Okay so it’s read-only access, but it’s Free :-). Have a look at HFSExplorer the next time you need to grab a file from that mac formatted firewire drive. It’s a little Java program that allows you full read access to any HFS+/HFSX formatted disk. It works nicely under boot camp to give you access to your OSX partition or even a MAC formatted IPOD. As a bonus the app even allows you access to HFS+ formatted .dmg files without any conversion……what more do you need??? Oh and did I mention it’s FREE.

If you ever need to scan the airwaves for wireless accesspoints, you might want to try the new AirRadar. Yes, there are other programs out there that do similar things (AirStatz or iStumbler), but AirRadar also supports GROWL which is kinda nice

Have you ever had problems ejecting a disk or emptying your trash under OSX. Did you waste time trying to find the offending program. Well “What’s Keeping Me?” is for you. Just run it the next time you get one of these errors, tell it the name of the file that’s giving you grief and it will return a list of processes that have locked that file. Then you have the option of killing those processes. Nice little free util to add to your collection.

Just when you thought your command line life was getting boring, we discover these happy tunes for your cut/paste pleasure. Just select the entire line, copy it, open a terminal window, paste it followed by Enter and marvel at your Mac. Yeah it’s a OSX thing and works best under 10.5, so if you’ve got Vista/XP/Linux, this might be a good enough reason to do the switcheroo :-).say -v Good oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosay -v Bad oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosascript -e 'say "Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum he he he ho ho ho fa lah lah lah lah lah lah fa lah full hoo hoo hoo" using "Cellos"'osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dum de dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dee dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" using "Pipe Organ"'osascript -e 'say "oh This is a silly song silly song silly song this is the silliest song ive ever ever heard So why keep you listening listening listening while you are supposed to work to work to work to work its because i hate my job hate my job hate my job its because i hate my job more than anything else No its because youve no life youve no life youve no life and you better go get one after forwarding this crap" using "cellos"'Who said you can’t have fun on the commandline?

If you ever needed a reason to switch to a mac and you were thinking to yourself, “well maybe I’ll wait a bit longer, after all, the malware/virus/trojan scene hasn’t caught up to me yet”, you might want to think again.

Today marks the re-release of Virus.Win32.Gpcode.ak virus for the PC platform. This sucker was released two years ago and went around RSA encrypting peoples files (including, but not limited, to .doc, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .jpg, .png, .cpp, .h) with a 660-bit encryption key. Thank god the boys at Kaspersky Labs found a bug in the code and cracked the code. This time the author(s) are using a 1024-bit key. So if you ever end up with files ending in _CRYPT, you’ve got a major problem on your hand. If the author(s) have done their homework, Karpersky Labs estimates that it would take decades (if not longer) to crack the 1024-bit key.

Now I’m sure you’re thinking I’m spreading FUD, but think about this for a second. How many hours of work would you loose if all your documents were encrypted and you were faced with a ransom note pointing you to pay up to recover them? How much do those digital camera pictures from your last trip mean to you? I don’t know about you but when a virus company comes out and says, “Let’s hope the virus author screwed up or else we’ll be in some serious heat”, I would start worrying.

Anways, something to think about while you’re writing those documents, taking those pictures or creating the next best selling computer game. At the very least you should BACK IT UP!!!! More over at Kaspersky Labs…..

Came across this tip today and I thought it might be useful to some of you out there. OSX, as great as it is, has always had this (atleast) one shortcoming for me. The stupid date display in the menubar. Why did they decide to hide the actual date/day of the week is beyond me. Yes, you can go and grab Magical, I know…..But that’s yet another program that needs to be loaded. There is a simpler solution. Follow the steps below and you can prettify your date display too :-).

1. In System Preferences, open International and go to the Formats tab.
2. Next to Dates, click the Customize button. Arrange your date in the format you want to appear on your menubar. I just simply grabbed the full format. Select the entire date format and copy it to your clipboard (Cmd+A, Cmd+C). Hit OK.
3. Now back in the formats screen, hit the Customize button next to Times. Choose the “Medium” format. Make sure you do this to the Medium format, I tried the other ones (Short and Long) and it did not work (at least under Leopard 10.5.2). Paste the date format on your clipboard next to the time format, and hit OK. I pasted mine inside a set of square brackets in front, you can customize the extra characters to your liking.
4. You should see the changes on your menubar immediately. If you end up with double day of the week display, in System Preferences, go to Date and Time, and uncheck “Show the day of the week.”

