Setting up Nike Missions with an iPod Nano

This was a little annoying to set up, but these are my recommended steps (assuming iPod Nano and iTunes have already been sync’d at least once for music and other media):

1. Set up Nike+ account by doing the following:
   1. Go to http://www.nikeplus.com in the default browser
   2. Create an account if one does not already exit
   3. Log in and leave the browser logged in
2. Register a run on the iPod Nano by doing the following (it must be a run, not a walk):
   1. Tap “Fitness”
   2. Tap “Run”
   3. Tap “Basic”
   4. Tap “None”
   5. Tap “Start Workout”
   6. Shake the device a little bit to register some activity
   7. Tap the pause button
   8. Tap “End Workout”
3. Sync the iPod with iTunes.  iTunes should prompt whether Nike+ data should be uploaded automatically or not.  This can be changed later by going to the Nike tab under the device settings and checking or unchecking the box.
4. Once the iPod has been sync’d, the device should be registered with Nike and should be recognized for Nike Missions (http://missions.nike.com)

After registering for Nike Missions and clicking through the introduction screens, a screen should be found that has a button to start a mission.  Clicking this button seems to start the timer (i.e. if the mission were to earn 300 points in 30 minutes, the 30 minute timer would start as soon as the button was clicked), so I’m not sure how this is supposed to work with the iPod Nano since it has no wireless synchronizing capabilities.  For someone like me who carries their iPod to work and sync’s it at home, I’m assuming runs could be registered on the device during the day, a mission timer started in the evening at home, and a sync performed at home while the timer is running.  Time to try it out!

Locking Your Mac

I previously thought the only way to lock my MacBook was to wait for the screen saver to turn on or to log out out the machine.  This was an annoyance since I was used to being able to lock my laptop with a single key combination in Windows.  However, I’ve found there is a better way!

First, open the Keychain Access application. This can be done a few different ways:

• In Finder: Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access
• In Launchpad: Utilities > Keychain Access
• Search for “Keychain Access” using Spotlight

Once Keychain Access is open, open the Preferences window from the application menu and check the box labeled “Show keychain status in menu bar.” There should now be a lock icon in the menu bar that should have a Lock Screen option when clicked!

Triple Booting a Macbook Air

Download Windows 7 Bootcamp Drivers

It is possible to download the Windows 7 drivers with the Boot Camp Assistant, but I could never get this to work (the progress bar never passed 20%), so I had to use the alternate method below.

Download and Install Driver Package

Follow this link (http://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-lion.merged-1.sucatalog) and search for BootCampESD.pkg. There were two entries listed when I did this, so I picked the one with the more recent value between the date tags, which was pointing here: http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/63/18/041-4777/GRGxJTrxPTSTdbBKFXt2bVjqVJGvBknRC3/BootCampESD.pkg

After downloading the file, simply double-click it to run it.

Copy Drivers to USB Flash Drive

After the install is complete, navigate to /Library/Application Support/BootCamp and double-click the WindowsSupport.dmg file to mount it. After the file is mounted, copy the contents to a USB drive for later.

Download and Install rEFIt

Download rEFIt from the website (http://refit.sourceforge.net/). It will make the whole process much easier. When the download is complete, simply double-click the dmg file to mount it and run the rEFIt.mpkg file to install.

When the install is complete, reboot the machine. I had to reboot twice before the change took effect (not sure why this was the case). It will be clear when rEFIt has taken over because the boot screen will have multiple graphical icons.

Partition Hard Drive

OS X supports live partition resizing, so the partitioning can simply be done using Disk Utility. Open Disk Utility, click the hard drive (not the partitions) on the left pane (mine says “251 GB APPLE SSD…”), click the Partition tab on the top, and add two partitions by clicking the + button near the bottom.

Both new partitions should be formatted as FAT and should be labeled clearly. I made a 50GB partition labeled WINDOWS and a 100GB partition LINUX while leaving my OS X partition at 100GB.

Install Windows 7

I think a USB flash drive can be used somehow, but I happen to have a USB DVD burner, so I used this instead for simplicity.

With the optical drive connected and the Windows install disk in the drive, reboot the Mac and press and hold the option key when the computer turns on. There should be a picture of an optical disk labeled WINDOWS that should be selected. It might take a little while (~30 seconds) for the system to find the disk if it does not appear right away.

Click through the first few steps until you are able to choose Custom Install. Select the partition labeled WINDOWS, format it as NTFS (you may have to click some link to enable advanced features to be able to do this), and click through the rest of the install process. This should be pretty straight-forward.  You should be able to select the WINDOWS partition whenever you need to reboot at the rEFIt screen.

When the Windows installation is complete, install the drivers that were copied to the USB drive earlier.

Remove Linux Partition

This step isn’t really necessary if the desired Linux partitioning is known, but it makes the process easier.

Disk Utility will be used as earlier (which means the computer has to be booted into OS X), but instead of clicking the + button, the - button should be clicked to delete the LINUX partition and leave it as empty space.

