Did you ever plug in a headphone? Then the same happens like on the iPhone: The Computer is muted and the headphone makes the music. I hate that! Why? Because I am so fussy and want to spare my hardware. Especially jacks are sensitive and easily getting loose. So it would be so much better having a headphone connected, put it aside and still enjoy the iMac’s speaker sound as well. There is no option anywhere in the preferences, so I have to accept this. The only solution I know is getting an external sound card.

Phase change

So I did, and I am the proud owner of the external Terratec Phase X24 Firewire audio card. Really great device, and you know what? I can connect a headphone with still having sound everywhere. YES!

Record

I love making music and hopefully you have subscribed my audio podcast. To create my sounds I mainly use software like Record in combination with Reason. Record is so great in connecting audio hardware with multiple inputs and outputs.

Combine in, combine out

For my latest song I needed to record my voice while playing the music inside Record. That masterpiece software is able to do that, but my USB microphone was not in there. Checking out all the devices, I noticed for the first time, that Record combines audio devices with inputs and outputs.

Shit happens, my PhaseX24 and the Samson GoMic was not listed up in combination.

Got a Mac? Do it yourself!

Damn, yeah! I am a Mac user, so that’s no big deal. I will create my own device!

I have just opened the Audio and MIDI settings, and voila, there is the add button. Give it a name and click all devices I want to have in there. Made a check on PhaseX24 and one Samson USB GoMic, that’s it! Restarting Record, running to preferences and there it is: my PhaseX24+GoMic device.

While living in the virtual reality I help my environment to save valuable resources. One of them is avoiding the use of paper whenever possible. But, unfortunately there are some rare situations where somethings needs to get printed out and signed – contracts for example.

And the winner is

Some years ago, I decided to afford me a printer to exactly match such requirements. A good device with a reasonable price and performance ratio for my needs is the Brother HL-2040 series. It is a black and white laser printer with economic power and toner saving working on Windows and Mac.

When something is really needed

As Murhphy’s law confirms, the printer will stop it’s work when really needed. And exactly that happened. I did not use it for about two months and the first print job ended with paper jam, so the second did, too. After that all four LEDs started flashing and no printing was possible.

If you have a similar problem, then these two tips may help you out, because this is not mentioned in the FAQ and the official technical support did not know!

Solution

Tip 1:

Remove paper jams with the device still powered on. DO NOT POWER OFF! Open all paper trays and toner lid, then close. The motors will begin turning and the printer will be ready, again. Maybe it is required to press the GO button.

Tip 2:

This printer does not have a text display, just LEDs. Turn the power off, hold the GO button, power on, still hold GO for eight seconds. Release and press again. If the ready indicator is green, try a print. If the LEDs are all flashing again, do this Tip 2 instruction again and power off the device instead of printing. IMPORTANT: Let the power off for some hours, not only seconds or minutes! Turn on the next day, and voila.

Espacially, when you want to install something large which normally requires an expensive dual layer DVD or even when no DVD drive is available at all, it makes sense to use a USB device. On a Mac, this can be a standard USB stick or an iPod having the appropriate capacity.

Also using a USB device is really fast und produces less noise.

Ok, here is my short step-by-step guide for you how to make it work:

Note: Doing that will erase ALL data on your media!

Step 1: Open the Disk Utility from the Application / Utilities folder and select your destination USB device. Then go to the “Partition” tab and change the scheme from “Current” to “1 Partition”.

Step 2: Click the options to select the partition mode. To make it bootable on a Mac “GUID Partition Table” is required. Check this radio button and confirm with “ok”.

Step 3: “Apply” the settings and confirm to “Partition”.

Step 4: Finally, we need to select that image file to be placed on the USB device. This can be a DMG or ISO file. You can use the Disk Utility tool, to create such images from your DVDs. You can start the process by clicking on “Restore”.

Note: Do NOT copy discs or any other media you are not allowed to!

Drop me a comment, if that guide helped you out.

Many disc accesses are usually done with a Virtual Machine, so I put a blank Parallels Windows XP virtual machine image to the stick, hoping the speed would be fantastic.

