* Posts by The humble print monkey

35 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2012

House of Commons agrees to allow Zoom app in Parliament, British MPs will still have to dress smartly

The humble print monkey

Re: "a glimpse of Michael Gove in a leopard onesie"

In a cold receptacle, to my right.

Over on the graun, there’s an article saying the Lords won’t be broadcast, as Teams won’t let it, and explaining that the houses only have a finite IT resource. If ever there were a PR opportunity for M$.

Upstart Americans brandish alligators at the almighty Reg Standards Soviet

The humble print monkey

I think it was a typo - but with variable data. Two golden retrievers is a unit of time, when used in conjunction with alligators.

Variable, as they’re getting thinner, being forced to walk once a day; and variable, because it could be measured from time consumption started to time GR no longer visible, or to time of reappearance.

Complete with keyboard and actual, literal, 'physical' escape key: Apple emits new 16" $2.4k+ MacBook Pro

The humble print monkey
Coffee/keyboard

Trade in

Just tried the up to £800 trade in wizard. Entered serial number for old school cheese grater mac pro.

Confligurator asks what model - imac, air etc.

Select late 2010 mac pro.

Offers a list of machines, none of whose processors matches a dual hex 3.33

Then it asks if the power adapter is included.

Does it boot?

Is the machine bulging?

Select highest spec processor.

Confiscator says it's worth eighty quid, as a trade in against a four grand machine (I aint paying that much for that much on board storage).

Sod that.

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

The humble print monkey

SD cards

Students wonder why I take time to explain to them that SD cards go in the little slot in the side of old 27”iMacs, and not the big inviting one.

Guilty: The Romanian ransomware mastermind who infected Trump inauguration CCTV cams

The humble print monkey

Albie Starvation

The MMB - the most secretive of the TLA’s

London's Gatwick Airport flies back to the future as screens fail

The humble print monkey

You fly by helicopter or spitfire to Biggin Hill, then off on your Learjet.

UK chip and PIN readers fall ill: Don't switch off that terminal!

The humble print monkey

Re: Cash on the barrel head

Good luck if you’ve just filled the car up, to find the card payment system’s gone down.

Devon County Council techies: WE KNOW IT WASN'T YOU!

The humble print monkey

Update on the router fix

I dust off my Router Text-Change software (a simple piece of code that simply watches packets go by and occasionally introduces a spelling mistake or adds a zero to the end of a figure

Grad sends warning to manager: Be nice to our kit and it'll be nice to you

The humble print monkey

Elphin safety

I keep a variety of hammers in plain view of all our printing devices.

The printers know, they understand.

Title, because I haven’t found a plausible explanation for an axe in my print room.

The humble print monkey

Percussive maintenance

We have a wonderfully cheap xerox printer, who when handled gently, produces excellent results. The build quality is appalling, being made mostly of brittle plastic.

A colleague would vent his frustration about paper jams (paper not loaded neatly) by slamming the cassette shut. Cue taking out trays, reseating / replacing rollers etc.

When asked if he would treat a hasselblad or sinar in the same way, of course not.

As a finishing stage, the printer is stroked, and spoken kindly to. Then it works.

I’m now no longer certain that I’ve not been unaware of micro switches.

♫ The Core i9 clock cycles go up. Who cares where they come down?

The humble print monkey

Custom coolers

Silly idea, having spent the day in our air conditioned server closet (no room to sit, but hey, it is cold).

MBP (whatever model) has a known physical form. Ok, the thermal energy paste, and internal cooling are what has come out of copertino design shrink-farm.

Would it be beyond the whit of someone to design a form hugging water cooled dock/base that would drop the base ambient?

There are people who do have to use Apple applications (well, have to, are kind of tied to) fcpx etc.

I’m only suggesting the Apple water cooled dock, as it would be likely to out sell a custom dell/HP until, and there is a base level of aluminium forming part of the thermal envelope...

