The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[pdurrant]

I use Brother printers and third-party cartridges. I haven't noticed any colour fidelity problems, but I'm not doing any high-end colour work.

[Quoth]

Maybe depends on which 3rd party. I've used 3rd party colour carts on Brother lasers for years with no problem. Also Brother supports Linux and doesn't have the shenanigans of HP. Was the HP laserjet IV the peak? Their inkjet never as good as Brother or Epson, or even Canon.

Edit:
I've not had an Epson inkjet for years and most entry level inkjects from anyone seem predicated on making profit from cartridges. I'd only buy an Epson or Brother that took the big tanks. The ink cartridges are a scam.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Most of the people I know have swapped their inkjet printers for ones that use refill cartridges.

Or laser printers for low volume printing because toner cartridges don't dry out. I've been running on the same Brother cartridge for... um... something like 10 years. With a piece of tape over the optical sensor hole to disable the toner low sensor.

[issybird]

Why, when you try to troubleshoot an issue, do the recommended fixes jump from things any idiot already thought up and tried herself to "Inspect the logxmuz, delete all paqimngs, install punbvgtt and run oiunyutr"? Why is there no middle ground for the technically clunky but teachable?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by issybird

Why, when you try to troubleshoot an issue, do the recommended fixes jump from things any idiot already thought up and tried herself to "Inspect the logxmuz, delete all paqimngs, install punbvgtt and run oiunyutr"? Why is there no middle ground for the technically clunky but teachable?

Install dodgywindowsrepairtool.exe.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

Why, when you try to troubleshoot an issue, do the recommended fixes jump from things any idiot already thought up and tried herself to "Inspect the logxmuz, delete all paqimngs, install punbvgtt and run oiunyutr"? Why is there no middle ground for the technically clunky but teachable?

You don't have the special code word for the call centre?
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/ind...:_Tech_Support

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by issybird

Why, when you try to troubleshoot an issue, do the recommended fixes jump from things any idiot already thought up and tried herself to "Inspect the logxmuz, delete all paqimngs, install punbvgtt and run oiunyutr"? Why is there no middle ground for the technically clunky but teachable?

Because when the commonly recommended troubleshooting steps don't work, the problem ends up being something weird or esoteric, and there are no middle ground answers.

Like right now I'm trying to get one of two Windows workstations to use WSL2 and it won't. I did something to disable Hyper-V two years ago, and reversing the steps isn't undoing whatever I did. The other workstation I did this on reverted just fine. Weird and esoteric.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Maybe depends on which 3rd party. I've used 3rd party colour carts on Brother lasers for years with no problem. Also Brother supports Linux and doesn't have the shenanigans of HP. Was the HP laserjet IV the peak? Their inkjet never as good as Brother or Epson, or even Canon.

Edit:
I've not had an Epson inkjet for years and most entry level inkjects from anyone seem predicated on making profit from cartridges. I'd only buy an Epson or Brother that took the big tanks. The ink cartridges are a scam.

I don't have a problem with ink cartridges as long as they are single color. What I do have a problem are printers with one ink cartridge that contains all of the colors. That to me is a scam because if one color runs out you have to replace the entire cartridge even if there is plenty of ink for the other colors.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Like right now I'm trying to get one of two Windows workstations to use WSL2 and it won't.

I use WSL to do operations on ext4 partitions with shared blocks. I run it from Windows using GCC make (from the Android NDK) using a combination of Windows and Linux commands. It works very well.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Renate

I use WSL to do operations on ext4 partitions with shared blocks. I run it from Windows using GCC make (from the Android NDK) using a combination of Windows and Linux commands. It works very well.

WSL itself is great. My specific case though is I broke something and I haven't been able to fix it.

[Renate]

I just meant that I've had good luck. It was pretty painless.

[Solitaire1]

I've recently been going through my CD collection, checking it against what I've ripped into the Music Library on my computer and updating missing metadata when needed. One thing I've found that is very irritating is that often the physical CDs are missing metadata (it's not shown in the booklet, on the CD Back Cover, or on the CD itself).

An example of this is the Composer Credits. When I rip a CD they are often missing from the supplied metadata. I've researched various sources and ended up having to go to Discogs to find the Composer Credits by looking at a picture of the 45 with the song, and sometimes even that doesn't provide the credits (a CD I have Harmonicats had one song where I checked for the Composer and all I found was that Composer is credited as "Unknown").

Also not good is that often when the Composer Credits are listed in the CD package but it is in print so small that I have to get an strong magnifying glass to make it readable. I can understand if the Metadata Source when ripping is missing some information, but why should I have to do research to find readable metadata that should be contained in the CD Booklet/Back Cover/CD itself?

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

An example of this is the Composer Credits. When I rip a CD they are often missing from the supplied metadata. I've researched various sources and ended up having to go to Discogs to find the Composer Credits by looking at a picture of the 45 with the song, and sometimes even that doesn't provide the credits (a CD I have Harmonicats had one song where I checked for the Composer and all I found was that Composer is credited as "Unknown")

Have you checked MusicBrainz? Try using MusicBrainz Picard to tag your music files.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I've recently been going through my CD collection, checking it against what I've ripped into the Music Library on my computer and updating missing metadata when needed. One thing I've found that is very irritating is that often the physical CDs are missing metadata (it's not shown in the booklet, on the CD Back Cover, or on the CD itself).

Depends on the tools. I'm partial, historically, to CUETools' CUERipper utility. It's essentially Open Source EAC. Can use the AccurateRip database to ensure your rips are 100% accurate. Can use freeDB and MusicBrainz for metadata.

I don't know how useful CUETools is for already-ripped tracks but the metadata databases should still be useful for manual editing.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Have you checked MusicBrainz? Try using MusicBrainz Picard to tag your music files.

I haven't looked into it and actually I hadn't heard much about MusicBrainz Picard. Is that a repository of metadata or is it a program?

What I've been doing is checking commonly available areas for the metadata (such as Wikipedia and Discogs) and then manually transcribing it to my music management program (I use MediaMonkey4).

I don't mind doing that, my concern is locating the information itself. That's what I've been irritated about, it shouldn't take that much work. As an example, I go into Wikipedia and often many of the albums in the Discography just show the title, with no other metadata (no subpage for the album itself).