What’s neat about SSHFS is that I can now, for example, mount the hard drives of the web servers I work on as normal directories on my computer, eliminating the need for dealing with an FTP client, and allowing me to open websites are projects using my text-editor of choice, TextMate.

However, all is not well if your server layout uses a lot of symlinks, as mine does. The sshfs.app that comes with the MacFUSE SSHFS package doesn’t use the follow_symlinks option by default, and there’s no preference to turn it on. Luckily for us, sshfs.app comes with the command-line version of SSHFS built-in. All it takes is a couple terminal commands, and you’ll be opening Transmit with less frequency in no time.

How To Do This Thing I Mentioned: The Pre-Requesiting

The first thing we’ll need to do, obviously, is to download and install both MacFUSE and the SSHFS packages from the project’s Google Code site. After installing MacFUSE, you’ll have to reboot your machine, due to the fact that FUSE is actually a kernel extension, that need to load when OS X first starts up. While you’re doing that, I’m going to go crack open a Red Bull. We’ll see who finishes first.

Step 2: Termina, Round 1: The symlink

The next step is the meat of our SSHFS implementation, and you’ll need the use of our friend, the Terminal. He lives in /Applications/Utilities/ and likes long walks on the beach, shell scripts, and perl. Luckily for us, we won’t need any of those things. Just a couple of simple commands.

As stated above, the SSFHS package provided by Google Code gives us just what we need, but it’s kind of hidden. After you’ve downloaded the package, and dragged sshfs.app into your /Applications folder, pop open your Terminal and put in the following code:

sudo ln -s /Applications/sshfs.app/Contents/Resources/sshfs-static /usr/local/bin/sshfs

The above code creates a symlink (symbolic link) to the command-line version of the SSHFS application, which exists inside the app we downloaded from Google Code. We use sudo here, because we need temporary Root access, to modify the /usr/local/bin directory. Putting a link to the application inside /usr/local/bin is entirely optional- it just makes things simpler. Instead of typing ‘/Applications/sshfs.app/Contents/Resources/sshfs-static’ every time we want to use the app, now we can just type ‘sshfs’, instead.

Step 3: The Finishing Of the Thing We Started A Minute Ago

The final step is to actually USE the sshfs tool, now that we’re all set up. sshfs’ invocation is pretty simple, and if you want more info, you can check out the documentation for yourself. For the purposes of this howto, though, I’m just going to show you how I do it. I do it like this:

sshfs user:remote.server:/remote/path /your/path/here -oreconnect,ping_diskarb,follow_symlinks,volname=VOLUME_NAME

This invokes our new friend sshfs, tells it we want to log onto a server, located at the address remote.server, directory /remote/path, with the username user. We also want to mount the directory on our machine in the directory /your/path/here (personally, I use /Volumes/servername), and with a bunch of options at the end. You don’t really need to know about those, I promise. The main one we’re interested in is follow_symlinks, which was the whole point of my taking this journey down tutorial lane.

If you’re successful, the server share should mount onto your desktop, and you can interact with it just like it’s a normal part of your own hard drive, without needing to use an FTP client to transfer files, browse directories, delete items, or any other mundane or advanced task. Enjoy.

This article was originally posted to murderthoughts.com

One button. No GUI. A key press might just call someone, or maybe it will add a seemingly random entry to your calendar, or maybe it will even send $600 to Steve Job’s secret offshore bank account. The only way to know is to press it. Who are you to resist?

No-Screen Shuffle

iPhone Shuffle is an iPod Shuffle with easy one-touch controls that lets you enjoy all your content — including music, audiobooks, videos, TV shows, and movies — on a device with absolutley no screen. It also lets you sync your content from the iTunes library, we think. And then you can access it all with just the touch of a finger.

Revolutionary Phone

iPhone Shuffle is a revolutionary new mobile phone that allows you to make a call by simply pressing the iPhone Shuffle’s innovative one-button control system, and letting the phone randomly choose who you call. Sometimes it won’t, though. The only way to know is to try. Randomize your life!

Breakthrough Internet Device (Maybe!)

iPhone Shuffle features a rich HTML email client, probably! And several other things! We think! We can’t really tell what it’s doing most of the time. You want it.

You might wonder why, instead of simply modifying OmniWeb’s default google search shortcut, we’re making a new one. It’s not complicated: this way, if you want to go back to regular old google, it’s just a mouse-click away, no harm, no foul.

First things first

Open OmniWeb. Simple enough, no?

Once OW is open and loaded, click OmniWeb -> Preferences. Once you’re in the Preferences panel, click on the Shortcuts icon. Here’s where OmniWeb stores all the available search functions, for the search bar in the top-right of it’s default window. In the left side of the preferences window, you’ll have a listing of the currently available ones. We’re going to add a new one.

