This being said, the construction of the remote leaves much to be desired. I’m on my second remote. I had to RMA the first, luckily it was under warranty. The replacement remote I was sent is now out of warranty. Since going off warranty this remote has had several problems.

The first problem was that the remote would no longer charge. It turned out that the battery wasn’t keeping a good connection. This was a relatively easy fix. I just had to clean the contacts, and wedge a folded up business card between the battery and the edge of the battery compartment.

The second problem developed over the course of several months. The channel up and volume up buttons eventually stopped working. At first I just had to push the buttons extra hard and they would work. It got to the point that it felt like i was going to break something if i pushed any harder, and the remote never did anything.

I did some research and it turns out that this is a common problem with my model remote. The problem is that due to some bad design, eventually the buttons stop making contact with the contacts. Several people had luck with putting a small amount of epoxy on the remote contacts. This causes the contacts to be taller, and the button to again make a connection.

I thought I’d give it a shot. Here’s some pictures from along the way.

The remote comes apart in two pieces. There are only 2 screws, one in the battery compartment, and one below the IR port plastic. Once you have these screws lose, you have 8 clips to deal with, 4 on each side.

Here’s what the 2 halves look like:

  

Tube:

Unmixed:

Mixed epoxy:

Next I used a tooth pick to put small amounts of the mixed epoxy on the remote contacts. You can see the white blobs on the 4 round contacts in the corners of this picture.

I let the epoxy dry for 24 hours. After it dried the epoxy was rock hard and stuck the to contacts. All that was left was to put the remote back together. I’m glad to report that my remote still works. Not only that, but the epoxy seems to have done it’s job. The channel up and volume up buttons now work again!

I don’t think the picture does it justice so here’s a list of what I got rid of:

• 9 desktop pc’s
• 3 CRT monitors
• 3 Printers
• 2 Stereos
• 5 Keyboards
• 2 Sets of computer speakers
• 2 Pairs of stereo speakers

Now I just have to find room to put 26 cans of food.

I fired up my laptop this evening, got on there wireless, and went to reply to a couple emails. All of them failed to send. I tried telnet’ing to port 25 on my smtp server, it never connected. I though this was odd. I ssh’d over to my web host and tried the same thing. It connected right away.

I’m not hell bent on using my own smtp server, I just want to use thunderbird to send my email so I can avoid using a slow/clunky webmail app. So I thought I would try to use Suddenlink’s smtp server (smtp.suddenlink.net). Wouldn’t you know they make you authenticate to use there smtp server. Since I’m not one of there customers I don’t have an account to authenticate with. They’re sure making this hard.

I turned to trusty google and found out they are indeed blocking port 25 to all hosts except there own, to help prevent spam and viruses. You can read there “Unsolicited Email Spam FAQs” for yourself if you want more information on this. I’m not sure this is the best approach, but that’s a different story.

To get around this policy I decided to try and connect via SSL encryption rather than TLS encryption. This changes the port you connect to from port 25 to port 465.

After making the change my mail sent out right away. So if you’re having problems sending mail through your own SMTP server give this a try. You may also have success just changing the port your SMTP server listens on.

One of the coolest things is the network area. It will show you how long it takes to load each individual element on your page, it puts this out in a time line that shows what is getting loaded when.

For some reason the Web Inspector isn’t enabled by default, so you’ll have to do a little work to get it. Here’s how:

1. Quit Safari
2. Fire up the Terminal
3. Type:
   $ defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true
4. Restart Safari
5. Right click some where on the page, and click on “Inspect Element”

I know Apple tries to hide this kind of stuff because most everyday users will never need to use this feature, but I think they should have put this in the preferences. There is an advanced section in there, with some less than advanced features. I’m not afraid of the big bad terminal.app, but many are.

If apple truly want to compete in the browser war this would be some good ammo. That being said, I still use Firefox 99.9% of the time.

That being said I recently came across a website that required Safari for OS X users. This was annoying, but I fired up Safari and browsed back to the page. Then I got an error message telling me I needed to be on at least Safari 2 to view the page. This was obviously a case of the web master not staying up to date, as I was running Safari 3. I was pretty disappointed about this as the page is doing live video streaming of 3 upcoming WVU basketball games that are on the road and will not be on TV.

