Photo of Wednesday, the black cat, is © Lauren Riddle.

This is part two of a seemingly endless series of tutorials on how to undo what your cat (or other pet) loves to do. Today’s “Fix it” tutorial covers the repair of the Nintendo Wii sensor bar and its connector cable, which can be severed by the first molars of a black cat in under two seconds.

Scenario

The cable connecting the sensor bar to your Wii has been damaged or severed. You don’t want to spend $7.50 to get a refurbished one or $20 to get the new wireless sensor bar; however, you are brave and confident that you can fix it yourself.

What you will need

This tutorial will require the same basic tools as before:

• A soldering iron
• A spool of thin solder
• A wire stripper
• Some heat shrink tubing

You can find heat shrink tubing almost anywhere. Make sure to pick up heat shrink tubing that is just a little bit larger than the cable itself, so that it will fit tightly after it shrinks.

Before we get started

Since this tutorial requires some soldering, cutting, and heating, please make sure to be safe! Nothing here is dangerous so long as you use the tools properly and stay focused.

Step 1

Your cable may look a little like the included photo when you start. If your cable is damaged, but not completely severed, you will need to cut through it.

Use your wire stripper to cut away the damaged sections of the cable before you start the repair. The connector cable will get shorter, so make sure to save as much of it as you can.

Continue reading “Fix it: Nintendo Wii Sensor Bar” »

Photo of Wednesday, the black cat, is © Lauren Riddle.

Our black cat, Wednesday, has a cat tree, a feather boa, and all the mice a cat could ever ask for, but her favorite toy to destroy turns out to be cables. Yes, cables. She will chew through headphones, Wii sensor bars, and my Xbox 360 headset. If your cat, or another wild animal you choose to keep in your home, decides to destroy your headset, this “fix-it” tutorial will help you repair the damage.

Scenario

The cables on your Xbox 360 headset have been damaged or severed. You don’t want to spend $20 to replace it and are brave and confident that you can fix it yourself.

What you will need

These are household items familiar to anyone who has ever taken apart and fixed any electronics. If this is your first attempt, don’t worry, you can easily learn how to use them.

• A soldering iron
• A spool of thin solder
• A wire stripper
• Some instant glue

If you are missing a particular item, you can easily purchase it cheaply from most electronics stores. I have included links to these items in the SparkFun store. They’re both cheap and great for beginners! Plus, you’ll get to reuse them on your future electronics projects.

Before we get started

If this is your first time soldering, I recommend reading the SparkFun tutorial, including its safety tips! This tutorial will describe how to fix the cable below the volume control; however, fixing the cable above the volume control is almost exactly the same.

Step 1

If the cable hasn’t been completely severed, then you’ll need to make a cut. Your wire stripper can dual as a wire cutter, so use it to cut the cable right below the damaged area. You should have two pieces: the cable with the plug at one end, and the rest of the headset.

If your headset was damaged above the volume control unit, you’ll want to cut the cable right above the damage. Make sure to cut as close to the damage, since we want to maximize the amount of cable that is left.

Continue reading “Fix it: Xbox 360 Headset” »

I have finally completed the jump onto the Google bandwagon by getting organized with Google Calendar and shrugging off that Google now knows that I have CS4641 Machine Learning on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:05pm to 4:25pm in the Klaus Advanced Computing building. Sooner or later all of our personal data will be in the “Cloud,” because who really wants to manually sync their calendars, documents, contacts, etc. over three or four devices? I know I don’t.

There is a link in the right sidebar to my Google Calendar, so that you can check when I have something planned or not. You may use it to catch me during the week, or just out of plain curiosity.

For the fellow KDE users out there, you can sync your Google calendar and contacts with Kontact (or Korganizer) using Akonadi. The Akonadi Google Resource did not make it into KDE 4.3, but it can easily be grabbed and install from the KDE SVN repositories.

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/pim/googledata googledata
cd googledata/
mkdir build
cd build/
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`
make && make install

Once the resources have been installed, pull up the configuration window for Akonadi (either through the System Settings or the Akonadi Tray Utility). Click “Add…” and you should see the Akonadi Google Calendar Resource at the top.

Click “Ok” and then enter your Google account information in the dialog box that is opened. Confirm and close the Akonadi configuration window.

Next, open Kontact (or Korganizer). Click the plus symbol at top right of the calendar list.

Select “Akonadi (Provides access…” from the top of the list and click “Ok.” In the “Resource Configuration” dialog that opens, change the default label in the “Name:” field to something more useful and then click “Ok.”

You’re all done! You should be able to see your Google calendar and add, edit, or delete events. The Akonadi resource automatically performs a two-way sync of all events in the calendar; however, it is currently limited to only the first of your Google calendars. Hopefully, complete support for data synchronization with Google will be part of KDE 4.4.

Interesting fact: The instructions for setting up Google Sync on the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch involves Microsoft Exchange. Quite amusing.