Mending Laser Printers with Bubble Wrap

Some time back we got a colour laser printer. The price was amazing (cheaper than the first 9 pin dot matrix I ever bought) and we got a free set of toner cartridges too. The machine (a Samsung CLP-300) worked fine when we got it, and I thought that was that.

I was wrong.

It no longer feeds the paper in properly. The paper gets so far and then it sticks. Very annoying (a tip for printer buyers, do a search for “printername paper jam” before you buy one, just in case you get loads of hits. You do with the CLP-300…).

Anyhoo, I did some more searching and came across FixYa at http://www.fixya.com/. These people serve as collectors of self help tips for hardware owners, and there were quite a few threads about my printer, including one that said the springs in the paper tray were a bit under specified. These push the paper up against the first roller on the way into the machine, and get weak over time, leading to paper jams. The suggestion was to find some stronger springs.

Unfortunately my local spring emporium was shut for the night, and so I was forced to improvise. Turns out that a length of bubble wrap (unpopped works best) rolled into a cylinder and forced underneath the tray provides just enough extra spring power to make the printer work a treat. I’m not sure how long it will last, so I’d probably better get some springs at some point, but at the moment it works fine.

GigaPan Epic

The GigaPan is a device that will let you take huge panoramic pictures using an ordinary digital camera:

I really like that kind of picture, so getting one might be a nice idea. But I think it would be even more fun to try and make one out of Lego. On the other hand, if you have 400 dollars to spare you can find out more here.

http://gigapansystems.com/system-page.html

Doh! Some one has beaten me to the idea.

What a Way to Start the Semester

The car park, on arrival today

Valkyria Chronicles

Yesterday I finished the PS3 game Uncharted. Only started playing it in October last year. Go me. If you’ve not played the game I can strongly recommend it. Very much in the Tomb Raider mould, with some great level designs.

I’ve now moved on to Valkyria Chronicles from Sega. Number one son bought a copy whilst he was with us at Christmas, and since it was a good price I bought it a couple of weeks back. It is a turn based strategy game, a bit like the Advance Wars games that are so good on the Nintendo handhelds, but with lots of personality, a strong storyline and fantastic graphics. You get to hand pick, train and equip your troops before going off to fight against the Imperial forces (I was wondering if Imperial forces have always been the bad guys, perhaps it started with Star Wars).

The game itself has a very strong moral theme, starting with just how horrible war itself is, with picture postcard villages reduced to mud and wreckage before your eyes, and normal people dragged into the fight.

I’m enjoying playing it, except for one thing. If you are not careful some of your comrades in arms get shot. I hate this bit. Fortunately you can get them treated and evacuated from the battlefield, and I’ve not lost anyone permanently yet, but it is starting to worry me that I might in the future.  I know that they don’t exist, and that the whole thing is actually a block of data running inside an unfeeling lump of hardware, but it still bothers me.

Lifesaver

Went to York today and took some photos.

This is my new desktop background.