Ad Terras Per Aspera

Hoo boy. Top Gear decided to race a Bugatti Veyron, a car that has four turbo chargers, 1000 horsepower, does zero to sixty in a little over two seconds, goes over 250mph, costs 8.8 million USD to build the first prototype (costs about 1.1m USD to buy the commercial model), and has 12 separate radiators to shunt all the heat the car makes… vs… a Cessna 176, or as they call it, a flying toaster, in a race to bring truffles from the south of Italy to London.

I won’t spoil the race, but its funny as hell, and is the full episode, all 60 minutes of it. Its quite worth watching, and possibly one of Top Gear’s best.

Update: Nooo! Google took the video down!

So, I just watched the season opener for Battlestar Galactica. No spoilers, but I feel like running around in circles and banging my head on the wall for awhile until next Friday comes so I can watch the next episode.

Seriously, I swear they somehow use Wonkavision to lace my official BSG Snack with heavy drugs when I’m not looking. Its not only the best show on TV (verified by multiple scientific studies), but also the most addictive. It has the best plot, the best acting, the best CGI effects, and the best looking Cylons.

Er, wait, did I say that last one out loud?

At any rate, if you were watching the commercials, they’ve released the first half of Season 2 on DVD. I’m seriously considering buying it too. Actually, I need to get around to getting the Season 1 set as well, which includes the Miniseries.

And now, here’s your moment of Amazon.com zen: buy a Master Grade GP-02a Gundam Model from Bandai… get recommended a stir-fry pan perfect for doing Asian-style dishes. Who knew Amazon Recommendations were so useful!

As I mentioned earlier, I’m now the proud owner of a Canon i9900 wide format printer, and I’d like to mention upfront that this printer rocks beyond all belief. Canon managed to do everything right with this printer, and it shows.

For a mere $350-400, you get a printer that is fast, quiet, produces great prints, good looking, and charismatic. If there is a printer you can pick up chicks with, this is that printer.

Speed: Doing borderless photos at the highest quality using Canon’s Photo Paper Pro, I get a 4×6″ in about 35 seconds, a 8×10″ in about 50 seconds, and a 13×19″ in about 3 minutes. Watching it do a 13×19″ that fast is almost like a magic trick.

Noise: Ultimately none. The specifications in the manual say 37db maximum when printing, but the only thing I hear is the clunk-clunk sound of it feeding pages into itself, and the occational swish-swish as the head goes back and forth while printing. Its quieter than any printer I’ve ever owned.

Photo Quality: I’ve been printing out 8 megapixel images from my Canon Rebel XT, and the photo quality is amazing. Compared to, say, the Kodak digital printing booth at Walmart, for roughly the same price per picture[1], I get much better quality. And, of course, it beats any consumer or prosumer photo printer I’ve owned (including two Canons and a Lexmark[2].) I haven’t found a good picture to push the envelope of this printer’s 4800×2400 DPI output, but I find text to be crisp and sharp, as if it came out of a high end laser printer.

Size and weight: Well, I won’t say the printer is small. It being a wide format printer, it has to be big enough to print 13″ wide paper, plus enough room on each side for the print head to completely clear the paper. The specifications in the manual say it weighs 21 pounds, and has a WxHxD of 23x7x13″, but that isn’t really big at all. The volume is roughly four times that of a Canon consumer printer, and they pack a lot of features in such a tiny space.

Ink usage and price: You’d expect a printer like this to chew through ink like crazy, right? Wrong. I’ve printed over 75 4×6″s, a 8×10″, a 13×19″, and two pages of a PDF so far, and according to the ink level viewer in the driver, I haven’t used much ink at all (see the screenshot to the left to see for yourself). Amazon is currently selling all the 8 seperate ink tanks for around $8 a peice, so the cost per unit of ink is lower than most professional printers, and lower than any consumer printer that uses the single all-in-one carts with the built-in print head.

Asthetic quality: I used to think all printers were ugly, and were far too ornate for their function; or on the other end of the spectrum, too boxy and plain. The Canon i9900 manages to perform well and look good doing it. As a review said (one I read before buying the printer) it looks like they “sliced a cylinder in half”, and I have to agree. Also, the coloring is a tasteful blend of black and dark silver, and the front panel only has two buttons, a light, and a USB plug for plugging a camera directly into the printer.

Other things I like about this printer is how it folds up on itself to keep dust out: the front tray folds in and up to prevent stuff entering from the front, and the paper holder in the back folds down to prevent dust and small objects from simply falling inside. I can open the front panel with the tray and paper holder closed, so replacing ink carts is a breeze.

Honestly, I’d pay even more for this printer than what Canon sells this for. Canon’s MSRP is $500, Amazon sells it for around $450, and I’d pay around $600-700 for it; its very hard to get printers that are supported by Linux that are any good.

_{[1]: Its about $0.50 per 4×6″ at the local Kodak booth, and I pay about $0.60 cents per 4×6″ in a 120 pack of Canon’s Photo Paper Pro. Photo Paper Pro is thicker, brighter, and more resistant to mishandling than Kodak’s paper in my opinion, so it’s quite worth the extra ten cents.}

_{[2]: I hate Lexmark’s consumer printers. Lexmark refuses to release Linux drivers for them, and they have threatened to sue anyone who tries to. I would normally say “boycot Lexmark”, but lets face it, Lexmark consumer printers are some of the lowest quality printers produced with some of the highest priced ink. Get a cheap Canon for a similar price, you’ll be much happier.}

Update: I’ve blogged about using Adorama ProJet Elite inkjet paper with my i9900, and its worth a read if you want to know how well the i9900 interacts with this brand of paper.

So, I got a Norelco 9160XL SmartTouch-XL shaver for Christmas from my Mom, to replace the Norelco shaver who was around five years old, and the battery was starting to go on it. And I’ll have to tell you, I like it.

It’s got the famous Norelco three headed design, except this one uses those new triple ring blades that are supposed to increase the shaver’s ability to cut hairs efficiently; it also has the pivoting heads, allowing the shaver to follow the contours of my face. Also, the motor is both faster and nearly silent.

Between the new blade design, the pivoting heads, and faster motor, I have to admit I’m getting a better shaving experience out of this. But wait! There’s more! (… Why do I suddenly feel like one of those TV salesmen? “Call now, and get a second widget for free! Act now!”…)

It has an LCD display on the front that tells me the current charge level, and two lights that tell me if I either need to clean it out, or replace the blades. Actually, the whole thing about cleaning this out is so much easier: I can rinse it out with tap water, and you know, not get electrocuted doing it.

Oh, and it has a charging base, where my old one just had a simple cable. You know what happens to shavers with simple cables? Cats knock them off tables, denting just one grill/blade out of three, causing you to have to buy a set of three, new, expensive replacement sets just after you got it. At least with the charging base, and the better fitting hard plastic cover over the head, this shouldn’t happen again like it happened to me with my old shaver.

Also, the thing is made of high impact plastic. I accidentally dropped it in the bathroom sink, and did my impression of someone dying a horrible and painful death, thinking I destroyed my new shaver in less than a week. It survived! Not only that, I think it bounces.

As for battery life, it usually took my old shaver’s entire charge to help me shave a beard off (between using a pair of sissors, the sideburn trimmer, and the shaving head), and in the end, it wasn’t even finishing the job, and it took about 6-8 hours for it to fully charge. Now, with my new shaver, I shaved off my beard, and not only did it in half the time, but did it with less than fifth of the charge.

All and all, I give the shaver a 9/10: -1 being for, even though I got it as a gift, it was a tad overpriced, though I guess you have to pay more than you used to for get high quality.