Stumped by invisible abstraction, OR Oh b***er, there goes another inkjet printer to the tip without really finding out whether it could have been repaired and given more service.

Stumped by invisible abstraction

Or,

Oh b***er, there goes another inkjet printer to the tip without really finding out whether it could have been repaired and given more service.

It seemed like a good idea. L***** had no printer, and T** had found one skipped (thrown into a skip or bin so the action becomes a verb. In Australia). The found one was an Epson Stylus C45. Pretty dirty it was. Dusty. But it had power and USB cables, so theoretically connectable to the laptop.

Never having done this before, the first problem was working out how the covers came off. Screws. Plastic snap fit catcher and the like. Easy to work out remembering the exploded view version explained in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". When everything had been cleaned – with a damp cloth – the internal workings were given a good examination. It is then obvious, that all the revealed cogs, tracks, wheels and rods that provide mechanical action for the ink reservoirs to travel across the paper, and for the paper to move through the machine, and electronic action for the ink to be spat on the paper as it travels, are all controlled from a circuit board. So what happened when we plugged it in?  Two lights came on: a green and red led. And the reservoirs shifted home. What now?

Lets use the computer (has no printer, but is on broad band) to Google the printer’s name. The usual overwhelming number of results appeared. Yet a quick look through the top four pages revealed:

Some people seem to believe Epson to be criminally engaged in fraud by creating machines which indicate that reservoirs of ink are empty of ink earlier than is necessary;

That the Stylus C45 has sponges with which to mop up excess ink when the machine is in operation (I thought all the ink got used in an inkjet, so that was new to me)

That there is a means by which the Stylus C45 measures the amount of absorption of ink by the sponges and when it reaches a saturation level, at which point the machine’s red led comes on refuses to work (“Skip it mate”)

Or, the Stylus C45 counts the number of pages printed, equates this to the absorbability of the sponges, assumes that the sponges have reached their capacity to absorb, turns the red led on and stops printing;

Some person in Manila washed out the sponges in the Stylus C45 used by him there, but it still didn’t work;

Someone else in Mexico City, or maybe it was San Diego, I forget, had washed out the sponges and reset the counters, and hey presto had the machine printing happily for ages;

Not one of these sites pointed to a pdf of a manual for the Epson Stylus C45, or to a repair or maintenance manual for the same. Not even the Epson site. It may of course be there – hidden in folder 15, drawer 3 of cabinet 12 in Room 56 (or equivalent) of Epson’s archive – but to me that might as well have been rolled up in the spare duvet or locked in a vault;

Occasionally, I found reference to drivers for the machine which I could install on the laptop, but not once did I find one which was downloadable – I had to assume that Windows XP would deal with it. Later, I relented and installed a driver for the Stylus 400 – guessing that its similar name and low(ish) number would make it broadly compatible. I don’t know if I am wrong or right.

I found a site, Russian, offering a downloadable utility for use with Epson printers. “This is it” I thought, and downloaded and installed it. Despite misgivings about the security of the software (I had memories of reading “The Cuckoo’s Egg”) the computer, or what would happen on installation.

Fiddling about like this through Google had taken up the best part of a day. But I reasoned that the stumbling block I’d faced when trying to print would be the fully loaded sponges – excess ink.  So out they came. Easy to find now that the covers were off and into a bucket of water. It took about 10 buckets before the water ran clear from the 4 sponges. Yes 4 sponges! They stack one on top of the other.

From the my website reading, I felt confident that the saturation of the sponges was the reason for the red led’s “always on” status. I left the sponges to dry.

When dry and replaced, the red led’s still came on and it still didn’t work. I skipped it, mate.

Written in approx 2009

Notes on “The Revolution will be Digitised” by Heather Brook

Notes on “The Revolution will be Digitised” by Heather Brook 2011

Written on 13 October 2011 by WR

I am motivated to extract these quotes and offer them here because I believe that Heather Brook has done and is doing, an excellent job to help us understand how to navigate the information maze we face now. I want to support this.

In this book she points to ways in which attempts we may make to find out stuff may be obstructed by governments or corporations. So even if you don't read her book you can go to some of the websites through the links in the quotes.

WR

P14. 

“On 17 July 2009, thousands of people who had downloaded 99-cent copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 to their Kindle eBook readers found the titles suddenly deleted. It transpired that Amazon.com remotely deleted the titles from purchasers’ devices after discovering the publisher lacked the proper rights. Amazon refunded customers’ money but many were furious. Some likened it to a bookstore clerk coming to your house when you are not at home and taking the books from your bookshelf.”

P24

Most of what hackers believe can be boiled down into four basic principles:

Freedom of information …..

Meritocracy of ideas  …..

Joy of learning and knowledge   ……

Anti authoritarianism   …….

P26

“ ……..  Noisebridge’s governing principles: Be excellent to each other.”

                                    (from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”)

P29

“Sudo Leadership”

                        from “substitute user do”

“…  operating systems like Unix  ….  The super user or root user is the one with the highest privileges     ………   The command “substitute user do” allows a regular user to perform a command as the superuser , so sudo leadership is about letting people take the lead on things in which they have an interest but without being the leader for ever.”

P44

Sci – Fi Writers ….

