I absolutely love GlimmerBlocker. GlimmerBlocker is a free ad filter proxy, primarily targeted at Safari users. It filters those annoying ads on ad polluted websites very effectively. But wait, GlimmerBlocker is more! Read more »

Here are the kernel extensions I’m using on my ASUS P6T (non SE, non Deluxe) mainboard to run Mac OS X 10.6. I’m not planning to write a guide for a vanilla installation but I already summed up some important points when installing OS X on the P6T in this post from a retail Mac OS DVD. Read more »

I’d like to make my blog posts more share-friendly by adding buttons at the end of every post for the most popular bookmarking/sharing web sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg and so on. There’s a wide range of social bookmark plugins available for WordPress. A plugin that immediately caught my eye is SexyBookmarks. It looks great and you can choose between several catch phrases like Sharing is caring or Sharing is sexy.

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When I compiled the how-to about using Duply to backup a Linux server to a FTP account I mentioned the possibility to backup all data to an IMAP account. So, all we need for our encrypted backup is a reliable IMAP account provider with a few GB of email space. In this post I’m using Gmail which provides up to 7 GB for emails for free, but instead of saving emails Duply will store encrypted backup files on that Gmail account. Read more »

I recently changed my website’s WordPress URL from its www-version to the non www-version: www.trick77.com changed to just trick77.com. As this may will confuse search engines and thus lower your visibility in organic searches, it’s recommended to configure a 301 (permanently moved) redirect from the old domain name to the new one. There’s lots of SEO information about redirecting domain names using mod_rewrite and .htaccess to be found on the web.

Now, some SEO experts claim that it’s important to change the internal links on a web site as well. As I’m occasionally linking to my own WordPress posts within my web site, all those links still point to the old www version of the domain name. So, is there an easy way to change all internal links from one domain name to another on a WordPress site at once? Read more »

My Linux root server’s hosting price plan includes a 50 GB backup storage option. The backup server can only be reached using FTP, unsecured. Even though the backup server is only visible from within my server provider’s local network, I still don’t want to expose all my server settings, accounts and databases in clear text to a man in the middle. Or, I don’t want an untrustworthy subject with access to the backup server’s file system to be able to read my backup. Also, I don’t want to send my entire site to the backup storage every day as this would eat up my 50 GB within days.

This is where Duply (formerly known as FTPlicity) comes in handy. Duply claims to make your incremental encrypted backups on non-trusted spaces a child’s play. It manages backup job settings in profiles and allows to batch execute commands. It supports symmetric and asymmetric encryption using GPG.

Duply is not limited to FTP, you can also send your backups to a IMAP, WebDAV or ssh destination (and even more!). I haven’t tried the IMAP method but in theory you could send your encrypted backup to a free Google mail account as long as you don’t exceed the 7 GB provided by Gmail. However, in this sample, I’m using a FTP scenario with asymmetric encryption.

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Because Apple didn’t release the Darwin 10.2.0 XNU sources (the kernel in Mac OS X 10.6.2)  yet (as of 11-14-09), there’s no way to re-enable Atom CPU support on the MSI Wind (and other Atom based netbooks) once you update to 10.6.2. I’ve seen some russian bin-hacks (Tea’s kernel) but they don’t work on the Wind, the kernel panics while booting. Once the XNU sources are out it will be pretty easy to compile a modified kernel with Atom CPU support but for the time being, you might as well re-use the kernel that came with your 10.6.0 Snow Leopard installation. So far, I haven’t seen any limitations using the older kernel in 10.6.2.

All you need is the USB stick you initially installed Snow Leopard from and some basic Terminal skills.
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This is not a how-to guide, tutorial or walk-through, I just list the kexts and settings needed to get Snow Leopard 10.6.0 or 10.6.1 up and running on an MSI Wind U100 netbook. Even though I haven’t personally tested it, the kexts should also work in the Wind U100 plus model. Up to OS X 10.6.1 the Atom 270/280 CPUs are natively supported by the Darwin kernel a.k.a. the vanilla kernel. There are rumors that this may change in a later release of OS X. In fact, Apple already seeded an OS X 10.6.2 developer version with Atom support disabled.

Added 11/10/09: Do NOT update to 10.6.2 as Apple deliberately disabled Atom CPU support and your MSI Wind netbook will go into a reboot loop or simply crash! You’ll need a modified kernel to run 10.6.2 or higher on an Atom CPU! If you’re fluent with Terminal, you might as well install the 10.6.2 update and reinstall the old kernel, see this post for more information. I tried it and it works fantastic!

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The ASUS P6T is one of the less expensive LGA 1366 motherboards at the moment. It features some cool overclocking BIOS settings, FireWire, external E-SATA onboard port, and is SLI/CrossFire-capable. SLI/CrossFire is the main difference between the P6T and the P6T SE but you could always cross flash the P6T SE into a P6T to get SLI support. I put a Core i7 920 CPU in it and populated three of the six RAM banks with 2 GB Patriot Viper DDR-3 DIMMs. This baby has OSX86 written all over it, it screams to be run on Snow Leopard :-) Read more »

Here’s the ACPI DSDT (Darwin-style) for the Gigabyte P55-UD3 Intel LGA 1156 socket mainboard revision 1.0, BIOS version F4i. I’m using it with a Lynnfield Core i7-860 CPU. Created using DSDT Patcher 1e so you may need to recompile it shortening the RTC IO block length from 4 to 2 in case you get a BIOS reset when booting into OSX86 SL (once a 10.0.x XNU kernel supporting the new CPU/stepping is out). Read more »

Today, my Mac crashed with a kernel panic. After rebooting I tried to start iTunes but it just showed this error message:
iTunes application could not be opened. An unknown error occurred (13010).

I remembered that I was in the process of updating the iTunes Genius database when the kernel panic occurred. I was able to start iTunes again after deleting the iTunes Library Genius.itdb file. You’ll find the Genius database file in the direcory $HOME/Music/iTunes.

Just like in the MMI 2G, there’s a hidden menu in the MMI 3G too. I don’t encourage anyone to enable the hidden developer menu as it’s hidden for a good reason. So, if you’re the kind of person who likes to press buttons without knowing what they do, the hidden menu may not be for you! Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Read more »

Did you know you can enable a battery capacity bar in your MMI 3G?

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Due to popular demand there’s a MMI 2G/3G VIM login-code generator application available in the download area. Windows-only. And you need .NET Framework 3.5 in order to run it. You will be asked to download it from Microsoft during the installation if it can’t be found on your system.

Now, this is something for the Audi folks. If your Audi is equipped with a MMI TV-module or a DVD-player, security restrictions have been applied to stop video-playback while your car is moving above a certain speed threshold. This feature is also called VIM (Video In Motion) lock. There’s a guy from Russia who offers a VAG-COM/VCDS based solution to disable this restriction but a) he wants your precious money for this hack and b) he needs online access to your computer and to your car to set the VIM threshold. There are also expensive, CAN-based programming cables on the market for the same purpose. Read more »