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When I started grad school this fall, all us students were talking about how much we had to print out for class… so many journal articles and class readers! Some folks complained at how expensive their inkjet printers were to run and I went into my laser printer rant. Here is the latest incarnation of that rant.

Short form:
laser printers = fast, inexpensive ($0.05/sheet), reliable, high quality
inkjet printers = cheap to buy but expensive to operate ($0.20/sheet), almost as high quality as laser, almost
print shop = expensive ($0.20/sheet), inconvenient

Long form:
First I have to admit that I killed my awesome HP Laserjet P1606dn by running cheap sticky labels through it the wrong way. I’ll tell you exactly how at the end, suffice to say that a normal person wouldn’t make such mistakes.

So I needed a new printer. I’ve now had the Brother HL-2270DW for about 3 months.
Pros:

• prints double sided
• prints fast
• wireless
• inexpensive (about $0.05/page fully amortized with paper and everything)
• consistently excellent quality

Cons:

• It can’t print on 3-holed paper, it jams, so I bought a 3-hole punch

Throw away your ink jet printer. It’s the old “give away the razor sell the blades” scam all over again. Buy a laser printer instead.

Here’s the one I bought on Amazon
Brother HL-2270DW Compact Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex

Be sure to buy the TN450 High Yield Black Toner for $50 as well. The toner cartridge that comes with the printer is only a “demo” with like 500 pages worth of toner in it

printer $100 amortized over 5000 pages (a conservative guess) $0.02 per page
toner: $45/ 2600 pages = $0.017 per page
paper: $0.016 per page
final cost $0.05 per page

Now the dumb story of how I killed my printer with sticky labels. I bought these cheap sticky labels that used wax paper to hold the sticky sheets in place (better ones use some wonderfully slippery plastic. The sticky label has 2 giant 5″x8″ labels on it. I printed 1 of the labels and then put the sheet through the printer again. I told the printer to print on the wax paper. Oops! After that moment, the ink refused to be fixed to the paper. I assume I wrecked the drum on the printer, gumming it up with wax. Maybe I could have fixed it but who has time for such things? I just bought a new printer.

Megan and I saw the new Captain America movie with Michael K last night. Action Action ACTION! My two favorite moments:

• a super-baddie jumping on top of a speeding car and ripping the steering wheel off, much to the dismay of our heros driving the car
• A flying aircraft carrier slowly careening into a skyscraper… CCCccrRRUUUSSHHHRRAAAAAAAaaaAAACK!

My review: 2 1/2 hours of roller coaster ACTION!

I was a bit miffed that two promo codes Megan and I had gotten from buying stuff over Christmas on Fandango.com had expired. After looking at the original coupon again I now see the expiration date buried down at the bottom, but it feels pretty buried. Grrr. And I don’t know, I’ve got this feeling that the nature of a movie ticket, a fun non-necessity, shouldn’t have such harsh terms of use.

I wrote to them and their response was “tough noogies.” Screw them, I discovered another ticket-buying website: MovieTickets.com. They’ve got all the local theaters and their fees are a bit lower. I’m switching.

Here is a suggestion I just sent the Android Gmail team:

If an email sender has been previously approved to display images, the images should be loaded when the email is downloaded to my phone.

Right now the images are loaded when the email is viewed for the first time. This means I have to wait for the images to download and depending on my internet connection that could be a while. If I’m checking my email where there is no service (on subways, elevators, about 1/2 of Berkeley CA) the experience totally sucks.

If images are pre-downloaded, it will break “web bug” functionality built into email images. But web bugs have never been a web standard, just a clever, if unreliable hack at gaining metrics. If you’re totally excited about it, you could build a new web standard for when web bugs get viewed. Also, nowadays, if a user cares enough to have emails go to their inbox (and not unsubscribing, or marking it as spam), they are probably interested in reading the email, so web bugs aren’t that important any more.

Thanks for your consideration!

Groupme is a group-texting app for smartphones and dumbphones. I use it all the time to chat with Megan because it’s faster and more reliable than texting with my Virgin Mobile phone (ugh, I know).

I just sent a message to Groupme support with my biggest gripe:

Since the promise of Groupme is (from the homepage) “the best way to chat with everyone you know”… “works on every device”… It would be great if the emoji were similar on the 3 main platforms me and my friends use it on: iphone, android, website. It is frustrating when the emoji I send isn’t the emoji they receive.

Keep rockin

I haven’t seen a smartphone (android or iphone) that has a long enough battery life yet. This is asinine. My successful workaround is to buy a backpack battery from http://www.seidioonline.com

I am using an Android HTC EVO 4G 3D phone on Virgin Mobile ($35/month) with the Seidio backpack battery. With the stock (1700mah) battery, my battery sometimes runs out as early as 9pm under “normal” usage. With the (albeit somewhat bulky) backpack battery (4000mah), I can geek ALL day and not run out of power, I can get 2 full days of light-use.