The cybercriminal's cash cow and the marketer's machine: Inside the mad sad bad web ad world

The humble print monkey

Java off, and on

As a consequence of using an old iPhone with very limited battery and processing power, I have over two years of no ad history. This was as a result of turning off java. A colleague kindly donated an SE to me, as the battery life was half a day, and she was due an upgrade.

So now I’m getting a weird set of ads. On the register, I seem to be needing a jeep, and razor blades. Elsewhere, and I can only assume from reading an article on Genetically modified monkeys*, every fourth ad is for GM mice.

Don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but the battery seems to last me all day, even though the new phone is an interesting shade of gold.

*the Atlantic

Reborn Nokia phones biz loses its head

The humble print monkey

Re: All the same.. Red Hydrogen

Looks like it'll be very very different.

Camera - different

Screen - different

Storage - huge

Batteries - changeable

Expensive - yep

Not out yet, but Red don't seem to do average or vapour ware.

And a phone with heat sinks.

RED ALERT! High-speed alien fugitives are invading our Milky Way

The humble print monkey

Anyone for intergalactic bar billiards?

Super-cool sysadmin fixes PCs with gravity, or his fists

The humble print monkey

Percussive maintenance

Boiler stopped working at our NFP - called the installer who was on the other side of town.

Sounds like impeller stiction. Give the pump three slaps, each 40% of a good punch, give me a call back if it doesn't work.

Now my lovely colleagues assume that I'm also a heating engineer..

Stay out of my server room!

The humble print monkey

Serfver cupboard

A photography company I worked in, early 2000's, went from analogue (E6 line in the basement) to digital, and suddenly we required proper server, storage and back ups. Small outfit, with a very hands on approach. Researched and ordered server, raid, external backups (we were new to this, and on a tightish budget). Installed said on shelf in cool, dry basement in a part of the office (the noise was fine - the music from the studios drowned out the drone of the fans and drives).

Went away one fine easter bankholliday, safe in the knowledge that everything would tick over in my absence. Came back a few days later to find the server and drives no longer visible. It being early morning, the 'togs were not in, and the music off. The boss - something of a tidy fairy - had taken all the ugly computer kit, and placed it in an under the counter cupboard. I located it by a combination of the sounds of the fans screaming, the drives clicking and screaming, and the worksurface temperature of being in the too hot to touch range.

Mercedes answers autonomous car moral dilemma: Yeah, we'll just run over pedestrians

The humble print monkey

Re: Makes sense..

An upvote for the fabulous furry freaks reference.

Kodak teases smartphone

The humble print monkey

Re: "Exceptional" Kodak cameras?

They only bolted their, at the time unique, digital backs onto the front ends of N&N's top of the line cameras.

Making them pretty damned exceptional in the professional camera market at the time.

Here WeGo! Google Maps rival drops Maps branding

The humble print monkey

knowledge of crowds

The more data you acquire, with a feedback loop, and suitable analisys, the better the potential result. An article not so long ago talked about how long it would take for a contender to overtake google in the mapping game.

The greater the number of people who use wHere, the better the data, the greater the value for the owners.

Getting us non BMW owners to increase the quantity and quality of that data is, I think, a win-win both for users like me, as well as owners of big shineys.

Let the data get good enough, and with sufficient reference points it will, and there is the basis of the dataset needed for the self driving auto-monsters.

I suspect there will be a two or more tier product - that which is free, and that which is bundled, but in the short term, Here isn't building its business model on selling the user.

Just my (recently devalued) £0.02.

Cyanogen Inc 'axes 20%' staff

The humble print monkey

Re: Well shit - teacup?

So when my storm goes through thr boot process and says, after the recent update, cyanogen mod ready, I don't need to panic?

I hope this is so - quite like it as a phone, apart from the ludicrously large screen.

'I urge everyone to fight back' – woman wins $10k from Microsoft over Windows 10 misery

The humble print monkey

Re: puzzled

So, perhaps this is why they bought LinkedIn.