But, the hope still remains a hope. The speed is just OK, and absolutely not faster than directly starting from a harddisk. The USB probing sais 480Mb/sec which is a maximum of 6 MB per second, but the average speed I could measure in fact is 5.2 MB per second.

That is absolutely too slow and the conclusion for me is, that flash memory is only really fast if it will provided over the S-ATA port.

A very nice feature is the slider, where you can pull the USB-connector inside the stick, so that you can not lose the cap anymore.

When connecting it my Mac’s USB hub I saw a very nice suprise. The USB LED is not just flashing or blinking, it is fading the same way the Mac’s power LED does, when ready. Have look at my shortly recorded video.

Blackberry HS-655+ headset

The Bluetooth headset branded with HS-655+ or just Blackberry 655+ is a great and tiny thing. It supports Bluetooth 2.0 technology and has a good sound quality and distance range. There are lot of testing reports in the web, but no useful reference manual or user guide. The delivered one is one of the worst I have ever seen. So I will give a neat summary below.

I bought that headset in combination of my Blackberry 8110 which is now replaced with my iPhone 3G – the best(est) PDA / iPod / phone available on the planet. I suggest you getting it, because the price cheapened from about $100 down to approximately $60 and you also can use it on every Mac.

The original vendor is Plantronics with the model number ASY-12747-002, but there is not valuable manual out, either.

Here we go for the short, but explainary summary. I really can not image what inherited them for writing just these few words:

Charging:
Plug a USB cable into the cradle. Put the headset into the cradle. When it vibrates once it signals, that power is available. When it is blinking red in 3 second steps, it is charging. When the light is off, the battery is full.

Power on:
Hold down the button for 3 seconds. When it is on, then it blinks blue every 5 seconds.

Power off:
You need to disconnect bluetooth from the other device, first. Else the headset will not react on power off. When disconnected, hold down the button for 4 seconds. When the light it is off, the headset is totally powered off, too.

Pairing:
Power it on (see above). Release the button and hold it down for 10 seconds. Then the button blinks alternating red and blue. Find the headset with your phone or Mac. When you are asked for the passkey, enter 0000 (for times zero). When paired it blinks every 5 seconds blue as described on power on.

Note on Pairing: When powered on and your device is findable, it could happen that is asked for the passkey without holding the button for 10 seconds down.

Now, go and get it! Maybe, we will see/hear us in a Skype call.

Toastbook

Walking to the subway station I saw a an advert with a weird looking notebook on a big poster, but the design is very familar to me, so I decided to take a closer look.

It is a MacBookPro with a unusal thick screen and toasts falling into it. Next to it the hashkey “Toastbook”. This picture manipulation is not very professional, because the laptop’s frame looks quite unrealistic and the visible screen content is not designed by somebody having or using a Mac.

The promotion of trade and industry start2grow.de wants to help young start-up companies in the IT segment.

And now, “tada” (yes, this word was chosen by intention, and if you know why, then you are a real nerd, compliment!) one of the big sponsors surprisingly is Microsoft trying to pinch Apple.

To have all that comfort really greatful on your Mac’s screen, I absolutely recommend the installation of the Fritz.Mac Suite. Unfortunately it costs almost 30 Euro, but keep in mind that you use it every day! You can download a full working trial.

Fritz.Mac Suite

The software communicates via different TCP ports with the FritzBox itself to have all that live data.

In my case the Box did not have the required ports for CAPI and Fax services open. This can be done by simply dialling some codes with the phone.

#96*3* to enable CAPI over TCP
#96*5* to enable Fax support

My problem was, that I could not dial those numbers, because I am using a VoiP enabled handset. The Fritz.Mac Suite contains a Call Manager which can dial for you. Putting the codes in there, solved the issue.

IDE SATA USB

In my bargain bin I found some 3.5 inch harddrives. In fact I do not have a PC, but like a salvager I can not sell such gadgets too cheap to someone who does not use it with dignity. But having extra space for data backup is anyhow nice.

Moreover I do not have a external USB port to use them and I do not want screw and unscrew all the time.

Then I tried to find a cool adapter and I found one below 30 Euro!

