dotEvan

At work I use a combination of Mac OS X (Tiger) and a Windows XP laptop (mainly for developing web applications running in a Linux environment — go figure). I currently use Synergy to share the keyboard and mouse on my Mac with my XP machine. This really is an awesome program. It can be a pain to setup on non-windows machines, but it’s well worth the time and effort. I plug my headphones into my PC for mail and instant message notifications and to listen to music. My problem arises when I’m doing something on my Mac and I come across something that I want to listen to. I could blast it over the built in speakers, but I’d prefer to not have other office inhabitants loathing me.

I finally took the time to get a 1/8″ male to male stereo cable to connect the two audio systems together. At first I connected the headphone out of the Mac to my line in of my laptop. This worked fine, but the SNR on the laptop of the line in port wasn’t all that great. I wasn’t about to pollute my ears with the subtle sounds of a hissing cat. I decided to reverse the process: the output of the laptop goes to the line in of the Mac. Perfect — I play the sound on my PC, and I see the meter pumping in the sound settings. But I can’t hear a darn thing! Apparently, an out of the box Mac cannot route the line in port to the ouput.

After a few minutes of “Googling”, I found LineIn. This allows you to take any input and assign it to any output. Go figure. At least it’s freeware.

I’ve been spending some time tweaking the wordpress theme today.  Shoot me over an email (or comment on this post) if you notice anything that’s wonky.

Two words: Family Guy.  I always saw the previews for Family Guy — stared at it and said “What the hell — how come the baby can talk?  It doesn’t make any sense.”  Enter my wife — she showed me the light.  It is probably one of the funniest shows on television — the parodies are outstanding, the voicing is great.  Everybody should be watching this show!

There is the adage: If everybody jumped off the Empire State Building, would you? Consider this my arms-a-flailing, head-first jump into the blogosphere. It’s only fair that I empower myself to pollute your bandwidth with my inane drivel as have so many other internet inhabitants. As Apu Nahasapeemapetilon would say, “Thank you, come again!”