The Volkswagen Key Disassembly continues to be one of the more trafficked pages on my site so I figured I would commit one more selfless act of community service and bring you the all-new Mazda Key Disassembly page. This particular key is from a 2006 MX-5 (aka. 3rd Gen. Miata, or Miata NC), bit will probably work just the same as many similar keys. I’m not even sure if what Mazda might charge for this, but I’m sure its more than the $1-2 cost to replace the battery and 5 minutes of your time. It could also be useful to replace the keychain link or clean the contacts.

Enjoy…

Tag	Warning!
Connected	Disconnected

So have you ever purchased something or received a gift with security tag still attached? Quite annoying… well most of the tags were designed in the days where before rare earth neodymium magnets became so popular. They normally use powerful electro-magnets to disconnect these sorts of tags. Internally they are simply a spring loaded clamp that dis-engages with a strong magnetic force. If you don’t disconnect the clamp it will pull a metal pin that when pulled out breaks the two different glass die packs designed to stain whatever you disconnect.

So it took not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 or more of these strong magnets before it came apart easily. Anyway, much easier and safer than trying to Dremel it apart and much more immediate gratification than having to wait for the store to open, driving back and having them remove it.

Oh and be good, this is not for you bad guys out there!

So being the lucky guy I am, both my parents and I both have FIOS 20Mbit Bi-directional internet connections (actually they may have a slightly lower tier). So after the 50th time I had the conversation “You should really see this movie, tv show, etc…”, I got to thinking it might be cool to connect our networks in order to allow them to share my media library/HTPC.

Unfortunately, getting my father to reconfigure his home network firewall is pretty much a non-starter. So I had to find a more creative solution.

So here it is, a quick how to get Samba connected over a reverse ssh Tunnel on OS X.

SSH Tunnel
sudo ssh -N -p 222 -c 3des user@domain.com -L 222/127.0.0.1/139>

-N detaches terminal for ssh tunnels
-p is the port - you probably don’t want to use 22 since you already use that
-c encryption type - 3des is the default blowfish is faster if CPU time is an issue
remote user/domain

(direct from the man page)

-L [bind_address:]port:host:hostport
Specifies that the given port on the local (client) host is to be
forwarded to the given host and port on the remote side. This
works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the local side,
optionally bound to the specified bind_address. Whenever a con-
nection is made to this port, the connection is forwarded over
the secure channel, and a connection is made to host port
hostport from the remote machine.

Ok, now you have a tunnel, the next step is mounting the remote drive.

Mount command
mount -t smbfs //user:password@127.0.0.1:222/remoteshare /mountpoint


To make this run at login, put it in a text file, chmod it executable and then put it in your login items.

Great! Final step, how to make the connection persistant. Enter launchd.

`launchd` is a unified, open source service management framework for starting, stopping and managing daemons, programs and scripts. It was introduced with Mac OS X v10.4/Darwin v8.0, and is licensed under the Apache License.

Unfortunately, you need to make a launchd plist and launchd is a bit of a bitch, so its much easier to just go get Lingon by Peter Borg it’s free, it works and you won’t have to learn launchd.

Now you have a great persistent remotely mounted Samba title over SSH.

Notes:
1. The mount command is a simple terminal script, but you may need to put a delay in the script if the connection isn’t up before the login runs the mount script. There is probably a way to get launchd to handle this but I haven’t spent the time to figure it out. So if the session disconnects it will automatically reconnect but not remount the drive.

2. The 1.83 GHz Mac mini doesn’t seem to have enough CPU to playback and receive HD content over the SSH tunnel (works fine if you download, then play). I may try to use blowfish to see if it improves playback. Normal SD divx/h.264 seems to be just fine.

I’m interested to know if anyone has any suggestions to improve this setup.

So, I was just reading Engadget and I realized I don’t think I ever posted my bump key video.

For those of you out of the loop, locks don’t work. Even a total amateur can break in to some of the most sophisticated locks without any skill what-so-ever. In fact I’ve personally found it EASIER to break in to more expensive locks with this method, than cheaper old ones that are lose inside. Wiki on lockpicking.

I made this key in under 5 minutes with an old key I found in a drawer and a Dremal.

So without further ado…the bump…

Volkswagon, Volkswagen, VW, Beetle, Jetta…ok that should feed the search engines enough variations =P

Ok, need to replace the battery on your VW Key fob? Or need to replace the metal keychain thingy on it? VW will charge you a fortune for either…I made a page a few years back on my personal web page thats pretty popular, so I decided time for some update pictures and add the fix for the broken keychain…

Enjoy the savings!

Its Los Angeles, we aren’t supposed to have ‘weather’. Oh well, anyway the recent downpour has caused no end of annoyances for me. First the Internet goes out, the comes back on, then off, then on, you get the point. Then finally the power goes out. I give up for the evening and try to go to sleep only to be awoken every time the wind blows as the house is creaking unusually heavily. Kimmy after much effort convinced me to go out in the rain and take a look. I found one of the large oak trees has decided to lean on the house, great…

So this morning (after sleeping in the living room to avoid death by tree) after several failed attempts to get someone up here during the holidays, I gave up and made a temporary rigging. With the help of my father who has no end of supplies when it comes to the right tool for the right job, I did the following…

Tree Gallery

The cable and ratchet are rated for 2000lbs and the chain (which is doing double duty as a backup in case all else fails) is good for at least twice that.

It should hold until I can get a tree guy up here to assess the situation.