I’d kept an eye on the o2 pay-as-you-go mobile broadband for a while, because it offered the cheapest, noncommittal setup. A one off £20 for the USB dongle, and then as little as £2 for 500MB for a 24 hour period.

So I plug in the dongle and we get a nice little installer to set everything up; installing drivers and the o2 Mobile Connect application. The annoying thing is that if you install going this route, you can only connect if you have this app open. You can’t just use system preferences. Also, turns out this ‘handy’ installer program then blocks you from getting to the installation files again, and the dongle will refuse to do anything unless Mobile Connect is open (you’ll get a red light on the dongle when it’s being evil).

So, what can you do?

1. Drag Mobile Connect.app to the trash from your Applications directory.
2. Then head into System > Library > Extensions and delete ZTEUSBCDCACMData.kext and ZTEUSBMassStorageFilter.kext
3. Go into Network in System Preferences and remove the devices starting with ZTEUSB.
4. Then restart your Mac.

Now, let’s install things a different route giving everyone more flexibility.

1. Plug in the dongle and when the CD Icon appears on the desktop, open it up, but rather than double clicking on the installer, right click on it and select ‘Show Package Contents’.
2. Now head to Contents then Resources. Now double click on the drv.pkg file and install this only.
3. Once complete, restart your Mac again.

And now to configure the connection:

1. Open System Preferences, and go to the Network pane.
2. You should have three new items in there. Click on ZTEUSBModem.
3. Set the telephone number to *99#
4. Username to o2bb
5. Password to password
6. Click on Advanced. Select Vendor; Generic, Model; GPRS (GSM/3G) and set the APN to m-bb.o2.co.uk
7. Click on OK and then Apply.
8. Now you can click ‘Connect’ and all should work fine.

That is of course, besides the crappy image compression and caching o2 force onto you! Need to find a solution for that next.

Update: Here’s a solution for getting around the image compression, and Javascript injection; use a SSH SOCKS proxy. Works a treat.

1. Open up Terminal.app
2. Run ssh -ND 9999 username@yourserver.com
3. Enter your password if/when prompted (you may have key authentication setup)
4. That’s the SOCKS proxy setup. Now go to System Preferences and open the network connection.
5. Click on ZTEUSBModem.
6. Then Advanced, Proxies
7. Check the SOCKS Proxy and enter in localhost and 9999
8. Click OK and then Apply.

All done. You should now get perfect images and no longer have Javascript inserted into all webpages. Both of which weren’t clearly mentioned when purchasing my dongle.

There’s a lot of buzz brewing about it, so I wanted to give it a try with PHP on my development Mac. The following is how I went about installing Apache, PHP and MongoDB on Snow Leopard. You must have installed the Xcode developer tools (found on the Snow Leopard install DVD) and MacPorts for this to all work.

First, let’s install Apache:

sudo port install apache2

Nice and simple. Now we can move onto PHP:

sudo port install php5 +apache2 +pear

To enable PHP for Apache:

cd /opt/local/apache2/modules
sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs -a -e -n "php5" libphp5.so

I like to make some alias commands for starting, restarting and stopping Apache:

mate ~/.bashrc

alias apache-start="sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start"
alias apache-restart="sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart"
alias apache-stop="sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl stop"

source ~/.bashrc

Now we can make a few changes to the Apache config so that we can use our Sites directory:

sudo mate /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

I’m using Textmate here (mate), but you can use any editor you wish, like nano.

Change the DocumentRoot:

DocumentRoot "/Users/davidwinter/Sites"

Then update the <Directory> path to the updated DocumentRoot path.

<Directory "/Users/davidwinter/Sites">

We also want to enable index.php as a directory index file:

<IfModule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</IfModule>

And then add the PHP mime type:

<IfModule mime_module>
    ...
    AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
    AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
</IfModule>

Now we need to setup the php.ini file:

sudo cp /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini-development /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini

sudo mate /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini

My timezone is for London:

date.timezone = Europe/London

Now we can get onto installing MongoDB (this will install the latest stable version as of time of writing – 1.2.1):

sudo port install mongodb

And then the PHP MongoDB extension:

sudo pecl install mongo

You’ll need to add the extension to the bottom of your php.ini file:

sudo mate /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini

extension=mongo.so

Now startup Apache using the alias created earlier:

apache-start

If you create a file in your Sites directory, called test.php, and add the following to it:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Then visit the page in your browser; http://localhost/test.php

You can then scroll down the page and you should see a section titled ‘mongo’. This means the extension is working!

Now we need to startup MongoDB:

mkdir -p ~/data/db
mongod --dbpath ~/data/db/

Almost there, now a simple MongoDB test in PHP:

<?php
// Connect:
$connection = new Mongo();
// Select database:
$db = $connection->my_db;
// Select collection:
$films = $db->films;

$frwl = array(
    'title' => 'From Russia With Love',
    'year' => 1963,
    'actor' => 'Sean Connery'
);
// Save array to collection:
$films->insert($frwl);

$gf = array(
    'title' => 'Goldfinger',
    'year' => 1964,
    'actor' => 'Sean Connery',
    'girl' => 'Pussy Galore'
);

$films->insert($gf);

// Count documents in collection:
if ($films->count()): ?>
<table>
    <tr>
        <th>Title</th>
        <th>Year</th>
        <th>Actor</th>
        <th>Girl</th>
    </tr>
    <?php foreach ($films->find() as $film): ?>
    <tr>
        <td><?php echo $film['title']; ?></td>
        <td><?php echo $film['year']; ?></td>
        <td><?php echo $film['actor']; ?></td>
        <td><?php echo $film['girl']; ?></td>
    </tr>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
</table>
<?php endif;
?>

Very exciting stuff. More to follow.

curl -V

Check that the output contains https:

>: curl -V
curl 7.19.2 (i386-apple-darwin9.5.0) libcurl/7.19.2 OpenSSL/0.9.8i zlib/1.2.3
Protocols: tftp ftp telnet dict http file https ftps 
Features: Largefile NTLM SSL libz

If it doesn’t:

sudo port deactivate curl
sudo port install curl +ssl

Once you have curl with https support:

sudo pecl install pecl_http

If you followed my previous howto, you’ll want to move the module to the location specified in your php.ini file:

sudo cp /opt/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/http.so /opt/local/lib/php/extensions

Restart lighttpd and then you’ll be good to go.

