Ninja Blogging

On doing a tune up on our Chevrolet S10, I found that the #3 Sparkplug was going to be a pain in the ass to get to due to the steering shaft. I was a little hesitant at first but this is how I did it after doing some research.

Don’t be afraid of the steering shaft. In fact, it was designed the way it is so that it can be removed for the purpose of changing the driver side spark plugs. It is very accessible when you remove the air cleaner box.

1. First change all of your passenger spark plugs. These are the easy ones!

2. Next, remove your air cleaner top completely, by unscrewing the four wing bolts, and loosen the pipe strap just before the mass air sensor, and set the air cleaner top aside.

3. Now remove the bottom air box (its strait forward.)

4. Now comes the shaft. Unscrew the bolt at the base of the steering shaft just before the steering box. Remove it completely, and set aside. Note: You may have to turn your steering wheel to display the bolt.

5. Now just simply slide the shaft towards the firewall. If it doesn’t come easily, I like to use a wrench and small hammer to lightly tap it off. Sometime a large flat head screw driver or pry bar will work.

6. Once you have the shaft off of the steering box, pull it completely out, and set it aside. This will give you plenty of space to work with. It is also surprisingly quick to do all of this also.

7. Now have at it with the spark plugs.

8. To install, just simply do the opposite of removal.

I hope this will help some of you out. It may sound like a lot, but it really isn’t. Don’t be afraid of your problem. Tackle it with confidence.

Apple has offered developers a way to beta test iPhone applications with up to 100 iPhones. Some developers have already started using this to their advantage by giving their software out as free public betas. But, you must supply a developer with your iPhone’s UDID (unique device identifier) in order to install these “Ad-hoc” applications on your iPhone.

To find your iPhone’s UDID, just plug it into your computer and wait until iTunes recognizes it. Please note that a Firewire iPod cable will not work, since the iPhone does not have the proper hardware to support firewire connections. Select your phone from the Devices list in iTunes and click the “Summary” tab. To see your UDID, click on the word “serial number” beside the picture of the iPhone. You should see the word “identifer” and an alphanumeric string – this is your UDID.

Alternative: You can also download an app from the Apple Store called Ad Hoc Helper which is a free download. Here is the itunes store URL http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=285691333&mt=8

To copy it, just press command + C on your Mac’s keyboard (or control + C in Windows). Now comes the hard part: getting on a developer’s beta testing list.

This weekend I took a trip to Maumee bay with my family. We got a cabin which offered it’s own WiFi access point, but it’s $10 for a 24 hour period. Well we suckered up and got it billed to our Cabin number, and they gave us an access code. The problem is that the access code is for 1 computer only! After some sifting around on the source code of the login page where we entered in the access code, I figured out that they were using our MAC addresses for verification. Well, I changed my MAC address on my jailbroken iPod touch using an application called SpoofMAC using the MAC address of the computer we used the access code on. My iPod touch was connected to the web, but I wanted my PowerBook G4 on the web too! I used these two commands to try and change the mac address on my Airport Extreme Card.

sudo ifconfig en1 ether aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff
sudo ifconfig en1 lladdr aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff

But nothing seemed to work, so I downloaded MacDaddyX to try and change it. Still didn’t work! What Gives?! I could change my ethernet port mac address all I wanted, but not the wifi card mac address. After doing some digging I learned that the mac address for my airport Extreme card is loaded from within my Airport Card driver. Here is how to change your mac address from within your Airport Card Driver:

Because of the few problems with the dynamic method of MAC address spoofing I “invented” a static method. It makes MAC changing more complicated, because you have to hardcode the MAC you want into the driver and then reload it, everytime you want to change your MAC. But atleast no other real problems were discovered with this method.

Setting up…

I strongly suggest not to experiment with the original drivers in /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort2.kext atleast until you made sure that everything works as you want. Therefore you should first create a copy of the driver into a test environment and also don’t forget to make an additional backup.

base:/Users/spoofer root# cp -pR /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort2.kext .
base:/Users/spoofer root# cp -pR /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort2.kext.backup .

