Winton DeShong

Web / Flash Development

I received an Apple Magic Mouse over Christmas and to my surprise I had issues getting my system to recognize the device. After uninstalling USB Overdrive and restarting 2-3 times it still wouldn’t work. It took quite a bit of looking with the help of Sir Google to determine that there was a “USBOverdrive.kext” file lingering in my System/Library/Extensions folder. Simply deleted the file, restarted, and was golden.

Over the last several months I have been migrating to a different approach for routine backups. For longer than I can remember, I have manually backed up data from my various computers to a centralized Fedora Core Linux file server. My box only required a power and network cable to work. Pressing the power button would start her up and again to begin the shut down procedure. Occasionally I’d SSH in to make sure my RAID was working and to do any necessary updates.

Over time, even that process has become a chore for me. In an attempt to become lazier than I already am, I have been using large external drives with time machine to do routine backups of my primary systems.

Though time machine is a breeze, finding an external hard drive that is reliable hasn’t been so easy. After using a mix match of different enclosures and smaller hard drives I had laying around, I decided to consolidate. I looked around and decided to get the LaCie d2 quadra 500GB hard drive. At the time the quadra was attractive because of the price vs. storage ratio and the fact that I could use several interfaces besides USB.

Sadly, it only took 2-3 months of use for it to FAIL. One day, conveniently when I was going to upgrade the hard drive in my laptop for work, the drive decided it wouldn’t start. So, I talked with support and requested a new power cable. Apparently, it is common for their drives to have faulty power cable. No big deal, two weeks and a reminder to LaCie (they forgot to ship it), I received a new cable. For the time being, all was well.

Again, after about 2-3 months of use, my drive would not start. This time it came with an added bonus, the connection to the drive shot off sparks when connecting the power cable.

So, the next time you are in the market for an external hard drive, I’d avoid LaCie products if I were you. In turn, check out the following external drives that I’ve used:

1. Western Digital My Passport External Hard drives - Perfect if you need a drive that is extremely compact and reliable, but don’t require a fire wire, or esata interface. I’ve had the 60GB version of this drive for over 3 years and it still runs perfect!

2. Macally G-S350SUA Hi-Speed eSATA/FireWire/USB2.0 Storage Enclosure - This enclosure has several interfaces and is relatively light. It comes in two different models depending on if you want fire wire in addition to eSATA and USB. You can actually pair one of these enclosures with a 1TB Seagate drive for less than $200!

3. Western Digital My Book - Finally, there is the My Book. This option is probably the most popular of the three I’m describing. The enclosure is double the thickness of the Macally, or 2nd option, described above, but it comes with a few more flavors.

I finally decided on software to transcode various media types for use with the Playstation 3. After trying various packages, such as; MediaTomb and EyeConnect, I decided to use NullRiver’s MediaLink. Though many people have had success with EyeConnect and MediaTomb, I felt MediaLink had the easiest interface, produced the best results for my situation, and was cost effective. For only $20, you can turn your Mac into a Playstation 3 compatible media server.

Now, it might not be as simple as it sounds. My first attempts during this process were using my existing network consisting of a Fedora Core Linux server, two Apple Macbook’s, and some other devices networked with a Linksys wireless router. The combination of the increased traffic from those devices and the quirkiness with the Linksys router resulted in random connection issues and heavy latency. Even with proper port forwarding, my wireless devices would fail or my entire segment would go down and require a restart.

In the end, I decided to work around this issue and make a separate network entirely with an Apple Airport Express (which I had). Anytime I want to handle media distribution throughout my apartment, I switch over to this network and can communicate with the Playstation or remote speakers via airTunes. This segment extends the other so I can still communicate with my file server and other devices. Having the Playstation always working off of the airport express eliminated the issues I was having. With the Airport Express configured, I connected the playstation and my laptops with the MediaLink server wirelessly to that access point.

Now I can browse those systems for any media I want to view on my HDTV. For the _best_ performance, I recommend atleast using a wired connection for the playstation 3. It works for me either way, but when it comes to larger files it may take your PS3 longer to queue them up.

For those of you using Textmate and/or Git on the Mac, check out OpenInGit and OpenInTextMate.

For those of you who aren’t…convert now!

About two weeks ago, my Macbook Pro starting *squealing* while I was at work. At the time, I was using Adobe Flash CS4 as part of the pre-release of Adobe Design Premium CS4 and began to blame it on the current build. After two to three more occurrences it was just straight up annoying and I looked into the issue. Turns out many people have been having issues with the fans of their Macbook pros, in particular…the right rear fan
.
Well, after monitoring the situation for a few days I decided mine was on it’s way out and ordered a new one. For anyone reading this, don’t simply go purchasing a new fan right away! If you are experiencing issues with a fan in your macbook, I highly recommend running the application smcFanControl. This handy application allows you to not only monitor the RPMs and temperature of your laptop’s individual fans, it allows you to individually adjust the RPMs.

If you keep tabs on the RPM rate of your fans with this tool you should be able to prevent any issues before they happen.