I spent the start of the holiday break upgrading my studio gear, adding an HP LP2475w monitor and Logitech Z-523 speakers, both of which are excellent. My Macbook now runs in clamshell mode, with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The new studio setup in action

Games in particular are vastly improved on the new widescreen, but I had a devil of a time getting the wireless keyboard working under Boot Camp and Windows XP. Let me save you the hours (!!) I spent getting it sorted.

Note that this is for Windows XP. It might work for Windows 7—if you try it let me know what you find out. And although I haven't tried it, I think this process should work for the wireless mouse as well. I've got a Magic Mouse on order and will post an update once I've had a chance to try it out (Update: yep, it works the same, just choose "No passcode". Note that initially it said that the drivers failed to install properly, but a few seconds later the mouse kicked in and has been working fine ever since.)

The magic formula

I started by unpairing the keyboard from OS X. I don't think this is strictly necessary, but I'll mention it just in case. If you follow the steps below and it still isn't working you might want to try it out. In System Preferences > Bluetooth, select the keyboard and then press the minus button at the bottom of the list and confirm the warning dialog.

In Windows XP, bring up the Bluetooth control panel. Make sure the keyboard is turned on, then let it scan for devices. After several seconds the keyboard should appear in the list. Right-click on it and choose Properties and then Services. You'll see a checkbox options for drivers; check it and click Apply.

Now return to the device list, select the keyboard and hit Next to begin the setup. When asked for a passkey, choose Use the passkey found in the documentation and enter 0000 (that's four zeros; of course this requires that you have a keyboard connected! If you don't, use the On-Screen Keyboard application found under Accessories > Accessibility). Hit Next again and you'll be prompted to verify the passkey on the wireless keyboard. Enter the four zeros and press Enter (on the wireless keyboard). After a second it should confirm the device setup.

That's it, you're paired. Reboot XP once just to verify it will pair. Note that the special keys (brightness, eject, etc.) only work if you're running on one of the newest iMacs, or are using the 2.2 (Leopard) version of Boot Camp. Hopefully this will get fixed in a Boot Camp update, but considering how long us MacBook users have been suffering with audio issues I won't hold my breath.

Hopefully you're up and running at this point. If you unpaired the keyboard in OS X you can now reconnect it. And in case you're still stuck, here's Microsoft's troubleshooting guide.

Update: If you are having problems with your Magic Mouse "freezing" for several seconds at a time, particularly when doing CPU intensive stuff like playing games, see this thread on the Apple support site for a suggestion that might help.

My return to racing continues...well, not racing per se: these days I drive more like a mechanic who stole the keys. I just did a quick bit of math and realized that is has been almost five years (!!) since I last dusted off the wheel, and nearly as long since I did any simulation coding. Kids will do that to you, I guess.

It is too close to the gift-giving season to pick up any (relatively) new sims for myself, and honestly I'm so out of the scene that I don't even know which ones are any good. So for now the retro racing revolution continues, this time with the-sim-that-will-not-die Grand Prix Legends.

I really expected to find this sim—initially released in 1998—pretty much where I left it. I knew about the GPL Preservation Society, the massive track database, and the active modding community, but really how much can you do with a decade old, closed source sim? Quite a bit, as it turns out! Case in point: the jaw-dropping Targa Florio, 72 km of pure road racing joy. Grand Prix Legends is like Steve McQueen's Le Mans: a classic!

Because of all the mods and patches, there is some hoop jumping involved to get up and running. The hardest part was figuring out which bits I needed and where to get them; I'll save you that trouble with a full play-by-play below. Installation was straightforward from there, and it runs great on my MacBook Pro under both Boot Camp and VMware Fusion 3.0 (be sure to switch to full screen before starting the game; it doesn't like Unity).

Okay, enough chit-chat. Here's my installation guide.

Ah, the original Need for Speed! Alpine, Coastal, Vertigo Ridge—great tracks now trapped in an out-dated game, passed by in time. As an avid road-tripper, I loved those open road tracks and the opportunity to drive with traffic in an environment that, for the time, felt realistic. I even plunked down the cash for a Thrustmaster T1 wheel and pedals.

Several years ago I had the idea to rip out those tracks and convert them to run in a modern simulator. With some help from Denis Auroux (the author of TRACKED, to my knowledge the first player-created editor for a commercial game) I was able to decode the track segments and textures. But then I got distracted, my attention turned elsewhere, life and children caught me up, and the code was left to collect dust.

Now the driving bug is biting again and I'm blowing the dust off this project as a first, small step back into simulation coding. I dug up my circa 1995 NFS SE CD and got it running on my 2009 MacBook Pro. It is…dated, as you can imagine. The steering and handling is all over the place compared to a modern sim; I have no idea how we managed those quick laps back in the day!

(As an aside, I used to run the AutoSim World Records Site back then, which you can still find in the Internet Archive. None of those records are mine though; too much time building websites and not enough racing.)

In case you feel like following along, here's how I got it working.

I used to use Quicken, back when I obsessed over the allocation of every penny. These days I'm rather more laid back. The one and only feature that I really miss are automatic savings goals. In case you aren't familiar them: Quicken allows you to set an amount that you would like to save, and the date you would like to reach that goal. It then automatically sets aside a regular amount every day, "deducting" it from your total available balance. So when you look at your account balances in Quicken that money is already "spent" even though it is still sitting in your bank account. This is a very handy way to plan ahead and avoid coming up short when a big expense comes due.

So, no Quicken, but no worries. I whipped up a goal tracking spreadsheet for Excel and OpenOffice. To use it, just replace the sample goals with your own, inserting new rows as needed. You will enter the amount you want to save, the date you want to start saving, and the date when you will need the money. Once your goals are in place, come back on a regular basis and update your bank balance in cell B2. The spreadsheet will keep a running total and show you exactly how much you have available to spend.

What Should I Track?

It is up to you to decide how many goals you want to track. Me, I put in anything more than $100 that I know I'll need by a certain date. For example, here are some things I have on my list:

• the money to put a new door on the garage this summer
• the registration fee for next year's summer camp for the kids
• a Playstation3 in November (or an Xbox360 if it doesn’t pan out)
• money for Christmas gifts
• this year’s IRA and 529 contributions
• a new car, ten years from now

Hopefully that will get you started. Enjoy, and feel free to leave questions in the comments!

I want to access the music collection on our big Windows XP-running game-playing desktop PC from my recycled Linux laptop down in the basement. I found a lot of information on connecting to a Linux file server from a Windows client, but not much on going the other way round. A bit here, and bit there, and this is what I came up with.