just another domo-kun

kawauso_kun @ 2007-06-17T13:02:00

2007-06-17T17:38:31Z

Linux CUPS printing is a funny thing.

Every time we reinstall Linux (I think, though, we’re going to stay with Ubuntu for the foreseeable future) I have to reconfigure printing.

When our Lexmark Z51 finally died, everybody stood around and swore they’d never buy another product from Lexmark, So we went out and bought an HP Deskjet 5740, because I’d heard that HP printers had great Linux support.

This is completely true.

But keep in mind we’re talking about Linux support. Very rarely are things point-and-click.

After installing the proper packages and the PPD file, setting up the printer wasn’t too hard. I had to change the CUPS configuration file to make it allow access from the local network, and I also made printing work from the Ubuntu machine in my room—a relatively straightforward undertaking—and so, things were happy on the LAN.

Now that I’m using OS X, though, I’m having to relearn some tricks, and today I learned how to get OS X to print to a CUPS printer.

First, make sure you can access the other machine’s CUPS server. Type something like this into Firefox:

http://192.168.1.xx:631/

You should get the CUPS information page. If you don’t, you probably need to change the configuration to allow access from the local network.

The next step depends on how your printer is set up. In my case, each client must have the PPD file for the printer, as CUPS does no translation, so I open a terminal and type:

lpadmin -p Deskjet -v ipp://192.168.1.100:631/printers/DeskJet-5740 -P ~/Desktop/HP-DeskJet_5740-hpijs.ppd -E -u allow:phil

192.168.1.100 is the IP (or hostname) of the CUPS server, DeskJet-5740 is the name of the printer queue, ~/Desktop/HP-DeskJet_5740-hpijs.ppd is the name of the PPD file for my printer (which can be had from linuxprinting.org), and -E is the magical make-it-work option. -E enables the printer. I have no idea why it is necessary to do so or why it cannot be done from the OS X print administration dialog. I assume -u allow:your_username is not required, but I don't want to break it to find out.

If you can print to your printer without a PPD file, simply leave off that option. In my case, that causes the printer to spit pages of Postscript. Your mileage may vary.

Four Hours

2007-06-03T05:09:12Z

estie: as long as you don't give me a tampon with a smiley face drawn on it in sharpie for my birthday
phil: that would be pretty funny, though.
phil: admit it.
estie: it would as long as it was followed by something more substantial
estie: than something i could kill in four hours

Innocent Civilians

2007-05-09T23:02:44Z

The American dream is just that — an imagined reality.

I know that instrument...

2007-05-03T01:13:35Z

Motorcy...cle.

2007-04-18T03:37:43Z

now you listen to me, aaron. you don't blow your money on those comic books, you understand? they don't do you a damned bit of good. and the nude mags, you're gonna be inheriting mine when you're sixteen anyway. now look, the junk food and the candy just rots your teeth and gives you bad breath and the girls run like hell. stay the hell away from buying any rock tv shirts, or hip hop gear, or anything like that. arcade games - pick out one that you can do, okay? ONE that you can do as opposed to a whole bunch of them that you don't know what the hell you're doing. techno music just puts a hole in your brain--are you listening to me? look at me when i'm talking to you!

Rooted

2007-04-09T03:48:07Z

If you're using Debian or Ubuntu, I uploaded a Administrator-mode Text Editor menu item. It simply opens gedit as root, but download it to ~/.local/share/applications/ and you'll have a menu item for editing root-owned configuration files.

Lave

2007-03-25T04:57:18Z

In typical March fashion, it has suddenly warmed up.

Perhaps everyone's first clue was the blooming of the Bradford pears, and the sickening, fermenting smell that emanates from these trees. From a distance, their snowy white is beautiful, but the cloud of stench that surrounds them is unbearable.

Today was a day for throwing open the windows and stretching out on the bed in boxers.

I napped before dinner, and woke up bleary-eyed to uncooperative, crumbly cornbread and catfish. When I returned to my room, the matte black of the screens in the windows stared like eyes, with green pinpoints reflected from the lava lamp on my desk.

The insects outdoors and the wash of air from the fan remind me that, indeed, we all remember.

