From Ubuntu/Windows to Mac OS-X Leopard

I just got my first brand new MacBook and, as one would expect, some problems emerged by leaving my usual OS combo (Ubuntu/Windows) for Mac OS X Leopard. I’m still undecided whether to install Ubuntu or use VMWare Fusion to use Linux. As for Microsoft Windows as long as I don’t need to use .NET I don’t think I’ll install it. Not even with the free licenses Microsoft provides University of Minho students.

First I had to decide what to install:

• Firefox
• del.icio.us UNSAFE add-on for Firefox
• Portuguese Dictionary add-on for Firefox
• Pidgin Adium
• Nero Toast Titanium
• Office
• Photoshop
• TextMate
• Ruby on Rails
• Java SDK
• Netbeans
• Glassfish
• GHC
• Erlang
• MacTex
• oXygen
• BookPedia
• DB2 (will IBM make it available for mac anytime soon?)

The question you are probably asking is why Firefox instead of Safari!? Because the damn unsafe add-on for del.icio.us is just that: del.icio.us! I just can’t live without it. Maybe if the guys over there worked the basics of security we could say that it’s both excellent and safe! And don’t say there’s a add-on for Safari as well. I’ll only accept it if the add-on is as good as the one provided by Yahoo.

Now we go for the fun part. The problems and solving them. Your attention please, this is only fun for me when I do it on my computer so it won’t be pleasure if you ask me to fix your computer! Joana this one is for you, I know how your mind thinks.. Almost as badly as mine. Oh well, we are related aren’t we? :\ Please release those crazy Christmas photos to the world! :X

I’ll start with a small OS free tip and then go for the Q/A part. If you are Portuguese like myself you just hate all the results that google gives you from .br domains. Most of the results are overrated and most of the times you just wish that they weren’t there. If this is the case just do your normal search in google but write -br in the end. Just test this, go to google and type governo brasileiro -br. It works ;)

1. How do I get my mouse to behave like a normal one by removing this dreadful acceleration?
   

   Easy. Check Rúben’s blog @ http://blog.0×82.com/2007/12/mac-os-and-usb-mouse.html

2. What’s wrong with the encoding on TextEdit? The automatic descovery does not work and even when I specifically tell him to use this encoding it won’t work. The Where is ISO 8859-15 dilemma.

   Still don’t know. Anyone? If you want to test the bug just do this (from here):

   $ echo é > ~/a.txt
   $ cat ~/a.txt
   é
   Open a.txt with TextEdit and get:
   È

   Cracked it! At least I have a partial fix for Migrating documents from Ubuntu to Mac OS X Leopard:

   cmd + space terminal enter

   {go to the directory where the file is}

   bash$ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 {filename} > UTF8-{filename}

   For me it was:

   bash$ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 Pam.tex > UTF8-Pam.tex

   And yes PAM is as in Pluggable Authentication Modules. So I have a latex work on that :P

3. Where is type-a-name application? It’s not on the dock.

   Just press cmd + space and type what you are looking for. This is called spotlight. Either this or open Finder and go to applications.

4. Why doesn’t it show my dashboard when I go to the left/whatever corner?

   Have you even configured your mac? Common.. Click the apple on the top left corner and go to System Preferences. Exposé and Spaces. And now that you are there take a look around and configure all the other things that you neglected.

5. This computer is always underlining the words in red. (when the spelling is right :P If not you are a dumbass for asking this!)

   Just press cmd + mouse and change the language. Thanks Nuno Veloso from Apple Tech Team for this tip.

6. How can I see the right mouse button menu?

   crtl + mouseclick

7. PageUp/PageDown!?
   

   fn+ up
   fn + down

If after this you still feel like reading about Mac OS for rookies – like myself – you can check this section in Arun Gupta’s Blog or check this extensive list of Keyboard Shortcuts. Have fun!

Now let’s get back to work, something almost impossible when your doing a report on LaTeX and the encodings are never right.

