Google+
last.fm
Stack Overflow
YouTubeMy internship recently ended, and as such, I had to move from Calgary back to Edmonton, where I’ll be completing the fourth year of my Computing Science degree at the University of Alberta. I hope to be able to write more about my internship later, but at the moment I want to share a handy trick I discovered for reinstalling OS X. The reason I bring up the move is that after I arrived in Edmonton, I found myself wanting to reformat my Mac Mini and re-install Snow Leopard, but my Snow Leopard disc was nowhere to be found. Luckily, as a semi-paranoid computer scientist with an abundance of disk space, I keep images of important discs on my network-attached storage device for just such occasions.
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
How to reinstall OS X from a disc image using only one computer
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011I’m considering switching back to iOS. Here’s why.
Sunday, June 12th, 2011In September of last year I ditched my iPhone 3G and switched to the Android-powered HTC Desire (which I later sold in order to purchase a Desire Z, which sports a physical keyboard.) I’m sad to report that I’m now considering switching back to iOS, after less than a year on the Android platform. The following is an excerpt from an e-mail I wrote to a friend of mine whom I’d describe as a fervent Android evangelist, detailing some of the frustrations I have with the operating system and why I feel that I might be better served by iOS. I’ve edited it slightly to make it more readable for anyone who might come across this blog.
I really want to like the Android platform, and writing this gave me no joy. There are two reasons I’m posting it here, though. The first is simply that the purpose of this website is for me to post about my programming and my experiences with technology (as well as whatever else catches my fancy.) The second is that I hope that sharing my honest opinion about Android might be helpful to anyone considering a phone purchase.
Android UI/UX gripes
Saturday, April 16th, 2011The week before last, whilst browsing Reddit I came across a blog by the name of “Android Gripes.” The name is perhaps a bit misleading, as it’s not actually a blog by an Android user hoping to spur Google into making UI improvements, as I would have expected. It is, rather, a blog by a self-proclaimed Apple fanboy (though he’s recently edited his about page to remove that admission) complaining about Android for the sake of… well, complaining about Android. (more…)
Making Samba shares accessible to Apache on OS X
Sunday, October 3rd, 2010As a small weekend project, I’ve been working on a simple Python HTTP “file server” of sorts. The basic idea is that authorized users can log in to a web interface and browse files in specific locations on my home network. The Python script is accessed through Apache on my Mac Mini, but some of the files I need access to are on Windows boxes. Unfortunately this presented something of a problem, as the Apache user on OS X (_www as of Snow Leopard) doesn’t have permission to access Windows shares mounted by users.
Sounds simple enough, right? Just chmod or chown the Windows share and go to town. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to work; neither chown or chmod have any effect on mounted Windows shares. Oddly, they don’t output any errors; they just don’t do anything. The only way around this seems to be to mount the shares as the Apache user (or whichever user you need to have access). Here’s how to do so in Snow Leopard, with instructions modified slightly from a Stack Overflow question on the subject:
- Create the mountpoint
mkdir /Volumes/Mount_Name - Set the permissions on the mount point
sudo chown _www:_www /Volumes/Mount_Name sudo chmod 777 /Volumes/Mount_Name - If necessary, make a symlink from your Apache documents folder to the mount point
ln -s /Volumes/Mount_Name /Library/WebServer/Documents/Mount_Name - Mount the share as the Apache user
sudo -u _www mount_smbfs //DOMAIN;User:Password@Host/Share /Volumes/Mount_Name
I doubt a great number of people will need this information as it’s a strange sort of setup, but it’s my hope that these instructions will save someone some time.
Android First Impressions
Monday, September 6th, 2010Like a number of disgruntled users and developers, I recently decided to trade my iPhone in for an Android device. My distaste for Apple’s app store policies, design philosophy and corporate culture had been pushing me in that direction for some time. The final straw, though, was iOS 4, which rendered my iPhone 3G almost unusably slow while failing to grant any of the most noteworthy new features. The inordinate difficulty of downgrading iOS exacerbates the problem for users who are still stuck with the iPhone 3G. To be fair to Apple, Wednesday will see iOS 4.1 released, and they’ve claimed that it will fix the iPhone 3G performance issues. For me, though, 4.1 is too little, too late. (more…)