So I'm very excited about the Intel Macintoshes, such as the MacBook Pro, the forthcoming MacBook (which actually may be called the iBook again), the iMac, and the Mac Mini. I'm very fond of my PowerPC-based Mac, and I love OS X, and frankly, I would love to have a single computer that I could run OS X on for everyday surfing, writing, and emailing, but then reboot to run Windows XP for games and various Windows-Only applications. The only problem is that stupid freaking single-mouse button that's built into the Macintosh notebooks. (OK, there's also the problem of cost, but there are cheap Intel Macs out there - the Mini, for one - and a cheap notebook is probably on the way real soon now.)

Apple's Boot Camp has made running Windows XP on a Mac a reality, and if you use a "regular" external two-button mouse, Windows (and OS X, for that matter) will see the right mouse button for what it is, and life in Windows is fine. But what about those notebooks that just come with a single mouse button built in?

In Windows, what you'll need is some special program running in the background that can emulate a right mouse button click when you press some key on the keyboard. One program that does this, and a lot more, is AutoHotkey, and it is totally free, being Open Source software. And right here I'll tell you how to do it.

So Stephen Colbert was invited to speak at the White House Correspondents Dinner, where he was apparently the last speaker of the night. I'm sure event planners got a lot more than they bargained for: Stephen basically roasted President Bush, a standing president I might add, for 20 minutes while the President was not more than 10 feet away.

Amazingly, the mainstream media is not generally reporting this watershed event, though when they do, they generally claim the President left immediately after Mr. Colber's performance. Hello?! His was the last performance of the night! Of course the President left immediately afterwards. Let's not report and cause and effect where there is none.

Anyway, the video of Mr. Colbert's entire performance is online. The best versions I've found are at FreeVideoBlog.com. Be sure to check them out before the powers that be make it, and Mr. Colbert, disappear.

Hey all. Warren here.

Needless to say, there are some updates going on over here at The LlamaPen. Call it a LlamaPen 2.0. There's a new physical server. Updated versions of old software. New stuff in general. Things may be a little bumpy over the next few days, so please bear with me. New features that have been on the drawing board for a year should be getting online very soon now. Thanks for the understanding.

Update #1: The site is now up and running on the new server. There are various bugs to chase down, but I'll be tending to those this week as they happen. If you notice anything, please add a comment, and I'll get right on it. 

Update #2: By dumb luck, my DSL upgrade happened this week too. You may not know that The LlamaPen runs off of my DSL line, but now you do. As such, The LlamaPen (and indeed, my entire domain, including email) was down for just under two days (it looks to be around 41 hours). We seem to be back up now, and with 4 times the bandwidth as before. Let the good times roll! 

Update #3: Apparently a tricky little server error was keeping new users from getting their randomly generated password and login information. Whoops. It was tricky tracking down, too, but I think everything is now OK. I'm still messing with the "Look and Feel" of the site, but things are almost back to normal.

Hey gang. This note is intended for the jerk-off script-kiddie who has been attempting to use a spam-script to post poker-related links (and others) to my site from the IP addresses of 209.200.11.104 and 69.42.64.213:

Your admins over at WebAir.com have been notified, and have been provided with Google links to show how long you've been wanking yourself doing this.

And to the good people of WebAir.com. Your response to these reports shall be noted...

So, imagine my surprise to find that the little photo I put on my site about an external power supply fan for my QBIC would get a few hundred hits in a week. I guess there's some interest in it, so with that, here is a fuller description of the project.

Now that Soltek spare parts are going to be even harder to get than before, it occured to me that perhaps I should be a little less cavalier about how hot my powersupply gets. My 3401 is on 24/7 (has been for more than a year), and is also my primary gaming rig (I also bring it to LAN parties and Gaming Conventions). Normally, the air coming out of the power supply is very VERY warm (if not HOT), and the top of the case above the power supply is very VERY warm, and the back of the power supply itself is, well, I would say HOT. The problem is airflow; air barely blows out the back of the power supply at all, despite an interal 80mm power supply fan.

I'm sure the fact that the CPU cooler and the Power Supply fan are sucking air in opposite directions from the same little area inside the case doesn't help matters much. I'm rather considering getting an XP-90 CPU cooler and a 92mm Nexus fan sucking up, thereby blowing air into the power supply, and hopefully helping the power supply get some warm air out.