Install Fedora 16

This was by far the most challenging part to get right, but hopefully this will make it pretty straight-forward.

Download Fedora DVD

The first step is to download the install DVD (the Live CD WILL NOT WORK!!!). The DVD apparently has extra EFI capabilities that the Live CD doesn’t come with. It was a little hard for me to find the link, but it is here: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all. Near the bottom of the same page, there are links for torrent downloads, which might work faster.

Install Fedora 16

Insert the Fedora 16 DVD into the drive and reboot the computer, pressing the option key when the computer powers on. Two optical disk images may pop up, but the one labeled WINDOWS should be the one selected.

When the Fedora installer comes up, press the tab key and follow the steps displayed on the screen to add the nomodeset kernel parameter. The screen may remain black for a few minutes, but the installer should start up. When prompted, select the “Use Free Space” option if the LINUX partition was removed earlier, otherwise the partitions should manually be set.

When prompted, the boot loader should be installed to the disk (mine was /dev/sda), not the partition.

Sync MBR

After the Fedora installer is complete, cycle through the icons at the rEFIt screen and select the MBR tool. It should state that the MBR is out of sync, so it should be synced up. I only had to sync up the MBR once, but again, I had to restart twice for this to take effect for some reason.

After the computer reboots, all operating systems should be successfully installed. At the rEFIt screen, selecting Linux or Windows should boot into the Grub2 menu, at which point the proper OS can be selected.

Optional: Remove rEFIt

Because selecting Linux and Windows both led to the Grub2 screen, I thought having rEFIt was redundant. rEFIt can be easily removed by booting into OS X, selecting the OS X hard drive in Startup Disk to bless it, and removing the /efi folder.

If rEFIt is removed, the option has to be held when the computer boots and the WINDOWS hard drive selected in order to see the Grub2 menu.

Fedora Tweaks

Enable WiFi

WiFi and sound do not work out of the box. I was able to connect to the Internet via my phone over Bluetooth, but a USB Ethernet dongle can also be used. A simple yum update and reboot should enable the WiFi.

Enable Latest nVidia and WiFi drivers with RPM Fusion

The free and nonfree RPM Fusion repos should added by following the instructions at the RPM Fusion website: http://rpmfusion.org/

After the repos are added, run yum install kmod-nvidia kmod-wl. yum info kmod-nvidia and yum info kmod-wl can be used for more information on these packages, but they are just downloading the latest nVidia and WiFi drivers.

After the packages are done installing and the system is rebooted, the resolution should be set properly.

Enabled Sound

The sound modules all get loaded correctly, but the speakers seem to be muted for some reason. Run alsamixer -c0 as your user (does not have to be done as root) and make sure the main speakers are not set to MM. This can be toggled by selecting the main speakers with the arrow keys and pressing the m key. The up and down arrows can be used to set the speakers to the desired level. I set mine to 60.

When this is done, run alsactl store 0 as root. Reboot just to make sure everything still works, but it should.

Enable Two-Finger Scrolling

Two-finger scrolling is not enabled by default, but thankfully the only tweaking necessary here is clicking the two-finger scrolling checkbox in the mouse settings tool.

Other Notes

The brightness keys do not work. I have not tested any “advanced” functions like hibernate, stand by, etc.

Share Your Computing Power With BOINC

I have a server that is powerful for the mundane tasks I use it for (primarily backup). To take advantage of the power, I decided to install Boinc and participate in some World Community Grid projects. Apparently it’s also possible to deduct some of the contributions on your taxes.

Install Necessary Client Software

The client is all that is necessary to become a node in the grid. My server doesn’t have a graphical display, so I am not installing the manager, but if this were being done on a desktop, the boinc-manager pacakge can also be installed. I will be installing the manager on my laptop.

root@server:~# apt-get install boinc-client

Join a Project

I created an account on the World Community Grid and configured the projects I am going to participate in there. All I need to do is join my client to the project now.

root@server:~# boinccmd --project_attach

Remote Management (Optional)

Clients can be managed by a remote computer via command line or GUI with the changes below. The client has to be restarted for these changes to take effect.

Configure A Password

A password can be configured in the /etc/boinc-client/gui_rpc_auth.cfg file. It just has to be added in plain text.

Configure Remote Hosts

If the client is going to be managed by a separate computer, the remote computers have to be added to the /etc/boinc-client/remote_hosts.cfg. The hostnames or IPs just have to be listed in plain text.

Windows VirtualBox Guest Port Forwarding

VirtualBox is an awesome free tool for running virtual machines under Windows, but running a virtual machine that might actually provide some service to external clients will most likely require some port forwarding.

I am using Windows version 3.2.8 r64453. Here is a summary of the VBoxManage command from the manual followed by an example of forwarding port 2222 on the host to port 22 on the guest.

--natpf<1-N> [<name>],tcp|udp,[<hostip>],<hostport>,[<guestip>],<guestport>

VBoxManage modifyvm "ubuntu" --natpf1 "guestssh,tcp,,2222,,22"