Little Tech Tricks

As this doesn't fit my usual genre of blog post, here is your fair warning: this is another of my technical posts. :)

So I've recently switched to a Mac Mini in one of my spheres of influence. It's been challenging; missing or stolen keyboard shortcuts still miff me, but several things have worked well for me:

1. Mou. This is a Markdown editor for Macs (OS X). I have tried about a dozen in Linux, Windows, and OS X and this one takes the cake, kicks butte, `sudo rm -rf /`, and any other superlative expressions of high marks you wish to contribute. It's shiny. It does real syntax highlighting. It isn't cross-platform. :( Above all, though, it scrolls with you as you type!!! Now, as you're typing notes in class or composing a blog post, you can see what you're typing rather than scrolling back to the bottom after every change you make.
2. I play with hardware. This means that I need to use serial communications fairly often, and Macs kind of suck in this department. Windows and Linux both know that a standard USB COM port is; BSD/OSX needs to be told. For the most common of these, FTDI provides their own solution. It works rather well. If you don't want to go through the effort, OSX lets you attach any USB device to a Linux virtual machine (I like VirtualBox) and let a real operating system do the dirty work. (This works for charging the Motorola W755 phone on macs and for reading EXT2/3-formatted USB devices as well.) Remember to install the Guest Additions.
3. EXT2 R/O access: MacFuse combined with fuse-ext2 will at least get you started.
4. iTerm2. If you do any amount of work on a terminal, iTerm2 is here to save you from xterm and Terminal. One problem; several standard keyboard shortcuts are AWOL. Lucky for you, ShadowFiend and his commenters have been gracious enough to show the world how to fix this.
5. BetterTouchTool. This is how I got enough gestures and taps (middle click anyone?) working to be somewhat productive once again on OS X.
6. IRC. Several programs exist that fill this need; I'm enjoying Colloquy at present.
7. Google Calendar/iCal integration.

Also, I've had the opportunity to set up and modify several servers in a professional capacity of late, and a couple of articles I found are worth mentioning, if anything for my future benefit.

1. HTTP Basic authentication. There is a simple Perl command that generates encrypted passwords. (A better article exists but was not found by me.) While Basic Auth is a terrible choice for strong security, it has many handy little uses and this makes administering those a bit easier.
2. How to get an SSH Key's fingerprint. Useful when lots of little keys are running around nekked. 'Nuf said.

I hope you find something here useful. Happy Thursday!

Motorola Droid disassembly

Taking things apart is fun...especially when it was expensive, has been replaced, is out of warranty, and needs fixing. So my boss handed me his recently bathed Droid to take apart, rinse out with ethyl alcohol, and reassemble. A brief Google search found these two links:

Dr. Wreck's Motorola Droid teardown
Note commenter Jeremy on the second page of comments.

Dr. Wreck's analysis of the carnage


These are nearly comprehensive and very impressive. However, I would like to insert an omission or two.

When pulling the back cover off, there is a black flat piece that runs along the top (camera end) of the battery compartment that needs to be pulled down as it has two tabs around the first silver torx' socket's base.

Note that the mic will lift right out.

The antenna board seems to be glued in, but it doesn't seem to interfere with removing the edge cover so I didn't remove it during disassembly.

Keep track of the three buttons: I nearly lost one to the floor. One doesn't come out until you remove the edge connector.

This phone has a sticker under the battery that holds a significant part of the edge cover down. Peel this back, lift the screen-ward edge in the direction of the back of the phone and the opposite edge will disengage towards the front of the phone.

The screen mount has NINE (9) screws holding it in. Five you can see with the phone open and four you can only get to with the edge cover off. I am presently having incredibly amounts difficulty getting the center right keyboard edge one to come out. Judging by their use of glue in holding the edge connector on, it has probably been loc-tite'd into place so it's brutally obvious to a trained service tech when I have invaded the inner sancta of the phone... EDIT later today: every device has failed to break the screw loose, so I had to drill out the head.

Also keep track of the various rubber buffer pieces on the main board. In my considered opinion and lack of specific experience, they can hide water damage and are essential to vibration protection.

UPDATE: Even with two separate water damaged Droids, no combination was successful in restoring life. Luckily, my boss' Droid was still able to recognize a USB connection and dump anything useful onto his PC.