Author Archives: daniel

How much ink is really left?

PC World did an investigation of how much ink is left in an inkjet cartridge when the printer claims it's empty. In the case of the Canon MP610 (the same printer I have) the printer stopped when there was still 24% of the ink remaining. (via Lifehacker)

Happily there apparently is an override for this, at least with many recent Canon printers:

1. Turn off the printer
2. Hold the Resume Button (red circle in the triangle), add a printer (click “Power”) an indicator light green.
3. Hold the Power Button, release the Resume Button.
4. Not releasing the Power Button, double click “Resume” and release Both Buttons.
5. Click “Resume” for Four times
6. Once you click “Power”, to confirm the selected action (reset counter absorber). To disable the printer “Power” button to click again.

A quick Google should hopefully find workarounds for other brands of printer too.

YouTube goes widescreen

Youtube wide with 4:3 contentYouTube has gone widescreen (note: this link currently breaks if your YouTube preference is for a non-US locale, eg for Aussies you end up here, which currently displays nothing).

The only catch of course is that 4:3 videos now appear letterboxed… or whatever the vertical term for letterboxed is.

My question is: why? Why not just make the player (at least on the YouTube web site) the aspect ratio of the video that it's playing?

In fact at the moment, embedded 16:9 videos still appear letterboxed; 4:3 videos “full screen” … what should happen is that the embedding code should define the player size and so match the video's aspect ratio.

Surely it can't be that hard to avoid those black bands?

Layer changes

I just got the complete Young Ones new DVD release. Great to see these episodes again (and unlike previous DVDs, uncut).

But unbelievably, they put the disc 1 layer change in the stupidest spot ever. Rather than put it between episodes, or even at a quiet spot within an episode, they put it in the middle of a song (Dexys Midnight Runners singing “Jackie Wilson Said”).

Idiots!

Haven't checked yet where the disc 2 layer change is. The disc 2 layer change is at the start of a song in Time.

Previous rant about DVD layer changes.

Lost in translation

Welsh translationNews that council workers in Wales sent an email request to their translation officer to translate the English “No entry for heavy goods vehicles”… what they got in reply was an Out Of Office reply in Welsh, but not realising, they printed that on the sign.

So the Welsh part of the sign reads: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”

Youtube RSS feeds

It's not widely publicised, but Youtube publishes RSS feeds so you can track the latest uploaded videos from your favourite users.

They take the form: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/USER/uploads

Quite handy at times.

Acrobat rant

I knew there was a reason I'm an Acrobat luddite. What moron decided the toolbar options most frequently sought in a hurry, rotate page, should be removed from the default toolbars in Acrobat Reader 8? (The corporate PCs just got upgraded from 7 to 8. I haven't tried 9 yet.)

To get the Rotate back: View / Toolbars / More Tools. Scroll down the window to the options for the Page Display Toolbar and turn on Rotate Clockwise and Rotate Anti Counter-Clockwise.

Now, can someone explain to me how Acrobat has bloated so much over the years?

Acrobat versions sizes

And WTF was the deal with version 7.05?!