Having finished writing her thesis, but needing hard copies for proofreading and revisions, it became quickly apparent that the old inkjet wasn’t cutting it. The pricey ink cartridges ran out fast, something like 100 pages. Or the heads got clogged, the cleaning of which also consumed ink. Or, enough to make you spitting mad, the printer refuses to print black-only if the color cartridge was empty.

So, last week I went out and got Julie a laser printer. I went with the
Samsung ML-2010. We couldn’t be happier with the little guy. I had to look around to find a decent price for it, though.

Often in Paris you will find certain areas to have a cluster of shops dealing in the same kind of wares. For computers the place to go is Rue Montgallet, just three stops from here. There are rows of little shops run mostly by the Chinese, I believe, with all their prices in the windows. At the bottom of the hill is the giant Surcouf, a chain, who is also the most expensive of all these. Unfortunately, Surcouf is also the only one of those that maintains a catalogue and prices online, thus giving the whole shopping experience a need for a bit of legwork. I was having none of that, though. I ended up going to yet another place, a “store” called Grosbill.com. This “store” is really just an extension of their website: you order online, either from home or from one of the dozens of computer terminals at their location. Then there are two machines where you put in your login name and pay either by card or cash. Then there is a cordon, and then a counter where some lanky IT student hands you your booty. I’m not in a huge hurry to go back, but their prices were low, as long as you remember to opt out of the 2 year extended waranty that they automatically add to every item you order.

Nonetheless, happy with el printo, as we’ve named our imprimante laser. The Toner will cost more than the printer itself, however, what with the third-full cartridge included having a life of 1000 prints, it’s easy to see how they are already much more economical. And it’s much faster, and quieter.

New Animation for Apredica: Dr. Slough Invents a Drug.
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On the home stretch of her PHD, Julie has completed writing and is now revising and doing the finishing touches. It is a race against the clock, and tensions are high. Sleep cycles are stretched and completely out of sync with the rotation of the earth. Tempers flair, and dishes are washed on a less than daily basis. It’s like living with meth addicts.
Finding time to be good to oneself is very important in days like these. Yesterday, I took her to lunch at the Sushi place on the corner — there are at least four in the neighborhood. Going for a daily walk is also nice, although unlike Frank, we never bring any furniture we find on the street home with us.

And this weekend is the famous Fete de la Musique, which is a veritable orgy of busking and free concerts.

Meanwhile, Julie has enlisted her little mom to help with the proofreading, which has been an ordeal of itself. Although a very literate woman, things like copy and paste, or the fine difference between “save” and “save as” are a complete mystery to her. This is compounded by the fact that she is dealing with a computer with a German language operating system.

Fortunately, there is logmein. Although I had thought about doing it before, I could absolutely kick myself for not finding a solution like it earlier on. You install it on your mother-in-law’s computer with a password, and then you can access and control it remotely via a web browser. Amazing. Totally cool. Logmein.com

Our young birdies don’t come to the flowerbox anymore, although we see them around still. We’ve populated all the pots and boxes with shishkebab skewers to discourage anymore flower box romance taking place, cause Brother, we don’t need the hassle. However, with the warm weather and the windows open all day, we’ve had a damn pigeon fly into the flat three times in the last four days. Not cool. We are getting a cat.

Julie gets this message quite often while working on her thesis. “There are too many spelling or grammatical errors”. Therefore your paper won’t be able to run the automatic spell checker.

This problem seems to be complicated by writing a work in multiple languages. What we did to fix the problem was first select the entire text, then double click on the language down at the bottom, select the language, deselect automatic language detection. The kicker is you have to do this once selecting the main text, and then again selecting the footnotes.

Wilbur and Orville have now both taken to wing, the older one already two days ago, the second one just yesterday.

Unfortunately we weren’t witness to their first airborne flaps. Just like the hatching, one minute they seemed to start doing it, and then suddenly a day later they just did it.

Nonetheless, we’re both quite excited and proud of the little ones. It’s odd to be so fascinated by something so mundane. But then again, we don’t get out much.

Spec work, simply put, is speculative work, work for maybe-profits down the road, or just for creds. For example, someone has an idea for a T-shirt. It is expensive to print T-shirts, so we can’t pay you now to make the design. But if well sell lots of shirts we’ll pay you later, plus you will get lots of publicity. How about that?

Trying to make a living doing something creative will have you facing it almost every day, especially if you are just getting started and are just about ready to take any job you can find.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve encountered lots of good reads on the subject, so here are links.

This first one was actually from a discussion thread from a forum for Flash animators.

The funniest / saddest job posting you will see

This next one is a site that is aaaall about it.

NO!SPEC

Dani of DaniDraws has a thing or two to say about those guys on Pixish. A good little read.

Spec Work and Pixish

Tom gets all spec worked up.

Tom’s MAD Blog

Brad is pissed.
Brad Fitzpatrick

Pigeons reaching adulthood on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

You can see it here: they are nearing adulthood. They resemble the adults in all but size. Still not able to fly, but soon no doubt.

8 Best: Non-Wikipedia Pedias

Did you know that “snot vampire” is slang terminology for the Anzati species? Of course not. No one did.

Those birds are getting big. They appear fully feathered, and resemble the parents in two aspects, the first being a little bit of yellow fluff is visible yet and the second that they won’t fly away.

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Hip, modern stylized design. Killer design.
Adventures In Music : Toot, Whistle, Plunk And Boom.