Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with jack

What kind of hardware jack does my Sleek Audio SA1 headphones use?

SamuelF — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:44:21 -0800

Help me identify this audio jack. I purchased a pair of Sleek Audio SA1 headphones recently, partially because they come with a replaceable cord. Problem is, the tiny plug it uses seems to be some kind of secret, and me no likey proprietary hardware. I figure it must be some kind of common connector, but don't know enough to identify it on sight or know what to search for. You can see examples here and here. It's very small, much smaller than a normal headphone plug. The male plug has a hole in the middle (hee hee), and the female jack (in the earbud) has a smooth metal prong that fits in the middle of the male jack (hee hee). It's not just a plug-in-a-hole like a normal headphone jack.

Any ideas? And, thanks!

Help my find Jack Donaghy's Bar

jefficator — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:53:34 -0800

Where can I find a bar like Jacks? In Jack Donaghy's office on 30 Rock stands this bar. I like it. I want something similar, but smaller. I feel like Pottery Barn used to sell a little round version. But wherever it is, I want one. Where can I get it?

Jack the Ripper: A Starting Point?

snap_dragon — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:20:43 -0800

Can anybody recommend a good nonfiction book to read about Jack the Ripper? I am not sure what book is considered to have better scholarship of so many books out there and am not remotely a "Ripperologist" (yet). Like the Zodiac killer, many folks have their own pet theories and the Ripper books are plentiful on Amazon. Any info on where to start to read about ol' Saucy Jack would be appreciated. (Feel free to name more than one title if you want.)_

How do I check that my phone's contacts are safely backed up?

Marquis — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:38:27 -0800

How do I locate the contacts I've just sync'ed from my smartphone (Windows Mobile 6.1) on my PC? For a friend:

I've just installed ActiveSync 4.5 and have apparently successfully sync'ed my Samsung Jack to my PC.

I'm going to need to do a hard reset on the phone to solve some other issues (corrupted ringtones) and want to make sure that the sync'ed contacts are complete and intact. It's important that when I reset the phone, everything is there to import from backups. I'm terrified of losing the 500+ contacts in my Mobile Outlook.

Where are the contact files transferred to? They aren't in the file I've designated to receive all photos, sounds and other files.

Thanks!

Kirby Kreations

wittgenstein — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:47:12 -0800

Jack Kirby/Fourth World filter: I have a question about the real people that influenced Kirby characters in the Fourth World series. I have read that Mark Evanier was a model for Mark Moonrider, and that Mr. Miracle was based on Jim Steranko's magic, and that Big Barda was based on a Playboy picture spread of Lainie Kazan (sp?), and that Funky Flashman was Stan Lee and Houseroy was Roy Thomas. But what about the rest of the characters? Are there any other real world models I have not mentioned? I thought Mark Evanier said somewhere that almost all of the characters were based on real people, but maybe I dreamed that.

There's a jack stuck in my computer

Andy Harwood — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:37:25 -0800

I just unplugged my headphones from my PC to find that the top of the jack has broken off and is stuck inside the socket. Does anyone know how I could get it out?

Headphone jack Snapped Off Inside Laptop

zzazazz — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:55:11 -0800

I have about a quarter of an inch of a headphone jack snapped off inside my laptop due to a manic dachshund. Can you recommend a tool I can use to get it out? I've tried very small tweezers but I can't get in there. I attempted to open it up but stopped when I got to the point I didn't know what I was doing.

Dollar Store sucks

BrnP84 — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:18:12 -0800

Did this cheap POS from the dollar store really just break my computer headphone jack? I bought a 1/8 to composite cable from the dollar store and when I went to hook it up to my receiver nothing happened. My computer didn't seem to be affected, there just simply was no sound going through the speakers so I just assumed the cable sucked. Than I went to hook up my computer speakers back up and they don't work now. I used the computer speakers literally 5 min earlier and they worked fine, the power lights are on and I'm pretty certain they are in good working order. I have Apple care but did this cheap ass cable really just break my headphone input?

New Comcast phone service, but old jacks no longer work

blueberry — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:44:20 -0800

My mom switched to land-line phone service through Comcast, but now she only has one working phone jack. How do we restore functionality to the remaining outlets in the house? [This question is a bit long, but if you want to skim it, I think you can get by just reading the non-small text]

My mom recently switched to Comcast for cable/internet/phone. Cable and internet are fine, but it's the phone portion that's causing trouble.

Her house has a phone jack in each room. Back when she had "normal" phone service, the phones worked in every room. Since she changed to Comcast now there's only one phone outlet in the house that works.

Looking at the Comcast black box (that the cable from outside plugs into), there's a short phone cord (photo of the back of the Comcast box with phone cord circled here) that runs from the box to a little Comcast-installed connector-box on the wall. Looking at the little connector-box, I could see that from there, a wire seems to run down through a hole in the floor to the basement.

