Saturday, 24 December 2011 20:49
Keith Rice
A quick followup to my earlier review of the Apple Magic Mouse. After I installed the Rayovac alkalines with the aluminum foil positive terminal extensions, I started having a lot of problems with signal loss and ended up not able to connect at all. I wasn't sure if it was a problem with the mouse or if my little aluminum extensions were interfering with the Bluetooth signal. I resorted to using a spare HP USB mouse I had laying around until I got around to replacing the batteries with something else. Earlier this evening I installed some Energizer alkalines and the mouse connected right away and I haven't had an issue since.
Last Updated on Saturday, 24 December 2011 20:56
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Wednesday, 30 November 2011 15:49
Keith Rice
I've been using my Magic Mouse for several months now after an unfortunate tumble killed off my wireless Mighty Mouse. It fits well in my hand and the Multi-Touch functionality makes it hard to beat. The Multi-Touch interface is a bit too sensitive to use for serious gaming so I keep a wired USB mouse handy.
The only real issues I have with the Magic Mouse have to do with the batteries. First, this thing uses batteries faster than anything I've ever seen. I usually only get about three weeks out of a pair of alkaline batteries, if I'm lucky. The last time around I switched to Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries and they lasted about two months. Second, likely owing to Steve Jobs' insistence that Apple products look good, even on the inside, the engineers created a nice-looking battery compartment. The negative terminals are spring-loaded buttons rather than just springs and the positive terminals are recessed. The problem is that they are so recessed that not every battery has positive terminals long enough to reach the contacts in the recessed space. I bought some Rayovac alkalines since I didn't have any spare lithiums and the grocery store didn't stock lithiums. The Rayovacs couldn't reach the positive terminals! I had to resort to balling up some small pieces of aluminum foil to fit in the recesses in order for contact to be made.
Lesson learned? Always keep a spare set of lithium batteries handy that I know will fit.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 30 November 2011 15:50
Thursday, 13 October 2011 14:59
Keith Rice
Not too long ago, Firefox added two features, turned on by default, that have started annoying me. The first is URL formatting which greys out all of the URL displayed in the URL bar that is not part of the domain name. This means that if "www.google.com" is displayed, then the "www." portion is grey while "google.com" is black. The second one is URL trimming. This means that if the URL in the URL bar is a regular HTTP URL (one that begins with "http://") then the "http://" is not displayed. In other words, you will see "www.google.com" instead of "http://www.google.com".
Last Updated on Thursday, 13 October 2011 15:19
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Wednesday, 19 October 2011 12:45
Keith Rice
I'e been getting a bit frustrated the last couple of days. I've been trying to burn a DVD on my Macbook but keep getting an error saying it was unable to burn the disc due to a medium write error. I used to believe that this was simply a problem with the particular disc I was trying to burn to and would simply try another one. However, it kept happening over and over no matter how many different discs I tried. I had finally resorted to using an old, yet reliable, external USB burner but that was giving me fits as well so I decided to look into the possibility of a software issue. I went searching through Apple's online discussion area and various other sites I found through Google and many of them talked about the problem starting after some Apple software updates to iTunes and other packages. Having just gone through my semi-annual system rebuild I was not interested in reinstalling my system just to burn a DVD and then try to track down exactly which software update broke the burning capability. At least, not on my current hard drive.
Fortunately, I am a hardware packrat and keep just about all my old hardware so I dug out my original hard drive for the Macbook and temporarily installed it. I'm currently installing Leopard. Once that's done I will try and burn the DVD again. Hopefully that will work. If it does, I'll keep the old hard drive around with Leopard and put it in an external enclosure to boot from next time I have burning problems. Either way, I'll follow up on this post and let you know how it goes.
Later,
Keith
Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 October 2011 12:47
Thursday, 22 September 2011 21:52
Keith Rice
Here is a script that will randomly generate a hexadecimal digit. Please enjoy!
# randomhexdigit.sh - Version 0.01
#
# A simple Unix shell script that generates a random hexadecimal digit.
#
# Written by: Keith Rice
#
# This script is free to use but please credit me and/or link to my site.
# http://dkrcomputing.com
# You are free to modify this script to your heart's delight, but PLEASE
# DO NOT DISTRIBUTE MODIFIED VERSIONS! Please send comments and recommendationss
# for improvement to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
# Step 1: Get a random number using the $RANDOM environment variable
NUM=${RANDOM}
# Step 2: Perform modulo arithmetic using the 'let' shell command. Perform
# MOD 15 on the random number to get a number from 0 to 15.
let "NUM %= 15"
# Step 3: Convert our decimal number from step 2 into a hexadecimal digit
# by using the bc utility.
echo "obase=16;$NUM" | bc
# end of randomhexdigit.sh
Last Updated on Thursday, 13 October 2011 15:19
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