Fast forward to this evening. My co-worker told me I could download an application that would enable a debug menu in Safari that would let me change my user agent string. I thought this was a cool idea, but didn’t really want to install an app if I didn’t have to. So I started doing some research on how I could accomplish the same thing. My guess was that it was just a system preference that I would need to set in the terminal. The app was probably doing this in the background, transparent to the user.

I was right. I turns out this hack was discovered back in 2003.

Here is what you need to do to get your debug menu in Safari.

1. If Safari is running close it. Make sure you quit the application, not just close the window.
2. Open the terminal.
3. type:
   
$ defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

4. Open Safari again
5. Enjoy your new menu

If you want to take the menu out, do the same steps, except change step 3 from a 1 to a 0.

Sure enough after enabling this menu, I was able to change my user agent string. The website thought I was on Safari 2, and the content loaded as it should. Looks like I’ll be able to watch the Mountaineers after all.

Login Screen
You may have noticed that your login screen has the default star wall paper that comes with 10.5. I didn’t like this generic look, and I wanted to customize it. No problem. Fire up the terminal and do the following (all on one line):

$ sudo cp /path/to/new/picture /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg

Log out, and you will notice that your login background picture is now changed. In addition, all new users created will have this picture set as there default wallpaper. Here is what my login screen now looks like:

Thanks to Jason for the tip on how to get a screen shot of the login screen (VNC is your friend).

Dock
One of the first thing people will surely notice is the new dock in OS X. By default the dock has a bright gray background. Here is a picture of the original doc:

You can change this too. The files that control this are in /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources. The files you are looking for are:
scurve-l.png
scurve-m.png
scurve-sm.png
scurve-xl.png
You can either update these files to have a new color, or just remove them for a mirror look. I decided to go with removing the files (after backing them up of course). Either way, your changes won’t show up until you fire up the terminal again and run:

$ sudo killall Dock

Here is a picture of my new mirror dock:

Halo 3 came out late last month. It only took me about a week to beat the solo mission. That left online play to get my money’s worth. The online games are a lot of fun. I find it pretty interesting that I could be playing a game with some one from the other side of the planet. It even shows a world map showing where all of the people signed on are located. Along with the world map it shows the current number of people logged in and looking for games. The smallest I’ve seen this number was are 70,000, and most times it is well over 100,000. This being said, I was having problems finding games. It would take up to 5 minutes before it would find a game to join. I had a feeling something wasn’t right.

I noticed tonight an error message that said my NAT type was wrong. For those that don’t know what NAT is, all you really need to know is that the error message meant something was set wrong on my network. If you are running router on your home network, you’re most likely using NAT. You can get more info about nat at Wikipedia.

The game pointed me to http://www.bungie.net/router/. I went there expecting to find ports that I needed to open on my firewall. I was wrong:

Q: What is NAT and why do I care about it?

A: In extremely simple terms, NAT (Network Address Translation) helps determine how your router interacts with the rest of the internet. If your NAT settings are restrictive, you may have problems connecting to other players. To test your settings, go to the Xbox 360 Dashboard and test your connection. At the bottom of the test results, you will see your ‘NAT Type.’ You want it to say ‘Open’ – if it says ‘Moderate’ or ‘Strict’ you may experience some problems.

If you’re NAT settings display ‘Moderate’ or ‘Strict,’ you should consult your router’s documentation, either online or in the instruction manual.

…

Q: Are there any routers that are recommended for playing Halo 3 online?

A: If you live in North America or certain parts of Europe, look for routers that are specially marked as ‘Xbox LIVE compatible’ or ‘Windows Vista compatible.’ These routers have been tested specifically by the Xbox LIVE team to make sure they work…

Go figure, no real useful information. Tells me to look at my router’s documentation, but doesn’t tell me what to look for. It was just a website trying to sell me a new router that would do less than mine already does (and for probably more money too).

