Tuesday, February 17, 2009

 

Open Source Inkjet Printer!

Whoever or whatever comes up with the first viable project to develop the kit with hardware and software for a reasonable to use open source inkjet printer, guess what? The world will be beating a path to your door! Trust me on this. The build quality of most consumer-grade commercially made printers can now be confirmed to suck ass. If parts break when clearing what should be a simple to remove paper-jam, then something is seriously wrong with the design. Either somebody cheaped out in the materials used, or the design is flawed and has inadequate access provided for clearing the problem. A paper jam should be user servicable. Also there is still a problem with overpriced ink...

Now I can only imagine an open-source printer with plans available. If you've got the machine shop to make it, great. But also there should be various places where you could order the kit. And I wouldn't care if it costs $300 in kit form from a good distributor. If I know what I'm getting is a fully user servicable product (if I put it together, I should darn well know how to take it apart.) that's cheap to run and made of actual sturdy components, that is money well spent. And I'm sure people wouldn't mind another premium of money on top of that for a fully assembled unit. I think if the right team got on it, HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark, etc. would all get off their complacent and semi-negligent collective arses and finally give the people what we've been asking for.

So, is anyone up to task? An open source printer is really needed in a very complacent and user-unfriendly market. I know I want one.

Labels: , ,


 

Damn printer!

After 2 year or so of ok service, my mom complained of a paper jam. She had already opened it in an attempt to clear the jam with no success. So I looke inside and managed to yank what paper I could from the top and from the back panel. Then I figured closing it would allow the feed mechanism to loosen the rest so I could go back in and get it. No dice! It wouldn't close. The alignment of the top was off. Badly. As it turns out, one of the hinges on the top broke. The plastic was too fragile, and my mom must have lifted it too far while expecting better access.

So if you have a Hewlet Packard 3200 All in One series, be forwarned - the lid hinges are fragile! Perhaps way too fragile, especially if an ol' lady break them without really trying.

But I'm kinda disappointed now. Other than the hinge, and a stupid interface that doesn't easily let you select the smaller photo paper (have to use a USB stick workaround), that printer wasn't too terrible. Now that we're back in the market for a new one, it's going to be difficult since I hear most of the quality these days is crap. Too bad there isn't a viable open-source printer just yet (or an all-in-one with scanner for that matter). If there was, I'd buy such a kit over the non-servicable commercial units pronto!

Labels: , , , ,


Friday, February 06, 2009

 

Tinnitus sucks

I'm not sure why, but I feel like I have a ghost of a lonely Tibicen canicularis stuck between my ears. Or in other words, a particular type of dog-day cicada. I know for sure it's not one perched outside the window, since it's 10 below freezing or so on this early February day. But it's just loud enough (perception wise) to be annoying and the cicada noise is what it sounds like. I guess I need to turn on a radio or something. Also I suspect too much caffiene from having some Mt.Dew to be partially at fault. Usually I've been pretty good at laying off the stuff.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

 

Funny Slashdot Quotes...

I'm probably relatively light as far as being a technical geek goes (I can't program worth squat, if you could consider my mediocre fiddling with Action/javascript to be programming), but I still read slashdot because of the thought-provoking topics it goes into. But what I find funny are some absurd quotes, but specifically ones that are absurd and even funnier when taken out of context. I figure if I collect enough of them, I'll make a dozen illustrations to go with them. Sort of like a backwards engineered Far Side calendar, but probably not as good as what Gary Larson would have come up with.

Anyhow, here's some of the random quotes:
"No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."
I suppose I'll trudge on, whether I'm really just a marionette or not.
Do you stand underneath the spinning blades of a nice, Green-friendly power generating windmill and eat the birds and bats that are beaten to death and fall to the ground so that some electrons can make your Wii glow and amuse you?
Also, pigs soar above the frozen wasteland that was hell.
So thanks for nothing buddy, you're about as much use as a poopy flavoured lollipop.
Jesus will forgive you, then He will adapt and evolve to deal with the perils of living in the trash can. Or being undead in the trash can.
These aren't suspension bridges, as the comparison to the George Washington bridge in the article clearly shows. They are rope bridges.
Do you really think the suits upstairs can tell the difference between Linus and Zaboomafoo the Typing Lemur?

I just need four more good ones, and I'll have what I need to make my own little wall calendar art. I can just picture two sabertooth tigers talking to each other for that first one, and if you can also see that, you can tell that random debates of countless debating geeks makes for fun material to work.

Labels: , , , , , , ,


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?