For Patching the binary driver I downloaded HexFiend

For now there is no automatic installation tool and therefore you have to patch the driver binary in AppleAirPort2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirPort2 with a hex editor of your choice. The following values are maybe different in your driver but atleast 3 driver versions have the same bytes.

For pre Tiger driver versions search for:

88 FF 15 30 | 89 5F 15 31 | 89 1F 15 32 | 7C E0 50 38
89 7F 15 33 | 7D 00 00 38 | 89 3F 15 34 | 7D 60 00 38
88 5F 15 35 | 7D 20 00 38 | 7C 40 00 38 | 2F 80 00 FF
41 9E 01 98

and change into

3C E0 Xx XX | 90 FF 15 30 | 3C E0 Yy YY | 60 E7 Zz ZZ
90 FF 15 32 | 60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00
60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00
60 00 00 00

For post Tiger driver versions search for:

88 FF 19 90 | 89 7F 19 91 | 89 5F 19 92 | 89 1F 19 93
7C E0 58 38 | 89 3F 19 94 | 7D 40 00 38 | 88 5F 19 95
7D 00 00 38 | 7D 20 00 38 | 7C 40 00 38 | 2F 80 00 FF
41 9E 01 CC

and change into

3C E0 Xx XX | 90 FF 19 90 | 3C E0 Yy YY | 60 E7 Zz ZZ
90 FF 19 92 | 60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00
60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00 | 60 00 00 00
60 00 00 00

Of course you have to replace Xx:XX:Yy:YY:Zz:ZZ with the MAC you want. It should be mentioned, that putting any value other than 0×00 into Xx resulted in not working connections. I don’t know if it is my accesspoint that refuses such MACs or the Apple kernel.

Testing

After having patched the binary you can now test if everything works by

base:/Users/spoofer root# kextunload AppleAirPort2.kext
kextunload: unload kext AppleAirPort2.kext succeeded
…
base:/Users/spoofer root# kextload AppleAirPort2.kext
kextload: AppleAirPort2.kext loaded successfully
…
…
base:/Users/spoofer root# ifconfig en1
en1: flags=8863 mtu 1500
inet6 fe80::211:22ff:fe33:4455 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0×5
inet 192.168.1.100 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
ether: 00:11:22:33:44:55
media: autoselect status: active
supported media: autoselect

Known Problems/Limitations

• Changing the MAC is more complicated than using ifconfig until someone releases an autopatcher
• WPA/WEP connections maybe need that you reenter the key after changing the MAC

Permanent install

I suggest that you perform this step only if you are sure that everything is okay, because otherwise your kernel maybe crashs during startup. Copy your modified AppleAirPort2 file to /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirPort2 and clear the kext caches.

base:/Users/spoofer root# cp AppleAirPort2.kext /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirPort2
base:/Users/spoofer root# rm -r /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/
base:/Users/spoofer root# rm /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
base:/Users/spoofer root# rm /System/Library/Extensions.mkext

The above instructions was found at http://generation-php.net/airport-static.html

These last 4 days have been an emotional roller coaster for us, and is a week that is burned into our memories.  This weekend Emily and Ian came to town and brought their two other family members with them, Gus and Illias.  Well Saturday night, Cory let all the dogs out– there were four at our house– and Gus ran away.  We spent 2 hours looking for him to no avail, and with Gus being a miniature pincher, we weren’t very confident that he would make it through the night. Saturday night the temperature dipped into the lower teens, and on Sunday, we printed out 300 colored flyers and handed them out in Pheasant Ridge with Emily and Ian. Emily and Ian had to leave for their home in Pittsburgh Sunday night, but we were determined to find him. Katy put a post on Craigslist for Gus, and a couple hours later we got a call from a gentleman in Michigan that said he saw a min-pin crossing SR12 in Michigan just north of our house about 7 miles.

