Saturday, January 31, 2009

Fujifilm s1000 fd Camera Doesn't Work Right on Mac

Short version: my wife's camera didn't work right with her Mac using the bundled software, but it worked fine with iPhoto.

Long version: My wife just bought a Fujifilm s1000 fd superzoom camera so she can start working on her food blog,, and she ran into an issue getting it to communicate with her Macbook. She followed the directions outlined in the manual, which included installing the company's lackluster FinePix software. The instructions say to hook up the USB cable and to hold the 'play' button for a few seconds until the computer recognizes the camera and opens the software automatically. This did not work.

Instead, open Apple's own iPhoto software and then hold the 'play' button while connected via USB. iPhoto should import the pictures automatically, unlike Fujifilm's own crummy software.

Since we figured this out, we've been taking all sorts of pictures, which look absolutely stunning. You can check them out at her blog.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

List of Known Cheaters on Mario Kart Wii Online

Here is a list of users that have been reported as using the infinite item cheat on Mario Kart Wii Online. I made this page so people could report more brazen offenders and others could know to avoid them, since the only recourse for us non-cheaters is to simply not play with them anymore.

*To the cheaters themselves: care to let us know how you do it? Is the USB Gecko still the way to go, or can you do it through a softmod/homebrew channel these days? Update 6/21/09: It looks like you can use the Ocarina homebrew program to load cheats on a softmodded console (i.e., one with the homebrew channel installed; some directions are available here).

Mario Kart Wii Online Cheaters Wall of Shame

Update 6/21/09: From an anonymous comment on my other Mario Kart page:
"I would just like to say, none of your hacker stories compare to mine. I got stuck playing in a race with 5 hackers who could change their points from 1 to 35001. During the race they ALL ganged up on me by throwing non-stop green turtle shells at me, bombing me repeatedly, then all cornering me and using big mushrooms and stars simultaneously to hit me, and run me over for about 5 minutes straight. It was officially a Mario Kart gang rape. They are:
1. ihack@u - this guy deserves at least a little cred since he actually figured the whole infinite items thing out (to my knowledge, at least). I don't know anything else about him, e.g. his Mii.

2. Speedy - no other information.

3. Alwin - no other information.

4. Kenny - Mii looks like Kenny from South Park, probably something like this:

5. Upsidedown - Mii's face is upside down.

6. SoSerious? - His Mii looks like the Joker from The Dark Knight, but its hair is black instead of green or whatever...

7. Death - no description of the Mii, but this one is especially troubling because of the claim that he/she actually *disconnected* another user after pelting them continuously with green shells. Hopefully the disconnection was just a coincidence and not another hacking capability...

8. AIM:Voth24 - s/he seems pretty proud of his cheatiness, based on his/her youtube videos. S/he also seems to target players with high VRs, so watch out if you care a lot about your score.

9 Alien - doesn't use his hacking to win, apparently and always loses on purpose. That in mind, you don't have to disconnect from this guy just to protect your precious points--assuming the cheating itself doesn't piss you off enough anyway.

If you have more to add, leave a comment with their name, a brief description of their Mii, and anything else that could be helpful in identifying them and I'll them to the list.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Aspire One's Synaptics Trackpad Suspend Issue in Intrepid

I just corrected a really strange and infuriating issue with the trackpad on my Acer Aspire One running Ubuntu Intrepid. I'm going to write the whole story in case someone finds it useful, but here is the short version: trackpad quit working and didn't come back with a reboot. The solution was to hit Fn+F7 a couple of times (didn't work on first press, but did after a few presses...).

Now for the long version:

My fancy new Aspire One went to sleep (suspend) on accident--I know there are some unresolved issues with devices after suspending, so I've tried to avoid it--and I couldn't make it wake up, so I did a hard reset by holding the power button down for ~5 seconds. However, upon reboot, I was horrified to find that my trackpad no longer worked. It still showed up in the hardware profiler and in the kernel boot log, but it was totally unresponsive. No cursor movement, no clicks, no nothing. I rebooted. Still nothing!

I scoured the intarwebs looking for a software solution, including purging/reinstalling the xorg drivers, reloading modules, etc. to no avail. However, I did find a forum post where another Acer user had reported a nonfunctional trackpad that followed him across several Live CDs, suggesting a hardware issue. I was horrified by this prospect, as I love my little machine and I've finally gotten it configured to my satisfaction. Luckily, this user was kind enough to post his deceivingly simple solution: re-enable the trackpad using a key combination of Fn+F7.

I don't remember ever pressing this key combo to disable it in the first place, so I'm forced to assume that it happened on its own. Now I know how to fix it, should it happen again.

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