Cipher

2007-03-20T01:37:10Z

phil: very bizarre
estie: strange strange strange strange
estie: i vote on the legal name-change of "vagina" to "enigma"
phil: it surely is one
phil: and change "Enigma" to "Vagina," to make world war II history textbooks more interesting
phil: "WE'VE GOT TO FIND THAT VAGINA MACHINE OR THE GERMANS WILL WIN!!"

JUPITER

2007-03-16T02:43:55Z

The French have a verbs for awfully specific actions, like landing on the moon. For example:

J'alunais quand j'ai frappé.

I was landing on the moon when I farted.

Estie and I propose a new verb: ajovir, which takes "jovi" from Latin and means "to land on Jupiter."

Twins

2007-03-11T02:14:10Z

I solved the twin problem.

When I was at the movie theater with Rohail and his parents, I saw these twin girls standing in line. For the rest of the night, I was trying to figure out where I'd seen them before, and finally gave up.

Tonight, I saw one of them at Burger King. By this point, I'm beginning to freak out, because I still cannot figure out where I've seen them, and by this point, I'm second-guessing myself, and thinking that I only remember her from the movie theater.

I decided I needed to figure this out.

I came home and looked through my yearbook from Bryson on the off chance that they had gone to Bryson and were a grade below me or something. Sure enough, they were 7th graders when I was in 8th grade.

I hate seeing people I almost know.

Peaky

2007-02-10T04:18:20Z

Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast
with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut.

Oh, come on!

You're So

2007-02-06T23:44:52Z

Available Space

2007-02-06T23:41:03Z

Zeitgeist Returns

2007-01-23T23:06:08Z

Google Zeitgeist seems to have been revamped as "Google Trends."

Here's the (mostly unsurprising) graph for the search "state of the union."

What confuses me are the two little blips during 2005. Any ideas as to what caused these?

The graph is also available with the key and some more information.

Nautical

2007-01-22T00:15:26Z

Who here likes bubbles?

Can I trust you guys with the bubbles?

Evolution ICS

2006-12-25T07:13:57Z

I exported my idea lists that I keep in Evolution as both iCal and CSV files. I figured I could write a Python scraper in a few minutes that would pull out the summaries so I could post them here. However, Evolution's export seems flawed for both types.

In the CSV files, Evolution exports newlines unescaped, so you can't use normal parsers (like Python's csv module) to handle the CSV format.

For the iCal format, Evolution does something similarly annoying. For some reason, it hard wraps string values at 80 characters. For a mostly non-human-readable format, I don't understand this. Again, it makes it really hard to parse.

The only other export format is RDF, which I guess is what I'll have to use, even though I don't feel like fooling with XML.

Merry Christmas, folks!

Mustache

2006-10-23T03:20:30Z

Cherrydake

2006-10-09T02:50:18Z

elspeth: over at sherrydale
phil c.: hahahaha
phil c.: and got drunk
elspeth: cause its right there
phil c.: at sherrydale
elspeth: nope
elspeth: dammit!
elspeth: *cherrydake
elspeth: DAMMIT

Snakes on a Plane Prop List

2006-08-27T02:52:34Z

Props for interactions:

Rubber snakes

Large plush snake

Leis

Plush "Mary Kate" dog

Spray bottles (pheromones!)

Lip balm

Sporks

Empty soda bottles

Red Bull for everyone

Hand sanitizer

Olive oil if you're super-hardcore

Script interactions so far:

Applaud when Samuel first appears.

Spritz the spray bottles during the lei-coating scene.

Apply and pass hand sanitizer whenever Three-Gs uses his.

When the Englishman complains about sitting next to a dog and wonders aloud what could be worse, shout "snakes!"

Act along with the flight attendants during the safety announcements.

Shout "federal offense!" when the smoke detector is tampered with.

When the timer goes off, throw your rubber snakes.

Apply lip balm when the male flight attendant does so, and loudly!

When Mary Kate is sacrificed, throw the plush dog at the screen.

Randomly roll empty cans down the aisles.

Unwrap and hold up sporks when the flight attendant does so.

Pull up on the chair in front of you and make birthing sounds when they try to pull the plane up.

Shout along with the "I'VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES..." speech.

