Stupid Broken CUPS. Stupid Broken Printing Support.

June 01, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Here's why I absolutely despise printer tools in Linux. I open up the gnome-cups-manager, click the print test page button, and then try to pause the job. The GUI freezes and here's the message I get on the terminal:

** (gnome-cups-manager:29261): WARNING **: FOOBAR

Right. Like I'm supposed to know what that means. Not even Google has seen that error before.

There was a Slashdot thread not too long ago about printing and all these posts were saying "I don't know what they're complaining about. The Linux tools work perfectly with my network postscript printer." DUH! I'd love to be dealing with something simple and easy like that, but instead -- back here in the real world of the home desktop -- we have things like little Epson Stylus Colors. They don't speak postscript, and they certainly don't have a network interface.

It's a New Month

June 01, 2005 by Eric Richardson

It seems a little non-sensical to say this, since I wrote my rent check this morning, but I just realized after I got into the office that this was June 1st. As usual I took the Gold Line northbound, and as sometimes happens there were fare inspectors that checked the train at Filmore. They were perfectly content to nod at my May monthly pass and let me go, which makes me wonder if there's a little leeway on these things, or if they're just forgetful like I am.

Biking: Hollywood to Manhattan Beach

May 29, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I started off yesterday pretty lazy, just working on some stuff on the computer. I felt like I wanted to go for a ride, but didn't really have a destination until I found out a friend's birthday party was happening in Manhattan Beach. I needed to go to Hollywood first, though, to check in with Hollywood Pro Bicycles. So I decided I would take the subway over to Hollywood, and then ride to MB from there. Kathy would be meeting me at the beach, so I'd stick the bike in her car and only have to ride one-way.

The ride took me the length of the Ballona Creek Bike Path and then from the airport down to Manhattan on the beach bike path, so of the 20 miles I would put close to two-thirds on bike paths. That makes for a nice trip. I think it took me an hour and fifteen minutes, including hitting seemingly every red light on La Brea and riding into a headwind approaching the ocean. My ride was slightly different than that shown in the map -- instead of starting out by going east over to Vine only to come back west later I just went straight down La Brea to Jefferson. That worked fine (other than the lights).

The bike shop's going to order a tribar (vaguely like these, but differently shaped) for me to try out, which I'm looking forward to. I really want a grip position that'll keep me low and leaned forward for speed and power.

Mmmm... e17

May 26, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I set up enlightenment 0.17 on my laptop today (click on the image, and then all sizes to get the full sized image).

Wow.

Since I last took an e17 screenshot in December, they've added multiple desks, key bindings, and a whole host of other things that make e17 into a very usable window manager. It's still under heavy development and probably not even close to a release, but in my playing around it's working just fine. It still just supports one background on all desks and there isn't any true support for transparent terminals yet, but I think it's close enough that I'll use it on the laptop.

There's so much movey-goodness that you can't see in a static screenshot, but I still think the shot looks great.

Time to Buy a GPS Unit

May 25, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I'm about to set off from JPL to Kathy's new apartment in Studio City. Roughly that means taking this route, though obviously being on a bike I won't be hitting up the freeways. bikemetro gives me a route that's 16.68 miles long, and overall drops 518 feet. In between, though, it first goes up 200 to 300 feet, then drops 900 or so, and finally rises back 150 - 200 feet. That should make it a bit of a workout.

I'm more worried, though, about the fact that there are 24 steps to the directions. I wrote them down on an index card, now we'll see how I do at reading the card and road signs while negotiating traffic. This is one of those situations where a GPS unit would be mighty handy.