Enjoy :-).

Wow, Apple must be doing something right. According to research specialist SCRI, in 2007 Apple took 49% of the US professional editing marketing with Avid trailing on just 22%. There were a lot of rumors during NAB this year that Apple was gonna sell of it’s pro-video division to [your-favourite-video-company] (I heard Thomson/GV). At the time, I thought that would be a dumb thing to do and I said so. It turns out Richard Townhill, Apple’s director of marketing for professional video applications agrees with me. In this TVBEurope report Mr. Townhill says:

I can categorically state, on the record, that is not the case,

referring to the FCP unloading rumors. He then went on to say — about the recently released Final Cut Server:

There are a million Final Cut Pro users out there who need good asset management

Clearly Apple sees Final Cut Server as another mass market product, and why not, when you own 49% of the market, the only way to go is UP afterall.

The long awaited Apple Final Cut Server was released today, ahead of this years NAB show. It’s been a long time coming (more than two years almost), but you can finally have your cake and eat it too. From Apple’s FCS page:

Whether you work in a production boutique or a global news network, you can use Final Cut Server to free up more time for creative work. Final Cut Server can automatically manage thousands of assets, execute dozens of routine production tasks, and keep every member of your team in sync.

The scalable client/server software makes it easy to work the way you want to work, using as many or as few features as you need — whether you’re producing a 30-second spot, the nightly news, a documentary film, or a major motion picture.

A friend passed this on today (thanks Jeremy). If you use a mic in your day to day businness (or even if you’re an occasional ichat/skype user, you should check this out. RevoLabs have introduced a new line of Wireless microphones that come with RF-Armor. What does that mean, well the next time your GSM phone rings/sync/receives email, your microphone won’t be going all crazy. Plus their Solo mics come in three different types:

• Wearable
• Tabletop Boundry
• XLR adapter for handheld mics

All their mics use a base station that hooks up to your PC or Mac via USB (no driver needed) and show up as a sound device. As a bonus the wearable one also has a audio out so you can wear it around your neck (on in your pocket) and hook up a headset to it as well.
They also have larger 4 channel and 8 channel wireless systems that you can mix and match using different solo mics. The preconfigured systems even come with a 4 or 8 channel Gentner echo cancellation device by polycom. Very nice…..

Apples remote desktop service is great and it comes in handy, but what happens when you’re 5000 miles away from your desktop, only to find that remote desktop is turned off. Dooohhhh. Well here is a quick tip to turn the damn thing on and off in a second through a remote ssh connection. To turn on the service, ssh to your machine and issue the following commands:$ cd /Library/Preferences
$ echo -n enabled > com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchdAnd once you’re done, you can turn it off by issuing the following through an ssh session:$ cd /Library/Preferences
$ rm com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchdI’m pretty sure that this only works under Leopard (10.5+), so if you’ve got Tiger you need to look for an alternate way. I don’t have access to a Tiger machine so I can not guarantee that it works or not.

I bet you didn’t know that Frontrow, Apple’s Media Centre software that ships with every Mac, can actually playback those HD trailers from their site. Well here is a quicktip to enable that functionality:
defaults write com.apple.frontrow EnableHDMovieTrailers TRUE
Once you type this into terminal, start up Frontrow and note that you get a new option under trailers. To disable this functionality issue the following command from a terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.frontrow EnableHDMovieTrailers FALSE

Are you constantly hearing about Open Source software and are wondering how to go about getting started. Do you want to cleanse your Mac or PC from all those so called advanced applications that don’t do what they advertise, yet take up all the diskspace on your computer. Or maybe you’re just sick of BSOD’n/Beachball’n apps that you brand new computer came loaded with and are ready for some Open Source Lovin’. Well WinLibre and MacLibre have your answer. Both are free to download and both offer you an easy way to install the best Open Source Apps that are out there.

