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How not to buy a new inkjet printer…

The other day, I was trying to print some shots of our kids on our Epson Stylus Photo 890, and having nothing but issues--first it was clogged print heads, then it was trailing dots and splats at random spots on the page. I literally cleaned and aligned the heads probably 15 times over the course of a couple hours, trying to get a reasonable print out of the thing.

Finally, I gave up, and decided to lower my blood pressure by blasting over to my favorite local independent Mac dealer, The Mac Store, to check on the availability of the new 80GB iPod (more on that in another article). While I was there, grousing due to the iPods not yet being in stock, I happened to notice a Canon Pixma iP6600D (say that three times quickly!) sitting there, with a gorgeous borderless 8.5x11 photo glossy printout sitting there in its output tray. Of course, every sample print from every printer in any store looks great. With my Epson troubles fresh in my mind, I was definitely tempted, though, by the beauty of the print staring me in the face. I wanted to buy the thing, take it home, and beat the Epson to a pulp with a rubber mallet, basically.

But I had done zero research on any replacements for our Epson (which we had purchased over five years ago, I learned later when checking our records). And I'm not normally one to just purchase without doing the requisite research...what to do, what to do. So I moved over to a new 24" iMac (oooh, very nice machine!) and brought up Google. Canon Pixma iP6600D went into the search box, and up popped the results. That's when I was hit with the obvious stick--the first match was for a review at, of all places, Macworld. My employer. Duh! I didn't even think to look at Macworld's review section first.
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And the answer is…

For those who didn't quite see it in the comments, the mystery object is a printout of an entire walkthrough of the original game of Zork, one of the earliest interactive fiction games. Adventure was the first widely-known entry in the genre, but Zork really made huge strides in both the breadth of the virtual world as well as the character's interaction with that world. The printout pictured in the prior story was created on February 18th, 1980, by myself and a good friend who was in his first or second year at MIT.

Zork date

At the time, I was 15 and my buddy Patrick was 19. These were the early days of computing, just over two years into the Apple ]['s existence. So while graphical games existed (Mystery House was released in 1980, for example), the capabilities of the machine made for very limited graphics--check the screenshot on the Wikipedia page for proof. As such, interactive fiction offered a more complete escape into the gaming world, as your mind did the work of creating whatever "graphics" the game required, based on the descriptions provided by the developers.

It was also the very early days of the internet, meaning it basically didn't exist. Its predecessor, ARPANET, was just getting going. Somehow, probably through a computer club at high school, I was introduced to ARPANET and the MDL machine at MIT. This machine allowed free guest account signups, and they had Zork installed for anyone to play. That's about all it took for me to get hooked, even over a 300 baud modem working on a dumb terminal with thermal paper!

Read on for a bit more about Zork, online gaming in the very early 1980s, and that monster printout...
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A quiz of sorts…

This morning, while doing a bit of cleaning and recycling in the computer room, I came across something that I'd totally forgotten I had. So I thought I'd have a bit of fun with it, and see if anyone can figure out exactly what it is. Here's what it looks like:

Mystery image

Based on the visual, here are some clues...

  1. It's obviously a computer printout of some sort.
  2. It's quite long (30 to 40 feet?), as you can see in this short movie.
  3. The machine that created the printout was a TI Silent 700 terminal, which looked like this, and printed on thermal paper.
  4. In the year the printout was created, the Steelers won the Super Bowl, the Phillies won the World Series, the Lakers were the NBA champs, and the Islanders were the kings of the NHL. Bjorn Borg won Wimbledon (that narrows it down only a bit!).

So the standing question is: exactly what is printed on that long roll of expensive thermal paper? If there's no progress in guessing an answer over the next day or so, I'll post some more clues. (Peter, James, and Pat aren't allowed to comment, as they already know the answer. If you're reading this, guys, keep your mouths shut! :) )

-rob.



Mystery font identified!

Mystery font

Update: It's identified! Thanks to the commenters who quickly identified the font as Textile. This was a font Apple distributed with OS 9, but never OS X. When I last upgraded my machine, I didn't bother to reinstall Classic, since I never used it. However, I did keep a disk image of Classic around on a backup, so I'm now set once again with Textile--thanks again for the fast response!

About five years ago, I created a project for an event at my wife's employer. What started as something small and simple grew into (of course) something large and complex. But the event was a success, so the efforts were worth it.

Fast forward five years, and the company would love it if I could update the presentation to cover their latest five years. No problem, I think, as I've managed to keep all the project files intact over the years. But I can't say the same for my Macs. I believe I've upgraded twice since I originally created the project (in iMovie2, as a reference point). And whatever font it is I used in the project has long since vanished.