I'm guessing that during installation, the Comcast guy drilled this hole, went down to the basement and ran some phone cord from there over to just one phone jack (which is why it is just that one phone jack in the dining room that now works).

The problem is, we want her to go back to having phone access in every room (or at least back to having a phone in her bedroom and one on the second floor) so that she can hear it.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, we could just get her a cordless phone with 3 handsets and a charger for each room. However, my mom's hearing is not what it once was, so we want to get her a couple of phones with a blinking light, or something where you can plug in a lamp so that the lamp flashes when she gets a call. For this it seems like we'll need a phone jack in the same room where we want the flashing lights.

She has a cordless phone with a flashing base, but of course the flashing base is tethered to the one working phone jack in the dining room, so she never sees it. This leads to a lot of missed calls for her. Anyway, long story-short...

How do we restore functionality to the old phone jacks? I assume that the working phone cord would need to be "split" some way and then new wire fed to the old outlets... ?

Is this something a phone guy can do? Can Comcast do this? (I'll give Comcast a call when I have some time to sit on hold, but they're closed now and I thought maybe some fellow MeF's had run into a similar problem and might have some good advice.)

Thanks in advance

what is the correct term for musician jump kick

planetkyoto — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 05:27:00 -0800

What should I call it when a band is finishing a song and the guitarist hits the last chord while jumping in the air and jack knifing his/her legs back? I guess it's a way of putting an exclamation mark on the song, and, I suppose, to make sure that the other members of the band know that the song is ending here and not going around again. Should I just call it a "jump kick" or is there some preferred term among musicians. Any other insights into this practice are welcome, since I'm not a musician. This is for a documentary.

audiovox D1730

raphael19 — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:14:59 -0800

how do i use audiovox D1730 as a pc monitor? this device have 3.5mm audio and video plugs at the back along with an in/out switch. the problem is that i don't know any 3.5 video jacks, except the ones used with ipods/video-cameras, etc. (the 3.5mm jack with 3 rca output). do i use that cable, or any other cable which i am not aware of? (i will take the video input from the vga port of the pc with the audiovox's back switch at out position, so as to have a very light lcd monitor)

how to tell if phone jack is functional

giddygirlie — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:40:31 -0800

is this thing on? Phone jack not working. Is there a simple/easy/cheap/free way to tell if the phone jack in my bedroom works? I get a dead line when I plug in a phone, and I have already asked the phone company who had no idea and wanted to send out a technician for $150 and hour to figure it out.

Basically, I'm not sure if the jack is non-functional OR it was previously set up to have its own telephone number (thus, it doesn't work along with the rest of the jacks in the house).

If there's a way to find this out for less than $150, I'd be interested to know!

Funny like Jack Handey.

therubettes — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:49:47 -0800

If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's Hambone. I love the writings of Jack Handey. His Deep Thoughts (beware sound!) and his articles in the New Yorker. I would love to hear recommendations of similarly funny writings. I can re-read his writing without it's losing any of it's impact or ability to make me laugh.

I know humour is subjective (and doesn't dissect well), but a few of the things I love about his writing are:
The fact that its all punchline no filler (short attention span), not nasty just surreal and perhaps most of all it's his stupidity, petty concerns and dumb/skewed observations that get me.

David Sedaris has come up in searches for similar so I know about him. For those of you who haven't heard of Jack here are two of this thoughts and two articles:

Basically, there are three ways the skunk and I are a lot alike. The first is, we both like to spread our 'stink' around. The second is we both get hit by cars a lot. The third is stripes.

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

....there are hundreds of others.

Ideas for Paintings
Tatoo

Is Jack Vance hoaxing me? Does "The Lonton Times Historical Atlas" exist?

grumblebee — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:51:49 -0800

Is there such a book as "The London Times Historical Atlas"? Google and Amazon are clueless. In an interview published in 1986, Jack Vance stated that "the best way to teach someone to be a writer is to force them to read twenty books I would set out for them": he then names, in addition to Wodehouse and Baum, Cervantes's Don Quixote, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, Richard Adams's Watership Down and The London Times Historical Atlas ("my favourite book - I don't know of anything more clutching for the imagination"). -- Wikipedia [emphasis added]

working on a car - on a gravel driveway

bigmusic — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:59:17 -0800

I want to do minor maintenance on my cars (oil changes, brake checks, and so on), but I don't have a garage to do it in or a concrete driveway. All I have is a gravel / dirt driveway to work on. I would like to jack up my cars (and put them on jack stands), but I'm not comfortable at all doing it on this kind of surface. How can I do this without putting myself in harms way? I've thought about using pieces of plywood to put the jack stands on and chocking the rear tires - would this work or is there a better way?

Give me a satellite feed, now!

milarepa — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 07:40:22 -0800

Is there a version of stansdad.com for the show 24? Is there any place online that I can watch full episodes/seasons of 24? Please hurry! We don't have much time!

