Hoke’s Ramblings

Can anybody tell me why printer manufacturers assume that just because you’re buying a USB printer, you automatically have a bunch of USB connectors lying around at home?

If you buy any other USB peripheral, they come with connector cables (even, somewhat superfluously, most flash disks), but printers? No way, Bob. You gotta supply your own.

Which meant digging through a bunch of unpacked (yes, I know I’ve been here a year now) boxes looking for my old USB modem, which thankfully I found.

…And then there’s the matter of sample paper. It’s a bit awkward going through the whole setup sequence (which is remarkably complicated for printers these days) only to have the thing flash its feeble LCD at you telling you to put in some paper to do the head alignment, and then you realise there’s not a scrap of decent A4 paper anywhere in the house.

Hoke says “a musical and visual spectacular for the 21st century!”

Last night, for Lina’s birthday, we went to go and see the opening performance of “We Will Rock You”. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting…I’ve seen ‘Queen’ performances before, but this was an interesting story woven around their smash hits. And inspite of their being around for decades, it’s amazing how with a few subtle alterations to the lyrics their songs are as applicable today (and even 300 years in the future!) as they were then.

I quote the official tagline: “…We Will Rock You presents an extraordinary company of young singers and actors in a futurist adventure set in a time when live music is banned on earth.”

Besides the awesome music, their visual effects are unlike anything I’ve seen before in a stage production, and better than most rock concerts I’ve been to.

While everything didn’t go quite as smoothly as it could, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt as it was opening night. Besides, I doubt most of the audience noticed the stuff I picked up from my years ‘in the trade’

The star of the show was undoubtedly ‘Pop’ – The ultimate hippy, sorry, Bohemian, played by Malcolm Terrey and then of course there was ‘Britney’…

The internet is a scary place. You think you’re in this vast anonymous ether, but you’re really not. To prove it, I thought I’d add in this cool plugin that will add your country flag when you add comments.

This uses the free country-ip database from ip2nation.com, but you get way more advanced databases than that that can pinpoint you right down to your ISP (see ip2location.com if you don’t believe me!)

Based on this coincidental combination of random pictures, reading material and movie reviews, one might actually think I was rather obsessed with the matter…