Ankantoiel's Diary

No responses yet – published on Jun, 13 2011 at 14:47 under Site.

I really could ask for forgiveness that I didn’t make a post in over three months but actually: Why should I? It’s after all my web residence and there was really nothing to share or no things I wanted to share. I could bore you with this thing called my life, but actually that didn’t work out that well the last times.

So let’s stick to the plan facts: life is disappointing in most things, even if the dimensions of disappointments I have been through lately top everything previously experienced. So please forgive me that I will not go through the process WHY I am disappointed once again, I have been down this road to often lately and it always left me angry (the near-to-explosion kind of angry – I would recite something with “overheated reactor” here, but that would be really tactless) and hollow at the same time (makes no sense, I know). But if I may I would recite another quote from my favorite book and movie that feels too true lately:

I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like… butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don’t expect I shall return. In fact I mean not to.

Holiday! Aye, that sounds so lovely right now. Just to leave all troubles far away for some time. Being gone and away to explore and all these funny, little things you ever dreamed of. A prospect to live another life (maybe a happier life – not that I am unhappy, I am just saying that not everything turned out that well lately, there are a lot of things and people I don’t want to miss in my life).

But, I guess here we are again, people screaming at me that I live my head in the clouds and that reality is sooo muuuch better. Really, you still believe that reality is better? Only because you find other means of not seeing how bad reality is in fact, how people destroy each other, how people don’t think twice as long as they get what they want? Call me dreamer or illusionist, but I don’t believe that people can long stand brutality of our world without some kind of distraction. Well, and my distraction is reading Fantasy books. I don’t fancy that all the worlds that are written up in these books are better, they have their own problems and often quite similar ones as ours, but it helps to change my scope and to have a short holiday without having to travel, even if traveling is always welcome but a total different experience.

Alas, now I see that this post became way too long. In fact, I didn’t want to complain again (and I did –  damn me). To be honest, I often come to realization (and I have to tell myself from time to time) that my life as it is right now is quite comfortable and that I must be happy to be allowed to live such a life. I have a friend who really loves and accepts me (and my crazy, nerdy, geeky self alike), and a family I can rely on. Even if the last few weeks were consuming on a very personal level, I have seen in this time that there are people that are there for me to give me a helping hand if I should need it, as I would give all that I have to help them as well.

No responses yet – published on Feb, 18 2011 at 13:53 under Computer.

I really love my MacBook Pro Unibody 15” even if it is now 1 1/2 years old. It’s still looking and – most importantly – working great, and I had never any problem with it. Nevertheless there are some downsides you only realize when you are using it for some time.

Numeric Keypad, because Numbers count

One thing I sometimes miss is the numeric keypad. That’s a drawback most laptops have, but my 15” MacBook Pro would have enough space to fit a numeric keypad in IF the speakers would be placed somewhere else. I understand that it might look a bit too “crowded” (something Apple would never let happen) but even the 17” MacBook Pro doesn’t have a numeric keypad and to be honest: there is tones of space.

The MacBook Pro Unibody/Logitech VX Revolution mystery

Another thing I noticed the day I bought my MacBook Pro still makes me very sad. I am not sure if it even is a problem with the MacBook, its unibody aluminum case or my wireless mouse (Logitech VX Revolution), but somehow there is an interference between the mouse’s USB plug on the left and the mouse itself on the right side of the MacBook so that I have to use a USB extension cable for the mouse’s plug, otherwise the plug and the mouse always lose their connection. First I suspected it might be that WiFi and mouse had the same frequency but the problem also occurred while using ethernet. That really sucks and I haven’t found another solution but to use a USB cable or to buy a bluetooth mouse,… or hey, I could use a cabled mouse that would make no difference. It feels very 1990′s either way!

Hit the road, (Audio-)Jack!

Last but not least I am annoyed about the fact that the MacBook Pro has no microphone jack (anymore). I just realized this some days ago when I finally bought a headset – I always have used my iPhone headset and that worked fine, but it had some problems lately. My euphoria about my Philips headset was short. I plugged the microphone into the audio-in jack believing it is a microphone jack, and  SURPRISE it didn’t work.

That was the moment I checked what jacks my MacBook really has: it has a audio-in and a combined jack for audio-out and microphone that allows to use the iPhone headset! It reads like this on apple.com:

• Audio line in minijack (digital/analog)
• Audio line out/headphone minijack (digital/analog)
• Support for Apple iPhone headset with microphone

Guess I should learn to read before buying things… Well, there were models that had a microphone jack instead of the audio-in.

So here I was, I had a new headset, one that I don’t want to give away because it’s so comfortable, and I was using an external USB sound card (lucky me my boyfriend had one at home). But I didn’t want to use ANOTHER external device to “pimp” my MacBook. Is a USB cable to be able to use my mouse not enough?

But there was one thing I first forgot: the iPhone headset with microphone was working! And that makes perfectly sense. Compared to a standard 3.5mm headphone plug it has one additional pin, obviously for the mic. And so it wasn’t surprising that there already existed adopters that allow to use a headset with microphone plug and audio-out plug on a MacBook Pro, or iPhone/iPad/iPod.

A homebrew version of such an adapter requires:

• 1x 4-pin 3.5mm plug connector (TRRS)
• 1x 3-pin 3.5mm jack socket  - for the stereo audio-out
• 1x 2-pin 3.5mm jack socket  - for the microphone
• microphone mono and stereo cable

You could also use a stereo jack and cable for the microphone even if the microphone is not stereo.

IMPORTANT: The most important thing to know is the pinout of the original Apple headset with microphone that is working with the audio-out on the MacBook. As it is always the case with Apple there is of course a difference to the standard pinout of such 4-pin 3.5mm plugs. The following picture will give you the pinout of the plug [source].

I am very happy with my adapter. It works perfectly, doesn’t need an additional USB port or space, and I can also use it on my iPhone.