As my iPad Mini (gen 1) cannot sense touch pressure, it is difficult to write (actually draw) some Math symbols. After purchasing a Wacom Intuos Draw Medium which is a popular choice, I found the 2 buttons in the drawing pen not sensitive. That is, it does not work stably.

Solution:

When using the 2 buttons built-in the drawing pen bundled with the Wacom, make sure the tip of the pen is close enough to the tablet. Otherwise the pen is not active.

Tricks:

• The little LED in the top middle of the tablet will light up lightly when connected to USB port. And when the pen is active, i.e. close enough to the tablet. Then the LED will grow brighter to indicate that the drawing pen is now in active state.
• One more information on Intuos is how you choose the right model. First, size is important, medium size fits most users. The small one may make the drawing or hand writing become too large compared to a relatively large screen. Unless you are seriously concerned the budget, do not get the small form-factor. If you are not a serious artist in drawing, do not consider the large form-factor, it will probably not fit the size of most desks.
• Besides size, the touch feature is also important factor of choice. In my case, the touch model, i.e. Intuos Art is around 40% more expensive than the non-touch model, i.e. Intuos Draw. Also, I already have an Apple Magic TouchPad, the touch feature in Intuos is more or less duplicated with the TouchPad.
• Finally, either Blue or White is a personal preference, nothing related to feature or budget.

Config:

• Wacom Intuos Draw Medium
• iMac 21.5-inch late 2013 i5 2.7GHz model

The post Wacom Pen Control appeared first on LarryLai.

While conducting Online Live Class using Join.Me, and I need to select real-time video as profile. However, it seems that the built-in view camera in iMac cannot make any adjustment. So how can I make my profile more professional without adding an external camera?

Solution:

By using an application – iGlasses, it is easy to make adjustments to the setting of the built-in view camera

Tricks:

• iGlasses is compatible and integrating into all applications for the iMac is not a problem. It is as easy as selecting another view camera
• There is no free alternative for iGlasses on iMac, don’t waste time to find one!
• It is definitely worth the one-time charge. Moreover, A free trial period can give more confidence before buying it.
• In brief, this app leverages the capabilities of the built-in camera

Config:

• iMac          2014
• OS X         10.12.1
• iGlasses    v3.4.8

The post iMac View Camera Capability appeared first on LarryLai.

Issue:

Mac Mini’ s over heat problem has been known for a while. Though the chassis is metallic, the components are closely packed and ventilation fan is small, over 90°C is quite common when
processing graphics or encoding video files. My case was that the Mac Mini (mid 2011) would hang after CPU over-heating for a while even boosting the internal fan speed to over 5000rpm. Worst situation is not bootable for a while.

Solution:

Instead of placing the chassis horizontally, place it on a HK$65 metallic-like stand slightly tilted. Now on average CPU temperature is around 40°C even the fan speed is less than 3000 rpm, and around 70°C on heavy loading.

Configuration:

Mac Mini:  Quad-core 2GHz i7 CPU, 256GB SSD

Tricks:

There are many stands suitable for this task, but many of them are more expensive than this stand.

The post Must Read! Cool Down MacMini appeared first on LarryLai.

Using either Dolphin File Manager or ftp, copying a directory of around 70GB to an USB storage formatted in NTFS stopped mid-way without notification at less than 10GB copied.

Checking the system log (/var/log/messages), the following was supposed to be relevant:

• quiet_error: 20 callbacks suppressed
• Buffer I/O error on device sdc1
• lost page write due to I/O error on sdc1

Though it’s not easy to figure out what went wrong, I think it’s the front USB port/channel issue on my HP. The source directory is another USB drive connected to the rear USB port. I have tried the rear USB port to test if it’s the port issue.

Solution:

1. remove the USB storage and connect it to the router’s USB port
2. Mount the USB storage as samba

Config:

• OpenSUSE       12.3
• Dolphin              2.2
• KDE                  4.10.5
• Router              Linksys  EA6700
• FileZilla             3.7

Tricks:

1. Even after using a Windows 7 PC to full format the USB drive, fault still happened.
2. Merely typing smb://192.168.1.1 on Dolphin may see the samba share content but cannot write on any samba directory
3. Mounting the samba share requires stating the share directory in the command
4. To let non-root user to write on the samba share, it’s not permitted to mount the samba share from non-root user, chmod to 0777 had no change to directory permission state, but rather mount it by root and state in the option the uid of the linux user, i.e.

mount -t cifs -o uid=[userid], rw //192.168.1.1/[share] /[mount_pt]

Though the transfer speed between the PC and router fluctuated a lot from 7MB/s to 36MB/s (using USB2.0 instead of USB3.0), it’s better to have it done eventually than using the USB port on the PC with stable transfer speed around 25MB/s and then I/O died down quietly. 

Using NTFS as the USB file system as it’s good to be share among Linux and Mac as it’s mature and both Linux and Mac have ntfs-3g utility to read and write NTFS drive. exFAT may be an alternative but not easy to find a way to deploy this Windows proprietary file system.

The post Secret of Mounting USB Storage on Cisco Linksys Router appeared first on LarryLai.

• After upgrading OS X from 10.7 to 10.8, my mac cannot print properly to the printer connected to QNAP nas.
• Problem was that only numerous blank pages were sent out.

Solution:

Install Brother HL-2030 driver for Mac OS X instead of Xerox’s printer driver

Config:

• Fuji Xerox DocuPrint 203A (purchased in 2007)
• QNAP TS-210 Turbo nas (firmware ver: 3.7.3 Build 20120801)
• Mac mini with OS X 10.8

Tricks:

1. Brothers driver works in this scenario.
2. Change System Preferences -> Personal -> Security & Privacy may be necessary if it’s NOT set to “Allow applications downloaded from Anywhere”
3. Drivers for Xerox printer from Apple site is useless!

The post Xerox Printer Driver Issue appeared first on LarryLai.

How to enable built-in wifi in Acer Aspire 3623WXMi?

Solution:

1. add package ath driver v.0.5 for Solaris 10
2. download wificonfig binary to /usr/bin
3. create profile: wificonfig createprofile profilename essid=ssidname authmode=opensystem encryption=wep wepkey1=wepkey
4. procedure:
   1. ifconfig rtls0 down
   2. ifconfig ath0 plumb
   3. wificonfig -i ath0 connect profilename
   4. ifconfig ath0 dhcp

Tricks:

• down the wired LAN interface (in this case rtls0) before bringing up wireless
• add authmode option in creating profile explicitly
• run: ifconfig ath0 plumb before running wificonfig command otherwise system will probably hang!

The post Wifi on Acer Notebook appeared first on LarryLai.