Stereo cable voodoo: Connect game console output to computer speakers

I need to connect a game console to a computer speaker system. This requires some cable voodoo.

Specifically I need to connect a Wii (composite RCA plug output - 2 stereo sound, 1 video) console stereo output to my Logitech (3.5 mm male) computer speakers. This is a fairly common problem, Amazon has two different solutions:

2 x RCA Female / 1 x 3.5mm Stereo Female Adapter (CableWholesale)

or

both 3.5mm Stereo Coupler F/F AND 3.5mm Stereo Male To 2X RCA Female Adapter (Cables To Go)

I ordered the second one because I needed a bit more versatility.

Now I'd also like to use my computer with the same speakers. I'm going to try using a headphone splitter in reverse -- so the sound sources will plug into the headphone jacks and the speaker will plug into the input jack. I think it might work ...

PS. The mess of a adapters and cables cost half as much as the Logitech computer stereo system. The profit margin on cables is impressive.

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How to disable lateral (horizontal) scrolling on a Magic mouse

Things that seem like a good idea at the time but aren't really:

• auto-orientation on my iPhone: Mostly it guesses wrong.
• horizontal scrolling surface on the magic mouse: Mostly it guesses wrong.

There is a way to disable the Magic Mouse horizontal scrolling:

Apple - Support - Discussions - Magic Mouse - Disable horizontal ...

... This worked for me. It's a relief to disable horizontal scrolling. Just to clarify the previous post:

To turn horizontal scrolling off:

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseHorizontalScroll -bool NO

To turn horizontal scrolling on:

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseHorizontalScroll -bool YES

These commands are entered on the command line of the Terminal utility application.

You must either restart your computer or connect and disconnect your mouse for these changes to take effect. To connect/disconnect you power cycle the mouse; it's helpful to have the OS X mouse pref pane open to see when it's disconnected and reconnected. Reconnection can be slow.

It's beautiful to have lateral scrolling disabled. Just beautiful.

Update 6/17/10: Even with lateral scrolling disabled, I still came to despise the Magic Mouse. Finally I gave up on it.

Killjoy review: I so wanted to like the T1i

Amazon reviews can be so cruel.

I really wanted to get a Canon EOS Rebel T1i this summer, but the Amazon reviews are a buzzkill. Like this one.

Too many megapixels. Damn. If only they'd gone for more light sensitivity and 10 megapixels.

PS. I rarely bother with the 4-5 star reviews. The best reviews are always in the 2-3 star range.

Snow Leopard 10.6.3: still not ready for primetime

Apple is having a very hard time getting rid of the really big 10.6 bugs (emphases mine) ...

Macintouch - Snow Leopard: Updates - Matt Neuburg

... Applied the 10.6.3 combo updater to two computers. No issues on either ...

One minor annoyance: I noticed on both computers that my display's custom ColorSync profile setting had been forgotten. I had to go into System Preferences - Displays - Color and select the correct profile.

Please see also the report concerning the three Snow Leopard bugs originally identified and reported in TidBITS. Two of them are fixed by this release (great, that only took 7 months), but one, a serious bug where attempting to Finder-copy a file bundle via File Sharing, is not fixed. http://db.tidbits.com/article/11123"

The Tidbits article link reports fixes to an Apple events bug and a Preview bug.

I still can' recommend upgrading to 10.6 from a happy 10.5 machine. At this rate, it won't be respectable before 10.6.5. Apple is struggling to keep all their balls in the air.

There's been no mention of a fix for the USB/firewire external drive system lockup bug.

See also:

• Image Capture - Import to Aperture - deadly bug
• The OS X Snow Leopard "Connected As" MobileMe bug
• Why you shouldn't use OS X ACLs
• My 10.6 iMac is crashing - a debugging exercise

Virgin mobile - Sprint for your laptop, no contract

For $100 it appears you can sign up for Virgin Mobile Broadband Service. From the fine print it looks like they're reselling Sprint, but there's no contract, you pay on demand ...

$10 10 Days 100 MB 5 hrs Web Browsing Or 25 minutes
Video Or 10,000 Emails (without attachment)
$20 30 Days 300 MB 15 hrs Web Browsing Or 1 hour Video
Or 25,000 Emails (without attachment)
$40 30 Days 1 GB 50 hrs Web Browsing Or 4 hours
Video Or 100,000 Emails (without attachment)
$60 30 Days 5 GB* 250 hrs Web Browsing Or 21 hours Video
Or 500,000 Emails (without attachment)

I'm interested. Anyone with any customer experience?
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My slowing 3G iPhone -- and why multitasking will need new hardware

My 3G iPhone feels like it's on its last legs. Rebooting only helps a bit.

Why should it feel so much slower now than the day I bought it?

Perhaps because it's constantly processing two email accounts, two calendars, one file share, and two contacts servers including use of CalDAV, Exchange server, and MobileMe protocols. That's atop whatever else I might be doing with the phone.

My 3G iPhone is doing a lot of multitasking, and it's hurting. It doesn't have the firepower to handle these demands.

Emily's 3GS does a lot better, but if Apple were to enable 3rd party multitasking I suspect it would run out of steam too.

I'm guessing we'll get 3rd party multitasking on the iPhone this year, probably requiring special certification by Apple, but that it will only be enabled on the June 2010 phone. More multitasking will require new hardware.
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Amazon MP3 download in Safari

I bought an MP3 tune from Amazon, but the download wouldn't work.

Safari OS X kept saving a ".amz" file. The instructions said to "open it", but of course Safari refused. The "help" link took me to a Windows specific help page.

The real answer is that you must first Install the Amazon MP3 Downloader. The downloader is supposed to require that, but it didn't in my case. I migrated my account from a machine that had the downloader installed, so that might explain the bug.

I do wonder, however, how many OS X users ever buy from Amazon. I'm guessing it's a very low number.