Fighting Ninja Turtles

Thank you for taking an interest in me. I must say that I am a little flattered that you decided to follow me in your little blue mini from the front of my house to outside my uni on Victoria Parade.

Most psychopathic stalkers would drive a vehicle that isn’t so conspicuous. But you took the high road making sure I knew you were always there by my side. I asked the bus driver to sideswipe you but he complained about panel damage and broken windows. It’s really hard to find good help these days.

I know you ring my home number, caller identification is paying for itself already. Most psychopaths wouldn’t ring from their office extension without turning number hiding on first (#37 on the Siemens phone).

So maybe I shouldn’t have gone and burned a whole heap of bridges when I left. Don’t take it to heart. It’s not that I don’t like you… actually I don’t.

Please leave me alone. I know you’re reading this. I can see it in the site stats. To say you’re a failure as a stalker would be wrong but yeah you are.

Kindest Regards.
Former co-worker.

Or Oh how I wish I could write something less boring for a Sunday afternoon.

Head matriach of Craphola Towers decided to splash some cash and purchase a Epson Stylus R350 printer. For the price it isn’t a bad printer but nevertheless there are some minor gripes.

1. Wireless Connectivity
We have the printer connected to an AirPort express wireless adaptor so we can share the printer with a few of the computers around the house. There are two key issues related to the driver and using the printer wirelessly.

Firstly the printer won’t tell you if it’s out of paper. The computer will continue to spool jobs to the printer and assume that everything is ok. Unhelpful if you are working in another room.

Secondly, to access the main control panel for the printer you have to disconnect the printer from the airport base station and attach it directly to the computer. The drivers won’t detect the printer any other way. Again, unhelpful considering Epson state that drivers are 100% AirPort compatiable.

2. Front Door
This is a problem we had with our other printer. There is no sensor to tell you that the front paper door is shut. If you are stupid enough to leave the door shut, the printer will jam.

3. Boot Time
I thought my XP computer was slow to boot up. Total time from pressing the power button to the printer becoming available for use is 1 minute, 30 seconds.

4. Colour Correction
The first three things are nothing compared to this last one. The printer has driver based color correction mode used mainly for photos. The mode defaults to on and cannot be permanetly switched off. In colour correction mode all colour print perfectly except for yellow. Yellows turn out this strange Yallow-Grey colour.

Turning the colour correction off makes the printer print yellow correctly but all other colours darker. I’m still scratching my head trying to work out if there is an intermediate solution but so far none seem to work well.

Besides those four gripes. It really isn’t a bad printer. It utilises six ink cartridges, has a CD printing function and an OK collection of software applications, Pictbridge support and of cause if you shop around is reasonably priced.

This is our first full-blown photo printer so it’ll take some time to get used to all the controls and functions. I think I might reserve judgement for a little while longer.

So some cool things have happened over the last few weeks. We’re almost on the last stretch of the video equipment installation. The sparkey has to come over and install the wiring and new electrical sockets.

OK, so onto the equipment list.

Optoma HD 70 Projector
Screen Technics Cinematech Screen (92″)
xBox 360
Logitech Harmony Remote
Panasonic Viera Upscaling DVD Player (HDMI)

The sound system consists of a JVC CD player, Mackie Mixer and DBX graphic equaliser. I’ll get around to replacing all that gear with a 5.1 channel setup eventually.

Well as the title suggests I’m still looking for a job. I had my fourth interview today and I’m quietly confident that this may be the one.

The experience was really interesting; the office itself overlooks Camberwell station which is convenient in terms of travelling. The staff were helpful and I was able to chat with them for a short while before meeting the owner of the business.

There was a test planned to see how 1337 my hax0r skillz were and I was completely caught off guard in terms of the complexity and the amount of time given to finish it in. I got through the task and apologised to the boss and hoped he didn’t see it as a misrepresentation of my abilities. I think he was satisfied. We talked for a little while longer and he said he was happy with my work and portfolio even though were some problems at the start.

Lesson learnt: Always keep a massive portfolio of work; even if you think something is junk include it somebody else might think it has value. Don’t be afraid to make yourself look like a whore - the more people who see your work the better.

I replaced the FNT 2.0 theme with the FNT 3.0 theme over the weekend. Nothing special just more colour and better formatting.

Being the lazy fuck I am I forgot to ensure that it renders correctly in most browsers. So if you don’t see two columns or if things seem a bit wonko let me know.