Tired of having to look for a crossover cable?  Irritated at not having a proper cable to connect to a T1 box?  Misplaced loopback dongle?  Any combination of the above?  It’s no longer an issue.  Save time and money spent searching for or purchasing adapters, cables or dongles with one device that will handle whatever you throw at it.  Need a crossover link?  Just twist the collar and you’ve got it.

It comes in three varieties, requiring one, two, or zero straight-through Ethernet cables to connect two network devices without the need to determine or locate the type of cable needed for hassle-free troubleshooting.

The device speaks for itself, there’s not really much to say aside from the fact that I’m surprised it hasn’t already been made.

Check it out the Universal Network Cable site, or if you’re ready to buy, it’s available for only $25 at Think Geek.

I thought I’d post this, as I didn’t find an adequate answer in my Googling, and I even saw the question asked over at Yahoo! Answers without a solution.

Recently I decided to finally install and test the Windows 7 release candidate. Having a 64-bit processor, and knowing that finding drivers for 64-bit systems isn’t the hassle that it used to be, I decided to try the 64-bit version.

So far the compatibility issues have been minimal. In fact, the only two areas in which I’ve had any difficulty have been with my Palm Centro (Palm’s software doesn’t support 64-bit Windows for some absurd reason, that will be another topic), and my printer. For some reason, my Canon PIXMA iP3000 is not in Windows’ driver database. Of course the 32-bit driver I had stored on my hard drive wasn’t going to work on the 64-bit system:

No big deal I thought, just head over to their website and download the latest driver for Vista, right? Nope. All they have for Vista is an “Add-on Module” for the driver. Odd. That got me nowhere.

The first part of the answer was simple. Download the Windows XP 64-bit drivers. Duh.
Here’s the link for those that don’t want to endure the tedious task of navigating Canon’s site and having to close window after window with each link followed.

Why Canon neglects to include the XP driver alongside the useless Vista “Add-on” when “Vista” is selected as the OS is puzzling. I hope this helps someone else afflicted by the poorly-organized site (in Canon’s defense, every driver-related site I found does the same thing).

Extract the file you download from Canon’s site to a location you’ll remember (C:\drivers\Canon\iP3000 would be a good idea).

Now we come to problem number 2. This one isn’t quite so simple, though the fix is easy. Windows 7, by default, will not allow unsigned drivers to be installed. So if you simply run the installer from the folder you created above, you’ll eventually get an error telling you this. Since so digitally signed driver exists, you’ll have to circumvent Microsoft’s security.

To do this, reboot the PC, press the F8 key before the Windows logo appears. This will give the option to boot into Safe Mode, Last Known Good Configuration, and a number of other options to boot into a system for troubleshooting purposes. The relevant option in this case would be “Disable Driver Signature Enforcement.” Select that, boot up.

Now you should be able to run Canon’s driver installer without problems. If you still get the error about an unsigned driver, finish the setup and then proceed to the “Devices and Printers” section of your Control Panel. Add a new printer, (choose “Local” if it’s connected directly to the PC in question, “Network” if it’s shared on another PC), click on “Have Disk” when asked for the make and model of your Printer, and navigate to the directory where you extracted the file downloaded from Canon’s site (in the example above, it was C:\drivers\Canon\iP3000). The driver should install correctly now.

That’s it! Please, comment if you find any problems with this solution.

The Problem:

It has been decided that we need a home theater computer (HTPC). Cases designed for the purpose are either expensive, ugly, or they won’t fit properly with the rest of the audio/video components on the shelf. Besides, building one will be much more fun.

The Solution:

I found a nice Sony 5-disc CD player at a yard sale for $5. The plan is to cram a micro-ATX motherboard complete with all the necessities for a fully-functional machine inside. There are plenty of boards with on-board graphics and digital audio that can handle HD video as well as surround sound, so that will help keep costs down and the build simpler. The case is just about the right size for a standard power supply unit, and there should be no need for add-in cards with Ethernet, video and audio all on-board. I also plan to install an LCD display to replace the one in the original CD player.

The Results (So Far):

First, disassembling the CD player. This involved a lot of unscrewing, but not much else. Fortunately, even though the outer casing was screwed right into the internals of the CD player, the four parts that make up the case fit together quite nicely afterwards.

The CD Player	Taken apart
Another view	Reassembled, minus the internals

The Problem:

Yesterday I decided to install some new ink tanks in my Canon Pixma iP3000. It had just been sitting there, unused, for months and it was time to bring it out of retirement. It powered on nicely and was hassle-free to share with my Linux machines from my Vista PC, but when I printed a test page, I noticed a distinct lack of black ink on my page. Using the printer’s maintenance tools proved a fruitless endeavor.

The Solution:

It is a well-documented fact that sitting idle with dry ink tanks for a few months is not good for the nozzles on an inkjet printer. When ink doesn’t flow through on a semi-regular basis at least, bits of ink tend to dry up in the microns-wide holes, and you have a clogged print head. Canon makes replacement parts for this very purpose, but for an older printer like this, be prepared to shell out about $50 on eBay (brand-new print heads for newer models are probably double the price; often a large percentage of the original price of the entire printer). Well, I wasn’t prepared to go that route, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I had nothing to lose anyway.

After a little bit of Googling I decided that cleaning couldn’t be too hard. So here’s what I did:

Before & after removing the ink tanks and print head

First, I took the ink tanks out and removed the print head (it comes out easily as the ink tanks are what hold it in place). The print head is a small plastic piece that has some circuitry on one side and slots for the ink tanks to fit on the other. On the bottom are the nozzles (you may notice some smudged ink here that will tip you off as to where the black and colored nozzles are).

L-R: ink tank bays, contacts, nozzles

Next, I tried simply cleaning the area around the nozzles with a moistened Q-Tip. This used to work on an old HP printer I had about a decade ago, but my problem was evidently more severe this time around.