Bad Science

Ben Goldacre's web site Bad Science has some wonderfully insightful essays on science in the media and the abuse of science by irresponsible researchers. I'd write more but I would just be repeating Ben's stuff and you could already be there reading right now. So scoot! There is a lot to read. You may want to get a cup of nice tea first or warm milk. Mmmm, polyphenols and tryptophan.

Serenity

This is the movie you were looking for ... when you went to see star wars. Exceedingly entertaining and should put a whole horde of people onto the Firefly series that got stopped because marketing screwed up.

Go see it ... when it comes out at the end of September 2005. So very highly recommended.

Consumables (ink, toner, bulbs)

A couple years ago I had wanted to do some printing at home and found that my Canon BJ-30 had bitten the dust. Sad. I never really used the printer much but when I had it always produced crisp pages. The cost of ink really hurt though, which soon found me with alternate brands and refill kits. Seems that a lot of the ink from refills would end up over my fingers. That wasn't too bad because the ink was water soluble. Too bad if you got a couple drops of water on your document; smears and runs.

The problem is that the cost per page for inkjet printing is very high. Fortunately the cost of small laser printers had plummeted. I investigated the various printers in my price range then went out and bought a Lexmark E210. The cost per page is about 5 cents. Compared to the 25 cents per page I was paying for the old Canon. Modern printers are even MORE expensive per page, with colour prints around 75 cents per print for Canon (90+ cents for Kodak, Sony, Olympus, 50 cents for HP and Epson).

The downside to the little laser is that it is all black and white. Which actually is fine by me. If I want a print that bad then I can go to OfficeWorks, BigW or KMart and get one for 20 to 30 cents - and I don't have to buy any hardware.

My laser at 5 cents per page is looking pretty damned fine. Well after about a year and a half the toner ran low. Obviously I don't print that much. So I hunted around for the replacement toner.

When I was purchasing my laser printer I asked for the costs of consumables. The evil Harvey Norman salesman said the toner cartridges cost around $70. When I asked for two he ummmmd and arrrrd and claimed they were out of stock. I thought nothing more of it. But when it came time for me to get a new toner cartridge I find they are priced $110-$150. If I had known at the time that the salesman was lieing then I think I would have punched him in the face and left the store. Well. Maybe not, but sales tactics like this really really suck. I have encountered it before. The place I work for wanted a new data projector, so I purchased a one from a company and they stated that the bulbs would cost $200. One year later the bulbs cost $700. Another salesman told me that this was a standard tactic at the time. Well data projectors were getting popular and we required two more. This time, however, I ordered 4 spare bulbs. The salesman was desperately trying to talk me out of it, saying they would deteriorate over time, the warranty would expire (as if they EVER put warranty on bulbs). I had my way though, got the bulbs and, as it turned out, saved a couple thousand dollars. Of course, NOW they charge full price on the bulbs straight away.

So I hunted around for the best price for a replacement toner cartridge. I also wanted the toner straight away because I wanted to do some printing that evening. So cheap and in stock. I checked EBay for a ball park price and then I phoned about 12 companies. One company, Trendsetta Media, claimed that they made the cartridges themselves, but it would take a day to get it from their warehouse. Apparently everyone uses the same warehouse in Brisbane and nobody wants to carry stock. Bastards. The last two comapnies I checked actually had the cartridge on the shelf; Harvey Norman for $149 and the small place across the road from me - Cartridge World, a remanufactured cartridge for $78. Woohoo! That's 3 cents per page! How freakin' happy was I? Plugged in the toner and now I am printing new crisp pages!

There are a lot of other brand laser printers for under $300. I highly recommend having a look and if you will probably save a bundle.

So many companies want me to blog with them

Everyone is after me to add content to their company's blog site. I am guessing that they believe the content is free to them and they can slip some advertising in and around the blog. In return you get free blog space. Not that anyone ever reads blogs that much.

I first started blogging on a personal web server running on my own personal computer. The page was accessed only by a couple workmates. One of the workmates, Dave, decided he wanted to do something larger and came up with the money for web space and a domain name: POP1. I wrote the code and a number of workmates contributed content but the whole site suddenly died when the ISP took off, leaving us all high and dry without server space or even our data. I still had most of the content from a backup that I kept so I dumped it onto a Geocities site but unforunately the pages are static - no more additions until we could set something else up. Eventually POP1 was resurrected but became more of a personal blog for Dave.

Not that I have much time to toy with these things anyway, but toy I did. This place for instance is quite good. Hotmail has attached "My Space" which appears reasonably flexible in a WYSIWYG way, but is acually quite stifled from adding any of your own code or plugins. Yahoo's image based Flickr seems interesting in a rigid sort of way. I just had in mind using it as a photobucket type thing but they encrypt the image access and the tag they use contains javascript which this and numerous other sites will reject from entering into your blog text.

I have a web server on my ADSL account and may create something in the future but at the moment, the free public options are more than enough.

Cold Callers

There is a fix for cold callers. You don't need to be rude. Just explain what you believe and they go away. It doesn't take long.

"I have a personal policy where I never give money out to cold callers, sorry." If they persist, which none have to date: "Please don't try to talk me into compromising my values." Any further and you say "I think you are being rude now, I am hanging up."

Do the same thing with door to door sales people. Except the hang up bit - replace that with closing the door.

Please don't feed these people. Starve them of their market and they will have to go get real jobs. Or starve and die. Either way is fine by me.

Curry

Man I make a mean curry.

Friends will claim that I pile on the chilli when I use it, and I have to admit that I have calmed down with the demon spice.

My curries have always been tasty and never painful. Not that I would shy away from a painful curry, I can handle that challenge. I certainly wouldn't want that sort of thing regularly. When it comes to making my own, I like the tasty level. Ya, mix in some peas, corn, chopped steak then drop in some rice which you mix right in and you have the recipe for yum.

I don't have a large repitoire for generating my daily sustinance, but what I do create, I like very much.

Simple foods rock.

Web Cams

Web cams rock. You can set up some simple security in your house with software like Home Watcher or just take periodic simple snap shots using Cam Commander. You can also video chat using Yahoo Messenger or Microsoft Messenger.

If you have a permanent broadband connection, like cable or ADSL, then it isn't too hard to have your web cam up and going all day.

You will, of course, need a web cam. You should be careful because they are not all the same. There are some cheapo CMOS web cams out there that produce low res blurred images. There are some really nice cheap CCD web cams that produce images that are very sharp. A good idea is to get a web cam with a built in microphone, as they are generally good quality for chatting, although headphones with the pull down microphone seem to be taking over the world. I have never really had good luck with microphones as all the cheapo ones seem to be way too quiet / muffled no matter how I fiddle with drivers and filters.

If you have a bit of money to spend you can go hunting for network cameras. The good ones plug into your network and act as a web server or can be configured to upload images / video to a specified site. Wireless wifi cameras are also becoming more readily available - just set up your wireless network, configure the camera and place it where ever you wish.

Recently there have been google searches noted that allow you to find open cameras that you can freely access. Most of these are public places and offer an excellent way to view the world. To see live snow falling over a telescope dome in a forest while I am sitting here in sweltering weather is quite thrilling.

Amusing for a while anyway.

Yes there are many "Adult" sites that espouse web cam, but just avoid that stuff, they will ask you to download and run their virus ridden software that will fill your computer with advertisements. I have had to rescue way too many people from this sort of software. The dubious sites always seem to request your credit card details as verification - never ever give your details away unless you are absolutely certain that the company is legitimate and that the web site you are on is the exact web site of the company. There are so many web sites pretending to be a bank, or pay pal etc that you REALLY have to be careful.