The biggest issue with EyeTV is the lack of electronic programme guide. OK, you can get a trial subscription to IceTV, but that’s not good enough when compared to Windows Media Centre (WMC). Did you know that MWC has a free EPG? That’s right, free. Why can’t Elgato arrange for a free EPG for EyeTV.

Luckily for us here in Australia, Paul Shipley has written a tool to generate an XMLTV formatted EPG which can be impored by EyeTV. Thanks to Paul, I now have an EPG for EyeTV.

First impressions …

• the M505 is better than the Logitech V470 Cordless Bluetooth Mouse. The M505 is faster and more responsive, especially after the mouse has been sitting idle for a while. I found that the V470 took a long while to respond after being in sleep mode.
• the M505 is better than the Apple Magic Mouse. The M505 has a middle mouse button — I didn’t realise how much I’d missed the middle mouse button. A lot of mouse actions have now magically (pun intended) become a lot easier to perform. Please remind me not to buy a mouse which does not have a middle button.
• I miss the Apple Magic Mouse’s scroll with momentum.

It’ll be interesting to see if my first impressions last. I hope that Logitech don’t let me down this time, like they did with the V470.

I did contact Syntec International Pty Limited (the distributor here in Sydney) and they were helpful. They suggested two options:

• Return the headphones to the retailer for replacement; or
• Mail the headphones and purchase receipt to them and they’d replace them for me.

Hmm. Only one issue. I didn’t know where the receipt was.

After I returned from holidays (or vacation as some other countries call it) I found the receipt. I chose to return the headphones to the retailer, Maccentric at Miranda. The sales person was great. She listened as I described the problem and then explained the Maccentric repair/replacement process. We filled in the paperwork and I went on my way.

Two days later, Maccentric SMSed me to let me know that my replacement headphones were available for collection. I returned to the Maccentric shop the following Saturday where my replacement headphones were waiting for me. I collected my new headphones and I was on my way.

Kudos to Maccentric for making the replacement of my MM50 headphones quick and painless.

Like others in this Whirlpool thread, the right channel of my headphones has stopped making sound. It’s super annoying to listen to stereo music with just the left channel.

Mind you, when the headphones are working properly and you have the correct size ear plugs fitted, these headphones sound great. If you think the bass is a bit tinny, try the next size ear plug — it will make an enormous difference.

Syntec International Pty Limited is a distributor of Sennheiser products here in Sydney. They have an Service and Spare Parts e-mail address which I’ll use.

This is very disappointing. Here in Oz, these headphones cost AU$130.00, so I’d expect them to last a lot longer than what they have. Thankfully, they have a two year guarantee, so a replacement set should be at no cost to me.

How? I took the batteries out. I left the batteries out for a few minutes. I put the batteries back in and now it’s recognising right clicks again. Weird.

Now I’m wondering how long the magic is going to last. My Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0 is on standby just in case.

Last week, my Magic Mouse started playing up. It decided that it was not going to reliably recognise a right-button click. Most of the time it thought I was left-button clicking, even though I was pressing on the far right of the top surface. And no, I had all of my other fingers well away from the mouse. I checked the batteries and they were at 47%, so flat batteries should not have been the cause. I changed the batteries, just in case, but that didn’t resolve the problem.

So, I’m no longer convinced that Apple has built a better mouse.

I’ve reverted to using my old Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0 (no longer available?). At least it works.

I should start looking for another mouse now. The Logitech V470 Bluetooth Mouse is OK, but has too much lag after it has gone into power saving mode. It’s annoying to have the mouse cursor jumping around the screen. I might be better off forgetting about buying a Bluetooth mouse and just get a “normal” wireless mouse with a nano transceiver.

My Mac Mini is running out of USB ports, even though I have two four port USB hubs attached. Might be time for another USB hub too.

I took the hint and updated OS X, iTunes and iPhoto. So far, there’s been no downside to the update. In fact, I think there was an upside to the update — after the forced reboot, my little Mac Mini feels a bit quicker than it was before the reboot. Maybe I should reboot more often?

Time Machine is now having the time of its life backing up the 2.5GB of changes to my Mac Mini.

As it turns out, Microsoft have tweaked the SMB protocol to make it incompatible with Mac OS X (10.6.2) and samba (3.4.7 on my Debian machine) on Linux. Microsoft have changed a few settings so that Windows 7 network shares no longer behave like the LAN Manager shares of Windows XP.

What you have to do is this … (apologies to person who I copied this from because I did not record their URL)

On your Windows 7 machine, navigate to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy. In the left hand pane, expand Local Polices -> Security Options. In the right hand pane, scroll down to …

• Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level and change the value from Not defined to Send LM & NTLM responses; and
• Minimum session security for NTLM SSP (there’s two entries — one for client and one for server so I changed both) and uncheck the Require 128-bit encryption.

After you make those three changes, reboot.

You should now be able to connect your Mac and Linux machines to your Windows 7 shares.

I am pleased to report that VirtualBox 3.1.4 was released on the 12th February 2010. Download your copy now.

It’s my turn to run a book. The bet? How much longer will VirtualBox be actively developed?

(Now do you get the reference to the DNS term “TTL”? )

Have you noticed that since mid-December 2009 there have been no public releases of VirtualBox? Between September 2009 and December 2009 there was frantic development activity which resulted in quite a number of releases, culminating in version 3.1.2. I’ve been using VirtualBox since version 2.x was first released. I have used both Linux and Mac as the host OS and have had Windows, Linux and *BSD guest OSes running successfully. For me, VirtualBox has just worked. It’s been great.

But now, I’m having second thoughts about running VirtualBox. I’m suspicious of Oracle’s intentions towards VirtualBox and other Sun sponsored Open Source projects. I won’t be surprised if Oracle announces that it will cease to sponsor further VirtualBox, MySQL and OpenOffice.org development.

Oh, my bet? Due to the lack of obvious development activity, I fear that active development has already ceased.

What’s your bet?