Out of curiosity, I did the test they suggested and sure enough my NAT type was “moderate.” The Xbox dashboard had a “More Info” button next to the NAT type. I was hoping it would tell me the ports I needed to open. Again, I was wrong. More of the same:

This test indicates the type of Network Address Translation (NAT) that your router or gateway is using. Devices that perform strict or moderate NAT can limit the ability of gamers to find each other, participate in sessions, or hear each other on Xbox Live.

You will not receive a result for this test if you are unable to sign in to Xbox Live. If you do not receive a result, test your connection to Xbox Live. If your router or gateway is using a moderate or strict NAT, replace it with an Xbox Live Compatible device. For a listing of devices that have earned this certification, see www.xbox.com.

If you’ve tried these suggestions and your console still does not pass this test, go to www.xbox.com/setup or call Xbox Customer Support.

Again with trying to sell me a new router. This just wasn’t an option for me. Additionally, I had never heard of moderate or strict NAT. I’m not a networking expert, but I do like to think that I know a bit more about them than the average Joe. If not, I feel sorry for my employer.

After a couple more minutes of google searching I found this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908874

It had everything I was looking for. TCP and UDP ports 3074 and UDP 88 needed to be opened. I already had TCP 3074 opened, but the others were new to me. After opening the ports I reran the test and my NAT type was now listed as “Open.” I fired up Halo 3, got online, and was in a game in less than a minute.

Moral of the story is. The Xbox is great but you have to watch what they try to tell/sell you. Apparently Bill Gates isn’t rich enough yet.

I got on google in hopes that there was an easy fix and that I wouldn’t have to spend a lot to do it. I found Shandy’s Blog. He had the same problem. Apparently this is a fairly common problem caused by the button that detects if the laptop’s screen is open or closed. It will get stuck in the closed position.

Shandy gave a free fix. Pop the top of the keyboard off, re-seat the button, put it all back together. This is easier than it sounds. It doesn’t even require a screw driver. It took about 5 minutes to complete the entire process and I was back up and running again.

I was kind of wishing I had taken some pictures to document the process. Well, I got a 2nd chance today. When I got home from work today the button was stuck in the closed position again. I took pictures this time.

Here’s a picture of what the screwed up screen looks like, white with black and gray streaks. The streaks move, sometimes they disappear and I only have a white screen. It varies from being super bright to dim.

This is a picture of the button. Notice how it’s sticking out at an angle. You’ll see why next.

After popping off the blue strip of buttons at the top of the keyboard, I found out why the button was stuck. The yellow square shows where the switch is. Click on the image for a bigger version.

Here is the switch after re-seating it.

These are two pictures of it reassembled. Notice the button is now straight, and is sticking out further.

Success! Back at the login screen.

This is a pretty easy project. I took my drill and put 2 holes next to each other in the center of the strainer. I then cut out the metal between the 2 holes out . This made a single hole just about the right size for a male to female USB cable to fit through. I decided to use a male to female cable so that I could use different wifi adapters in the future. I ran the cable through the hole, and wedged the female end in so that about a 1/8 inch of the adapter was left not pushed through. Here’s a couple pictures, I think they’ll explain what I did better.

So now I had my antenna built. The idea behind it is that the strainer takes the signals in the air and concentrates them on a focal point in the center of the strainer. This would be where the USB wifi adapter sits.

I fired up netstumbler to see if this really helped. I was at home so this is signal strength of my home network, not WVU’s. So the numbers you see show a stronger signal than she was getting at WVU.

The first graph shows signal strength with the adapter plugged directly into the back of the laptop, without the antenna. As you can see I was getting around -65 db of signal.

Here is the graph with the wifi adapter running through the antenna. I was now seeing signal strength of around -45 db. One thing I noticed right away is that running through the antenna you have to get it aimed almost directly at your access point to see any improvements. You can see on the graph when my hand moved ever so slightly it resulted in a signal drop off.

I would have never guessed $5 would get a 20db gain. It’s a pretty ugly solution but I think it gets the job done. We’ll see what it does for Treah at her desk.