Category: Technical

I have used a variety of photo printing systems to have photos printed in the past year. Now a year after starting most of my accounts with these printers, I am receiving emails stating that my photos will be deleted if I do not order from these places. I do not quite get this. I uploaded my photos for printing only, not for storage, but apparently, I am the only one who does this and somehow I am supposed to be shocked and horrified and rush out to order prints that I don’t need. Between my new photo printer, ShutterFly and Fromex Labs (QPrints) I have more than enough ways to get things printed without having to order them from the photo-whores of Kodak Gallery, RitzPix or Walgreens.

As for actual storage, my 500GB drive and its 300GB backup are doing fine with storing my photos without me having to worry about anything. If those get full, I simply replace them, and then I get to keep a copy of my photos that I control without being at the mercy of giant photo printers to keep them safe.

So far, if I were to review the HP DeskJet 6940, I would have to say that I am not impressed. The printing speed is no where near what HP claims, the driver is a bear to install (and also WILL NOT install on Windows Server 2003 with the CD provided) and its paper detection seems to be a bit off, as it drowned one of my high gloss office papers with ink. The advantages are a really nice web interface for configuration, overall an easy to use ink carriage and the prints are very smooth (no lines or roller marks). I’m not highly excited by the printer, but I will keep working with it, and try photo papers and stuff with it.

I do not fully understand why people keep reviewing netbooks and trying to determine if they are underpowered. It is true that the netbooks came from things like the One Laptop Per Child program, but the new generation of these devices, produced by Dell, HP and Asus are quite different. I do not believe that these systems should be compared to their full size counterparts at all, but sometimes, you don’t need all of that power. I personally use my laptop and my netbook, each for different roles. My netbook is primarily for things like checking email, viewing pictures and doing classwork. My laptop is for tasks like photo editing, watching videos and doing everything else.

To make this simple, it pisses me off that people are trying to compare two completely different types of systems and try to make something simple and mobile seem like it is an underpowered “toy”.

How socially handicapped can a society become? I have been ignoring the recently “twitter trend” of micro-blogging and instant status updates, mostly just hoping that Twitter would pass and then life could return to normal. Unfortunately, when your favorite porn star begins to tweet and speaks of how widespread the disease has become, it gets a little harder to ignore. So I must turn my attention to questioning, what’s the big deal with Twitter?

I blog because its what I do. I have been blogging for nearly 5 years and I have never questioned why I do it. It is a written record of where I have been and what I have done. Do Twits think the same way? To me Twitter seems as though it is more directed at replacing conversation. Instead of writing an email or calling someone when you arrive somewhere or calling to talk to someone about what you did during the day, you just twit and everyone knows instantly. Seems boring and kind of anti-social, and for some people, they will soon discover that no one really cares what they are doing.

I sometimes really enjoy Microsoft’s ways of manipulating its community.

I received my MCP Flash/TechNet message announcing the availability of Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate this morning. I read over the message and found only one thing a little strange about it. The following line, which I can only assume is designed to prevent choking of the download network:

“So you don’t need rush to make sure you get your copy. When you’re ready to download the RC, it’ll be waiting for you.”

That went along with a statement that the RC would be available from May 5 until June 30 and that unlimited keys are available. BTW, what is with MS and their need to use June 30 for everything? June 30 is the end of life for Windows XP, end of several certification exams (and exam tracks), as well as the end of their IT Academy certification voucher program.

I am personally looking forward to Windows 7s RTM day and getting a chance to play with the final bits. I have been running with the beta on my desktop since shortly after it was released and am quite pleased with the stability and overall usability of the OS. I will likely be one of the people who makes the conversion from Windows XP to Windows 7 on most of my systems(assuming I can get enough keys through my varying channels).

I have been attempting to use Nikon Transfer on the Mini to transfer images back to the server from the memory card from the camera. I have run into a curious little problem with it though, everything works fine up until the point when I click “transfer”, when the application crashes, and I get the Windows diagnostic dialog boxes. This issue first occurred on the Mini, the app works great on the laptop (and probably will on the sever as well if I let it install).  The app crashes on the Mini as well as on two virtual machines running the same installation of Windows as the Mini. At first I thought it might be possible that Jasper (the internal SDHC reader’s driver manager). The VMs and the Mini’s install are all three from an nLite configuration. I guess that means I left off something important (but I remembered ACPI support and Image Acquisition this time). The laptop has its image from nLite as well, so its not just the stripped down version, there is something specific that I have done that has highly pissed off the software. I have had no luck in trying to decipher the problem. I sent the problem to Nikon a few days ago before I had a chance to try the software on the virtual machines. I am hoping that maybe if Nikon responds today that they may be able to tell me what Windows component the software is relying on that I whacked, so that I may either get my Windows installation to install the required part, or so that I may redo the nLite image, but this time remembering to not kill whatever I neglected to include last time. nLite is useful, but it allows one to get into trouble with pruning excess shit…. hmm.. maybe I should try nLite on Vista.

The machine with the reader can’t use the transfer tool to make things easier and putting the cards in the laptop is more trouble than doing things manually from the Mini.