Recently for a school project, I was required to work on my school’s lab computers because my program had to run in their unique network environment.

There were two problems with this. First, the school’s computers are unbearably slow and their keyboards are those big Dell ones that are impossible to type quickly on. Secondly, It’s a huge waste of time to trek into school just to do some coding, when I could spend my commute time actually getting work done at home.

The only access I have to the school computers is through SSH. Since Mac OS X Lion came out, support for SSH filesystems has been somewhat lacking and I could not find any decent instructions on how to get it to work. I have taken the time to figure out how to do it, and I would like to share it with you below.

There are two programs that you will need: OSX Fuse and Macfusion. Follow these instructions:

1. Downlaod OSX Fuse  at http://osxfuse.github.com/. OSX Fuse is the successor to macfuse, which is no longer being maintained.

2. When installing OSX Fuse, make sure you select the MacFUSE Compatibility Layer option. This is important because macfusion relies on it. This is the main gotcha of the whole process. It took me a few tries to find this out. Once OSX Fuse is installed, you will not need to touch it again. It is just a dependency for Macfusion.

3.  Download and install Macfusion app from http://macfusionapp.org/ .

4. Launch Macfusion app. In the bottom left-hand corner, there is a plus button that has options to mount SSHFS and FTPFS drives.

5. Have fun working from home!

It just struck me that TEDx Victoria is only a few days away and I am going! I have never been to one of these conferences before, but I have watched a large majority of the TED talks that are up online. TED seems to get it right by having really interesting speakers. Talks on subjects that I am not even really interested in are good.

I am pretty excited for Derek Jacoby’s talk titled A hackerspace for biology. He sounds like a pretty interesting guy, and like myself has a strong interest in both computer science and biology. Another speaker that got my attention is Beth Campbell Duke, who is giving a talk titled School is a Waste of Time. That is something that I am starting to agree with as I am spending more and more time self-educating and less time on my actual school work.

As someone who finds lectures in school to be almost unbearable, it’s weird that I’m excited to sit in lectures for a whole day. See you on Saturday….

If you are using Google Chrome, which you should be, you may be missing out on an awesome feature. I was. Google Instant is a feature that pre-fetches pages as you type in searches or addresses. It intelligently guesses what site you will be going to, and will have the page downloaded by the time you hit enter. I have been using it for about a day, and I am already so used to it that I can not go back.

The Google Instant product page claims that it can save between 2-5 seconds/search. On my big days, I am performing over 100 google searches, so this could save me up to 8 minutes a day.

The only snag with Google Instant is that it is not enabled by default. To enable it, go into preferences and check the checkbox as shown below:

I started making an apple pie from scratch last year. I still have a long ways to go and I’m getting pretty hungry.

After a few months of sleepless nights wondering if I have been doing my version control correctly, my Free (as in beer) copy of “Version Control by Example” by Eric Sink arrived.

It’s unfortunate that this arrived right in the middle of mid-terms for me, as this is way more interesting than the courses I’m taking right now.

I was surprised to see glossy pages, like a magazine, and the book looks great after a quick flip through.

I can’t wait to get started. Thanks Eric!

It’s now up on Amazon here.

Just ran into this bug. I think it’s time to goto bed…..

I have been a dedicated Chrome user since its release in the fall of ’08. At launch, it was noticeably faster and better than any other browser on the market.

Unfortunately, Chrome has not been able to keep this up. Today, Chrome on Mac and Linux has become slow again. I run on SSDs, and expect my applications to launch instantly. Most applications do, except for Chrome.

Last night, I finally lost it with Chrome and switched back to Firefox. The only major thing I miss about Chrome is its bookmark syncing. Firefox does have plugins that can do this, but not out of the box.

Please fix your browser google…..

I finally got around to playing with the new pistons in minecraft last night. I created one of pistons’ obvious capabilities: a secret entrance to my base hidden by a waterfall.

Three pistons hold the water back at the top and five pistons push up a drawbridge through the water when the waterflow is cut off. The redstone circuitry is all hidden underground. The only thing I still have to implement is the capability to close the entrance from the inside, once I’ve entered my mine.

Check out the pics…..