I love my laser printer, a Brother HL-2070N. It is fast, has a network interface and on my Mac it installed itself automagically. Sadly, on my wife’s Mac it installed alright but all print jobs failed. Even tinkering with CUPS did not work. Luckily I found the solution on this Apple support page.
The solution is essentially to install a new version of the open source driver set called Gutenprint. The problem I faced was that the version I tried to install, 5.2.4, did not install fully. I tried the Gutenprint uninstaller that comes in the same dmg file but it failed to work. Downloading the previous version, 5.2.3, and installing it worked just fine. All that was left to do was add the printer as usual (using JetDirect/Socket) and instead of using the default Brother HL-2070N drivers, to use the “Brother HL1270N – CUPS + Gutenprint 5.2.3” driver.
Hope this helps and thanks to the folks from the Apple forums. This was a doozy to solve.
Started playing with the Google Apps Engine last night. Now that Java is supported, even I can be lured after the magical charm of what is close to the infinite scalability holy grail. These are my impressions spending a couple of hours with the tutorial:
1. Eclipse makes it easy
Google created a pretty nifty plugin for the latest generation of Eclipse to help you with app engine development. It generates some of the code you need and hides the boring stuff. It also contains a Jetty app server that helps you deploy apps locally for debugging.
2. Old Java, new tricks?
Google appears to want to simplify the uptake and adoption. Therefore the tutorial uses old school servlets and JSPs. Need to test deeper to see if there is any reason not to use more modern Sping framework and templating engines like Velocity. Doubt that.
3. It’s JDO, JPA: not your average ORM
This will take some getting used to. To gain access to the bounty of ‘infinite’ no headache (supposedly) storage you will need to get cozy with JDO or JPA. These mainstream Java standards are less popular than Hibernate and other ORM libraries. You will need to learn yet another framework. Had one nit here with an annotation specifying the type of primary key causing a bug.
Overall, though, things appeared polished and working. Cannot wait to play more.
If there was a one compelling feature to my Nokia N95-8GB it was its excellent camera. Photos in 5 megapixel resolution were crisp and nice, and the premise of video was always reassuring to have. Until videos started to stutter and general slow response time made it difficult to snap photos of my kids. The iPhone was not an option until the 3Gs model came out with a just-good-enough 3.2MP camera with video capability. The 2 year plus age difference between phones helped with CPU speed too – video on the iPhone is a reality. And like the N95, the iPhone geotags photos you take. That, intersecting with Nokia developing updates to newer versions of its Symbian OS and abandoning the N95 made my transition away to the iPhone simple. (N95 for sale, btw)
Yes, the iPhone camera is far from perfect. While the touchscreen is a phenomenal interface for setting the focal point for a photo, I would love having a photo timer or a way to reliably take self-photos without fumbling for the touchscreen photo button. Yet the iPhone’s photo apps make it so much better.
For about $10 (if you buy them on sale periods) these apps give you phenomenal versatility. The following is a not comprehensive review of the apps I bought and love.
PhotoGene
This app is a basic photo editor with the functionality you would most likely need and then some. This includes trim and rotate, contrast and saturation, basic filters, frames and title insertion. Very useful.
Pano
I love panorama photography. Getting full landscapes in a photo always gives you a much stronger impact and memory of the moment you were there. Pano is a straightforward tool that makes panoramic photos happen. You choose landscape or portrait orientation and start snapping photos from left to right. Overlap is simplified through a ghost image of the last photo you shot that is superimposed on the current view. Saved in full size as a total of its constituent shots, no skimpy resize. Love it!
CameraBag
This one is more of a play on photos that need extra help moving them from just bad to artistic. You can choose from 8 effect bundles to apply to your photo, including Lomo-like, 60s and 70s camera effects and others. Lots of fun mutilating iPhone camera mishaps or just any photo.
Fun.
TiltShift Generator
TiltShift photos make real photos look like they were actually toy or model images. For the real thing you could plunk hundreds of dollars for a tilt shift lens. There are also Photoshop tutorials on faking it and now there’s an iPhone app. It teaches you how to use its settings, tweaking photos to get the macimum effect. Well designed use of the touchscreen and plenty fun to use.
