Author Archives: schwa23

OS 9 USB Woes:: Solved.

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What started as a (relatively) simple USB printer solution turned into an exasperating journey into more than I ever wanted to know about USB under Macintosh OS 9. A client had a Powerbook G3 (Wallstreet series), the kind without built in USB. OS 9.1. IOGear USB 2.0 PC-Card (Which under OS9 should work as a USB 1.1 interface). Canon MPC555 multi-function USB printer/fax/scan jobber.

Main problems: No printing. No waking from sleep. How to fix it? Let me tell you.
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Hot new Backpack

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From Burton:

Burton Amp Pack

“Whether you’re running to catch a flight, riding the subway or lugging your shit into the lodge, the Amp Pack makes it super simple to flip through your illegally downloaded music library.”

Computer Fixin’: AOL 9 Crashes

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I got a call to fix the computer for a kid whose computer kept crashing whenever he started AOL 9.0 on his windows XP machine. I figure, piece of cake, it’s gotta be MSBlast or welchia; just need to apply the security patch and make sure the worm is cleared off.

After about a half hour of going through all the prerequisite steps to do this, I’ve got a problem: the system is still restarting whenever it goes online. Really, just as soon as AOL connects and begins to authenticate, it crashes, hard reboot style. No such luck, but I did manage to figure out the problem….
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Panther Printing

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Being the crazy early adopter that I am (do NOT try this at home), I installed Mac OSX 10.3 Panther the night it went on sale (we went to the launch at the Apple Store). I love it — one great new feature is an enhanced printing system, which includes the return of Desktop Printers (apple’s slowly putting back all of OS9’s functionality), better windows printing, and overall better compatibility using the Gimp Print open source drivers.

Despite the improvements, one problem I had was that my Brother HL-5040 printer was not working after the upgrade. Read on to find the solution!
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About Money.

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So I’ve been performing in this kids show at the Atlantic Theater, which I’ve mentioned previously. Thanks in part to some great press (nytimes pdf, we’ve recently been asked to potentially do two more performances — which I’ve agreed to, gladly, but it’s gotten me thinking about money, since none of us actors are being paid.

I’m definitely game for the extension of the show — I have loved doing the play and working with the fantastic cast, an awesome director, and all the wonderful crew, designers, and staff at the Atlantic. I’m excited to have the opportunity to keep it going.

And while I’ll do it either way, maybe Atlantic will find a way to pony up some cash for us actors — nothing huge, even a ‘travel stipend’ or something would just be a huge show of respect and support, don’tcha think?
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God Bless Javascript.

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I’ve been playing around with CSS layer positioning in my web designs lately — it’s so powerful and simple, but the real problem is some major inconsistencies across browsers. Namely, the “position:fixed” element — to place a DIV in a consistent location on the page, regardless of the browser’s window size or scroll position.

The biggest problem is that it doesn’t work in Windows Internet Explorer 5 or 6! Works beautifully in Apple’s Safari (my browser of choice) and Mozilla/Firebird/Camino etc. And while it works in IE5 on the mac, there’s a major bug that causes any links within a fixed layer not to work.

There are a number of purely CSS hacks (here and here, for example) that I tried to no avail, so I finally decided I’d try a javascript route. I managed to do it, and while it’s not as elegant as pure CSS, it works! Read on to see how I did it.

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