Step one, I actually updated that most vain of blog pages: about me.

Fear not! As of May 10th, 2009, you can be up and running in about two hours. Here’s what you need:

(1) MSI Wind u100
(1) Another Mac. I used my white MacBook.
(1) USB Key Drive. I used the 16GB OCZ Diesel drive that’s crazy cheap

Step 0 – Download MSIWindosx86.iso and everything else you’ll need

This file is a special version of OSX 10.5 that enterprising hackers have built just for the Wind and other variants. Obviously, it’s not kosher with Apple so you are going to have to find it by less proper channels. Google should lead you in the right direction.

The download is going to take a while, at least a few hours and probably more like 12, so do it ahead of time for your own sake.

While you are at it, download the following:

10.5.6 combo update from Apple
OSx86Tools
MSi Driver Pack v1.1
RealTek WiFi Drivers
WindTrackpadBundle_v6.0.2

Step 1 – Update the BIOS

Follow the instructions borrowed from Bay-Wolf.com for making bootable USB key in Windows.  Next, download the updated BIOS files from MSI and copy them to the root of the USB key. I used version 1.0B, but many people recommend 1.09.  I couldn’t find 1.09 on MSI’s website and using a hacked BIOS is just too hardcore and risky for me.   Before you get going you need to shut down the Wind, remove the battery, and plug in the power and USB drive.

Now start it up, press F11,  select the USB drive, and you should get the DOS prompt. Then type ‘runflash.bat’ and wait.  After that’s finished you can shutdown and hook up the battery again.

Start up and press Delete to enter the BIOS. Restore the optimized defaults, save, and restart. You can shut it down again after it restarts and BIOS posts without beeping or anything scary like that.

Step 2 – Get OSX on the USB Key

Plug your USB into your other Mac and open up Disk Utility. Click the partition tab and format the USB key with Disk Utlity, selecting the format Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the option ‘Master Boot Record’.  When that’s done, click the Restore tab and drag MSIWindosx86.iso to the source field (browsing won’t work), the USB key to the destination field, and click restore.  This process may take 5 – 10 minutes depending on how clunky your USB key is.  After that’s done you should also copy all the other files you downloaded over to the USB key.

Next, fire up OSx86Tools and click the Install EFI / Run FDisk button.  Select your USB key in the Disk to Use menu and select No EFI (Darwin Uploader) in the EFI to Install menu.  Then click Run FDisk and, once complete, Install EFI.  If both complete without any errors, you should be good to go.

Step 3 – Format and Install

Plug your USB key back into the Wind and start it up again.  Press F11 and boot from the USB key.  You should get the Mac installer within a minute or two.  Once the first screen is up, click the Installer menu at the top and choose Disk Utility.  Format your drive in the exact same manner as the USB drive, apply the changes, and proceed with installing OSX.

Step 4 – Installing Drivers

Assuming you have no problems with the installation, unzip the driver pack, install MSiWindBaseDriverPack_v1.0 and restart.

Once you’re back, mount the 10.5.6 combo update and run the Installer, but DO NOT restart once it finishes.  You need to install ‘MSi10.5.6UpgradeDriverPack_v1.0′ or else you are screwed if you don’t have a USB keyboard or mouse.  After both are installed, restart again.  Next, install Trackpad drivers from WindTrackpadBundle_v6.0.2 to get a preference pane in System Preferences that will enable two finger scolling.

If you don’t yet have WiFi working, install the RealTek WiFi driver and restart yet again.  I haven’t tested Bluetooth yet.

Now you should have everything working, up to date, and be done!  So simple, right ?

Credits and Sources

There is an incredible amount of knowledge about this on the MSIWind.net Forums.  I relied on information from threads including these to get up and running: MSi Wind OSX86 Install [Driver Pack], Triple Boot setup [GPT+MBR] [Retail Mac OS X, XP & Ubuntu], Sentelic/Synaptics 10.5.6 Driver Bundle. Cybergreg is a genius.

Let me know if this works for you.  I think you’ll be happy with the end result, an amazingly snappy and competent little OS X netbook that’s gotta be a precursor for something Apple is working on.

My gut says that this would be a complete failure as a business, so someone will probably try some variant of it with great success.

That’s pretty much it.  Punch in your password and you or whoever gleams that your password is your dog’s name are in.  This is pretty weak considering what’s at stake.

Contrast with the sign in process for my Japanese bank account.  Step 1, enter your account number, pin number, and password.

