Slashdot Mirror
"Red is Dead" Optical Mice LED Change
A reader sent us the
HOWTO for changing that red LED on your fancy-pants new optical mouse to blue - or, I suppose any other color. I think I'm fine with what I've got - although, the glass tops on tables does make using optical mice a pain there.
although, the glass tops on tables does make using optical mice a pain there.
Rub some sandpaper over the part of the glass where the mouse will be. Problem solved!
Cool! I myself wanted to write a long FAQ about how to do an analogous thing for traditional mice. i.e. how to use a whiteboard marker to change the ball to match your decor.....but got bogged down by technical details...perhaps someone can help me...
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
I think I'm fine with what I've got - although, the glass tops on tables does make using optical mice a pain there.
I thought I was fine with what I had too, until I got a glass tabletop... and started working without pants. Now I just cry every time I look down.
Best Windows Freeware
Aw, MAN! And I was just getting caught up on all of my ridiculous case modding and converting my Geo Storm into a Geo Storm "Type R"...
(Like Heston) Damn you. DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
How many Slashdot'ers does it take to change an LED?
Answer: The ISP hosting the site is about to find out....
If you can move your mouse to a precision of 700nm, I'm very impressed :-)
The faint glow of a red light while looking at pr0n just seems natural.
Trolling is a art,
Tape a mouse pad under the glass top.
Yeah, that would be smart. All over the world geeks would be getting major sunburns on their right palms.
Trolling is a art,
Orange is the new pink!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I was tinning some wires once and flicked molten solder right in my tear duct. I thought I was going to die... but then i didn't and everything was OK.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Goes with the friction burns on their left palms.
Oh well, Karma suicide for a good joke....
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Yeah, that would be smart. All over the world geeks would be getting major sunburns on their right palms. :P
Thereby ruining their sex lives.
Every time I see one of these articles, this one in particular, it reminds me of the blokes who spend thousands of pounds to put UV tubes under their cars
However, the main difference I can see between the two is that when the car modders have finished, they drive around town and OCCASIONALLY some girl stops, thinks its cool, and gets in with them, while mouse modders can only use their accomplishment to click on "sign me up" for yet another porn site
A blue LED doesn't help me get any work done. Sure, it may look cool and impress chicks, but even cooler would be an ALL KNOWING, ALL SEEING MOUSE, that wouldn't rely on me to push it around the mouse pad to get work done. It would do all the work for me because it would be that smart. And I would fall asleep during working hours.
It would be pretty damn good at playing quake as well, much better than me.
If I could find a mouse like that, well heck, then it could have a blue LED. Until then though, only red for it, until it gets smarter and starts doing some damn work for a change instead of just sitting there until I push it.
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
The Laser pointer cat exerciser is patented - the owners have been notified and will contact you to arrange easy payment options.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Sith (evil programmers) use the red ones. Blue, green and now purple are used by the good guys :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
If they're going through all the trouble of changing the LED's to blue, why not change them into a superintelligent shade of blue!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
How cool is an optical mouse with apparently NO light?!?!
;)
About as cool as a 20 year old Sun optical mouse
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I am considering hanging myself by my cordless mouse.
In other words, this article is: Slashdot - How to Change a Lightbulb!
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
The cats must love getting stroked by a mouse, *the wrong way*. ;-)
I'd feel sorry for them if you are playing Unreal too.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Matters not, whether you can see it.
Red, it is.
Feel it, you can.
Blue, it must become.
The force is not strong with you... Much to learn you have.
Blue is the new high-tech color. As well as titanium. I read that somewhere.
;)
Must be because of the new PowerBook and Aqua.
mbbac
Of course you need the cool mousepad with the mouse for the Old Sun Optical Mouse.
