Once inside Disk Utility, just press the “New Image” button.

After this, put the settings that you see in the picture. Here I choose the image’s name secure, the syze 100mb (choose more if you want) and the important thing, in “Encryption“, choose AES-128. If you want to know more about this encryption, read some stuff.

Now, it’s important to choose a strong password, this can be tested by pressing the little key in the next window. This will show you a green bar, that grows, when password gets stronger. If you prefer, let the utility pick a strong password for you. One final thing to take in account: do not remember password in the Keychain, for improved security! So just uncheck that… Click OK, and you are all done!


Now eject the image, and move the secure.dmg inside your pen drive, or anywhere you want! Anytime you want to put new files, just mount the image (double click secure.dmg).

Very easy right? Enjoy simple encryption!

Here I will cover both the Mac and Linux, because, well, in fact they are almost the same, command line speaking I guess.

So, let’s skip the romantic part of the post, and let’s cut to the chase! =)

First go to your favorite command line client, and create or own set of digital keys. It’s very simple, don’t worry, just type ssh-keygen -t dsa (this generates a digital key, using DSA as security algorithm). It will prompt you the destination for the key, which normally resides inside folder .ssh at your home folder, and if you want to use a passphrase each time you use the keys (let’s keep it simple for now and say no). Now if you take a look inside .ssh folder, you will now see 2 files or more, but the important ones are id_dsa and id_dsa.pub. This is the pair of keys, one which is public, and the other you keep it for yourself.

Now if you look inside your id_dsa.pub, you will see a bunch of characters, which don’t mean anything to you. But copy everything to clipboard, for use in your remote server. My looks like this:

(this is all in a single line)

There is no problem on showing my public key, because, well, it’s public. You can learn more why here.

Now, login to your server, go to directory .ssh on you home folder, and edit or create the file authorized_keys; paste your public key inside, all in one line! That’s it, your done. If you use Dreamhost I found out that both .ssh folder and authorized_keys file must have 700 permissions set.

Now logout, and login again, and the remote server will match your public key, with your local private key, and if everything goes smoothly, you are in! No passwords, no hassle, no nothing!

It’s also possible to make your sftp client to use your keys, just define this in the login options, and check the “Use public keys authentication” or something similar, and choose your private key, not your public one. Next time you login, again, no passwords will be asked. Cool eyn?

I did not cover ssh inside Windows systems, but you can do the same using Putty and all the tools available. Go here to learn more about ssh authentication inside Windows, using Putty, but also for a more precise explanation on ssh authentication.

In the future it also should be important for you to set a passphrase with your keys, for extra security. But for now this is enough, so enjoy!
Oh, by the way, in case you did not understand the romantic vs chase part of this post, take a look here…

Update: By the way, this post refers to Dreamhost, but you can use this with any server you wish, just make the same steps discribed.

If you come from Linux, you probably are familiar with the Wine project, which is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. This allows you to run a great number of Windows only applications, without emulating Windows itself. And you might ask: what about Mac OS X? Doesn’t it descend from Unix? That’s right, Mac OS X kernel is called Darwin, and comes in direct line from Unix.
Wine is also implemented in Mac, and there are 2 choices. The first is a commercial one from the guys at CodeWeavers, and is called CrossOver. But if you are like me, you will use a free (both as beer and freedom), version of Wine for Mac, which is called Darwine (very clever, Darwin + Wine, AH!).

Its very easy, just grab a copy of Darwine, put it on your Applications folder and make sure you also have installed X11 that came with your Mac OS X Install DVD 1. Now grab uTorrent.exe, run WineHelper (from the Darwine folder you have just installed), and open uTorrent.exe. If everything goes smoothly, you should be seeing uTorrent client running in your desktop. There are a few problems with fonts, a some times it looks like uTorrent is “freezed”, but in fact you only have to click show/hide from uTorrent‘s tray icon, and it will come back alive and kicking!

I keep hoping that uTorrent gets ported do Mac OS X, so I can run it native, but for now this is good enough for me!

Enjoy this one, and post your feedback.

I am a big fan of GNU Linux, and other UX alike, and I recognize in the last couple of years, Linux as come a long long way, with every modern distro being able to recognize your hardware (at least most of them); I was positively surprised to install the latest Ubuntu on my girlfriend’s laptop, and just like in my Mac, I was able to connect right away to my WIFI connection with WPA TKIP security, with no hassle.

Now, in my humble opinion, I believe the industry is following Apple and their ideas. Things just work, stuff does not get in the way. You tend to feel, that everything, from instant messaging, to emailing, media organizing or just file browsing, have more productivity. Hell, even the hardware doen not get in the way! I might be wrong, but it’s a strong feeling.
I also believe Apple should follow the Open Source movement, because they have very good ideas, very good hardware, and they would win a lot more if they just shared with the rest of the world… I truly believe this, but I also know this is daydreaming (I am singing in my head, Lupe Fiasco’s “Daydreamin‘)

Getting back to the clean up! I did my backups to a external USB drive, rebooted with the Mac OS X inside the drive, and booted using the C key.
This took me inside a install “OS”, very similar to the real thing. Here, I had access to disk utility’s, log viewer. I did the full install, without answering to 100 questions! This felt very good, once again, does not get in the way. It’s simple, easy, and you don’t have to be a astronaut to get away without problems!

When everything was installed, it took me 5 minutes to put my login info, to configure my WIFI connection, and I was up and running!
When I bought this Macbook, I messed everything around, just to get to know the operating system. With time everything felt sluggish, and not snappy anymore, so now I have the full system back, and from now on, I will keep it this way, at least I’ll try! =)

Stay in touch!

I had a quick break, and went to one of my University’s coffees… Since my school is part of the e-U project, we have WIFI all over the place! When we connect, we receive instructions for Windows machines, but Linux and Mac, are left aside…
Since I’m connecting with a macbook, I figured out how to get online, with no hassle and left the instructions here!

Its very simple… Just go to the WIFI options on your mac, and choose the Other… option.

Now just create a new network, called e-U with 802.11x wireless security option enabled. Insert your credentials (should be similar to myne, except for the first part of the user name and, the password):

Just click OK and when the certification mambo jambo appears, just click Continue

If everything works right, you are now connected.. One last thing though: do not forget to add the local proxies, else you wont have access outside. My proxy is proxy2.si.ualg.pt:8080. Just change it for your network (ask the local computer support)

That’s it! Time to go back to classes…