Raam Dev’s Weblog

The first Boston Freehacker’s Union meeting was tonight at Trident Cafe. FU rule #3 states,

Everyone who attends has to eventually show something they did. Not something someone else did. This is your time to give a performance, not to teach people how to use something so you get a book deal.

I didn’t really have anything to show, but I wanted to show something. Tangled earbuds are one of the things that have been bugging me for, literally, years. (I prefer real headphones, but sometimes size matters.)

Every time I take the earbuds out of my bag, they’re all tangled and I have to spend 30 seconds or so untangling them. I wanted something like the retractable cables in my Belkin 7-in-1 Retractable Cable Travel Pack, but for my Apple earbuds. Well, here’s my 30 minute retractable earbud hack:

The most interesting part about this hack was what I learned about the locking mechanism. The recoil system was very simple; a twisted metal coil that increases tension as it is twisted. However, as you pull the wire out of the coil, something stops the device from retracting.

That something turned out to be a tiny metal ball bearing, sitting inside the funny looking track on top of the spinning center coil. The single straight track on the top stationary cover sandwiches the ball bearing inside the track and keeps the ball bearing in place. I actually lost the ball bearing twice and ended up taking apart all three of the retractable cables that came with the Belkin kit.

There’s definitely lots of room for improvement. A removable retractable device would be much nicer and the size and weight is also an issue. The guys I met at the FU meeting seemed to like it and I’m definitely going to keep using it whenever I use the earbuds. I’ll add any further observations to the bottom of this post.

I’m using a black Speck MacBook Pro See-Thru Hard Case. It’s done a great job of protecting my MacBook Pro! I’ve actually tried really hard to be careful with this laptop and I was pretty shocked when I saw the bottom of the case!

A multi-touch color screen touchpad using the same touchscreen as the iPhone? It could replace the OS X dock and provide a whole new method of interacting with your computer! Fingerprint security device, electronic signature pad, an electronic sketch pad for better photo editing accuracy… the possibilities are endless!

After so many hours trying to fix the damn U727 USB Sprint card, I finally have it working again. It was working fine up until about a week ago when it mysteriously stopped working. I was getting all kinds of messages, including “Unable to connect” and several seemingly useless messages in /var/log/ppp.log: “Connect script failed”, “LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests”, “CCLExit: -6021 (No carrier.)”, and “CCLExit: -6019 (Modem error, modem not responding.)”.

I finally came across this post that included a list of steps which billio discovered fixed the problem for him. I am re-posting his steps here (I hope he doesn’t mind):

1. Remove the Novatel USB device.

2. Download the latest driver package for Mac OS X from Sprint. It says it is for Tiger (10.4) but it seems to work.

3. Delete (sudo rm -rf) all the Novatel files from /System/Library/Extentions. Reboot.

4. Run the mpkg installer for the Sprint drivers.

5. Reboot.

6. Open Network Preferences; plug in the Novatel device; click “+” and add “Novatel CDMA” device.

7. Click “Advanced” button. Change vendor to Novatel and Model to CDMA.

8. Click “Connect” and it works.

And I couldn’t believe it, but that actually worked! (I’m writing this post using the Sprint card right now.) You can find the Sprint drivers here (select MAC OS from the drop down and download the Sprint SmartView software).

For the past few weeks, my local Microcenter has been out of power supply’s for the MacBook Pro. They did, however, have plenty of power supply’s for the 13″ MacBook (which just so happened to be packaged in the exact same box as the MacBook Pro power supply’s).

I finally gave up waiting for them and called a local MacEdge store. They said they had some in-stock, so I picked one up last night. Apparently the MacBook Pro power supply’s got an update because the new power supply is a lot smaller (which partly explains why Microcenter was out of them for so long). In fact, the new power supply reminds me a lot of the old PowerBook G4 power supply!

If you’re in the market for a new power supply for your MacBook Pro and you want to make sure you get the new size, you might want to take a peek at the label on my box and try to match the serial numbers or model number. I haven’t figured out exactly how to differentiate between the two, but if you know what to look for please let me know!

Now before you ask why I’m buying another power supply, let me explain. I have been asked dozens of times by fellow customers AND store clerks, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you’re wondering the same thing. It’s mainly because I abused my first one a little too much and it started to show major signs of wear (you can see where the wire is becoming exposed if you enlarge the picture). It’s also because I realized how convenient it must be for David (my co-worker at Aerva) to leave his power supply at work when he goes home.

Now I not only have a new power supply to lug around with me, but its a smaller power supply.