I’ve finally decided on a theme for my website! I’ve been playing about with ideas for a couple of weeks now and finally have decided on what sorta look I want to go for – I am blaming the entire thing on that bunch of trouble-makers over at LUGRadio. For those with an interest, I hope to have a proof ready by the weekend!

In other news, I’ve ordered myself a Tapwave Zodiac 2 – with DeskDock, Leather Carrycase and an extra 512Meg RAM – including what I already have here for it, that’ll give the whole unit a grand-total of 704Mb of RAM. Enough to hold a movie or 3

I’ve been thinking about a handheld video/media player for a while – I wanted something I could watch movies on, play games, listen to MP3s and, preferably, be productive too.  The productivity thing was sort of a bolt-on for me, as I already have an Ipaq 3870 running Familar – development release (which I have posted about it before) so wasn’t too stressed about that.

So, anyway, I did some reading and Video playback on the PSP looks pretty sucky, VERY limited support on resolutions and codecs. Sure the Games will rock but MP3s and Video have to go on MemoryStickProDuoThingyWhat which are lots more expensive than SDD/MC. What’s worse is there’s virtually no community development happening on/for it right now and the European launch has been delayed indefinitly…. (Oh yeah, Movies on UMD suck-balls. Why should I buy two copies of a film, one on DVD and one these pointless coasters of inevitable failure?)

The PSP does have 802.11b, of course – which is the main thing the Zodiac is missing – but I can happily buy a SDIO Wifi/Memory combined card to solve that problem – especially considering it has to SD slots anyway! 

So, apparently, it’ll be here on Monday – by which I plan to have myself a little test-suite made up on a 64Mb SD card – some video, a few MP3s and a game or 3. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know what I think of it when it arrives!

I’m off to look for pictures of computers now…. 

Yeah, I know! This is getting bloody stupid!

Hermione’s printer died.  I was in bed at the time, Lois was doing the that 100% coverage job I mentioned, and 2 pages the printer reports error "##345" which according to Google, a bunch of Germans and a fish means:

• Incorrect print head cleaning
• Foreign bodies within the carriage range, please remove
• Cleaning unit (Purgeunit) replace

The print-head doesn’t need cleaning, the cleaning unit isn’t full but could do with a clean itself, it’s pretty glooped up. But I suspect that there’s something more to it than this….

Everytime the print-head tries to move there’s a very distinct sound. For anyone who’s ever played with battery operated Technic-Lego, you’d recognise this. The distinct sound of "blocks not quite clipped together and rotating cog not getting enough traction to move its neighbour and grinding like a bugger". (Lego taught me so much about life, perhaps this explains the problems I have with sex )

In short, the print-head won’t move, unless "by hand" – I’m going to take the MPC apart at some point this week – but Lois kindly reminded me that it’s going to be a busy week, this week. I’ve gotten a hidiously important appointment that I thought was not until the end of the month this Thursday. (My tribunal on my CFS/ME DLA hearing. Such a bloody farse. How can one branch of the government say, "Yeah, he’s so ill he needs nursing/home-help care." and the other say, "You’re fine, get a job". It’s enough to make (and has made) me sob on occasion!) – so anyway, while I think the error message is in error, it does, atleast, agree with my thoughts – something interior (aka pass me that screwdriver, please) is playing up and thus making it seem the printhead is jammed.

Readers Tip: cogs that are wearing down, as a short-term fix until you can replace them properly, can often be bulked up with plumbers PTFE tape. But not for too long  

The "upshot" of this is that the MPC400’s printhead is now in the (self) serviced S520 – and printing fine.  Atleast we have some sort of high-quality print solution working. As an aside/note to reader: quality of print result is directly proportional to the qualify of paper you use. Moreso than the printer used (as long as it’s "relativly good", and clean, and not to cruddy). We use "Satin Inkjet Photo Paper"@220g/m2 for most stuff (we have a decent Stationary Box in Harrogate that has almost every type of printer paper imaginable in their own brand, often superior to "brand-names" and lots cheaper. HP charge something like £0.25 per sheet for their version of what we use) – and it looks and feels like a proferssional pohtograph – just like is says on the box – at only slightly more than £0.10 per sheet, it’s not cheap "for paper", but very cheap for what it is. And, believe me, it is worth it. Clients notice.

With that, I’m off to watch 24! (Season 4, Episode 12. *grin*) 

Well, quite a lot of things, I am sure, but this has to be one of the best:

3×3 Post-it^® on glass
4 floors x 1 window
E2 Building UCSC

I’m impressed. This is just another reason I want a "real job" – I’ve done stuff like this before, and no matter how much fun you think it look, it’s more.

I would like to say, "If that was my child, I’d flip at them wasting my hard-earnt money I used to send them to University." and moan like the old man I am (or atleast pretend to be) – but it’s not true, I’d probably ask why they never video-taped it! After all, atleast they did it at night, it’s not like they were sciving lectures or something and wouldn’t it have made the greatest time-lapse sequence to watch!

I’ve noticed that some of the smilie/emoticon graphics for this HTML/WYSIWYG thing don’t work on dark backgrounds, so I’m going to nutralise them a little. I hope.

This page will show my “work in progress” – I’ll do another weblog entry when it’s finished, so you don’t need to keep checking back, unless you’re curious.

Image Name	Original	My Hack
mellow.gif
huh.gif
happy.gif
ohmy.gif
wink.gif
tongue.gif
laugh.gif
cool.gif
rolleyes.gif
sleep.gif
dry.gif
smile.gif
wub.gif
mad.gif
sad.gif
unsure.gif
devil2.gif
surrender.gif
furious.gif
clap.gif
king.gif
help.gif
flush.gif
bye.gif
wallbash.gif
thumbup.gif
thumbdown.gif
drunk.gif
smoke.gif

I shall add some, I think, too. I’m not sure….   I want to investigate how they intergrate into Wordpress’ own emoticon thingy too.