A Digital Notepad

I have been using my first true mechanical keyboard. I didn’t realize there was such a big variety and such a large community around these keyboards when I first started looking.

I tried a Logitech keyboard first, it was a $30 wireless keyboard and I probably would have kept it if Logitech supported Mac like I would have expected… but they didn’t so I returned it. AND I’M GLAD I DID. If I didn’t, I never would have keept looking for keyboards and in turn never would have came across these mechanical ones.

The hard part was to find a true mechanical keyboard that was also wireless. I did find a couple, but most were in the $250+ range… not something I was willing to spend. I would have went wired before I did that! But a couple forum posts led me to the XArmor U9W wireless keyboard, by iOne (their parent company.)

The real difference between the $30 board I had and this one is the switches. There are apparently different switch companies that make a variety of switches, each with their own unique feel. So when a company decided to make a mechanical keyboard, the seem to go with one of the main manufactures of key switches.

My keyboard is using the Cherry MX Brown switches. That means it has a slight resistance near the top of the key press, and once you start and get past that first part of the key press there is almost no resistance till it bottoms out (with a satisfying clang I may add.)

Different switches have different feels and are generally preferred for different tasks. For example there is one is recommended for dual use gaming / typing. Black is more for gaming as there is no resistance at all till you bottom out the key, and blue would be for typing since there is more resistance and the general feel is good for typing.

Read up on the keyboards here…

http://www.overclock.net/keyboards/491752-mechanical-keyboard-guide.html

There are no bells or whistles here, just a very solid keyboard. It’s actually about 3 or 4 times heavier than any other keyboard I’ve had. I love it!

Overall, after only 2 days of using it, I feel like there is less strain on my hands / wrists. I feel I’ve been able to type on it very naturally and a bit faster, and I feel like I don’t need a bat upstairs in case of intruders… I’ll just wap them with this beast.

I just hope the batteries don’t die in less than a couple months. I’ll try to update this post with the life span I get… but hey… one other feature that’s awesome is I could use a USB cable to power this if they do die. (Although, using a USB cable to power the keyboard still means you need to use the wireless dongle. The keyboard always needs to function wireless.)

I’ve had a Razer brand Copperhead for about 6 years now. That has been a tank that out performed any other mouse I used. I wanted to go wireless though, so I decided to try the Logitech Performance MX.

Overall the mouse was great. I’m on a Mac, I write code all day and play FPS games sometimes. For $99 I expected this mouse to be at least ok for gaming.

The good.

The weight was fine and the mouse was overall comfortable. I likes the very customizable software that Logitech supplied… You could do set the buttons to do almost anything, including emulating alt+click for example.

The battery life was awesome, I used it once a full week without needing to hook it up to recharge, and it didn’t drop under 2/3 bars on the battery indicator. Plus if it did die, it allows for USB cable to be plugged in an charge while using it.

Now for the bad.

The Hyperscrolling was AWEFUL in games. It was just so sensitive that if I moved or bumped the mouse it would trigger the scroll action even if the wheel was in the lock position. It didn’t just trigger one scroll either, it acted like I scrolled up or down a few times.

You have the ability to unlock/lock the mouse wheel. Unlocked you can spin the wheel and it silently spins for a good amount of time with it’s momentum. Locked it clicks and acts like traditional mice, no momentum.

That was awesome outside games but per the behavior described above, made the mouse unusable in games!

In the end I returned the mouse for that reason, maybe that didn’t happen on PC’s but as I’ve found out Logitech support for the Mac is NOT priority to them.

After running through some issues / problems with the base configuration / features of the D-Link DNS-321, I ended up working to install the fun_plug hack to gain access to the linux core of the device.

I won’t walk through the whole process… they do that at the fun_plug wiki page.

I used that page to start and dig in. All references I link to can be found there. But to sum up what I did…

1. Install fun_plug
2. Turn on SSH and turn off Telnet
3. Download a bunch of packages and get used to funpkg
4. Turn on AFP

Some tips…

fun_plug: I had issues with getting the files to run on reboot. MAKE SURE your browser / system is not tampering with the files after you download them. e.g. fun_plug file should not be renamed to fun_plug.sh… fun_plug.tgz should not be unzipped and named fun_plug.tar… that stops the process from installing during the reboot.

AFP Give yourself some time. Took me a few hours to fully sit down and configure AFP.. that was the big time sink since it’s so hands-on. (Given I’m not used to configuring this type of stuff.)