I’m now switching to lighttpd for my development server, so have come up with the following recipe to install PHP5 and the great Imagick extension for image manipulation.

Follow these instructions at your own risk! They worked fine on my setup but I can’t guarantee they will for you.

1. Install Xcode.
2. Install MacPorts.

3. Now update MacPorts:

   sudo port selfupdate
   

4. Install lighttpd:

   sudo port install lighttpd
   

   Install the startup item and copy the default configuration file:

   sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.lighttpd.plist
   sudo cp /opt/local/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf.default /opt/local/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
   

5. Now we install PHP with the FastCGI, MySQL and Pear variants.

   sudo port install php5 +fastcgi +mysql5 +pear
   

   In order for this to work, I had to disable the port perl5.8 by using the following command:

   sudo port deactivate perl5.8
   sudo port activate perl5
   

   Then run the command again and it should succeed:

   sudo port install php5 +fastcgi +mysql5 +pear
   

6. Copy over the default PHP configuration:

   sudo cp /opt/local/etc/php.ini-dist /opt/local/etc/php.ini
   

7. Now open up the PHP configuration file:

   sudo mate /opt/local/etc/php.ini
   

   Add the following line to the file:

   cgi.fix_pathinfo=1
   

   Find extension_dir = "./" and replace it with:

   extension_dir = "/opt/local/lib/php/extensions"
   extension=imagick.so
   

8. Edit the lighttpd configuration file:

   sudo mate /opt/local/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
   

   Ensure that the following is uncommented:

   fastcgi.server = ( ".php" =>
       ( "localhost" =>
           (
               "socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php-fastcgi.socket",
               "bin-path" => "/opt/local/bin/php-cgi"
           )
       )
   )
   

   And also make lighttpd run as the user www:

   server.username = "www"
   server.groupname = "www"
   

   Add the following if you want to be able to use your Sites directory in your home directory. I also changed the default document root to the OS X default:

   server.modules += ("mod_userdir")
   userdir.path = "Sites"
   userdir.basepath = "/Users/"
   server.document-root = "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
   

   Ensure that "mod_fastcgi", is uncommented.

9. Now we need to setup a few directories, and make the user www the owner for them:

   sudo mkdir /var/run/lighttpd
   sudo mkdir /var/log/lighttpd
   sudo chown www:www /var/run/lighttpd
   sudo chown www:www /var/log/lighttpd
   

10. Now install ImageMagick:

    sudo port install imagemagick
    

11. Now we need to download the Imagick PHP module. I was hoping this would be as easy as sudo pecl install imagick, however I got an error for that, and so a manual build and install of the module is necessary:

    curl -O http://pecl.php.net/get/imagick-2.2.1.tgz
    tar xvfz imagick-2.2.1.tgz
    cd imagick-2.2.1/
    phpize
    ./configure --with-imagick=/opt/local
    make
    sudo make install
    sudo cp /opt/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/imagick.so /opt/local/lib/php/extensions
    

And finally, you can then run LightTPD with the following. The -D flag tells lighttpd not to run in the background–you don’t need to use it:

lighttpd -f /opt/local/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf -D

You should then be able to visit a PHP file in your browser to test that it works. A simple test file would be:

<?php
$img = new Imagick('pic.jpg');
$img->rotateImage('#fff', 45);
header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
echo $img;
?>

This is just a simple Imagick rotate on an image.

Opening up Activity Monitor showed that the syslogd and mount_hfs processes were hogging up both of my CPU cores. One each. The greedy bastards.

A little googling, and I found that deleting the file /var/log/asl.db seems to solve the problem. So far, my Mac seems to be speeding along quite merily now, but I’ll give it a few days before confirming mission accomplished.

1. Restart your Mac.
2. When at the login screen, enter your password, then hold down shift and login. This will prevent your startup items from launching.

3. Open Terminal.app and enter the following (at your own risk!!):

   sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd
   sudo rm /var/log/asl.db
   sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd
   

4. Logout, and then log back in again.

Update: That didn’t last long :( It had been zipping along so much faster, but it just started happening again. I’m trying to restart now, but I’ve just got the spinner on screen, and fear that I’m now going to have to force power off. I hope my Drobo turns up asap so I can have a decent backup of my stuff.

1. Open up the podcast file in Quicktime.app
2. Window > Show Movie Properties
3. Select the first ‘Text Track’ and ensure it is enabled.
4. File > Export
5. Select the ‘Text to QuickTime TeXML’ format

You should then have a lovely XML file. Just need to figure a way to parse the files to get the simple stuff out. Like when to display a link/when a chapter starts, and grab the link/chapter name.

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy file1.avi file2.avi file3.avi -o full_movie.avi

Just seems like a dumb idea.

plutil -convert xml1 path/to/preferences.plist

Now open the file and it’ll be in beautiful, human readable, XML.