Oh yeah, it also defaults to forcing you to key in everything with your mouse instead of the keypad and the option to use the keypad doesn’t work in Firefox.  I could also give you all three credentials right now and you still wouldn’t be able to get into much account because of step 2, which requires entering three random keys from a bank-issued security card.

Finally I’m in.  The Japanese style is clearly more time consuming, but I think it’s worth the piece of mind.  What do you think?

“And That’s You”

And That’s You

“Ba Do Ba Do”

Ba Do Ba Do

“I Want 50 Cents”

I Want 50 Cents

“In a Form of Love”

In a Form of Love

“Kolluthe”

Kolluthe

“Love Is Coming”

Lovecoming

“Mabey Was Herothsoon”

Mabey Was Herothsoon

“My Dog Chico”

My Dog Chico

“Ocean Township Library”

Ocean Township Library

“Sing in the Rain”

Sing in the Rain

“Spaghetti Hats”

Spaghetti Hats

“You Are So Wonderful To Me”

You Are So Wonderful To Me

Download complete archives in mp3 format (~8 MB) and wav format (~80 MB) and let me know if you do anything with them.  Read my previous post if you are interested in some tips on optimizing your own Mechanical Turk projects.

Ever since The Sheep Market, I’ve been curious about exploring the potential of Mechanical Turk for fun little tasks, rather than it’s main purpose as a brutally cheap and efficient marketplace for repetitive tasks.

My own silly idea was to pay people a relatively fair wage of 25 cents to record themselves singing short improvised songs.  I posted a request for 50 HITs with the minimal requirements that songs must be between 30 and 60 seconds and uploaded directly through Amazon’s interface as wave files.  After posting the HIT around 11 at night, I received one cute song almost instantly and went to sleep excited that the assignment would be completed by the morning.

By the way, if you’d like to skip my Turk tips then click here to go straight to the songs.

I checked the progress before leaving for work the next morning and was bummed to find that I hadn’t received any more songs at all. I thought that I might have been too stingy at 25 cents, so I closed the order and submitted a new one for 20 songs at 50 cents. Once again, I got a song almost straight away. Maybe price wasn’t the major factor?

Then I started browsing MT from the worker’s perspective and realized that my little task was likely not very discoverable within the pool of thousands on tasks (51,405 as I write this).  With such little monetary reward at stake, I pictured workers gravitating towards the first reasonable tasks presented to them, much like how searchers generally click the top handful of Google results.

Besides search and tags, MT provides the following ways of sorting tasks (“HITs”):

-Creation Date (Old to New)
-Creation Date (New to Old)
-HITs available (Fewest)
-HITs available (Most)
-Reward Amount (Least)
-Reward Amount (Most)
-Expiration Date (Soonest to Latest)
-Expiration Date (Latest to Soonest)
-Time Allotted (Shortest to Longest)
-Time Allotted (Longest to Shortest)
-Title (A to Z)
-Title (Z to A)

I put the options you can reasonably try to optimize for in bold.  The Creation Date sorts pass quickly and you can’t stop and start your projects at will without paying a 10% penalty, so unless you are comfortable losing some brutal efficiency it’s not an option.  I ended up was a couple bucks figuring this out.  You can’t post a massive order to get to the top of HITs available since Amazon requires that you pre-pay for your tasks, and you can’t get to the top to the top Reward Amount page without paying 5$-10$ per task.  Before you get too excited about making some folding cash, go check a few out. The amount of work required for some is absurd. Think ‘write a 5000 word essay’ or ‘transcribe 30 minutes of audio’. The hourly rate for the top paying projects is probably worse than most of the cheapies.  As you might expect, there’s a perpetual tie for the Least Rewarding task at 1 cent although there’s actually a couple totally free tasks on top right now for some reason.

Finally, we get to the easy wins. Time allotted can be cranked up to a few weeks if you aren’t in a hurry.  Most turkers are reliable and want fast cash, so an overly long deadline is not really a deterrent.  The current leader has allotted 20 days for workers.  On the short side, the minimum time you can allot is 60 seconds.  If your task is doable in that amount of time, it will likely get you on the top page.  Title is another east one.  Just browse the current top A to Z task and tweak their format $+number format.  To get top page on Z to A, start your task with the letter Z (duh).

All that said, it’s probably not a coincidence that Amazon put the easily gamed sort options toward the bottom, but there’s no downside in trying my suggestions to increase your exposure.

Here’s some other fun Turk ideas that may not exist:

-tag your flickr photos
-tag and organize your music and media collections
-create a frame by frame animation, each based on a previous turker’s drawing
-photoshop contest, like a low, low budget layer tennis

Don’t forget to check out the songs the Turkers made for me!