There’s a HP printer in the church office. One of those fax/scan/print jobs. And it hasn’t been working properly. Bad printer.

The error of choice is “supply expired”. I think it’s a empty ink cartridge, so I check the levels and it’s showing plenty of ink in both. But the colour cartridge is a compatible one, and we’ve had trouble with them in the past. Hmmm.

Anyway, after faffing around with cartridges I do something I should have done in the beginning. I check the error online.

It seems those cheeky chaps at HP put an expiry date on their cartridges. And the printer will not use it after that date. Bad call.

Feeling a bit dubious about this, I follow the instructions and whip out the internal battery and lo and behold the printer prints!

BigAl

10 days and counting

mrBen

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I spend a huge proportion of my time talking about computers, but every now and then I venture out into other subjects. I’ve talked in the past about Digital Rights Management (DRM) - the stuff that means that you can’t listen to the CD you bought on your mp3 player, or transfer your paid-for iTunes music when you get to your 4th iPod - and Creative Commons, the license for creative-types to release their works under to protect their authorship, but allow their works to be distributed.

Into this mix comes Jono Bacon, one of the LugRadio presenters, who also doubles as a heavy metal musician. He has just embarked on a new project called Severed Fifth, an experiment into seeing how far you can get by bypassing the existing music industry, and leveraging a little bit of internet and popular culture savvy. This will, of course, involve him releasing a load of music, but it’s about a lot more than that.

Take a listen to his introductory message over at SeveredFith.com, and, even if you’re not into heavy metal, if you’re into music at all then this is a project worth taking an interest in.

mrBen

Ruthy, my wife, has finally got her blog sorted out (www.dilligenz.co.uk) and has started her new project to keep herself, and anyone else who’s interested, away from the mindless evils of the new Big Brother series.

For her first project she’s going Lego mad and although I should be doing something similar, I’m instead inspired to finish painting my remaining miniatures in one fell swoop.

Problem is, I’ve got close to 50 of them to do…

Ah, who needs sleep anyway?

BigAl

I spent 7 happy years of my life living in the Bletchley area (now part of Milton Keynes), but now, as a full-grown geek (and also currently reading Cryptonomicon) I’m sad that I’ve never visited Bletchley Park, home of the Allied codebreaking team, not least Alan Turing one of the founding fathers of computing, and also the home of Colossus, the world’s first programmable, digital, electronic, computing devices. The Park also features in the film Enigma, because they were responsible for the breaking of the German Enigma machine codes.

Anyway, there’s talk of having to close Bletchley Park (which is now a museum), which I think is a Bad Thing (TM). And it seems I’m not the only one, so go and sign the petition.

mrBen

Now that it’s been formally announced, I can confirm that I will be speaking at this year’s LugRadio Live UK

This is going to be a new thing for me. I’m going to be pulling together a lot of my thoughts on the future of Linux, user support and advocacy and I’m more than a little nervous. Still - hope to see you there

mrBen

(Oh, and Digg It too)