Two becomes one?

special-k — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 08:35:48 -0800

How can I rewire all my phone jacks to one line (from two)? There are two houses on my lot. House A has a landline. House B used to have a landline. I want all the jacks in house B to be hooked up to phone line A. Is there a simple way that I can do this by myself w/o paying the phone company a lot of money?

White Stripes Rock Influences

sully75 — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:48:14 -0800

I'm interested in the influences of The White Stripes I've loved the White Stripes for a long time. But lately it's becoming a borderline obsession. I'm very bummed I missed their Portland, Maine concert.

Anyway. I get all the blues influences, and the straight ahead rock influences (I think Meg sounds like I think John Bonham should have sounded).

But I hear, I think, things that sound like punk and detroit rock and really, a lot of stuff I don't know anything about. Maybe The Stooges or MC5? These are bands that I sort of blew by. Garage Rock? That's good?

So I'm looking for recordings I could check out that would fill in that background for me. I think it's angry 3 chord rock but I'm not really sure.

Any record tips?

Laptop Front Audio Input Concerns

Overzealous — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:56:02 -0800

Are front headphone jacks on a laptop computer a real pain? I need to get a new laptop and several of the models I like have the audio jacks right under the mousepad, directly where my palm would go when I'm mousing.

Any heavy headphone users out there have one of these models? Is your headphone jack always in the way? Is this the only spot left on a notebook computer to put an input?

Don't call me Dirty Harry.

Gordion Knott — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 03:02:25 -0800

When Jack Bauer unholsters his sidearm, he invariably cups his left hand and uses it to support the right. Have movie heroes from Gary Cooper through Dirty Harry been fooling us all along? You'd think the two-handed approach would be used to improve aiming, but that's not always the case -- last night, in a repeat of an episode on DVD, he knocked Tony Almeida to the ground and pointed his gun at him with both hands. From point blank range.

I'm no gun nut, but the grip on pistols seems designed for one-handed holding and aiming. What's the deal here? Is the two-handed technique a passing fad? Has it been used since way-back-when, despite movie characterizations?

What's the purpose? Aiming at a target, or stabilizing the gun against recoil -- or a kick from an enemy? Is the two-handed technique part of a specific special ops technique in Bauer's arsenal?

Have Chloe Patch Me Through.

jtajta — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:22:57 -0800

How realistic is the exchange of information in the show 24? So obviously, the show's completely unrealistic, but I wonder how close actual technology comes to what we see on the show. If you worked for the most hooked-up intelligence agency in the world - I'm assuming the CIA - and had a team of people devoted solely to getting you information, with the highest level technology available, could you theoretically be as efficient and connected as Jack Bauer is?

Would you be able to have someone "patch you through" instantly; download any maps onto your device; trace any call; intercept messages; tap into surveillence cameras and let you peer in on your pdA; track cars on city streets; and so on?

Tip of Headphone Plug Stuck in MacBook Jack!

hidinginabunker — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:25:43 -0800

I was using the headphone jack on my macbook and moved it around slightly when the sound suddenly cut out. I soon realized that the very tip of the headphone plug had broken off and gotten stuck inside the jack, and the rest of the plug remained intact. I tried using a small refrigerator magnet to see if it would draw the broken bit out, but it didn't, and i didn't want to try a more powerful magnet because I don't know where the hard drive is in the computer. I was thinking maybe getting some pointy tweezers and taking the battery out so I don't electrocute myself while poking around in the jack? any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Make me Jack

brautigan — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 13:31:04 -0800

How to look like Jack? I'm attending a rather fetishistic / burlesque club night where the theme is "Greed Is Good", and the dress code is very much Millionaire. The SO has her Paris Hilton look down to a tee and I've decided to dress a la Jack Nicholson given my greying hair and paunch.

I have a single breasted dinner jacket, pants and tux but what else would set off the Jack look. What cigars does he smoke? What make are his trademark shades and what else would make a non-Jack look Jack?

Any links to UK suppliers would be great.

Many thanks.

Help me find this Jack Russell print!

saucy — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 04:13:06 -0800

Help me find this Jack Russell print! My parents absolutely adore their Jack Russell, and I want to get them a print for Christmas. I saw it at an O'Charleys in another state (can't go back and look at it again.) I believe it had the photographer's name on the print.

One of the prints had a Jack Russell, sitting on the kitchen floor, staring up at the refrigerator which had a pie sitting on top of it. (I think that's it, anyway--there were two prints in the resturaunt, so I may be combining the two.)

Identifying a 70s/80s animated Jack & The Beanstalk cartoon.

NationalKato — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:54:07 -0800

Help me identify this animated Jack & The Beanstalk film from the 70s/80s... I remember watching this sometime in the late 70s or early 80s. It was the basic Jack & The Beanstalk foundation, but once Jack climbed up the beanstalk he encountered a beautiful singing princess being held captive in the castle by an evil witch and her dumb giant. Jack rescues the princess and foils the witch's evil intent.

And for some reason, it scared the bejeezus out of me as a child.