MacLibre Featured applications

• Create
• Audacity
• Blender
• Gimp
• Inkscape
• Internet
• Adium
• Colloquy
• Cyberduck
• Fire
• Firefox
• Nvu
• Thunderbird
• Vienna
• Multimedia
• HandBrake
• MPlayer
• VLC
• Office
• AbiWord
• NeoOffice
• Utilities
• ClamXav
• DesktopManager
• iTerm
• VirtueDesktops
• X11

WinLibre Featured applications

• Create
• Audacity
• Blender
• Gimp
• Inkscape
• Internet
• NVU
• Firefox
• Gaim
• Thunderbird
• FileZilla
• Multimedia
• WinLAME
• CDex
• VLC
• Zinf
• Office
• PDFCreator
• OpenOffice
• Utilities
• ClamWin
• Notepad2
• 7-Zip
• TightVNC
• NetTime

A buddy of mine (thanks Mike) showed me this today. There is a input Access module in the newer versions of VLC (0.8.6+) called “screen” which makes this possible. To stream your desktop to another machine (ip address: 192.168.1.2 in this case) just use the following command in Linux (sorry command line only):vlc screen:// :screen-fps=30 :screen-caching=100 --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=4096,acodec=mpga,ab=256,scale=1,width=1280,height=800}:rtp{dst=192.168.1.2,port=1234,access=udp,mux=ts}'or in Windows (slightly different syntax) use this command:vlc screen:// :screen-fps=30 :screen-caching=100 :sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=2048,scale=1,acodec=mpga,ab=192,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=rtp,mux=ts,dst=192.168.1.1:1234}}This is one massive command, so lets take a look at it in more detail:

• screen:// is our input module selection (if you just run vlc screen:// you’ll see your own screen on the server inside vlc….kinda cool)
• :screen-fps=30 specifies that we want to screengrab at 30 fps (from default 5 fps)
• :screen-caching=100 sets the internal caching to 100ms (from default 300 ms)
• –sout is our output chain.
• #transcode tells vlc that we first want to transcode the input using parameters to follow
• {} contains our transcoding parameters
• vcodec=mp4v sets the video codec to mpeg4 video
• vb=4096 sets the bitrate of the transcoded video (4Mb/s)
• acodec=mpga sets the audio codec to mpeg audio (mp3). Audio does not work yet, this is a place holder.
• ab=256 sets the bitrate of the transcoded audio (256 Kb/s)
• scale=1 sets the scaling value
• width=1280 sets the width of the transcoded video to 1280 pixels
• height=800 sets the height of the transcoded video to 800 pixels
• :rtp tells VLC that we want to use rtp protocol to send the encoder output to our receiver machine using Real Time Protocol.
• dst=192.168.1.2 is the ip address of our destination/playback machine
• port=1234 is the default port on the destination/playback machine
• access=udp specifies UDP protocol
• mux=ts sets multiplexing to mpeg-2 Transport stream

Now on the destination machine just open vlc, goto File/Open Network and by default the Media Resource Locator on top of the window should read udp:// and UDP/RTP with port 1234 should be selected. If it’s not select UDP/RTP (option 1) and put 1234 as the port number. Press Okay and you should see the video stream from the other machine (your server machine). That’s it….Opensource comes to rescue again :-)

Well, you learn something new everyday. Here is what I picked up today….If you ever install an application that came as a OSX package, there is a good chance that the installer has installed files all over your machine. There is also a good chance that the installer has left you a little gift — a way out if you like — in /Library/Receipts folder on your mac.

