Where's the "Any" key? New Tech Support Thread

[dieblucasdie]

the trackpad/right mouse button on my vaio are not happy. 

Any thought?  Cheap to replace?  Could I do it myself?

Cheap, well, some quick googling seyz around $50 (you'll want to get the one already built into the cover/plastics).

You could do it yourself. As in, it just requires basic mechanical skills.  You just have to not be afraid.

In other news, apparently computers do not like having Two-Hearted Ale dumped on them.  I'll never understand computers.

[jess]

So I called the local apple-athorized repair shop abot my diet-coke indced keyboard woes (see the annoyed thread), and they seem to think a top case replacement is in order and said that wold rn abot $160, labor inclded. However, the gy also said that in his experience, Id be very lcky to not have logic board damage, so we shold look for that when he opens it first, and if thats the case, then repairing it is not worth it, and I need a new laptop. My qestion for the tech savvy here is how likely is it that I cold have logic board damage if no problems except for the malfnctioning keys have shown p yet? everything else seems ok, except for maybe my dvdr drive (I had a dvd in there and it started making all sorts of weird noises ntil I ejected it). Bt otherwise no problems yet.

Basically, Im wondering if Im safe ptting off the keyboard thing ntil I have time to deal with it and sing an external when I need to instead, or if odds are decent my laptop might jst die on me any moment thanks to a fcked p logic board. I cant afford to lose my comp for the few days it takes to do the repair right now, bt I can afford to totally lose it even less (I am backed p thogh at least).

[coldforge]

Put it this way: if you have liquid damage on your logic board it's going to cost about $800 to fix. So unless you're raring to put in that much money to the machine, you might as well put off the keyboard issue for a couple days. If the machine completely fails then you'll know there was liquid damage on the MLB, but if that's the case then you're already basically looking at dead laptop walking.

[jess]

Right, if it's the logic board, I'm assuming a new laptop is in order, but I'm wondering more is there a point where if that's going to get all fucked up/die, it will likely happen by? How long could it take for those sorts of problems to show up? Because clearly if it dies, then the logic board was fucked, but if it seems to be ok for a while, can I assume at some point it will continue to be ok?

[coldforge]

Once liquid gets onto the logic board it's hard to predict anything. How much coke was there?


Depending on how handy you imagine yourself, you could also try to find a take-apart on the web and open it up yourself. They're not terribly hard to open up.

[jess]

Considering I still haven't got my U or 7 key to snap back on quite right, I don't imagine myself to be particularly handy in this respect.

There wasn't that much coke--probably a third of a 20 oz bottle spilled and most of it got on the desk and of what got on to the computer, probably relatively little made it into the machine (vs being wiped or dumped off the surface). I immediately inverted it, and nothing seemed to come back out, which I take to be a good sign.

[mixed cats]

Nevermind, I fixed it and now I hate everything.

[ieatrats]

I feel like what I'm actually asking for is magic, but since iTunes kind of does this (crappily) I thought I'd throw out a question:

Is there a program or music player (or cd burning program) in which you can "master" the volume of a mix (or tweak individual tracks) when you're burning an audio cd from mixed sources and that were all recorded differently?  iTunes soundcheck kind of does this, but it permanently alters the tracks and does it to the whole library, and I want it done just for a mix.

Basically I have like 3 songs that are mad compressed and super loud and 3 songs that are super quiet vinyl rips compared to the average and I want to even out the volume.

[diesel_powered]

I think Nero has a "normalize" plugin. It's not the same as compressing everything, but it'll get the volumes the same.

[coldforge]

I eatrats, Toast has a similar normalize function, which just matches the peaks of the various tracks. But if you're dealing with really compressed vs not that compressed, there's not much you can do besides compress the vinyl rips. That's exactly what compression is; it lets stuff get way louder. If you brought the vinyl up any further, of course, the peaks would start clipping—which is why one compresses.

[ieatrats]

Hmm, I never went above Nero 6 but I'll shop around to see if that plugin's available for my version and/or consider getting a higher one just for cases like this.

'forge, thanks anyway, I'm on a pc, though that's not the first time I've heard of something handy in Toast that seemed actually to work well too.

[diesel_powered]

Nero 6 should have a normalize function. It's been a long time since I've used it, but after a quick googling, you should be able to get to it by clicking on each track and going to the audio properties screen and then clicking on the filters tab.

[ieatrats]

I just opened Nero to test this, but lemme ask before I perform irreversible actions on files:  does it do it to the file properties (like iTunes does) or only for the mix properties?

[diesel_powered]

Nothing permanent, as far as I know. It just affects what ends up on your disc.

[ieatrats]

hexellent.

Come to think of it iTunes probably doesn't either, but modifies the library file I'd guess, but why take chances with valuable digital objects like mp3s.

Man I didn't realize Nero had all this stuff in it... and looking at the biggest offender, a Lord High Fixers tune that is ultra loud, the spectrogram shows absolutely no lines at all - it's so pushed that every second of the tune is clipped heh.

Thanks!

[donblood]

Normalizing a bunch of tracks won't necessarily get the volumes the same - it'll make sure that the loudest hit of each track is the same volume, which works for songs without a lot of dynamic range (rock, metal, hip-hop), but with more varied program material won't do what you're looking for.

The better option is using a limiter, which is a particular type of compressor, and available in a lot of CD burning applications.  But play around with it first to make sure it's doing what you want.

(By the way, the above description of a compressor - it makes things louder - it kinda misleading.  If anyone's interested in a larger discussion of what a compressor does, bring it on.)

[coldforge]

To be fair, I didn't say a compressor makes things louder. I said it LETS things get much louder.

[donblood]

Seriously, let's talk about compressors, bring it on.

[diesel_powered]

HEY GUYS, LET'S TALK COMPRESSORS!

I know what they do, but I'm really terrible at explaining it to others.

[Aglaya]

I bought a new mouse today and the right-click functions still do not work.  How can I make them work again?

[diesel_powered]

Hit it with a bible and scream "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU"?

[alistarr*]

i probably can't help but just in case: first things first, is it a USB mouse?

are you using windows? do they definitely not work everywhere (like, have you tried it in a browser, and on the desktop, and in a word-processing program, and... etc etc)?

[DCDave]

I've got a loaner laptop at work and it's displaying a majority of text (in Firefox) as bolded.  Anyone know how to turn this off?

[YojimboMonkey]

I read about someone having a similar problem due to a corrupted arial.ttf file.  You could try copying this file from another computer and see if that helps.  The default font settings in my version of Firefox do not seem to have a fontweight setting and I also didn't see anything in about:config that might help.

[YojimboMonkey]

or whichever font is being bolded, likely to be arial since it's so prevalent