I remembered when someone told me about the "New" Microsoft optical mouse. at the time I was working on a Sun Workstation in the computer lab, and he was talking some junk on how inovative MS is. So basicly I turned the mose over that I was working with and showed him that it didnt have a mouse ball. Then I told him that this particular mouse is about 6 years old. Luckaly that shut him up and I was able to get to work.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Blue was rejected due to users making a possible inference to a BSOD.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I've got a Logitech optical mouse with iFeel haptic feedback (it vibrates), I doubt the cats would like that...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
The obvious reason NOT to do this.
On submarines and ships, they used to have only red lights inside when it was dark (or the person who had to go outside would wear red goggles inside). This was to preserve the ability to see detail in the dark. The eye's light sensors are able to recover quickly from red light, less so from other wavelengths.
Remember this at your next dimly-lit LAN party, where you've modded your computer and mouse with blue LEDs. And don't blame me when you trip and fall on the way to the fridge for another Mountain Dew. Or get fragged by someone you never saw, because your dark sensitivity was diminished after staring lovingly at your glowing blue mouse during respawn.
...
go down so fast? This site is shutdown temporarily due to the slashdot effect.
I suppose "extreme" could refer to minimum.
that is why i am keeping the red led... the "1337" crowd will switch over to blue, and then suddenly see that it is no longer cool to be blue, but my mouse with its lone little red eye will suddenly be the color of "1337"
oh know, i just gave away my plan...
Speak for yourself, lefty.
Synergy is your friend
As opposed to the usual friction burns.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When I changed my LED a few years ago, I also overclocked the mouse sensor to 8x its shutter rate. When my friends ask me why my mouse works better than theirs, I tell them it's because I have a blue LED.
Hah. That's nothing. I overclocked my mouse sensor to 10x. Of course, my palm is occasionally injured by the blades of the cooling fan, but I found the extra precision is useful for negotiating a bloody mousepad...
I have a microsoft optical mouse. works fine on shiny/mirror surfaces, such as the data (silver) side of a CD
Does the CD work after you've scratched it up after several hours of mousepad duty?
For me, the red light is too reminiscent the evil and almighty HAL. Just try playing an mp3 of 'Daisy Bell' while staring into your mouse's red light. See if you don't start pulling out PCI cards and breathing heavily.
Or for repairing a broken duck.
Personally, I prefer using DUCT tape for most applications, including removing warts. Doesn't work all that well for taping ducts, though.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Oh, I have to tell this story. Some guys at work took a Sun to a trade-show. As luck would have it, they forgot to pack the mousepad that goes with one of those mice. It was a Saturday; they were in a far-away city, and none of the stores carried that pad. The demo was to start the next day, and we couldn't send them a mousepad that quickly.
So what did they do? What all good engineers do: they improvised. They took mirror (bought at a local store) the size of the mousepad, and took some filament tape (used for packaging). They put the tape horizontally on half the mirror; vertically on the other half. To move the mouse, you would scan it on the 'horizontal' half till you got to the right row, and the 'vertical' half to get to the right column. Since the demo wasn't really _that_ mouse-intensive, it worked like a charm!
Goes down in my book as one of the coolest hacks under crunch. I know, its off-topic, but the site is slashdotted and we need some idle conversation here.. :-)
What if you are left handed?
W00t I'm safe!
Sheesh... Just 10x? I did mine to 10.3x and then a week later OC'd it to 11x oversampling.
Red's dead, baby, Red's dead
Hey,
I think it'd be cool as hell to have a blue LED light under my mouse.
When I first read that I thought you said house, and I pictures a building raised up, with blue light eminating from under it, like a modded car.
That'd be kinda cool...
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Okay. This solution is kind of technically involved, so please just hold on tight.
1. Take a piece of paper, about letter size (8.5 x 11 inches) and set it on top of the glass surface.
2. secure it with tape or glue.
3. Mouse on new paper surface. Consider this a table-top surface-mount upgrade, if you will. This is the PaperSurface 1.0 upgrade, the six-second solution to most of my mousing problems.
I think this is one of those problems that takes less time to actually fix, than to mention it as being a problem.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.