Mighty Mouse – Mighty annoying

Together with my iMac I received a mighty mouse. Still, after more than a year I could not get used to it. Although I like the scroll ball that allows to scroll not only up and down, but also from left to right, it totally annoys me that the scroll ball gets stuck so fast. It first happened after a few weeks of usage, which made me decide to use my old Logitech mouse. Some while ago I wanted to give it another try. It worked okay for a while and after some weeks again, it was not possible to scroll down anymore. Now I was looking for some tips how to clean the scroll ball and only to find out that it is not possible to open the mouse without breaking it. Some handy people still tried it:
Video: How to fix the might mouse scroll ball (EN)
Mighty Mouse öffnen und reinigen (DE)
Apple themselves suggests to use a cleaning cloth to clean the scroll ball. If it fells like something is stuck in the inside of the mouse, preventing it from scrolling correctly, they propose to put a little pressure on the scroll ball to loosen the dirt. In my case, that didn’t help at all.
Apple Support: How to clean mac products (EN)
Some others suggested to roll the scroll ball over a paper to get rid of any dirt:
Mighty Mouse reinigen (DE)
The only thing that worked for me, was to use a cleaning cloth for glasses and move the scroll ball over it in all directions. I am curious how long this measure will last… and I am wondering if it is time for the new magic mouse.

Readability

When I just researched for my post on Corot-9b I read several articles online. And I remembered my bookmarklet called Readability. It removes all the advertisements that are annoyingly blinking when you try to read something. Just by a simple click. The website describes it as follow:

‘Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you’re reading.’

So go to the website http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/, define your personal settings on how the page should look like for reading, e.g. if you prefer the font to be smaller or bigger, and drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark toolbar. Done! Enjoy reading!

Caffeine for your mac

Caffeine is a small application, that allows you to temporarily prevent your computer from going to sleep or from starting your screen saver. Without having to change all your energy saving settings you normally use, you simply click on the symbol in the menu bar and click again, if you don’t need it anymore. Very pratical for example while doing a presentation.

URL: http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/

Version: 1.1.1

License: Freeware

My favorite music podcasts

Midnight Maraudaz Podcast A Nu-Jazz Podcast mixed by Don Ray
The Beatz and Bobz Show A Nu Skool Breakbeat Podcast
Electro and House Mixes by DJ Bene

A backup a day keeps the problems away…

Nachdem ich jetzt schon seit langer Zeit vollkommen zufrieden NetNewsWire (früher als Lite, mittlerweile als kostenlose Vollversion) für meine RSS-Feed Verwaltung nutze, musste ich heute feststellen, dass es wohl kein Programm ohne Probleme gibt.

Beim Öffnen des Programms war meine komplette Ordnerstruktur mitsamt meiner abonnierten RSS-Feeds verschwunden! Lediglich die Abonnements die beim ersten Programmstart automatisch angezeigt werden waren zu sehen. Aber wie kann denn so etwas passieren?

Also habe ich mich mal im Internet auf die Suche gemacht. In einem Forum von Apfeltalk wurde von selbigen Problem berichtet. Leider gab es auch dort keine Lösung. Auch meine weiteren Recherchen waren nicht von Erfolg gekrönt. Schließlich habe ich mit Hilfe eines älteren Backups meine Feeds wieder importiert. Leider waren nicht alle aktuell abonnierten Feeds in meinem Backup enthalten. Was mich daran erinnert, das es nichts sinnvolleres gibt als regelmäßige Backups! Ich werde in Zukunft versuchen zumindest wöchentlich ein solches anzulegen… ehrlich!