You see, if the author/packager has done their job correctly (most do), there is a Bill Of Material (known as a bom file) that is copied onto your system. In the example below I wanted to check the files that got installed on my machine by the MacFUSE installer so here are the commands I issued:
Brainiac:/ mayromlou$ cd /Library/Receipts/MacFUSE\ Core.pkg/Contents/
Brainiac:Contents mayromlou$ ls
Archive.bom Info.plist PkgInfo Resources
Brainiac:Contents mayromlou$ lsbom Archive.bom
So in this case I cd to the folder for the application in question (under the /Library/Receipts folder) and go directly to the Contents Folder. Then I get a directory listing and notice that there is a Archive.bom Bill of Material file there. Then I proceed to issue the lsbom command which will decode the bom file and shows me the following output:
. 40755 0/0
./Library 41775 0/80
./Library/Filesystems 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/Info.plist 100644 0/0 2591 1626887788
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/Resources 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/Resources/English.lproj 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/InfoPlist.strings 100755 0/0 6092 580475608
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Contents/version.plist 100644 0/0 456 3975516369
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext/Contents 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext/Contents/Info.plist 100644 0/0 1032 1833265120
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext/Contents/MacOS 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext/Contents/MacOS/fusefs 100644 0/0 282292 3125657523
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext/Contents/Resources 40755 0/0
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext/Contents/Resources/MacFUSE.xcconfig 100644 0/0 42 965707547
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/load_fusefs 104755 0/0 29212 3910787877
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/mount_fusefs 100755 0/0 52008 3511781209
./Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/uninstall-macfuse-core.sh 100755 0/0 4419 3035817197
./usr 40755 0/0
./usr/local 40755 0/0
./usr/local/include 40755 0/0
./usr/local/include/fuse 40755 0/0
./usr/local/include/fuse/fuse.h 100644 0/0 28075 1689529217
./usr/local/include/fuse/fuse_common.h 100644 0/0 6623 3278924455
./usr/local/include/fuse/fuse_common_compat.h 100644 0/0 738 1569919976
./usr/local/include/fuse/fuse_compat.h 100644 0/0 8749 3548531510
./usr/local/include/fuse/fuse_darwin.h 100644 0/0 2304 4217317508
./usr/local/include/fuse/fuse_lowlevel.h 100644 0/0 40397 1846692219
./usr/local/include/fuse/fuse_lowlevel_compat.h 100644 0/0 7572 2140056707
./usr/local/include/fuse/fuse_opt.h 100644 0/0 7307 3645063899
./usr/local/include/fuse.h 100644 0/0 246 2097503619
./usr/local/include/ulockmgr.h 100644 0/0 701 3653182913
./usr/local/lib 40755 0/0
./usr/local/lib/libfuse.0.0.0.dylib 100755 0/0 272548 3600984730
./usr/local/lib/libfuse.0.dylib 120755 0/0 19 2829363220 libfuse.0.0.0.dylib
./usr/local/lib/libfuse.a 100644 0/0 861224 2222446251
./usr/local/lib/libfuse.dylib 120755 0/0 19 2829363220 libfuse.0.0.0.dylib
./usr/local/lib/libfuse.la 100755 0/0 804 1483864331
./usr/local/lib/libulockmgr.0.0.0.dylib 100755 0/0 38900 610654515
./usr/local/lib/libulockmgr.0.dylib 120755 0/0 23 4013380549 libulockmgr.0.0.0.dylib
./usr/local/lib/libulockmgr.a 100644 0/0 41056 3770607053
./usr/local/lib/libulockmgr.dylib 120755 0/0 23 4013380549 libulockmgr.0.0.0.dylib
./usr/local/lib/libulockmgr.la 100755 0/0 832 341285231
./usr/local/lib/pkgconfig 40755 0/0
./usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/fuse.pc 100644 0/0 276 3834070396
The listing above shows all the files that were installed by the MacFUSE installer, so now I can easily go through the list and remove the files (either command line or with Finder). Have fun uninstalling those uninstallable beasts :-).

Okay so hot on the heels of my MacFUSE install, I find iTunesFS which is a FUSE module for iTunes written by Marcus Müller…..YUMMY :-). Now it’s a read-only module (ie: it lets you take stuff out of itunes/ipod/iphone storage, but most of the time that’s all you want to do anyways. If you want to try it just download the FUSE module from Mulle KybernetiK. Make sure you have the MacFUSE core package installed first.

I think so, you see I’ve been waiting for about a year — since last years Mac World announcement — to try MacFUSE, but to be honest I’ve been a bit of a chicken. In my book you rarely, if ever, play around with the filesystem. Specially with ported beta code and all the “uncertainties” of Apple’s latest feline.

Anyways, today I finally got up the courage and had enough time to try out MacFUSE 1.1.1 (specially compiled for leopard). You can download the required files from the Google Code’s download page. For those of you who don’t know, FUSE stands for Filesystem in USErland, and it provides a generic interface that lets the operating system see virtually anything as a filesystem. FUSE provides a single interface that filesystem modules use to interface with the OS. Best of all, anything that provides the correct interface can be interpreted as a filesystem. There are a bunch of modules out there for FUSE and most of them work nicely under MacFUSE.

