August 24, 2005
Cool OS X gear!
Browsing my Bloglines subscriptions this morning I came across the creativebits.org website today which explains some really awesome features in Mac OS X and associated applications.
Here are a few:
To get a definition of any word hover over it and type 'control-command-d'. Works in all applications I've tried except for Firefox - I presume they've redefined that key sequence to something else.
Awesome little application that lets you browse your iTunes library by album art, graphically, with animated OpenGL effects.
Dashboard Widgets on the Desktop
Want a Widget on the desktop, simply click on it's icon and then press F12. It stays there till the next Dashboard activation
alias ls="ls -G" and those file type colours you're used to seeing under Linux come back.
Enable "Show Item info" in Finder to have image dimensions listed below the filename of the image itself. Great for checking file sizes of clipart, images, before using them.
Everything you wanted to know about Mac filesystems
This article has some interesting explanations about the "AutoOptimize" and "AutoCluster" features of HFS+ journalized filesystems in Mac OS X:
AutoCluster keeps track of files read frequently over a period of 60 hours and moves them to the "hotband" of the disk which has the best performance considering the actual disk itself.
AutoOptimize automatically defragments files when a file is opened and fragmented into more than 8 parts.
Lots more information in the article.
The developer tools package includes a Grid Widget that you can use to measure widths of any element on your screen via Dashboard desktop transparency.
August 14, 2005
Makezine interview
Clint Sharp has an interview with Makezine magazine creator Phillip Torrone about Make magazine and various gadgets that he brought with him to a recent "Meet the Vloggers" meeting.
Cool interview and some cool gadgets!
August 11, 2005
XBox: 3 bugs in 512 bytes of security code
Michael Steil has an interesting article about the trusted security requirements Microsoft implemented in the XBox to prevent unauthorized code (ie. non-Microsoft such as Linux) from running - and how in 512 bytes of code there's at least 2 attacks to gain control of the XBox and run any software.
My favourite is the Visor trick they describe which is borderline hilarious:
"...The roll over of the instruction pointer from FFFF_FFFF to 0000_0000 is supposed to generate an exception. Since no exception handlers are installed, this is supposed to halt the machine. But in reality, no exception is generated. Execution just happily continues at 0000_0000 - in RAM! Apparently the i386 CPU family throws no exception in this case, Microsoft's engineers only assumed it or misread the documentation and never tested it.
By adding Xcodes to write a jump to some Flash ROM address, like FFF0_0000, into memory at location 0, and causing the decryption check to fail by just not including the 32 bit check value into the Flash ROM, one's own code will be run right after the RC4 decryption..."
Even Schneier had a comment about it as well. More details described in the article.
August 09, 2005
Ruby'isms!
Check this following code, taken from Jim Weirich's OSCON slides about the "10 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know About Ruby".
class VCR def initialize @messages = [] end def method_missing(method, *args, &block) @messages << [method, args, block] end def play_back_to(obj) @messages.each do |method, args, block| obj.send(method, *args, &block) end endend
Nice stuff, it records all of the messages sent to an object, and can then replay them back on any other object. :)
Also, while on the subject of Ruby - there's a really interesting video available at the Rails website, that demonstrates the creation of a weblog in 15 minutes, show how some tricky code generation and dynamic site reloading works together to build a website very quickly. Very interesting stuff.
