the priority list after getting the brcmsmac driver out of staging."

Also there are also community efforts to create a driver and today one kernel-hacker told me:

"Hey, the work has just started and its really hard as we don't have ANY specs. Everything I write is from dumps without knowing real stuct of the driver. There is a lot if guessing, starring at the dumps and trying to find a relation with specs for older cards.

I'm on vacations right more, I expect to perform first tests in 2-4 weeks, do then ill be able to tell you more."

So all one can do at the moment seems to be buying an wifi-stick (which sucks, since the macbook wifi was four antennas and should provide a really nice connectivity) or wait.

OSX Snow Leopard on VirtualBox

Can't afford a Mac? Wanna do iPhone development with Ubuntu?

There are reasons why one would want to have OSX running on VirtualBox but getting it to run is not so easy.

First of all you need

- VirtualBox
- Hazzard OSX Distribution, can be found on the net

Now set up a new virtual machine in VirtualBox and select Mac as operating system.
The harddisk size should be at least 10GB, I chose 20GB

This gives you EFI enabled in the system tab of the virtual machine's settings.

Next boot the Hazzard OSX Distribution an start installation. Use the Disk-Tool to make a new partition.

Don't start the Installation yet!

You need to customize it and only install the Legacy Kernel and the latest Chamealeon bootloader.

This is all and you can begin the installation.

When you're done and before you boot into you new system go the the virtual machine's settings again and switch off the EFI option in the system pane.

The last step is to switch off Apple CPU power management by deleting /System/Library/Extensions and trashing AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext

Otherwise you will have full CPU usage even in when OSX is in idle because it is flooding the CPU with debug messages.

Remember to redo this step after installing Apple's software updates.

Andtie

So let me cover an innovation that actually look good on me - like an iPhone.

The andtie.

It's gonna keep you warm since the folks from Denmark know what cold and wet means. They came up with the idea and the material feels pretty high-quality.

Check it out.

Dry-Ice Canon fun

Use frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice), mix it with water and pipe the steam into a PET bottle. When the bottle at roughly 22bar explodes you can shoot for example a toy chicken over more than 80 meters (We had serious problems to build a projectile that is not destroyed by the power of the launch). We built the device for a creativity competition at our university.
And well, we could not place an object accurate on 20m but for shure we did it with the biggest impact.


Music on Amazon and iTunes

If you are curious, here some detail about the construction:

For us secure handling was not only an option. We have seen some people that put water and dry-ice together into an bottle close it and put it into a pipe. But you have good chances that it will explode in your hands. So we put an PET bottle into our pipe and connect it with an CNC made adapter to the presure reservoir outside. Beside that, all parts are made from steel and welded. We experienced that a 1.5l coke bottle (actually we used Deit bottles that explode in a better way) can withstand up to 22bar of pressure (what is more than most sources on the internet report)

The next design decision we had to make was a system to quickly inject all the water while not blocking the exhaust of the considerable amout of CO2 gas that is generated as the water mixes with the dry-ice. We first tried it with an single valve but had a problem to get more water it at some point when to much CO2 was exhausted. Howerver two, one for water injection and the other valve for the gas exhaust were ways better.

Finally, the manometer is not necessary but nice to have as it makes the firing a bit less surprising. All in all we spent about 90 Euros.

This blog makes money... erm gifts!

I lately discovered CuriousInventor as they sell some quite interesting diy kits like the touch strip LED display that looks perfect for synthesizer controlling to me (Hope to get one for christmas). But the really interesting thing to me is that you get a PanaVise Junior Clamp for free if you link them from a page with Google PageRank of 2 or higher (this page had 3, when I checked). So lucky me, I get a gift worth 18$ at their shop for free. Who said making profit from the web would be hard? ;)

It's done

Finally Summer of Code 2008 is over for me and it has been good. Although I had a lot to do this summer, I can say that I really enjoyed working on my project. So thanks to Google, Musicbrainz and Philipp for his mentoring.