Website Upgrade

Over the course of today and yesterday, my official page on the Internet, SevenBits' Tech Site, has received a face-lift. The original page, which was based around a shade of orange looked very dated, and to tell you the truth I never liked the design.

This update brings the website into the realm of other personal web pages and makes it look and function better on mobile environments such as iPhones and iPads.

Feel free to email me with any comments or suggestions.

This Independence Day, Celebrate Something as Important as Freedom Itself

America. The land of the free and the home of the brave has braved many changes through her years. So, this Independence Day, while we celebrate the brave actions of our compatriots 238 years ago, we also have another thing to be thankful for.

A new consumer preview release for Mac Linux USB Loader.

So celebrate the day in style with with a new preview of Mac Linux USB Loader's rewrite. Some specific changes since last time:

• The distribution downloader almost completely works now. It grabs the list of mirrors for a specific distribution from my repository and displays a nice little menu for you where you can select the mirror where you want to download. The mirrors are currently divided by country, with, obviously, the greatest country on the planet listed first (oh, sorry, excuse my jingoism - it is Independence Day, after all).

• And, the distribution downloader has a preferences window, though it doesn't really work yet. Most of the settings are saved, however.

There are a few additional changes here. Among them are:

• Some code was added to check the version of OS X that the user is running and, if it's Yosemite, it makes some small UI tweaks.
• The table in the Enterprise setup preference pane was tweaked under the hood.
• And some other, really unimportant stuff.

So, go ahead! Do your patriotic duty and download the latest test image now. Your country needs your immediate assistance! And always remember....

Okay, so maybe this isn't as important as freedom itself. But it's still pretty neat, right? :)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

You Can Design the Enterprise Logo!

Enterprise, my UEFI boot loader for Macs, is in deep need of its own logo. Right now, it's being represented by the UEFI logo, which isn't really suitable. With this in mind, I want to reach out to those who have design skills to design a logo. Here are the only requirements:

• The logo should be rendered in a PNG and SVG format and be at least 512 x 512 pixels or 1024 x 512 pixels, or any larger equivalent ratio. Props if you do both!
• Displaying the name "Enterprise" is not required but if you can work it in I won't complain.
• There are no specific color or design restrictions.
• You should work in something about Enterprise in the work, for example, its relation to the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, its purpose, its relation to Linux and OS X, its foundation on the UEFI boot process, etc. But I'll waive these requirements if you create something really cool. ;)
• You shall license the work under the LGPL or similar equivalent license. You shall retain copyright on your design, but agree that I may use the icon, gratis, in all works related to Enterprise in perpetuity.
• Entries must be received on or before the first day of July, 2014. A winner will be selected within two weeks. Entries must be submitted by email here.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer any form of monetary prize, however, the winner will be credited for their work and will be given the opportunity to try out the beta versions of the next major release of Incinerator before anyone else (trust me, it'll be huge), which should be relatively soon.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

OS X Yosemite

Apple today announced at its WWDC keynote the new version of OS X that will be arriving soon. Codename: Yosemite (YO-SEM-MIT-TEE). It shows great promise, but I'm not a fan of the new UI. Let's hope this doesn't become Windows 8.

What do you guys think? Comment below.

Mac Linux USB Loader: Declassified

So, for those of you who frequent this blog, you know about Mac Linux USB Loader, and how it is a huge project, at least when compared with some of the other stuff that I've done. You probably also know that Mac Linux USB Loader is currently being rewritten to be more future-proof and support more distributions. So, because not all of you can download and compile source code, I figure I'll share some more development screenshots.

This is the new persistence setup window. The layout is pretty simple and not all too complex. I made it easy to setup persistence, and you literally just need one mouse click, which is much different from the current set of instructions, which requires a command line and knowledge of how to use it. The default value used when setting up persistence is 128 MBs of persistent storage, which is usually enough for installing drivers and the like.

This is the distribution downloader. It doesn't really work yet and is currently in development. It is an expansion of the current distribution downloader panel in the current version of Mac Linux USB Loader. The distribution downloader offers a stable and reliable way to download ISO files of Linux distributions which can be used by Mac Linux USB Loader. I intend to have some sort of mirror support as well, so that you can download the distribution from a server closest to you, if supported by the distribution vendor. My plan is to open-source this whole process, so that everyone can download the mirror lists and make suggestions, etc from a site like Github. More details on this will be forthcoming.

So what do you think about the progress being made on Mac Linux USB Loader? Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts, and, as always, comments are welcome.