Torsten Curdt’s weblog

Ever wondered why tools like tar or rsync need support for so called “resource forks” on OSX? Resource forks are a way to store and attach extended attributes to a file. It’s sort of like they can have a parallel dimension. It can contain icons, positions or whatever you like.

So how can you access it? What I just recently came across is that there actually is a standard filename based way to access those forks. You just need to append “/..namedfork/rsrc” to the filename.

$ ls -aol test.xls
-rw-r--r--   1 tcurdt  tcurdt  - 113152 Nov 22 23:13 test.xls
$ ls -aol test.xls/..namedfork/rsrc
-rw-r--r--   1 tcurdt  tcurdt  - 0 Nov 22 23:13 test.xls/..namedfork/rsrc

As you can see, you see nothing. The file has no resource fork (as the size is 0). If you want to find files that have a resource fork you might want to try this query

find . -type f -exec test -s {}/..namedfork/rsrc \; -print

that I found here. Links that you dropped from your web browser onto the desktop are a good example. You will notice that these “.webloc” files have file size of zero. Still they get you to the desired URL when you click on them. If you open their resource fork with an editor you can see where this information has been stored.

(BTW: A similar facility is also available to windows user with NTFS …but less commonly used)

Another typical day 2.0 of a person 2.0 that wonders if there maybe has come the time for a version 3.0. While on facebook there are another ten invites to the next “super super wall” waiting, on myspace that hot chick wants me to visit her site (probably 2.0 as well but I didn’t check) ….but for some reason she is only friends with Tom. On Orkut another brazilian girl left a message on my message board. Too bad I am one of the few people on that platform that does not speak portuguese or spanish. On (the german) studivz another friend does the equivalent of poking me and I still wondering WTF “gruscheln” is supposed to mean. In my email inbox (which is so 1.0) I’ve already got another 2 invites to the next big social network that tries to make millions by gathering people and have them enter their information – again.

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Past 1.5 years at joost have been exciting, challenging but also quite exhausting. While it has been a great ride I have found that I need some time to take care of myself a bit more. Not concentrate on work 150% every day but instead explore, play with ideas and do some refreshing new experiments. Basically discover new areas that I am interested in and see in what direction I want to go next. One should not forget there is more to your body than the left half of the brain.

In the next 3 months I will try to cross off a few things of my open source TODO list and also try to get a bit more into Cocoa and Ruby. Maybe some interesting freelancer/consulting gigs? But most importantly I hope to find the leisure to do some painting, reading and some more photography and blogging. The upcoming travel I am also really looking forward to.

Anyway… exciting times ahead

I’ve just stumbled across the fact that my dive computer, a Suunto Gekko, does indeed support data transfers – event to my Mac. While the manual (and web site) states the exact opposite, it seems like this limitation was just introduced through the Suunto PC software. This original software is Windows only and DiveLog a 3rd party software to manage dive logs does not come with this limitation. DiveLog’s user interface is quite terrible – but it does the trick. In order to connect the Suunto you need a cable. While the original Suunto USB cable costs big bucks I can recommend the “Smartinterface” which is compatible but much cheaper. You need to install some drivers, reboot your machine and you are almost there to have your dives saved on your Mac. So let me guide you through the details…
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There is a proprietary file format coming from the windows world. It’s a disk image similar to nrg, dmg and iso. On windows you would use MagicDisk/MagicISO to access the data. If you don’t have a windows PC available I found this little tool called “uif2iso” that converts the UIF image into a standard iso.

$ uif2iso file.uif file.iso
UIF2ISO 0.1.2p0
by Luigi Auriemma
e-mail: [email protected]
web:    aluigi.org

- open file.uif
- create file.iso

  file size    000000002517e7b6
  version      1
  image type   8
  padding      0
  sectors      358305
  sectors size 2048
  blhr offset  0000000025177ff6
  blhr size    26560
  hash         2f55c3a2be048faf29d5cdda4a1412c3
  unknowns     00000040 00000000 00000000 00000000
  008%

Once finished processing just open the iso to access the files. While a simple “make” should do the job, I’ve also made my build of the command line version (that should work on intel and ppc) available for your convenience.

Update 1: Thanks to shazron the invalid argument problem should be gone. I have applied the changes and updated the build.

Update 2: I’ve updated the build to produce a universal binary so it should now work for intel and ppc.

Update 3: For those not comfortable using the command line I whacked together a quick and dirty version with a GUI. Just drop the UIF file onto it. Should work with Tiger and Leopard, Intel and PPC. Let me know how “uif2iso for mac” works for you.

Update 4: There is a proper project page now. Please go there to get to the download.