So, since color laser printers are rather cheap, now, I figured it was the right time to chuck my ancient HP LaserJet 5 and cheap HP DeskJet 5150 printers.  I picked up an HP Color LaserJet 2600n printer, since it had decent reviews, a JetDirect card built-in, and sported a rather standard 600x600 DPI [unenhanced] resolution.

Linuxprinting said that it works mostly, and that print quality is rather crappy compared to the Windows drivers.  Indeed they were right.

I installed foo2zjs [20060625dfsg-4] on my print server (Debian testing), and configured cups to use it.  The driver defaults to monochrome, but after selecting color, photos and random vector graphics (even printing C code from VIM) looked terribly washed-out and grainy.  I didn't have a problem with the grainy look, since it is only 600x600 DPI, and most inkjet printers use some sort of RET to produce a much higher effective resolution.

Ok, maybe my printer is shot, or maybe the Linuxprinting folks are right, or a combination of the two.  I installed the HP driver in my VMwared Windows XP system, and did a test print of a photos.  Big difference - it looked really nice, and correct.

I then tried the suggestion to use km2430_2.icm for the color profile, no noticeable difference.

Figuring there was something wrong with foo2zjs, I pulled down the 20061224-3 [unstable] version of the Debian package, but dpkg whined that it depended on a newer version of libc6, so I didn't continue.

After heading over to the author's homepage, I noticed some big red text:

*** DON'T USE the foo2zjs package from Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandrake/Manrivia, Debian, RedHat, Gentoo, MacOSX, or BSD!
*** Download it here and follow the directions below.

Umm, ok, so I dpkg -P'ed foo2zjs, followed the instructions, and built it manually.  By default, the install target uses a prefix of /usr instead of /usr/local, but they provide an uninstall target.  I printed a photo again, and it did look better, but not up to the same level of quality that the XP driver produced.  Anyway, here are some photos of printouts of this photo (click for full-size):

That's Debian testing's foo2zjs.

That's the author's foo2zjs.

And that's the XP driver.

I still think something's wrong.  Is it maybe just lack of RET on the author's foo2zjs driver that accounts for the delta between the XP driver's output and Linux's?  Anyhow, the printer is still nice.  Saves me power and desk space, if nothing else!

Ever wonder why sometimes, out of the blue, fonts in GTK/Qt applications become huge?  Yep, me too.

The answer (most of the time) has to do with the DPI your X11 video driver assigns the particular display.  Normally, the DPI setting is derived from the physical dimensions of the particular screen in use.  This is an attempt for fonts, and other screen elements, to be sized correctly.

It seems that some drivers do this correctly, and some don't.  The fglrx driver is way off, most of the time.

Here is a dialog with normal-sized fonts (DPI of 104 x 98):

Here's one with huge fonts (DPI of 127x127):

A quick way to determine the current DPI is to run the following:

lepton% dxpyinfo|grep dots
  resolution:    104x98 dots per inch

One of the fixes is to override the display dimensions in your xorg.conf, and ignore any EDID information from the physical display.  Example from xorg.conf:

Section "Monitor"
     Identifier     "LCD Panel"
     # Set Display Size
     DisplaySize    340 270
EndSection

The 340 x 270 mm size seems to work for me (even though it's not the physical dimensions of my monitor), and sets the DPI to 104 x 98.

Here's some output from Xorg.0.log after X is restarted with the DisplaySize directive:

(**) fglrx(0): Display dimensions: (340, 270) mm
(WW) fglrx(0): Probed monitor is 280x210 mm, using Displaysize 340x270 mm
(**) fglrx(0): DPI set to (104, 98)
(--) fglrx(0): Virtual size is 1400x1050 (pitch 1408)

Yeah, it's WW'ing since the DisplaySize has been overridden.  This is fine.

I've heard quite a bit about it, but never been to a Fry's, before.  Since I am in the Atlanta area this week, and there's one close by, I decided to take a trip and see what all the fuss is about.

The whole place is like a Sam's club for electronics.  It's huge, and seems to have a really great selection of almost anything.  Unlike some other stores, their Networking section actually has a good variety of cable, racks, punch-down tools, and patch panels.  The salesmen all wear ties, and seem moderately knowledgeable, which is pretty weird.

They have very cheap DVI/HDMI cables.

The motherboard selection is nice.  Beats buying them online, especially when things break.

Doom3 at 60fps?  Meh.

I picked up a 3-pack of 12oz compressed air for $12, and a USB light.  They didn't seem to have the fan housings for my Antec case, but eBay doesn't seem to, either so I'm not counting that against them.

Charlotte definitely needs one of these.  I suppose Best Buy and CompUSA wouldn't last too long, though.

Debian's packages for MediaWiki are nice, but don't always result in smooth upgrades.

If you're considering upgrading mediawiki1.7 to 1.7.1-16, I strongly suggest backing up your /etc/mediawiki1.7/LocalSettings.php, as the upgrade will trash it completely, and leave you with a nice collection of dangling symlinks.

After upgrading, add the following to the top of your restored LocalSettings.php:

define(MW_INSTALL_PATH,'/var/lib/mediawiki1.7');

It will save you some time, trust me.

Apparently OFTC has gone wild:

!oxygen.oftc.net *** Banned autokilled: This Host Triggered Network Flood Protection, please mail support@oftc.net (2007-05-09 03:20:27)

It apparently does that for every server, now, and booted all users with a similar message.

#RPI has temporarily moved to EFNet.

Back by popular demand:

• Quake III Arena (OSP): dax.prolixium.com
• Quake 4 (DM): nonce.prolixium.com

I'm not sure how I've missed these:

• LyricWiki.org - song lyrics, without annoying pop-ups or flash
• SongMeanings - song lyrics, with commentaries

Here's a rough transcript of the latest Sony stupidity:

Sony Tech: We know about this problem.  Its our new copy protection that's making these discs unplayable in some players including our own, we do not intend to change the copy protection.  The only correction to this problem is a firmware update to your player.  The electronics division know about this and should have given you this information.

[ http://sonystrikesagain.wordpress.com/ ]

Slashdot story here.  Just do me a favor and avoid purchasing any Sony products.  The company needs to just go away, and stop screwing over the consumer.