I dunno about rootability yet. The internets says “yes” but I haven’t tried it.

The 3D camera and 3D Lenticular screen on the phone is a pretty cool toy too.

Previously I had a Samsung Galaxy S Android phone on AT&T. I got a Seidio backpack battery for that one too and was quite happy with the battery.

Sent to Chase online today (yeah, it’s a small matter, but it bugs me every time I pay a bill)

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I know you’ve worked hard to make the new Chase site look and feel good. It’s pretty good but the new Payment Activity page is lacking.

When I go to this page, I am doing accounting and want to see all of my recent bill paying activity. Unfortunately, I only get to see some of it. For some reason, you have separated it into two thumbnails, “My Bill Pay Payees” and “My Chase Credit Cards”. As it stands, I see everything except my Chase accounts, which is rather frustrating. I can click on the “My Chase Credit Cards” page to see the rest of my information, but why should I have to? the types of information on the two pages is the same; please make the two pages into one.

The upshot is that on the Chase Bill Payment website, the hardest to manage bills are from Chase. I’m sure you didn’t intend that. Please work on it.

I wrote this to Chase Bank today
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Your new version of the Chase site has made it impossible for me to search the page with my browser (for example: ctrl-f). It is important for me to be able to search the page because it is so full of tables that are very easy to search but hard to scan with my eye.

When I try to do a search with my browser on “Pending and Past Payment Activity”, I can’t find text that spans a line. For example, The payee is likely to read something like this because of the tight columns:

Blue Cros
s acct 1234

If I search for “Blue Cross” the search comes up empty. I can tell you why this is the case. Looking at the HTML, it reads:

Blue Cros <br/>s acct 1234

That br tag is messing things up! If not for it, my browser would be able to search across the lines and find the text. Please use CSS instead of hard tags.

I was riding down a foggy, dark Berkeley hill over the summer thinking, “I can’t see the road! I’m going to get killed!” So I got a bright bike light. I only ended up paying $50 on Amazon and I’m quite happy with it.

• It is literally as bright as a car headlight! I’ve pulled up at stop lights and the light it cast is comparable to the low beams of the cars next to me. I can see the road!
• It took a full month to arrive from Hong Kong. But it looks like they are shipping from the US now.
• You definitely want to get the wide angle lens, otherwise one spot is lit brilliantly and you can’t much see the rest of the road.
• The battery lasts something like 1.5 to 3 hours.
• The ONLY problem I have is that it runs full strength until it runs out… which means it could die unexpectedly on the road. So I carry my old 1 watt light when I’m travelling a long distance at night.
• I tried to take photos of the light at night but they didn’t come out well. I’ll just say that the hard-to-believe-bright images on Amazon and elsewhere are real
• It isn’t perfectly balanced on my handlebar so when I hit a bump, it jiggles. But it’s pretty good… and just $50! Wait… they lowered the price, looks like it’s $30 + $10 for the lens…  total $40!
• $40, wow! REI sells similarly bright headlamps for around $200. I hope this one isn’t going to give me cancer or something

Here are the products:
4 Mode 1200 Lumen CREE XML T6 Bulb LED Bicycle bike HeadLight Lamp Flashlight Light Headlamp (Amazon link)

Wide Angle Lens for MagicShine, Gemini, and many other Bike Lights / Headlight (Amazon link)

My electric razor is currently in the Berkeley Police property room awaiting me (long story). After 2 days without a razor, my face felt like a porcupine autofelating itself: not good. I’ll get my electric back soon but I had to pick up some interim Bic razors at Walgreens.

After lathering up my face, I touched the razor to my upper lip, gave it a tuGGHHHHAAARRRRRGwhatthefaaaahk?! Ouch!

What the hell are people thinking, using a razor instead of an electric is masochistic! I’ve used a rotary electric razor since 1990 and never looked back. And today I was reminded as to why!

Screw bladed razors, get a Norelco rotary electric razor! They rock!

Both the Clic Eraser refill from Pentel and the SumoGrip refill from Sakura are acceptable eraser refills for my Logo II pencil. I have to add Scotch tape to make them fit perfectly, just like my original fix for the Logo II.

I like the SumoGrip refills a little better because the eraser material is a little more firm, and it’s cut to length, though the length problem took 2 seconds to fix with scissors.

Last summer I gushed about my favorite mechanical pencil, the PaperMate Logo II here. I’ve now bought 3 cases of them, 12 0.7mm pencils and 24 0.5mm pencils. I use them constantly and love them (read my post for a vital fix to the eraser!).