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Archive for the ‘Geeky’ Category

How to clean mighty mouse

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

I know that the post title is grammatically caveman in nature, but that’s exactly what I typed into Google. “how to clean might mouse”. This is what I came up with.

Photo credit: duanestorey on Flickr

Of course, I have the wired version of the Mighty Mouse on the iMac, but I’m sure you could apply this idea to the wireless version. When it comes down to it, sometimes the scroll ball, or mighty nipple as Rebecca calls it, gets gunky.

The same procedure can be used to clean the scroll ball on your Mighty Mouse if it has become discolored or dirty. Use a clean lint-free cloth lightly moistened with water. Wipe the ball and the surrounding area, making sure to rotate the ball itself to ensure complete coverage. If the scrolling feels rough or if the scroll ball isn’t scrolling up, down, or side-to-side, hold the mouse upside-down and roll the ball vigorously while cleaning it to help dislodge any particles that may have collected on the internal hardware. [apple]

They even have a little quicktime movie that you can watch to help you out with the process. However, I pulled a bit of a Red Green maneuver and went for my trusty bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Combine that with a good pair of boxers, clean yet lint free as well as soft enough for this job, all is well again.

In all seriousness, I was impressed that Apple had this on their site, including the explanatory video. That’s not only a clever way to provide support to your customer base as much as good marketing. They care. They really, really care. *sniff*

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Filed under: Apple, Geeky, Technology

Leopard is cool, I get it

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

I’ve had a few folks ask about Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. Have I seen it first hand? No. Have I upgraded to it? No. Do I want to? Yes.

I’ve been reading a lot about it[arstechnica], and it seems like something I could really use, like, and get used to. There are so many features that I would love to get my hands on, and there are some pretty neat podcasting tools that have peaked my attention.

Still, I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet. In due time, it’ll come. Rebecca’s MacBook can handle it, and the iMac will cruise right along with it. However, I’m thinking that my 17-inch Powerbook G4[wiki], this being my major hesitation before leaping into Leopard, might not like or be able to fully handle the new OS.

Right now, I’m running 1GB of RAM on my Powerbook, and the maximum I can put into it is 2GB. There lies the dilemma. Do you make the upgrades or do you consider an overall upgrade, getting a flavor of MacBook with a faster processor?

It’s a no-brainer as to what you should do, but the reality of what you, and the bank account, can do is another.

I’m incredibly jealous of the track pad on Rebecca’s laptop and the ability to use it to scroll. I swear that ups the ability to do things faster, and it might be time for me to downgrade to a smaller laptop for the sake of portability.

That brings me back to Leopard. The Spaces feature means that you don’t need a huge screen real estate, the reason I got this first generation 17-inch, to be efficient. I think I could be happy with a 13-inch screen, and the ability to have Firewire 800 is a consideration that I could live without, but prefer. Still, with the iMac at home, I can survive on Firewire 400 when being portable with my external hard drive, but even that lives at home most of the time.

After that, I have a little issue with being on the bleeding edge. I’ll let those brave souls out there be the first to be first. If there are any issues, let them figure that out and have the fixes come down as a result. I haven’t heard of anything huge yet, but never say never.

Until then, I’ll keep contemplating upgrades for my Powerbook and looking for cheap RAM for a laptop that was discontinued about as soon as it was released.

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Filed under: Apple, Geeky, Mac

Replacing the home network with the Linksys WRT150N

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

I’ve been making comments here and there about our home network for the past few weeks, and it all came to a head about a week ago. At first, I was quick to blame Shaw about their service and lack thereof. I know for a fact that there was one day where it was their fault that we had no access for nearly a day, but the problems continued after a quick phone call about the problem.

For the past few years, I’ve been using an Asante FriendlyNET FR3004 router (circa 2002) and an Apple Airport Express to create a wired and wireless LAN. Not even a year after buying that Asante of an eye sore, it was discontinued, and the firmware updates stopped not long after. The UI for setting up the thing was never my favorite, but it worked. Well, it worked until about a week or so ago, and the Apple Airport Express has always worked well, now a very handy, travel-sizable WiFi device.

During a recent recording of The Crazy Canucks that ended up being a hodge-podge selection of material due to technical problems, our network went into meltdown. Skype wasn’t working, and the entire bandwidth ground to a halt after that. This was prefaced with slow performance in the days leading up. It wasn’t until that I bypassed the router and went straight into the iMac that the Asante was medically discharged from service.

After some research, Rebecca and I settled on getting a new router. Like my father raised me, I didn’t want to get something that would work as much as it would be a suitable replacement for at least the next three years. Looking at the specs for the WRT150N, it had a few key things that I wanted; four 100/1000 Base-T ports on the back, WPA wireless encryption, and 802.11n capabilities that would support Rebecca’s MacBook.

There were some folks recommending other versions of Linksys routers, namely Duane and Gregg, and those were very much appreciated. For the price and the performance that I’m getting now compared to what I had is very noticeable and quite loved though, and it makes me very happy. I used to think that my PowerBook’s performance over wireless was poor due to it’s age, but it was obviously the poor operation of the old router translating traffic to the Apple Airport Express. It’s nearly a new world, and Rebecca has noticed it as well.

So far, I’m really impressed with the Linksys WRT150N. I spent some time setting it up to allow better functionality with certain programs like iChat or Skype, and the wired connection for the iMac has an increase in performance when loading websites or downloading podcasts. Here’s hoping for the long term, but knowing the interesting things I could do with other Linksys models makes me wonder what other, geeky things I could do with it. I’d just have to brave to try.

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Filed under: Geeky, Internet, Technology

Comparing loonies to the thin, aluminum Apple keyboard

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

My mom did something interesting the other day. They purchased one of the new Apple keyboards, the new, ultra thin aluminum ones that now come standard with most of their desktop machines. Taking some loonies from their last trip to Vancouver, she showed just how thin it actually is.

Two loonies thick

As you can see, the thickness of the keyboard is just two loonies.

One loonie thick

The keys themselves stick up from the keyboard at just one thickness of a single loonie.

That’s an outstanding size comparison. I haven’t had a chance to use one of these, but the last standard that Apple sent out with their products, in terms of keyboards, is something I’m not too found of. I love the feel of the keys on Apple laptops, so this might be an investment worth snagging. I fear I’d fight Rebecca over it though.

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Filed under: Amusing, Apple, Geeky

Lost in the matrix

Friday, August 31st, 2007

Photo credit: miss604 on Flickr

Just one of those other things that I toil away on. I wish that I could say that I understand more of what I see on this screen, but it’s really a trial by fire situation. This issue, on the other hand, has been a pain in the ass to figure. To put it simply, GD library support on a Apache web server running in the Unix environment can be a nasty thing to deal with.

Yeah, nerdy. Eat me.