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!

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 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…..

With last week’s announcement of the iCloud, Apple has disregarded the regular use of the term cloud, and used it for one their own products. For many people, including the mainstream media, Apple’s iCloud is their first exposure to the term cloud. This is unfortunate because cloud computing has been around for a while within the geek and tech communities. Non-tech people will now think that cloud computing is synonymous with the iCloud.

By today’s use of the term cloud, the iCloud is not cloud computing. Cloud computing is when data storage AND processing happens in the cloud. The iCloud is just a big hard-drive in the sky. No processing actually happens there. As the Buzz out loud crew stated, iCloud should actually be called iSync. Syncing is all that the iCloud does. The iCloud isn’t even in the same ballpark as cloud computing.

This is not the first time Apple has stolen a term like this. They pretty much redefined the term App, which used to just be short for application, but now it is synonymous with mobile application.

Since Apple has hijacked the cloud term from the geeks, we are going to have to regroup and come up with a new one. I can’t think of a term at the moment, but someone needs to come up with one soon.

So, it has been a few days since the big iPad 2 and iOS announcement, and I have had some time to reflect on it. The iPad 2 is obviously a competitive device, and competitors are still struggling to complete with the now outdated original iPad.

It took me a few days to notice, but this announcement did lack something that is long overdue: an updated notification system. The iPhone is still using its’ original notification system, which is from the days when the iPhone didn’t even support 3rd party apps. I think that it is currently the weakest part of the iPhone, and it is one area where Android is far ahead of the iPhone.

Currently, there is an alternate notification system available called MobileNotifier, but it requires a jailbroken phone, which is a dealbreaker for many users. The fact that developers are going to so much trouble to create their own notification system should be a wake up call for Apple to get their act together. I realize that a new notification system is planned for a later release, probably iOS 5, but it is getting pretty ridiculous that it is not out yet.

Check out a video of MobileNotifier in action:

Yesterday, google announced a chrome extension that allows users to block specific domains from google’s search results page. This has probably been released as a response to the recent criticism that google has been under for not being able to filter content farms out of their results. I installed the extension yesterday, but did not know where to start with blocking domains. I haven’t really been paying attention to content farms. I pretty much just ignore them. The extension creates a link on the results page next to each result to block that specific domain. Blocking domains by this method will take a while to create a comprehensive list of blocked domains.

Jon Gales has compiled a list of content farms. This is a great list of domains to get a list of blocked domains started.

Here is a link to the blog post about the chrome extension.

The interwebs has been in uproar during the last 24 hours about the new Usage Base Billing that the CRTC has allowed ISPs to implement. Some of the new usage caps are ridiculous. For example, starting March 1st, TekSavvy customers will have a bandwidth cap of 25GB/month, down from 200GB/month.

ArsTechnica has a good write-up about the situation, and the Liberals are already calling for the decision to be reversed.

Reddit user CGSColin put it in perspective the best in the following graphic:

Also, goto stopthemeter.ca!!!

Asimo has been around for a while, but some researches at Carnegie Mellon have given it some amazing capabilities. It can dodge dynamic obstacles, including some pretty tricky ones at the end of the vid. Asimo would be pretty good at real life frogger.

Last tuesday, Apple announced the Magic Trackpad. For those of you who ignore apple news, the magic trackpad is basically a larger version of the trackpad found in the macbook pros. It is marketed at desktop users, and from some of the pictures on apples’ site, it is being marketed as a mouse replacement. Some bloggers are even claiming that this is the end of the mouse era.

There is no way that this trackpad will completely replace the mouse. It is likely that something will eventually replace the mouse, but this is not it. I could see the Magic Trackpad becoming a common peripheral, maybe finding its home on the left side of a keyboard, but it will never replace the mouse.

A trackpad will never be as precise or as fast as a conventional mouse. This is due to some simple biomechanics. A trackpads precision and speed could potentially be increased by some smart motion sensing algorithms, but if these algorithms existed, they could be applied to mouse-movements as well, making those even more precise and speedy.

Don’t worry, your mouse isn’t going anywhere….

Since I signed up for my first Google account, which was sometime in 2006, Google has kindly been keeping track of my web history. As of today, I have performed a total of 20900 Google searches. That averages to about 14/day. In practice, I would have performed many more searches than that, for Google’s web history only keeps track of the searches made while I am logged in. I am rarely logged into my google account when I am on the computers at school, at friend’s places or on my phone. Also, when I first got my Google account I didn’t stay logged in all the time, so Google’s web history wouldn’t have known about a lot of my searches.

The calendar over to the right shows the Google searches that I have made last month. Most days I am performing between 50-100 searches, and I am breaching the 100 search/day mark on several days.

…yea…I probably spend too much time on the interwebs….