One final touch: ctrl + alt + cmd + 8. Merry Christmas! :)

Ornatos Violeta – Deixa Morrer

Para quem estava interessado no tema anterior deixo-vos as sources do livro Beginning Cryptography with Java. Pelo menos usa bibliotecas de uso livre (bouncycastle). Quando acabar o trabalho disponibilizo-o neste post. É com muita pena minha que tenho que comunicar que o livro não está disponível na biblioteca da Universidade do Minho.

[EDIT: Código fonte disponível aqui]

E agora a minha música favorita de uma banda que muita falta faz no panorama musical português. Ornatos Violeta, claro!

Não nos deixei mentir e agora tanto faz. Vou dar o mundo a quem!?

Diffie-Hellman Java Implementation

Diffie-Hellman is a cryptographic key agreement algorithm that allows two parties that have no prior knowledge of each other to jointly establish a shared secret key over an insecure communications channel. This key can then be used to encrypt subsequent communications using a symmetric key cipher.

We were asked at cryptography classes to develop such algorithm using the core java libraries. I made a little test – I think they call it jUnit – to prove that both famous Bob and infamous Alice share the same dirty little secret.. :)Source: http://nunojobpinto.googlepages.com/diffie-hellman.zip[EDIT: As Ruben pointed out Diffie-Hellman is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. This is a purely academic work and - despite the brilliance of the response - is not intended to be used as is. If you want to learn more about this maybe you should read about station-to-station and certificates. In Portuguese you can use the resources given to cryptography masters students at University of Minho]Also if your using Netbeans IDE 6 you are probably noticing that the themes SUCK. I don’t even mean this as it’s not eye-candy, I really mean they hurt the eyes and I am already using glasses due to the overwhelming amount of time I spend at my laptop.To surpass this I advise you to download these files:

• http://mediacast.sun.com/share/tor/org-netbeans-modules-ruby-themes.nbm
• http://www.ibrasten.com/com-superruby-netbeans-themes-fadetogrey.nbm

Now open your very own Netbeans IDE – wait 10 minutes for it to start – and then go to:

• Tools -> Plugins -> Downloaded -> Add

Now add the two files you have just downloaded and change the theme in Tools -> Preferences and you are ready to go.

Netbeans 6 RC2 Uninstallation Issue

Well i have been using Netbeans IDE Beta 1 for some time now.

I was using it to develop some Ruby on Rails projects. Some days ago I was in cryptography classes and tried to use the Apache Tomcat support for the Netbeans Beta 1. As I found out there was some bug in my way I decided to download the new RC2 and see if the issue got fixed in the meanwhile.

That when I first tried to uninstall Netbeans Beta 1. I got this error and still don’t know how to fix it. So I submitted it to Netbeans Community as a bug.

Anyone with the same problem got it fixed?

[UPDATE: Solution here]

I know that I have recently said that Netbeans has the best support to work on Ruby on Rails. It does. But just don’t use the beta. It’s crappy. If your on 512mb of RAM like me your computer will hate Netbeans Beta. I don’t even know if they will ever get this fixed. (Maybe a lightweight version of Netbeans is in order)

Is there such thing as the perfect IDE? We should be focusing on developing not on the IDE.

Learning Rails

Damn I HATE TESTS. Unit testing is boring…
Learning rails is hard. I know it’s supposed to be easy to use. And it is.

But if you explore it a little further, and you want to know how things work, properly understand the framework and language than your in trouble. And you’ll have some headaches with it, specially on the damn tests. Knowing that in some two months I’ll have enough knowledge to create a web application is what keep me going…

When I’m done with the first study, I’ll let you all know what my impressions where. For now I’ll describe Rails framework as highly impressive and simple, but different from all you have seen before.

Some advices to who is starting, use Netbeans 6.0 and InstantRails. Visit Netbeans Documentation for quick tutorials and read the book I referred to in another post for more advanced topics.

7 tests, 7 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors
6 tests, 12 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

I’m out of here.