I did have trouble getting my Snow Leopard driven MacBook to be able to write to the drive over AFP. A CNID error that made me mount the AFP share read only. Look for the comment about starting /ffp/sbin/cnid_metad at the AFP install page.

My goals

Update my router, and get a network attached hard drive setup allowing me to backup my MacBook Pro over the network via Time Machine (possibly over the internet, but that might be a long-shot?) I’ll write about the backup process later, but here’s some references to get a network setup supporting full G speeds and also support B/G (all running DD-WRT.)

How I decided on the Linksys e3000

I finally upgraded to a wireless n network. After looking at a few high performance dual band routers (Negear WNDR3700, Linksys e3000, and the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station) I decided on the Linksys e3000.

The Airport Extreme wasn’t as customizable as I wanted. And the main deciding factor between the Netgear and the Linsys was just brand loyalty really. All were close in price.

After I bought the Linsys I almost took it back for an Airport. I wanted to Time Machine from my MacBook Pro over the WiFi via an USB attached hard drive. But the Linksys e3000 didn’t offer the support for that type of hard drive sharing.

I instead decided to install DD-WRT onto the router, after all I’ve done that before with my trusty Linksys WRT54G and it was great. The only holdup… DD-WRT didn’t officially support the router yet (as of July 25 2010.) It was however supported in the forums, and I decided to try installing that.

Step 1: Setup the Linksys e3000 with DD-WRT firmware

Here’s the link to the thread on the DD-WRT forum I read through after some Googling. Note: page 14 has the version of the firmware I installed in the end.)

I wanted DD-WRT because I was used to it and didn’t want to be limited in any way with the Linksys factory firmware. As I mentioned, a USB hard drive attached to the router was not very useful for my needs using that factory firmware.

1. First I installed a standard build (dd-wrt.v24-14567_NEWD-2_K2.6_std_usb_ftp-e3000.bin)
2. Then I installed the “big” build with all the extra features, it fixed some bugs and why not? I ended up with this build at the time (http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/downloads/others/eko/V24-K26/svn14826/dd-wrt.v24-14826_NEWD-2_K2.6_big-e3000.bin)

I configured the router with WPA2 WiFi security and the basic settings I would want in a day-to-day router setup.

Step 2: Setup my old WRT54G as the G and N WiFi hotspot

I had older B and G devices in the house, and I wanted to separate the traffic from those off the wireless of the newer e3000 router. I guess it helps with speed (keeping the N speed up to true N speeds) and I felt it may also help avoid a bit of wear and tear on the newer router, I don’t know but I did.

I already had DD-WRT installed on it, here’s the walk-through I used to setup the old router to use the internet through the new router through ethernet and keep the DNS settings the same as if there was one router.

(Say that title 5 times fast.)

I am very picky about the hardware I use. I’m on the computer a lot of the day developing websites, and I won’t settle for a keyboard / mouse setup that is not comfortable and responsive.

(95% of the reason I switched to Mac was due to the keyboard on the late Powerbooks and original Macbook Pros)

I tried the Copperhead by Razer for my PC, and loved it so much that I ended up getting the mouse Razer markets towards the Mac. Meet the Pro|Click

The software for the mouse is nice. The best thing about the Razer mouses is the ability to change the sensitivity on-the-fly. You set up a button on the mouse and when you hould it and scroll your mouse becomes more or less sensitive.

Perfect for switching between graphic editiong, coding or general web browsing.

This will be the first of many posts. Computers cost less these days, and you don’t need to spend a couple grand to get a good gaming computer.

XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Barebone Kit – Intel Pentium D 965 Extreme 3.73GHz, 4GB DDR2-800 OCZ SLI, 1TB, Clear Side Case, 550W PSU

I’d recommend one this card. Nothing special, an average card that will drive the games out there well.

That totals to about $540.

This system is a one of many barebone systems at Tiger Direct. This is the tower, so make sure you have a keyboard, mouse and monitor.

It also comes with a blank hard drive, so you need to make sure you have a copy of windows. I haven’t seen a game yet that requires more than Windows XP.

Also, you need to buy a graphic card. It supports PCI Express graphic cards, and supports SLI, so I’d stick with Nvidia cards.

What does all that mean?

SLI means that the motherboard is able to support up two graphics cards. So you can get a couple of low cost or high cost cards and double up your power.

Note though, the power supply is only 550 watts, so if you get a couple of cards, a nice future upgrade might be to get a new power supply. If you get a couple high cost cards for this, you would almost need to upgrade the power supply.