With the Wintech adapter you can connect 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives as IDE or SATA. In the package are cables for SATA power and data connection as well as a power supplier for 3.5 drives. No driver is needed. Just plug and use.

During writing this I am doing a backup and the speed rocks continuous with a little bit more than 22 MB per second on a 3.5 inch Samsung 160 GB drive.

Speedport’s original firmware has some bad properties. After login it resizes the browsers window, the interface is ugly and some items seem to be misplaced in my opinion. But, all in one it is ok.

Due to I am having T-Home, I am forced to use the Speedport router because of the built in Modem. I just wanted to use my TimeCapsule only, but that did not work, because I do not get any internet connection then.

In former times I already a had FritzBox and was impressed how far it succeeded with useful options. It was even possible in those days to connect a USB capable printer and to print wireless via WLAN. But now, AVM has implemented state of the art features which are really useful for home users or small networks. It provides now USB-support for harddrives and memory sticks and even sharing them with FTP and SMB, VPN tunneling, call answer machine, fax sending/receiving and many more.

Refering to that article mentioned above, I began some research and found some solutions how to get the AVM firmware to the Speedport.

It is not working by just uploading it the normal way! You need to somewhat compile your own thing out of both firmwares. See my steps, and it will work really easy.

Here is my installation guide for Mac users, but with some fantasy you may adapt it for your own purpose:

Disclaimer! YOU ARE DOING ALL THAT AT YOUR OWN RISK! YOUR HARDWARE MAY GET DAMAGED. Read carefully and make sure to understand before doing anything.

First of all, get the Debian businesscard edition (36 MB). The compiling scripts do require some apt libraries which are not available on OS X by default. The stable CD/DVD of Debian 5 crashed during my installation within Parallels Desktop 4.

Begin to create a virtual machine with Parallels by running the assistant. Set the just downloaded Debian 5 ISO file as the CD/DVD drive. Parallels will automatically detect everything what is needed. When the machine starts for the first time and asks you for the installation method, I recommend you to go to the options and select the graphical unattended one. The installation will download everything what is required.

When done, log in as a normal user, because no root access is required. Use the browser icon from the menu bar to download the master script doing all the nasty work for you. For the ease of use, I have created a short URL to type less. You can use the samehttp://kURL.de/opupiin your address bar. If you get a hint, that you have no internet, have a look at the top right corner of your menubar left next to the clock and calendar. There should be a tiny icon and if you click it, you can select a cable network connection. Then reload the script and you should see it’s source text. Store it with menu file, save as. Change the download folder to Desktop!

Open a root terminal window via the menu bar applications, then tools. Go the Desktop directory where the downloaded shell script is located by typingcd DesktopPay attention to the letter case on unix systems! Start the script by typing sh ./download_speed-to-fritz.shThis will do some downloads and may take some time. Now, we change to the new files and run the first script, which will install some needed libraries to continue.cd trunk/speed-to-fritzsh ./install-start

Follow the instructions and read carefully. If everything is done it will start the module configurator which has a nice interface where you can use the cursor keys to change options. Then it downloads the needed firmwares and will re-image them. When you are prompted to reset the router, turn it off! Wait 10 seconds and power it on again. Then the firmware will be installed. Do not interrupt until it is complete!

Then you can access the router over same IP as before or just with http://fritz.boxAll the settings are still kept.

If you made a mistake, you can re-run the last script and restore to the original firmware or just customize other things.

Now I am so happy beeing able to receive faxes and missed calls running on my answering machine by mail to my iPhone!

USB 2.0 HUB

I really required to have a USB Hub, because the amount of USB devices is growing. My iMac just has only two connectors for USB at the back and that is absolutely too less. Ok, the keyboard has two plugs, but they are just low power supplied, so most devices will not work.

At Amazon I bought the Hama USB 2.0 Hub for less than 10 Euro. It is bus powered, so that no additional power chord is neccessary. There are 4 USB 2.0 ports available.

This works fine on a Mac without trouble. When you are searching for a cheap and small one, pick this one. No drivers are needed, just plug it in and use.