Whenever we see the snake's point of view, make a hissing sound.

Pass the large snake during the appropriate scene.

Comment with more ideas!

So Begins Our

2006-08-19T04:55:06Z

Caught Of Montreal (with The Minders opening) at the local venue tonight!

Bryan was wearing a nice orange dress and Kevin was periodically shirtless, so all was good. Something that concerned me, however, was that a lot of people brought lightsticks.

I think someone lied to them about the genre of the band.

Definitionless

2006-08-15T01:53:14Z

Can anyone give me good definitions for either of the following words? It is my sincere opinion they should be real, eloquently defined words.

Lubricative

Illustratory

Rick James Bible

2006-08-08T02:00:57Z

Verbosity is the very cornerstone of religion.

Jenkins

2006-08-03T05:38:14Z

phil c.: blame the pituitary gland
phil c.: it's always the pituitary gland's fault
estie b.: pituitary gland, you are just stupid as hell!
phil c.: at least it has chicken

Switch

2006-08-02T01:30:35Z

phil c.: my mom's freaking out about my sister, i don't know why she won't just drop it
rohail r.: gay dude
rohail r.: but i do have good news
phil c.: excellent
phil c.: shoot
rohail r.: i just saved an ass load of money on car insurance by switching to geico

For the Win

2006-08-01T03:44:42Z

To the Concerned Management of Northwest and Pinnacle Airlines,
I recently returned from a short holiday in Iowa via your company's Airlink service. Due to a number of mishaps with other airlines (namely Delta), I booked with Northwest because of its flexible schedules and affordable prices. All the workers were efficient and well-trained, loading the plane quickly and ensuring the comfort of the passengers, even those that were almost certainly dead. However, I experienced something that will forever cement Northwest as my airline of choice.

The first leg was utterly devoid of mistakes, but did not stand out to me with the same magnitude of the exemplary performance of your employees on the second flight. Within minutes of boarding the aircraft, we had been subjected to, count them, two entire flight safety speeches — one delivered by the automated system, and the same one delivered again by the flight attendant. After some quick math on my tray table (still in its full upright and locked position!) I calculated that this resulted in me feeling at least 200% safer than a normal flight.

Little did I know, this was just the beginning.

As I sat rigid in my chair and directed my attention to the front of the cabin to learn, once again, how to pull on the strap of the seat buckle to tighten it, an irresistible feeling of hilarity passed over me. Placing my fingers above my head like huge pointy spikes, I made, much to my horror now, a silly face at the flight attendant.

Immediately after she had finished the safety talk, she briskly walked to my seat and assertively informed me that "we're going to stop that now, okay?"

I am forever indebted to this flight attendant, who saved me from what was certainly a bout of terrorist-like activity and could very well have lead to more drastic actions. I envision such atrocities as having undue interest in the operation of the wing outside my window or a passive inspection of the galley, all without my own awareness of my malefactions. The subliminal nature of today's world is a frightening and dangerous thing, and I have already enrolled myself in government-run classes to help me control any further outbursts.

My only complaint with the flight was the flight attendant's almost cavalier stance on another situation which arose. A young boy, perhaps 9 or 10 years of age, had seemingly innocently switched to the empty row behind him. However, this row was an exit row. While at a casual glance it may have looked that he was merely attempting to gain more legroom or reprieve from his brother, it became obvious to me that he was acting very suspiciously. In addition to changing seats to an exit row, he quietly began using what appeared to be a portable gaming device, even after being informed not once, but twice that this could interfere with the aircraft's navigation and communication systems.

Needless to say, I was appalled.

Not at the boy's parent, whose job it is not and should not be protecting fellow passengers, but instead the flight attendant's reaction to what was quite obviously behavior consistent with that of a terrorist. She simply asked the boy to move back up. I firmly believe that in such a radical breach of given guidelines, the child should have been forcefully restrained and moved to the front of the plane where he could be more closely observed. Furthermore, I believe his belongings should have been confiscated until security professionals at the receiving airport could be summoned to inspect them.

Despite this brief indiscretion, I believe in the general upstanding nature of Northwest and its employees, and in their firm commitment to protecting me from both myself as well as my fellow travelers.

Sincerely,
Phillip Calvin