Now that I'm updating it, however, I need to know what font I used--I'm sure it's on a disk around here somewhere, but I have no idea what it might be called. Since I'm far from a font expert, I figured I'd ask for some assistance. How about it? Anyone have any thoughts on what font family I might have used?

Thanks!



Black Mac is back!

After just under a month on the road (Portland to Austin to Memphis to Austin to Portland), my black MacBook is now back in my possession! The good news: so far, the power adapter isn't overheating. The bad news: it still makes more noise than I would consider "normal," though it's not audible from as great a distance as before.

What's truly strange is what they replaced:

  • APP-646-302 DSPL 13.3 GLOSSY AUO: I'm assuming that's the 13.3" glossy screen...
  • APP-603-9181 ASSY, BEZEL, BEST: I think this is the bezel that goes around the screen.
  • APP-616-0268 BATTLITH LITH, 55WHR, ATL, BLK: A new battery.

I guess I understand the battery replacement...but why the screen and bezel? Perhaps the connection between the screen and the machine itself was somehow causing an issue? Or maybe a tech's screwdriver slipped and gouged the original screen :).

In any event, it's back, and based on the first hour or so of usage (downloading 2.52GB (well, it feels like that much!) of system updates), the overheating problem seems to be resolved. Hooray!

Update: After letting the machine run for a good two hours, I felt the power brick, and it seemed notably cooler than before the fixes. To confirm, I hooked up the USB temperature probe, and found that the temperature now maxes out around 94F. That's a good 30+ degrees cooler than before. So while it's still warm to the touch, I no longer fear a meltdown if I leave it too close to something made of plastic.



Which Mac should I buy?

Macworld logoGiven that everyone at Macworld is publicly reachable via a web email form, I get a lot of random questions in my inbox.

By a wide margin, the two most popular recent questions have been "which Mac should I buy," and "when should I buy it?" After answering the question about 2,500 times (or so it seems), I decided to write up my usual responses for easy future reference. There was some good conversation on the topic in the forums as well; this has become one of the threads to which I point those contemplating the switch.



Live chat support is great!

In a feat of amazing stupidity yesterday (aided and abetted by a screaming three-year-old in the back seat), I managed to back our Honda Pilot into the garage door while it was still going up--I very nearly cleared the door, but ended up cracking the housing that holds the high-mounted brake light on the Pilot.

I called the local dealer yesterday, and they want about $150 for the thing--and it's a pretty simple looking piece of plastic. So I spent some time last night and this morning scouring the net for a better deal (but still from an authorized Honda dealer, as I wanted the genuine part). I was having some trouble finding the part, though, as I didn't know exactly what it was called. On one of the sites I visited, there was a button for "Live chat! 24 hour assistance!," so I thought I'd give it a try. Here's the actual exchange that took place with the "live" support rep:

Live chat image

Now, call me suspicious, but I don't think Simon is any more "live" than are the rocks decorating our yard. Sheez. If you're going to offer a live chat button, shouldn't you at least make sure it really does offer live chat?



How hot is too hot?

If anyone out there is using a MacBook (or a MacBook Pro, for that matter), and has access to a temperature probe, I'd be interested in knowing the temperature of your power adapter brick. (Just stick the probe between the adapter and work surface, or hold it on top with a book or somesuch.) Apple just sent me a replacement for my first one, as it was making a scary sounding noise (sort of a grating static-like sound), and was getting to be *very* warm--at least, what I consider to be very warm.

Within an hour or so of powering up the machine, the adapter brick will go over 123F, which strikes me as too hot to be normal. It's basically too hot to hold comfortably for any length of time, and the brick will warp plastic if I set it on such for a period of time. My PowerBook, for instance, never got anywhere near 123F; its adapter stayed cool to the touch. And since both bricks exhibit the same behavior (noise and very high temps), then I think I must have an issue with my MacBook, not the adapter (or perhaps the wall-to-brick cable, but that seems unlikely).

On the other hand, if everyone out there is also recording 123F and can hear the grating static-like noise, then I guess everything's normal...scary, but normal. Still, I find it hard to believe that the brick should be getting that warm, just from the machine being powered up. (As soon as I put it to sleep, the noise in the brick vanishes, and temps return to normal).

June 24 update: I spoke with Apple again this morning, telling them that the new adapter exhibited the same issues as the old. They have agreed (without any prodding on my part) to take my MacBook in for a look-see. So I spent some time this morning reinstalling OS X and removing my third-party RAM chips; it's now ready to go back to Apple on Monday morning.

July 12 update: My MacBook has been with Apple since June 28th, with a status of "Parts on order." Not much of an update, really, other than knowing that I still don't have resolution on the issue.

-rob.