Epson Happiness

After partially disassembling the Canon printer, we discovered that it's almost impossible to get to the part that is broken. I think I will still attempt a full disassembling some day, when I have lots of patience and time. In the meantime, we ended up buying a new printer - the Epson WorkForce 600. So far (after an hour) it seems very nice - nicer than the Canon it replaces. Only two downsides: it doesn't do duplex printing, and it installs some crapware. I had to search a bit on Google to find the following thread: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=648074

The install process was tedious, with about 6 installers kicking in at various times. But now the printer seems to be working well - wireless printing, good quality photos, better faxing. I'm happy.

Except the environmentalist inside is crying a little. Quite a waste of resources to buy another printer when we have one already. Hopefully we can fix it and then give it to someone who can use it.

Canon MP530 + Move = Unhappy

Electronic stuff is so frustrating when it breaks down. Our Canon MP530 printer starts up, makes a funny noise (funnier than what is normal) and flashes an error code: 5100. It then helpfully suggests to 'Check Printer'.

Searching the Internet reveals nothing useful, other than take cartridges out and put back a few times: http://www.fixya.com/support/t253745-canon_pixma_mp530_problem_error_code

Any suggestions? The costs to service these things is usually beyond worthwhile.

Palm Pre

Kudos to Palm for announcing a new smartphone platform. The venerable Palm OS needed a vast overhaul, or to be put to pasture. The Pre with WebOS looks quite interesting. Of course, it's not available yet. 'First half of 2009' and no price given. Apple did much the same thing with the iPhone - releasing it in June of 2007 ('first half').

So the blogsphere seems to be having fits of joy over the phone, but no one has actually got to use one yet. All of the first impressions were one-on-one demos given by Palm employees.

Anyway, I find it interesting in Gizmodo's comparison (see here: Gizmodo: In a Nutshell..), that they gave the nod for item #4, Development platform, to the Pre... well, they had, before they updated their list. Anyway, it seems odd. Apple initially told developers to develop for the iPhone using 'JavaScript, HTML, and CSS' and developers yelled out loud for a native SDK. Apple eventually delivered, but has continued to push the capabilities on the web side. You can now create an iPhone web application that:
1. you can create a custom launch icon and let users save it to the home screen (and when it's launched, the Safari chrome can be hidden)
2. store information in a local database
3. capture and respond to multi-touch gestures
4. dynamic animations such as screen flips and slides
5. use accelerated graphics via canvas blocks

There are still some capabilities web apps on the iPhone are missing, but by and large you can create an iPhone web application that does almost everything a native app can do.

Unfortunately, no one seems to know this...

Senate Reform...

Nooooooo....

A Globe article today mentions how a key task of the 'new' Conservative government is Senate reform. I'm all in favour of cleaning up the Senate - it needs to become more effective and less a patronage position. However, I totally disagree with it become elected.

Why?

Because in this past election only 59.1 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot. There is no point in having more than three levels of government elections! Seriously, how many people are going to care who their senator is?

I don't know what the best solution is, but there has to be other options. What about allowing provincial governments to appoint Senators for fixed terms?

Civilization's Last Chance

Here's a scary article in the LA Times: Civilization's last chance

It still frustrates me that there are so many people denying that global warming even exists. Of course we don't know exactly what will happen, but the vast vast majority of people who have spent their lives researching climate change are saying that the planet is heating up. Even worse, they are saying that we are rapidly approaching the tipping point, after which the earth will take over for us and heat up even faster.

It's like pushing a big boulder. It takes a lot of effort to get it moving, but once it goes, stopping it is even harder.

Remember this: 350 is the magic number. And we are at 385...

On running Leopard on old hardware

Original Commentary here...

For the record, I'm running Leopard on a (nearly) two year old MacBook (1.83 GHz Core Duo), which was the low-level entry machine of the time. Mac OS X is very responsive and quick on the machine. Certainly better than Vista on the comparable (Core 2 Duo) Dell desktop that I have.

Actually, I have found with each upgrade of Mac OS X, that the computer feels faster than before. Apple seems to put a lot of effort into optimizing with each release.

I would like to half a Mac Pro

Rob Griffiths at MacWorld has built himself a Mid-Mac from the ground up. It's certainly a tempting proposition, what with the Psystar kurfluffle and all. As one of the commenters on the MacWorld article says, the machine I would like to get is about 1/2 of a Mac Pro. The Pro is a neat machine and all, and pretty powerful, but ultimately it is more than I need and a lot more expensive. Apple, make a small tower machine that's similar to the iMac in capability but expandable! Thanks.