But first, I remembered this post, and I have plenty of spare 80mm case fans laying around, so I thought I would see what happened if I tried it myself. CompUSA has 60mm-to-80mm fan adapters for $4, so I picked one up at lunch. With just a little reaming of the soft plastic holes on the 60mm side of the adapter, it fits perfectly into the two screw holes for the screws that hold the power suppy to the chassis. I had longer-than-average case screws in my parts bin. So, the adapter screwed on with just two screws to the Qbic, which seems fine.

I didn't bother the to chop up the power supply grating. I want this mod to be reversable.

The 80mm fan I have is a Vantec adjustable fan; it has its own speed knob, so I cranked it down to its slowest, quietest setting. I can't hear it under my desk, but I can when I bend down and listen for it. If I stick with this mod, I'll purchase a super-quiet fan. Screwing the fan to the adapter is practically impossible when the adapter is installed, so the fan is attached with Zip ties.

And finally, the power leads for the fan pass through the IcyQ vent slots on the back of the system to a molex 3-to-4 pin adapter.

And as for the cooling results: they are excellent. We're talking about 6C degrees cooler in the case and 4C for the hard drive, but more importantly, the top of the case above the power supply isn't even warm, and the air moving through the PS isn't hot as before; now it is just slightly warm, even during intense gaming or ripping. I'm pretty confident this should extend the life of the power supply by quite a bit too.

Additionally, for the first time ever, the interal case temp is actually lower than the hard drive temp.

The only real problem with this mod is that it looks just terrible; totally ghetto. It also makes transporting my portable SFF machine problematic, since I can't lie it on its back in its knapsack. I could stand it on its front, which may scratch things up, or I could move on to Phase Two...

Phase Two would be to have the fan (either an 80mm adapted, or a 60mm fan) mounted to the back of the case with some sort of quick-release mechanism, or perhaps Velcro. "But what about the power connector?" you ask? Well, why should it be internally powered? With a generic AC to DC Adapter, I could just run the fan from an external AC outlet on my power strip. If I used an adapter with different output voltages, I could even change the fan's speed by changing the electrical current it got. Then when it came time to move the computer, I could unplug the fan, take it off the computer, and then toss it into my computer bag.

Phase Two will probably take place over Christmas, 2005. Stay tuned for further developments... Leave comments too.

Eagle-eyed readers will spot a lengthy article by yours truly in the early December issue of PC Magazine, page 108 (I think. I don't have my copy yet.) You can view it online as well.

If you'd like to ask questions or discuss any of my advice on the subject, please leave a comment here (click the # Comments link below this text), and then check back for a reply.

And if you liked the article, be sure to contact PC Magazine and tell them you bought 50 copies of this issue to give out as gifts because of my wonderful article, and that you plan to buy stuff from all of the advertisers too.

So you want to have a huge digital music library culled from many sources (all legal, of course), but you don't want to be locked into just one vendor (Apple) or technology (Windows Media.)

I know how you feel. I have an iPod Photo. I have a car stereo and Treo cell phone that use MP3s natively. My "workout music player" is a Creative Labs Muvo TX that plays MP3s and Windows Media Files.

The key for me is to use "lowest common denominator" file formats, which means MP3s. iTunes is a fine Ripper, so I have it set to "Import Music" (that is, rip from CDs) in MP3 format (usually 192 kpbs, but sometimes 160). Stuff winds up in iTunes' library automatically.

OK, so that handles ripping my CDs and making them work on the iPod.

When buying music from the iTunes Store, it comes as AAC files with DRM. Big hassle, since it only works in the iPod (and iTunes, of course.) Fortunately, you can use Hymn (or JHymn) over at http://www.hymn-project.org/ to convert these store-bought songs into MP3s with just a few clicks. Problem: it doesn't work with iTunes 6, at least yet. The solution here is to keep using older iTunes. Since I don't need to download and play video, I still use iTunes 4.9, available from http://www.5star-shareware.com/Windows/Music/MultimediaPlayers/itunes.html, or version 5.x is over at: http://www.oldapps.com/itunes.htm.