Adding A Shortcut

Adding a shortcut in OmniWeb is simple: click the + sign at the bottom left of the window. This will add a new shortcut at the bottom of our list, with the Name and Keyword ‘somewhere’. Clicking on this will bring up it’s relevant information in the right pane of the preferences window, so we can edit it.

You can name the shortcut whatever you like. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to call it ‘GoogFilter’, and make it’s shortcut goog@. Pick something easy to remember for the shortcut.

Pasting In The URL

Here’s the real meat of this tutorial, adding the proper options to a normal google search. In the URL field, paste in the following text:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=%@+-site%3Akelkoo+-site%3Aciao+-site%3Abizrate+-site%3Apixmania.co.uk+-site%3Apixmania.com+-site%3Adealtime.com+-site%3Apricerunner.co.uk+-site%3Apricerunner.com+-site%3Apricegrabber+-site%3Apricewatch+-site%3Ashopping.msn.com+-site%3Aresellerratings+-site%3Aepinions.com+-site%3Anextag+-site%3Acomparestoreprices.co.uk+-site%3Aunbeatable.co.uk+-site%3Aebay+-site%3Ashopping.com+-site%3Ashopbot

Make sure you copy and paste it, instead of trying to type it all in like an insane person, otherwise you could miss something important.

That’s Pretty Much It, Really

Close your preferences window (OmniWeb saved all of our changes automatically. Don’t you love it?), and click on the magnifying glass in the search bar up top. Select our new GoogFilter shortcut, and type something in to search. If you did what I told you to, and I honestly can’t imagine why you wouldn’t, then you should be getting considerably less spam results in your google searches, especially for things like movies and consumer electronics. Enjoy!

This short how to was brought to you by the brevity council. I guess the sub-headings were kind of unnecessary. I’d apologize if I were sorry.

Apache Web Server*: /private/etc/httpd/httpd.conf

MySQL*: /private/etc/my.cnf

To be added to as time permits.

* Editing these files requires you to be logged in as root, or use the sudo command.

Yes, I know that ‘short treatise’ is somewhat of an oxymoron, and I am also aware that this post is, in fact, not a treatise at all. So?

I really like Last.fm. They seem like cool people, their service has been great to me over the last year or so, and it’s cost me nothing. But here’s the thing: I’m not going to use your shitty music player, last.fm. I’m sure you’ve spent a lot of time on it, and lots of people have worked very hard. But it’s feature set is suspect, it bogs down my aging G4 Powermac, the OS X interface is pretty lame, and I love iTunes. I have 6,220 songs in my iTunes library already categorized, cross-referenced, tagged, shagged, and playlisted. I’ve spent 4 years constantly tweaking the semi-random ‘radio’ playlist. I’m not going to toss away all of that, or run another application concurrenty, just because I like you, and I’m not sure why you think I will.

We’ve had fun, last.fm. I’m sorry, but I think once you entirely kill off iScrobbler, we should just be friends.

Here’s how to block it in OmniWeb:

Navigate to OmniWeb -> Preferences -> Ad Blocking -> Edit Blocked URLs List. Click the + symbol below the text box at the top of the screen, and simply ad the word ‘buysafe’ without quotes. Problem solved.

It resolves any conflict instantly! For example, Shawn and I might be arguing about who thinks Rob Glaser is more of a douchebag. We Google Trendshambo for it. I throw titties, Shawn throws ass. According to the graph, Shawn hates him more. See? Simple, and no bloodshed.

However, tits makes a much better run at ass than titties did.

If you work on websites with flash content, like I sometimes do, and this flash content is often comprised of, say, animations with really shitty audio… well, you get the picture. Spending an hour working on one page of a site with flash in it, while it loops over and over and over, is enough to turn a man sour.

So, here’s how to tame Flash in OmniWeb, so you have to click any/all flash files before they play:

1. Click OmniWeb in the menubar, and go to Preferences.
2. Then click Ad Blocking.
3. Make sure “From blocked URLs” is checked under “Block images and other inline content”.
4. Click the Edit Blocked URLs List button.
5. This screen has two boxes. In the top one should have some stuff in it already, like this: /ads\..*\.net/. Click the + button under the box, and type in swf, then click done.
6. ???
7. Profit.

And you’re done. Now all that awful flash content must be clicked before it plays, and you can keep that slim grasp you have on sanity for a little longer.

But, it’s still snappy, and it’s still camino. I’ve been using it as my every day browser for 6 months or so, grabbing nightlies from krmathis’ site. Camino is good, and it’s even better if you grab CamiTools and CamiScript, which makes up for a lot of the features Camino gives up to OmniWeb and Firefox out of the box.