We then put an ad in the Elkhart Truth for Gus and waited.  Monday came and went, and Eva ended up taking Tuesday off to go look for the pup.  Eva began the day handing out fliers around the area, and headed into Michigan.  While Cory was at work he got a phone call from a women who works for the Zion Lutheran Church, which is just down the road.  She said she spotted Gus in the area, so I promptly called Eva who then scoped out the area. Gus was there and was so afraid that she had to coerce him with lots of ham to get him to come to her.  GUS WAS SAVED! We are all so happy that Gus is back with us! But the story doesn’t end there.  Gus spent Tuesday night at our house and got along with Mozart pretty well.  They both were battling for the attention, while we were home. Well, today Emily and Ian were on their way to our house after work to pick him up and take him home.  Cory was in the garage getting stuff ready to pack up, and had just come in and sat down to eat some pizza. There was a knock on the door and under the porch light, Cory could see a women with a concerned look on her face. He answered the door and she said “I think I just might have hit your dog.” Cory asked, “Is he black and white?” She replied “yes” and Katy bolted out the door before I had a chance to put my shoes on.  Through the vehicle lights I could see Katy running towards a body lying in the road that looked like Mozart. I ran as fast as I could to the motionless body, kneeling beside him see if he had a response.  I could hear the lady in the background saying how sorry she was, but I didn’t care. She had killed our dog.  Tonight has been a difficult night for us both. We have shed more tears tonight, than ever. I can’t remember the last time I really cried like this. It hurts so much, and we will miss him.

More Mozart Pics

Mozart’s website

Photo from Ben

Another Photo From Ben

I found the story of this town very interesting, and felt the need to write a little about it. Centralia was established as a mining town and was originally named Centreville until 1865. Centralia was incorporated in 1866 and it’s main business was Coal Mining until the 1960s when most of the mining companies went out of business. During that time, the town would burn their trash they would dispose in empty mining pits. The town would get a couple of volunteer firefighters to monitor the fire, and make sure it doesn’t get out of control. Well, this fire was never extinguished and had spread from the lower depths of the pit to a hole that led to an abandoned mine shaft. This fire was started in May of 1962 and burned throughout the 1960s and 1970s despite attempts to extinguish the fire. Throughout this time, locals almost forgot about the problem until 1979 when a refueling station owner lowered his wooden measuring stick into his underground tanks to measure the fuel. When he pulled the stick out, it felt extremely hot and after taking temperature readings, found the temperature of his underground gasoline to be 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Word spread quickly throughout the town of the seriousness of this problem that was thought to have been contained. State officials were notified and in 1981 a 12 year old boy was playing in his backyard The boy would have likely died if it hadn’t been for his cousin who pulled him to safety. Ironically that same day a state representative, state senator, and a mine safety director was in town doing some investigative work on the mine fire problem. Through out the next few years, people were evacuated because of safety concerns, and in 1992 Pennsylvania claimed eminent domain over the town and revoked their zipcode. Some families still stayed in the town despite having their properties condemned, and the apparent safety concerns. Since then, homes have been demolished and more recently in 2007 the Moyer residence was shredded but remained occupied until this time. You can still see smoke pillowing from the ground because of this almost 50 year old fire that was the death of this town. It is believed that the fire could burn for another 250 years with the amount of coal that is estimated to be below the town of Centralia.

This town is extremely fascinating to me, and I hope that I can one day visit this almost empty town. It’s crazy to think that just one minor misjudgment caused many people to have to leave what was once their home town.

You can see more more photos on Flickr
And Read more on Wikipedia

Well, this weekend I decided to do a redesign my blog. My old theme was a modified Green Marinee Wordpress theme that I found 3 years ago and was looking pretty out dated. I hope everyone likes this new theme and feel free to leave comments. I can’t seem to figure out how to get rid of the underline styling on my Flickr images in the sidebar. I’m no CSS master and after tinkering for 10 minutes, became frustrated and said screw it. I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween, I know I did. Katy and I went to Goshen friday night and brought some friends with us to a Goshen College party. Besides having to break up a fight due to my dumb ass friend, it was a pretty good time. Note to self: Do not allow a friend to pee on a stranger. Cheers!