Now how to pull out iTunes files for other players? idleTunes to the rescue! It can take any playlist in iTunes and copy the MP3 files out to another folder, with the files named and numbered how you like them. It does other good things too. And for free. Get it from: http://www.idletunes.com/.

And that's how I keep my music flowing between all my devices. Works great.

I have the Stowaway IR keyboard, and I chose it over the Palm Universal Wireless keyboard after trying them both in-store extensively, and reading reviews of these and BlueTooth keyboards. I've owned two previous palm-branded keyboards, one for the Palm VIIx, and one for the Kyocera 7135.

First: BT keyboards. I wasn't that concerned about battery life. I was concerned that you can't use a BT keyboard on an airplane in-flight, at least for now. Radio interference, you see. I fly just a few times a year, but I can type for hours and hours on that tiny seat-back tray with my Treo and keyboard, where my notebook PC barely fits.

I'll never get a direct-connect keyboard again. All Palm has to do is change the freaking connectors at the bottom of their devices, and I need to get another keyboard. Enough.

IR keyboards should be compatible with whatever Palm (or Microsoft) throws at us in the future - I do not agree that IR is going away any time soon for PDAs, especially Palm OS.

As for which IR keyboard... The Palm branded unit has a number-row of keys that the Stowaway lacks, but the keyboard feel isn't as "crisp" as the Stowaway. (BTW, ThinkOutside manufacturers both of these units - they are very VERY similar.) The Palm keys also aren't as nicely sculpted as the Stowaway, and some of the keys are actually smaller than the Stowaway's.

Though I don't exactly know when this story of mine will appear in PC Magazine, I would guess that my write-up on creating your own external hard drive from a bare enclosure and bare drive should appear in print sometime in a November or December 2005 issue. So in anticipation of the questions stemming from this, here's the stuff I bought for my enclosure, and why.

First, my goals for this drive. I have Macs and PCs in my office, so I have a combination of both USB2 and FireWire ports to deal with. I need a drive for backing up systems with Norton Ghost, transferring huge video files between recording systems and burning systems, and very occasionally bringing very large files to a client to work on them. This drive will not be on 24/7, but when it is on, it will be transferring huge amounts of data. I'm also trying to cheap it out.

For a drive that's on 24/7, I almost always pick something from Seagate these days. Though not as absolutely totally fast as some other manufacturers, they are usually a little quieter and cooler. Even better, they all come with a five-year warranty, rather than a chintzy one-year warranty. That said, this drive won't be on for 24/7, so I'm willing to go with any major drive manufacturer. My local CompUSA had 160 GB drives (8MB cache, 7200RPM) for $100, but with two $30 rebates, the final price was only $40. Perfect.

For drive enclosures, maximum portability is not a concern, but heat dissipation is. I've used many enclosures in the past made of cheap stamped steel and then sheathed in a "stylish" plastic shell, and the damn things get red-hot to the touch after just a few minutes of intense data transfer. Even if they do have a tiny, noisy, irritating fan to "cool" them. No, what you want is a case made mostly of bare aluminum and with a good-sized fan. Bare aluminium radiates heat from the drive into the open air, and a large fan can spin quietly yet still move a nice quantity of air. And since we're inventing the perfect enclosure, you also want one that has an AC power adapter that doesn't block other jacks on your power strip, and yet plugs into the drive any old which way. (Adapters that look like an S-Video cable, complete with lots of tiny pins in the jack, drive me nuts.)

Fortunately, there is just such an enclosure out there, and it is well-built and pretty inexpensive. You want the Venus DS3, from AMS electronics, and that's what I went with. There are two versions out there: one with USB2 only ($37 from Newegg.com), and one with both USB2 and FireWire ports ($54 from Newegg.com). Both have a nice, low-speed 80mm fan that moves a good amount of air quietly, and I can assure you that even after moving 100 GB of data through it, drives remain only slightly warm. It is also a joy to assemble, with lots of metal-to-metal connections and no internal wires to tangle up. The internal electronics are of high-quality too.

So there you go; that's the drive I built for myself for this article. Net price for 160GB in the best enclosure on the market: under $100 after rebate. You can't beat that.