Eighteen year old server trumped by functional 486 fleet!

The humble print monkey

Re: My previous iMac was around 7 years old

One of my print servers, 2002 G4, mirror doors has been up 24/7/365.

Sat next to it are two spare machines, awaiting cannibalisation.

Another is a 2006 macpro1, which also runs day and night. That's under my desk and has only had one graphics card replaced. Know when to clean it out as the fans scream blue murder when the dust carpet gets too thick.

Mac kit certainly had the potential to keep on ticking.

Apple's Faulty Powers moment: iPad Pro slabs 'temporarily bricked' during recharge

The humble print monkey

Re: "temporarily bricked"? @TRT

Reports of being bricked were temporarily slated by the voices.

They load these things with managerium? Sheesh.

ProtonMail 'mitigates' DDoS attacks, says security not breached

The humble print monkey

ramping up capacity

I do hope that once this storm has passed, pm will be in a position to expand their facilities, to take on many many more users. I have no valid requirement for encrypted email, other than a loathing of advertisers, and a wish to quietly add to noise.

I'd happily pay an annual subscription for this formyself and for my family and would recommended pm to any who would listen. And I haven't even tried their services.

I for one welcome my cuckoo nest winding, slurp denying, future email provider.

BAN the ROBOT WHORES, says robot whore expert: 'These AREN'T BARBIES'

The humble print monkey

Sprint of the age

Your android replica is playing up again.

Iranian hackers ease off on US after friendly nuke chats, says NSA

The humble print monkey

Re: Should we believe?

That the generals have thanks

As the other ranks

Held back the enemy tanks for a while

And the Anzio bridge head was held for the sake

Of a few hundred ordinary lives.

Something in a recent BOFH about friendly fire.

Wileyfox smartphones: SD card, no bloatware, Cyanogen, big battery – yes to all!

The humble print monkey

Say it is true

The £199 SIM-Free “Storm” has an eight-core Qualcomm 615 processor running at up to 1.5GHz, 32Gb RAM, 20Mp Sony EXMOR camera, 1920 x 1080 5.5” display and a 128 GB micro SD card slot.

32giggles of RAM!

How can I turn this into a laptop?

Collective noun search for security vulns moves into beta testing

The humble print monkey

Re: Another

Not forgetting the collective for the _highly_paid_ bods in finance.

A wunch of bankers.

Screwball ruble closes Apple's Russia store, whole kit and caboodle

The humble print monkey

Yota2

On a selfish note, will I be able to get me a two faced toy for Xmas?

Data protection laws come to the rescue of poor, underpaid UK MPs

The humble print monkey

A ministerial equivalent to the wunch

If a wunch is the collective term for bankers, might I suggest either a flacitude or a dysfunction of upstanding members?

The Apple Watch and CROTCH RUBBING. How are they related?

The humble print monkey

Stylus

As we all know, the finest input combination known to man, is the biro. Applied to the sole of a slipper.

Cue the iSlouch

And MS response based loosely on Ted Moult.

Say goodbye to the noughties: Yesterday’s hi-fi biz is BUSTED, bro

The humble print monkey

8 not 3

Had months of fun tuning up eight monitor audio ceiling speakers, destined for instal in a gallery. 4x100w zonal amp connected to 4pairs of speakers over a redundant drum of cat6a. Each pair tuned with boxes of various sizes, to create a system that I never managed to get above 6.

(Zonal amp auto monos to avoid stereo anomalies when moving between zones, resolved by separating left bank of speakers on input 1 and right on input 2).

Result was a sound system that kicked ars3, even by Brixton standards. Sadly the speakers were eventually installed in the gallery, and my print finishing room feels decidedly quiet. Ebay is being scoured for replacements - Bose electrostatics of particular interest.

That said, when its time to close opening nights or parties, I have the ultimate room clearing options - Overkill, streamed from my phone via airplay (amp input 3, only I have the password), racked up to ten, or Amy Macdonald.

