I’ve been messing around with HBO’s new OS X Dashboard Widget and it looks like I found something really cool. There’s an easter egg in the widget that when unlocked plays back the classic HBO intro from the 80’s. Anyone who grew up during the dawn of cable is going to remember it. Here’s how to unlock it:

Step 1: Go into the Help screen and click the “Video” tab on the top. Scroll down and you will see the word ‘video’ spelled out in colorful letters (there’s also a tooltip that says “Reading Documentation is Rewarded!”). The colors of the letters are actually the code that you need to open the easter egg! As you can see, the code is: red, red, blue, red, green.

Step 2: Flip the widget over and click on the on the plug ‘inlet’ below the ‘Done’ button (circled in the picture). This will reveal a hidden panel of little audio/video inputs.

Step 3: click on the the left most component inputs in the order of the code we saw above: red, red, blue, red, green. The widget will flip over and curtains will open!

Step 4: sit back and enjoy the show.

We’re back in 1982!

I’ve noticed that no matter how much I charge my iPod Mini, it will only last 10 minutes on the way to work in the morning on cold days. It’s not a dead battery issue, it’s the cold weather as confirmed here:

Keep it at room temperature

One of the most important ways to keep your iPod battery functioning is to keep it at a moderate temperature. Cold temperatures slow down the battery’s chemical reactions causing the battery to appear to be drained long before it should be. When using you iPod in cold weather, try putting it inside your coat to keep it warmer than the outside air. Hot temperatures speed up the chemical reactions causing the battery to wear-out sooner than it should. Because of this you should not leave your iPod in a hot car in the summer and only use iPod covers that allow the heat that the iPod generates to dissipate.

That crazy chemistry. I should have paid attention in 10th grade.

Speaking of iPods, I came across another Nano. I had to return the previous one because it was scratched so bad. I discovered about invisibleSHIELD which allegedly does a good job protecting it. More word on it once I receive the product.

My iPod track history is as follows:

1) 2nd Gen 10GB: Battery died after a year which I replaced, then the HDD died. Sold it on eBay for $120 to someone who needed parts.

2) 3rd Gen 10GB: Same as above but it’s sitting around in a box somewhere.

3) 4GB Silver Mini: Old faithful. Had it 1 1/2 years and still works as advertised minus the battery issue I mentoned above.

4) 1GB Shuffle: Bought for my fiancée. Sits in a drawer somewhere at my house.

5) 4GB Nano: Again, bought for my fiancée. Survived an attempted mugging. Became scratched so bad (from normal use, not the mugging) that I returned it. The Nanos are made of really cheap materials.

6) 60GB Video: Actually belongs to my employer. Has a bad mar down the right side of the screen from general use. It appears the Video iPods use the same shoddy materials as the Nanos.

7) 2GB Nano: Going to let my fiancée use it, after I apply invisibleSHIELD.

Wow, seven iPods in three years. In contrast I’ve only owned four pairs of shoes in that period of time.

The Regency TR-1 transistor radio, made in 1954, had a decent claim to be a genuine piece of innovation, however. It was, by popular agreement, the world’s first commercially sold transistor pocket radio.

Small enough to hold in your hand, and powered by batteries, it came in a variety of delicious colours, including green, pearlescent blue, lavender, white and red.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4265374.stm

Today’s featured OS X Dashboard widget is my co-worker and bud, Bob’s ChessPuzzle 2.0. He’s put a lot of work into it and it shows:

I only wish I played chess

I wanted to use my external Firewire drive on all my systems. I found that formatting the whole thing for FAT32 was not the answer. The best solution I came across was to make two partitions, one FAT32 and the other HFS+. Windows can read FAT32, OSX and Linux can read both. Super.

The best way to do it is under OS X (10.4.2 in my case) using diskutil. My drive is 160GB, so I did a 100GB FAT32 partition and a ~60GB HFS+ partition. It’s as easy as:

diskutil partitionDisk disk2 2 MBRFormat MS-DOS FAT_VOL 100G HFS+ MAC_VOL 60G

Diskutil will figure out the change on the 60GB partition if you go over the free amount (it came to something like 55G).

You need the MBRFormat parameter if you want Windows to be able to read the FAT32 partition. If in doubt check the man page.

Using either disk under Linux 2.6.x is as easy as:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/exthd1/
mount -t hfsplus /dev/sda2 /mnt/exthd2/

You need the vfat and hfsplus modules compiled for this to work of course. Check my Linux 1394 guide for getting the disk to work under Linux.

One year, two shipments to Apple, over a dozen support calls, one nasty letter to management, and three trips to the Genius Bar later my Powerbook is finally fixed!

The problem? A defective battery which on the 12″ PowerBooks contains the Power Management Unit.

The last “level-two” support guy I talked to at Apple was pretty adamant that the problem was a “depleted battery” and that it was not covered under AppleCare. Wrong, you dick. Anyway, it’s over. Thank goodness.