Epson Stylus C84 vs MacOS X 10.5.7

I found that when I upgraded a PPC iMac 20" from MacOS X 10.5.6 to 10.5.7 I was no longer able to print to the USB connected Epson Stylus C84.

A call to Epson yielded the information that Epson does not support this printer on anything higher than 10.4.11 and that 10.5.7 breaks the Epson driver and that Apple would have to fix it.

Thank goodness for the FOSS Gutenprint Project.

I downloaded and installed Gutenprint 5.2.3, from here:

http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/

And added the printer again from the Printer and Fax System preferences using the Gutenprint drivers, and to my great joy the printer is working again.

Leopard does seem to come with Gutenprint already installed but it does not appear to have been updated since Gutenprint version 5.1.3.

1and1 vs dreamhost

Am working on a new portfolio website for a creative and have recommended hosting for him at 1and1.

I chose 1and1 for the following features:

• Low cost hosting.


• Good control panel.


• Lots of features.


• Generous resource allocation.

Further, this is the third site I have recommended for hosting at 1and1 and I have never had a problem with site availability with them yet (no downtime).

If you google "dreamhost + 1and1" you will see a lot of folks recommending DH over 1and1.

I have a client a client who chose to host at DH and I have to report that their uptime is a joke. Email stops working, sites stop working frequently, sometime with advance notice, sometimes without notice.

Moreover, DH has a very generous referral program and I can't help but feeling that lots of the folks who are recommending DH are doing to get a little juice sent their way.

I also have my own hosting account at DH. It's a great deal IFF you are looking for cheap hosting without a care for reliability. I keep thinking that I will do a site with them since I prepaid for a year's hosting there. Yet I can't think of any site that I would take the time to make where I would take the time to build it and then not care about reliability enough to host at dreamhost.

Dreamhost is based in California. 1and1 is based in Germany. I think the geography is really telling.

Dreamhost believes in radical transparency. They use surfer lingo. They've got a lot of bounce.

1und1 is strict, German style. When you sign up for a new account and put in your address they validate against the USPS and so detect if you have incorrectly entered your own address (like they know your address better than you do). They don't assign usernames, they assign user IDs. You are a number, not a name.

While 1and1 does have some quirks, (more on which in future posts) on the whole they are the better low cost hosting provider.

For sites where I need very high uptime and responsive customer service tho, I still recommend Pair.

What Apple's new board member points to...

Apple added a new board member yesterday, Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO of Avon.

There is some speculation on what this means. My 2 cents:

This is a play to expand Apple beyond its core US market. Where there are ladies there are Avon ladies. Nobody does global marketing better than Avon.

Apple wants to get the iPhone into China. They want to build market-share in Europe and Japan (both trail US market share substantially).

Ms Jung speaks Mardarin. She has connections all all over the world...

Digital Broadcast TV is excellent in Park Slope

So we got a new TV for xmas. We mostly used our old TV to play DVD and VHS.

The new TV is 1080p, and we paired it with an up-converting DVD player. (Seemed too soon to jump in on the Blu-Ray vs HD-TV battle, tho, that seems to have settled itself out this week). The DVD's look great.

Later mostly just for fun I reattached the antenna on my roof and aimed it a little better at the Empire State Building (where most of the antennas are since the WTC was knocked down). We get all the main channels in both analog and digital now. I wonder if people even know that this is available? The picture quality of the digital broadcast channels is really excellent.

Iowa caucus prediction

So who is going to win in Iowa?

My predictions:

Among Democrats, Hillary will have the most votes outright, but after the 15% rule the state will go to John Edwards.

Among Republicans, it looks like Romney in a walk.

This is based on data summaries at electoral-vote.

[update: way off in my predictions: Romney came in second as did Edwards]

Timber!!!

Really uninstalling Now Contact and Up to Date

I evaluated Now Up to Date and Now Contact for a customer a while back.  (my evaluation: a once-great product that has been eclipsed by webApps and is now surviving on locked-in users, tho since then they have announced NightHawk which might warrant another look) Ever since then I have had a contextual menu item in the Finder "Add to Now Up to Date" or something like that.

Searching for instances of "Now Up to Date" on my hard drive did not reveal where the contextual menu was applied.

Turns out that it is implemented in the GrabNGo.plugin

/Library/Contextual Menu Items/GrabNGo.plugin

Deleting this plugin has finally freed me from the contextual menu tyranny.  There were a couple of other contextual menu plugins for other software that I had evaluated -- Extensis Portfolio, iViewMedia Pro.  But at least they had names that gave some clue as to their purpose.

Who would guess that GrabNGo.plugin was part of Now Up To Date?

I've always been proud that MacOSX doesn't have the need for system Un-installers (a la "Add or Remove Programs" in Windows), but situations like these almost make your wish for one.