Wireless file transfer between two macbooks?

Firewire 400 works great for that, but being he has an aluminium macbook that is a no go. Your best bet if you do not have a router handy is just connect them with a standard networking cable. Done it before and it works good.

 

If there is a routers near by and you both join the network then ad-hoc is not required, you can just share a folder. You can also us a standrd cat-5 network cable. But you asked for "wireless" so a handy device foryou might be the Apple "Airport Express". It's about the size of a small power cube and even plugs into the wall like one