To start you have to install either one of the core packages. MacFUSE-Core-10.5-1.1.1.dmg for Leopard or MacFUSE-Core-10.4-1.1.0.dmg for Tiger. Once you’ve got this installed and rebooted, you’re ready to use any MacFUSE module to access services as filesystems. I’m gonna talk about sshfs (which you can download from the same google code page). There are quite a few modules out there that you can start using, examples of file systems that work and have been tested (to varying degrees) include sshfs, ntfs-3g (read/write NTFS), ftpfs (read/write FTP), wdfs (WebDAV), cryptofs, encfs, bindfs, unionfs, beaglefs (yes, including the entire Beagle paraphernalia), and so on. You can try these once you get comfortable with the basics. Let’s take a look at getting sshfs module working:

1. Download sshfs module from google code download page.
2. Save it somewhere on your mac and double click the dmg file to mount the disk image.
3. Once the image is mounted you’ll find a single file inside called sshfs.
4. For my own use I created a macFUSE folder in Applications where I’m planning to keep all my FUSE modules.
5. Double clicking on the sshfs will run it and bring up the following dialog. I’m going to specifically mount just my Sites folder during this setup. This will allow me to run iWeb and have it natively save my website changes directly to the server. Web developers and anyone else who manages files via SFTP/SCP should rejoice. Using SSHFS means no more synchronizing files with an SFTP client.
6. Next you’ll be prompted to enter your ssh server password.
7. Now you should have a new network mounted disk that gives you secure ssh access to your directory on the remote server (in my case my website folder).

Notice that all the files on the server are treated as local files, you get the preview icons, you can drag and drop them on to your desktop or even double click on the files and edit them right on the server, through a secure connection. Now that’s power. Hope you have fun with this, also try out the other modules that are around and let us know which ones you like, which ones work nicely with the mac and so on…..

$ sudo changeip -checkhostname
If you need to change it (ie: after a DNS table change) use the following command (for OD sites):
changeip /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1/ 192.0.0.12 192.0.0.12 old.example.com new.example.com
changeip also has a lot of other uses (ie: if you change the ip address of your machine you can use changeip to change the setting in the directory as well). Have a look at the man pages for more info.

If you’re having trouble kerberizing your Open Directory under OSX server then you are also most likely having hostname problems. Run the first command to check the hostname information and make sure “Current Hostname” and “DNS Hostname” in it’s output match. If they don’t use the second command to change (fix) it (assuming your DNS is working properly). Then you can go to Server Admin and under Open Directory/Settings press the Kerberize button that Pops up on the lower left.

Once in a while you might want to dig deep into OSX’s dhcp client and find out what dhcp packet the server sent it. A quick command to spit out this info:
# ipconfig getpacket en0
This produces the following output:

op = BOOTREPLY
htype = 1
dp_flags = 0
hlen = 6
hops = 0
xid = 1956115059
secs = 0
ciaddr = 0.0.0.0
yiaddr = 192.168.4.10
siaddr = 192.168.4.1
giaddr = 0.0.0.0
chaddr = 0:3:93:7a:d7:5c
sname = dhcp.mycompany.net
file =
options:
Options count is 10
dhcp_message_type (uint8): ACK 0x5
server_identifier (ip): 192.168.4.1
lease_time (uint32): 0x164a
subnet_mask (ip): 255.255.255.0
router (ip_mult): {192.168.4.1}
domain_name_server (ip_mult): {192.168.4.1}
domain_name (string): mycompany.net
end (none):

Here are some notes for those of us working with Macs, who also have to deal with networking gear that usually have a serial console for local control. I recently purchased a IOGEAR USB 1.1 to Serial Converter Cable that uses the PL2303 chipset (pretty much any brand of these usb to serial converters use this chip). I was hoping that this dongle would allow me to access our network switches serial interface (which you kinda need when the switch has gone berserk). So after looking around the net I found that there is a opensource driver out there for it and that it performs better than the driver provided by Prolific (the company that manufactures the chip). So once everything was installed I hooked up the serial cable and realized that I needed a serial console program.

screen /dev/tty.PL2303-0000101D 9600
where /dev/tty.PL2303-0000101D is the device for the dongle (easy to find….just do a ls -l /dev/tty.* and pick the one with PL2303 in the name). The baudrate is 9600 in case you haven’t guessed it already.

This will open up a new screen session in your xterm/terminal and from there you can control your serial device. Once you’re done you need to issue the command Ctrl-a Ctrl-\ to get out of screen and back to your shell prompt.

This is one of those gotta haves. Beautifully done and Free. Grab it here.