October 2012 Archives
October 30, 2012 @ 19:24 EDT
53/365: Labellous
I spent the better part of a day coaxing a well-abused Zebra 96xiIII label printer to print an acceptible (both human and machine-readable) label for one of my employer's products. These are just some of the (many) failures..
In the end I generated the label from scratch using Z/PL, generated programically by a perl (yay!) script. I also managed to find (and reprogram) a handheld scanner capable of reading the tiny QR codes, so they can be integrated into the production workflow. (The labels are less than 8mm square!)
...I sure seem to be doing a lot of printer hacking these days.
October 29, 2012 @ 23:06 EDT
52/365: Consolation Cookies
I made another batch of my chocolate chip cookies tonight. This time, half of the chocolate chip budget was filled by Andes Candies. It turned out fairly well, though I'm glad I didn't put black walnuts in this batch too. Next time I do this I'll use a 1:3 ratio of Andes:Chips, or just stick to my usual Black Walnut-y goodness.
As I type this, there are only eight (of eighteen) left.
October 27, 2012 @ 11:48 EDT
Photo printers and libusb, oh my!
A while back, I picked up a Canon SELPHY ES1 dyesub photo printer, only to discover it didn't work properly under Linux, thanks to it needing an intelligent spooler to prevent lockups, and being just different enough from earlier models to require tweaks to gutenprint.
So, in the spirit of Free Software, I patched gutenprint, and wrote the spooler. Over time, the spooler got smarter, supported more printers, achieved sentience, and brought about world peace.
...Until Apple revved OSX's printer subsystem and Canon neglected to release updated drivers for, well, most everything. Since my tool was written to use linux's native usblp support, OSX users were SOL.
Last night, I finished rewiring it to use libusb, and accept input on stdin. This enables it to be used in a CUPS filter chain, and theoretically supports OSX. But that remains to be tested..
...And I finally moved it to version control:
git://git.shaftnet.org/selphy\_print.git
http://git.shaftnet.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=selphy\_print.git
It still needs USB IDs for most of the SELPHY line, but otherwise seems to work fine with my ES1, ES2, and ES30 printers, at least on Linux.
October 23, 2012 @ 21:52 EDT
46/365: "New" Toy
This Tokina 50-135mm f/2.8 zoom was discontinued a few years ago. I lowballed an auction and actually won, much to my surprise and delight. I suspect it just cost too much money to make for them to keep it in production. It's built like a tank, and is optically about as good as it gets.
With the exception of the wide-angle shots of the cars, this lens hasn't left my camera in nearly a week.
I now have three Tokina f/2.8 zooms; oddly enough I need to dial down about -1EV exposure compensation for all of them.
(yeah, I couldn't come up with a better shot of the day. Blame a 12-hour day at work..)
October 17, 2012 @ 21:23 EDT
40/365: Lolz on Mah Crackberry
I can't help but think of the LOLCat Bible.
October 15, 2012 @ 20:04 EDT
34/365: The Gaping Maw
Thursday night, I arrived at Camp Kiwanis for the 21st Paralounge Drum Gathering. I hung my hammock between two massive oak trees, cradled beneath a canopy of Spanish moss -- which looked positively wicked in this light.
(Bear with me, I have a 2600+ image backlog to sort through before I can catch up to what I shot for today)