Archive for the 'Tech' category
Catching Up
12-April-07 7:37 pmA Magnificent Mushroom Cloud in the Sky
26-November-06 11:22 amThanksgiving came and went, and now Christmas lights are up everywhere around town. Kim and I spent Thanksgiving together. We were planning on having her family coming down and having dinner, then using the time off to move into the Place Across the Street. However, we postponed moving out until the 3rd of December. So Kim and I went to Golden Corral for Thanksgiving. That was a pretty terrible idea, since the place usually ranks about a 3 stars out of 10 in my non-patented, completely fictional and made up on the spot restaurant guide. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the few days off from work.
Entertainment has been found recently in my new game, Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Playing on servers with live air traffic controllers makes the simulation game even more real.
I also stumbled upon on a new [to me, anyway] series called Paranoia Agent. Besides my euphoria for Cowboy Bebop (re: this blogs nomenclature, my personalized license plate), I never could get much into anime. Paranoia Agent, however, has a suspenseful miniseries feel. The series consists of 13 episodes - half of the Cowboy Bebop series - and does a great job of not appearing too campy (something most other anime shows seem to be).
For home, I have some great new toys that will be nice to have in the Place Across the Street once we move over there. First is my Jinzora-based music server. With my music collection on one computer, I can play any song from any computer in my house or any other broadband connected PC in CD-quality sound. By typing “mediaserver” into my web browser on any of my LAN PCs, I can bring up my music collection, sort and create playlists, view and print album artwork, read lyrics, and (obviously) stream music. I’m not openly streaming my collection to the general public, but there is a demo at jinzora.org:
With Jinzora installed, I added a “Currently Listening To:” script on the right-hand side of this blog so people can see what the server is playing. It’s not perfect though. I’m thinking of extracting the artist each time a new track is displayed as being played, and then linking the “now playing” text to an Amazon search or something. Also, if I close my player, it still shows the last song I listened to as the “current song.” I can probably psuedo-fix this by creating a script to the effect of:
If song_currently_played is older than 1 hour
then display "Not currently listening to anything"
The next toy is my new TV that I got from Dell. I get discounts from Dell, and every year in November my employer will pay for my Dell purchases. I then pay back my employer over the next 12 months, interest free. My new TV is actually a Dell, DLP HD projector and 106″ HD screen. I’m waiting until I move before I set up my nearly 9ft HD TV, especially since the living room in the Place Across the Street has surround sound built into the ceiling (thanks Adam for leaving your speakers.
)Work has been going pretty slow. I had my usual 3-day weekend, worked one day, had two days off for thanksgiving, worked one more day, and now I’m back to my usual 3-day weekend. Most supervisors and managers took the entire Thanksgiving week off, so I probably won’t find anything out about getting the promotions until Wednesday.
Scientists make Harry Potter-like ‘cloak of invisibility’
29-October-06 11:24 pmNew Toys
23-October-06 4:21 pmMy new printer came from UPS today, a Dell Laser MFP 1815dn. It retails for $419 (currently on sale until Nov. 1 for $339), but my work’s employee discount made it $279.
It’s a black-and-white only laser printer/scanner/copier/fax @ 27 pages per minute. It hooked up via ethernet to my network, allowing all PCs (Both our desktop and laptops, 4 PCs total) to use it without printer sharing in Windows. Some of the advanced functions are unique for any printer I’ve owned.
Beyond being a traditional printer, scanner, or copier, the 1815dn can scan images to any PC. It prompts you on its LCD screen which computer’s “My Documents” folder to save the image to, but it can also scan into other programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word. To this extent, I can scan an image, select any of the four computers in our house on the LCD screen, then it will save the image to the selected computer. It can also scan to, or print documents from, a USB key plugged into the front of the printer. Last, you can type in an email address on the printer’s keypad and your scanned document will automatically be emailed out to whomever as a PDF attachment from the printer - no PCs even need be turned on.
Anyway, we were definitely due for a new printer. Kim and I print almost daily for school related papers. The ink cartridges on our inkjet printers were $40 and could only go about 300 sheets before needing more ink. A 5,000-page toner cartridge for the laser printer costs me about $70, which is definitely a better cost-per-page value that will make up for the cost of a new printer.
The status monitoring and setup is easy, too. Since it’s networked on the LAN (and has its own IP address), I can just type in its address in my browser (i.e. “http://192.168.0.5″) and I can see from any one of our computers how much ink and paper is available, and change options just as if I were at the printer’s LCD menu.
