Category Archives: OSX

I really like codeIgniter, since it’s super lightweight, and its learning curve is super small. You can get to build a whole website within just a couple days, even with database support.

I’ve written myself a e-commerce website in just two weeks, without having previous knowledge on the technology. Now, let’s get to business.

What happens when you’re writing a view (php based), and you need to display a variable?. Well, you’ve got, essentially, two options. To begin with, you can simply invoke the php ‘echo’ routine, by doing something like this:

[cc lang=”php”][/cc]

Now, if you wanna keep your code really clean, you can rely on CodeIgniter built in parser. How do you implement it?… super simple…:

1. Initialize the Parser Library:

[cc lang=”php”]$this->load->library(‘parser’);[/cc]

2. Replace the ‘<?php echo $blog_title; ?>’ routines with the following syntax:

[cc lang=”php”]{blog_title}[/cc]

So far so good. Now… here’s something interesting. What happens if you wanna print an object’s property? or an object’s method?. Well, CodeIgniter doesn’t support that scenario. It will only work with strings, and with arrays (of strings). So… i’ve extended a bit the library, in order to support ‘printing object’s properties’.

You can download right here my extended version of the parser. We won’t be analyzing the code i’ve written. It’s not complex, and you’re invited to run a diff between the original, and my patch.

Now… how do we use it?. Simple…

1. Install the sf_parser library

You should copy the ‘sf_parser.php’ file to ‘/application/libraries/sf_parser.php’. That’s it. No more no less. Simplicity is one of the things i love the most about CI framework.

2. Initialize the sf_parser library

Instead of initializing the CI’s default parser, we’re gonna need to load our custom library. We can achieve that by doing the following:

[cc lang=”php”]$this->load->library(‘sf_parser’);[/cc]

3. Use the new syntax!

The goal of this library is to enable you (the user!) to print any object’s properties, or getter’s results. Which means that… instead of using the following syntax, in your view.php file:

[cc lang=”php”]get_title();>[/cc]

You can now do something far more elegant… which looks something like this:

[cc lang=”php”]{blog:get_title}[/cc]

If you found it useful… if you found a bug… or if you’ve extended it further, i’d love to hear from you!

MongoDB is a NoSQL database, free of charge. The beauty of mongo relies on its schema-less design… you can add and remove fields, without doing ‘alter table’.

Your information gets stored in JSON, which is  seriously interesting, specially if you work with iOS / Android Apps, and the communications layer works in json.

So.. fire up a browser, and head to this urls. Assuming you’re running OSX (like me!), you’d need the mac binary, which is about 60 megabytes.

Preferrably, you’ll need to download the 64 bits executable. The 32 bits version can address only databases up to 2 gigabytes.

Once you’ve got the file, simply double click on it, to get it uncompressed. Assuming that the file is in the downloads folder, let’s move it to a more suitable location.

Launch terminal, and type the following:

[cc lang=”bash”]
sudo
cd ~/Downloads/
sudo mv mongodb /usr/local/mongodb
[/cc]

Mongo stores its databases in the “/data/db” directory, so… we’d need to create them:

[cc lang=”bash”]
mkdir /data
mkdir /data/db
chmod 777 /data/db
[/cc]

Now, let’s add a couple symbolic links, so you can launch mongo from anywhere in the system:

[cc lang=”bash”]
cd /usr/local/bin
ln /usr/local/mongodb/bin/mongod
[/cc]

That’s it! you’ve just installed mongo!. In order to launch the database, you simply need to type the ‘mongodb’ command.

If you wanna launch a command-line client, type ‘mongo’, which should connect to the server, right away.

For those of you who have no clue what is all of this about, Aircrack-ng is a command line tool that allows you to bruteforce WEP and WPA wi-fi password protections.

WEP being the easiest protection to break, and WPA the hardest. The difference?. WEP can be broken in… two days, give or take (probably less than that), while WPA could take months… without results!. Personally, everytime i needed to break a WEP protection, i had to boot a linux system. If you’re like me, and you’d rather staying in OSX, this is juuuuust for you.

I don’t wanna forget about this, so i’m writing this short guide, right here!

1. Install Macports.
2. Install aircrack-ng:[cc lang=”bash”]sudo port install aircrack-ng[/cc]
3. Install the latest Xcode, with the Command Line Tools.
4. Create the following symlink:[cc lang=”bash”]sudo ln -s /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport /usr/sbin/airport[/cc]
5. Figure out which channel you need to sniff:[cc lang=”bash”]sudo airport -s[/cc]
6. Open up a terminal and type:[cc lang=”bash”]sudo airport en1 sniff [CHANNEL][/cc]
7. Open up a seecond terminal and type:[cc lang=”bash”]aircrack-ng -1 -a 1 -b [TARGET_MAC_ADDRESS] [CAP_FILE][/cc]

Notes: the cap_file will be located in the /tmp/airportSniff*.cap.
Nice, right?

===========================
Update:

I’ve been having issues while trying to crack a WEP key. I had over 100k IV’s… without luck. So i’ve attepted to crack the key with the KoreK algorithm (coded in aircrack-ng). And guess what!! i got the key!!. If you ever have the same problem, try this:

[cc lang=”bash”]aircrack-ng -K -a 1 -b [TARGET_MAC_ADDRESS] [CAP_FILE][/cc]

I’ve tried several RSS Readers for Mac. Many of them are free… such as Google Reader, or Capuccino. But a couple weeks ago i sumbled upon Reeder. I dare to say… it’s the best RSS Reader you’ll be able to find, anywhere else.

Why is that?. Well, the UI is pretty awesome… take a look:

Reeder has several UI styles. Personally, i use the layout portraited above. You get your feed list on the left… the posts in the middle, and the actual post on the right.

Now here’s something interesting. If you click over a post, the app hides the Feed List, and automatically enhances the post itself. Reeder has also something super cool. It’s Gestures-Enabled, which means that you can just swipe to the left or right, and trigger several actions (of course, you can configure that).

Most important of all… you can connect Reeder to your Google Reader account, and that’s it, this guy is gonna keep everything in sync. You could run it across several OSX installations, and… everything will be in sync.

I know it ** might ** be a bit expensive, for a simple rss reader. But trust me, this ain’t no simple reader.. and i believe it’s totally worth it!.