Then time for something more mellow direct from a redundant mac mini that lives in the same rack as the amp and video distribution. Layout of the gallery and offices means I have multi room sound available, and if I open the windows, I can continue to listen out on Electric Lane, but only before/after the office staff are in.

Pure boffinry: We peek inside Nokia's miracle cameraphone

The humble print monkey

Re: here is an idea

At £4-500, it would be likely to struggle to sell (and that's an optimistic - think sigma foveon cameras). Wrap it up in a phone OS of one flavour or another, and I suspect that many people will be happy to fork out a few hundred quid, and a monthly fee to get a "one device" that happens to be a cracking snapper.

Interesting that Nokia don't want/ haven't needed to resort to any Zeiss/ Schneider/ type name drop marketing tricks - speaks volumes for their confidence.

Really hope that this helps to shake up the current phone + camera markets.

The humble print monkey

Details forthe devil

As some one who prints photographic exhibitions for a living, and uses a whole host of cameras for fun, I can say that this is one of the most exciting cameras I've seen. Potentially on a par with the shifts brought about by the Nikon D1 (professional press camera at a quarter of the cost of predecessors) the Canon 5D2 (full frame and hd video) or the red one.

I was slightly gutted when there were no 808's available to buy when my iPhone took a dive. Now I'm looking forward to the imminent demise of my current pocket slab, hopefully around the time when the 1020 is available.

A phone is a phone - I'm sure that the majority of the apps I use will be available on winphone, that the sound (talk) quality will be up to Nokia standard.

But this camera looks to be a truly ground breaking belter of a pixel beast. Hope some one works out how to get it to dump raw footage, ala magic lantern.

Listen up, Nokia: Get Lumia show-offs in pubs or it's game over

The humble print monkey
Pint

Monkey pixels are a marketing game

After I had intermediatly dropped my iPhone 3GS, (damaged but not yet dead), I really tried to get an 808; I'm a photographic printer (epson and canon large format, rather than snappy snaps). I print from all kinds of scans and files - drum scans, imacon scans, Hasselblad and phase1, via canon 5d2 through D2x and onto iPhone and the ilk.

Pixel numbers are a marketing game. Pixel quality is something else (imagine a drinking budget for four people: £100. That gets you three bottles of Veuve, a case of Sancerre from majestic, 25 average London lagers, or a Wapping ton of pseudo-cidre). We all know that the lagers are the optimal drink quality point, unless there is really nice food / company, in which case, the French white tips things.

I've run A1 (seeing as we are European, best part of a yard high), prints from lowly 4mp (monkey Pixel) cameras (such as Nikon's then flagship D2x), six foot high prints from iPhone 4gs, and larger from real serious (5 series costing) medium format kit.

These are prints that have been hung in places such as the National Portrait Gallery.

Where the (back when) ground breaking Canon 5d2 scored highly, was in its pixel count. Unfortunately many snappers used it at >3200iso, and produced noise. At 100iso, it had the potential to rival 6x9cm film (good old 35mm film being 25*36mm)

Canon and Nikon's most expensive offerings now have less resolution than the 5d2, and their top end compacts have 10-12 mp sensors. And these have dripped in resolution from the precious generatios, a N&K have realised that less can be more. I'd contend (and take the at the bar/Pepsi/ bloody huge print out challenge) that most people don't need more than 8-10 mp, ever.

Small sensors are inefficient captors of light. Those who claim that they wouldn't want less than twelve monkeys know nothing about image quality.

I have many thousands of £'s of high end digital camera kit. - I take more pics on my mini (v4s) JFS, of friends, family, and for pleasure, than I do on all the other cameras. The picture quality is good. It prints fine at poster size. I would have loved to get the 808, but I was a few weeks early.

The pixel count in my pocket, although designed @infinite loop, is definitely in the napa valley class.

But I did did did want to see what 41 monkeys could do: could they snap the equivalent of to be or...