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This post is mainly a note to myself so I have a simple but very useful (at least to me) script in a place I can find readily in the future. Go ahead and skip this post. It's supposed to be boring.
( A one-liner at its core. )
Hardware weirdness
21 October 2006 12:45Earlier this month I swapped KVM switches and a pointer weirdness went away. It came back. And it stayed. I've cycled power on both computer & KVM and the jumpy pointer stayed jumpy. I swapped out USB-PS/2 converters and things still stayed jumpy.
I gave up and used the trackball I had been using with the laptop. That trackball is PS/2 for real, no silly USB converter needed. That one also is working just fine. I'm using it now and all seems well.
Just to see if it would work, I plugged the USB-PS/2 trackball into caspian the laptop and brought that up. Son of a Gunn diode, it works right and isn't jumping around the screen like an overcaffeinated squirrel. Evidently there's just something about the combination of belgian's hardware, a KVM, and a USB-PS/2 converter that makes things goofy.
Fortunately things worked out with just swapping stuff around. At least I didn't need to spend any money to get things working as I expect them to.
Pointer pain
28 September 2005 11:10Last night I did a bit more with caspian, (updated the Ultima Linux install from the latest CD, got Opera installed and mostly configured, told xchat how to open URLs with Opera. Still need to install joe and tell Opera to use NEdit to view source) and a fair amount of that time I was using the laptop's built-in pointer. The built-in pointer is an eraser-head thing. Despite the other colloquial names for that style of pointer, it's not fun to use, at least for me. I've found it's painful. Not right away, but I notice it eventually and today my wrist is sore. As much as I dislike trackpads, at least they don't make my wrist sore that I've noticed.
Fortunately I have a good spare trackball that I can plug into the laptop. It's not as convenient as the built-in pointer, but it's won't give me a sore wrist. It will, however, fit into the laptop along with various cables and such. I don't expect to be setting up the laptop in every little space or using it on aircraft, so it's not a big deal.
A good trackball is one with a fairly large ball. Those micro-marble things tend to be painful to use for any length of time. Also, a good trackball is one that can be used by the left hand. While I am right-handed, I prefer the pointer to be on the left. There are, or were, many allegedly ergonomic mouse and trackball designs that are right hand only and therefore useless to me. The Logitech "Marble Mouse" is mis-named twice, it's actually a good trackball. It's the one I now prefer. There are also too many trackballs that seem to be designed by people who never use them, and it shows. They're annoying to use left or right handed.