Bruce Sterling,  William Gibson

“The Shockwave Rider” (1975) John Brunner

“Cryptonomicon” (1999) Neal Stephenson

P70

“the journalism of verification”

P73

“The press is not like any other business and what it sells shouldn’t just be rehashed press releases or celebrity gossip, but the civic information necessary for people to understand their society and participate in it. It is a check on political and financial power, or at least it should be.”

P73

Nick Davies  “Flat Earth News”

“…. The journalism of verification has been largely abandoned by the owners of the modern media conglomerates.”

P74

“A perception of indifference doesn’t equate to a lack of interest.”

P75

Assange left his laptop in David Leigh’s room.

[My (WR’s) comments / thoughts:

I wonder why Assange’s unconscious wanted the laptop left?

I wonder why Leigh’s unconscious wanted the laptop unnoticed?]

P84

“…….. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who were both influenced by the “Father of Liberalism” John Locke and who took the view that monopolies of any kind, whether for government information or business, were bad for society.”

P85

Thomas Jefferson’s letter  …. become a rallying cry for copyright reform:

tinyurl.com/22udzn/

P86

In 2004, Parliament’s Clerk of the Scrolls tried to shut down – for breach of copyright – a civic website.

theyworkforyou.com

P87

Lawrence Lessig founded Creative Commons, wrote “Free Culture” 2004.

P104

William Safire “You Are a Suspect” Nov 2002

tinyurl.com/cozfs6

P111

FBI can obtain signalling information

tinyurl.com/2j8g4t

Steven Bellovin – Columbia University Professor

P131

Techwriter: Danny O’Brien

“On the Net, you have public, or you have secrets.”

[WR : What does “private” mean to Brookfield?

P132

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 – defined privacy as – the right to be left alone.

P139

Ben Laurie

Security activist

[If you want to know how unique your computer is then I suggest trying the EFF’s Panopticlick at

panopticlick.eff.org]

and

“They (Facebook) occasionally make statements along the lines of “We respect users’ privacy” but their actions prove that they do not. I think it’s very clear that they don’t give a damn. Facebook’s business model is to know and reveal as much as possible about you because that’s how it makes money and that’s how it spreads. But the same argument applies to Google and search (engines): Facebook have to be privacy non-respecting, then the next guy who was less privacy respecting would take over from them.  I do blame Facebook because its clearly a conscious decision you make, but it’s also inherently obvious that the most successful social network will be the least privacy respecting.”

P155

Re data broking:

“Even worse, some make you pay to have your own information removed.”

tinyurl.com/6h2a3q6/

tinyurl.com/5tegjwj/

P158

“…. even in Europe, with its Data Protection directive, citizens have little power to uncover where their data is going.”

P159

“Use the tools that are available to you to protect the private information that is important to you. Mostly its about paying attention.”

The Long Bag we Drag ...

The Long Bag we Drag……………

Sometimes the motivation to do something like read a book is a mystery. I don’t usually re-read, but was drawn straight to “A Little Book on the Human Shadow” by Robert Bly this week.

I came to it again after 20 years or so, and it was new to me.  And in the process, I realised that it formed part of my introduction to C G Jung and his thoughts and ideas. Only about 15 years ago did I discover the power of Type Psychology as a means to outline a way of describing our human behaviours which is very fruitful as well as the driving forces of the psyches of individuals. Initially, I worked with the MBTI, then later discovered the JTI, the work of Keirsey and Bates, and on. I think, I by having read about the human shadow before understanding type, I have had an advantage in that I already had a notion that the shadow is a powerful idea which we ignore at our peril.

Here are some quotes from “A Little Book on the Human Shadow” which struck me this week.

“I lied all through high school automatically to try to be more like the basketball players.”

“men, young men, are likely to put their feminine side, or interior woman into the bag.”

And  … (WR’s) … surely some of their masculine side, the homo erotic …

“projection is wonderful thing too … women sometimes complain that a man often takes his ideal feminine side and projects it onto a woman. But if he didn’t, how could he get out of his mother’s house or his bachelor rooms?”

“When a woman Lincoln met on a train told him he was one of the ugliest men she’d seen in her entire life, he didn’t become offended. “What should I do about that?” he asked. “Well” she said. “you could stay home.” Lincoln told that story on himself – he liked her answer.”

“The anger is angry with us for not honouring it, for treating it shabbily, for getting out of it what we want without ever bringing it in and introducing it our friends, saying, “This is my friend Anger here. He’s a lowly-paid assistant of mine.””

“…. horrible types, specialists in the One, builders of middle-class castles, and upper-class Usher houses, writers of boring Commencement speeches, creepy other worldly types, worse than Pope Paul, academics who resembled gray jars, and who would ruin a whole state like Tennessee if put into it; people totally unable to merge into the place where they live ….”

“A man has an effect on “the world” mainly through institutions. So we could say that in the second half of life a man should sever his link with institutions. I think the problem is more complicated for women, but I don’t understand it. Conceivably for women the change might involve accepting more responsibility for affecting the world.”

WR Jan11

Lingering

Reflection on a learning which happened during a journey in 1971.

Every so often we called on people who were known to us, or even those whose address we’d been given. The occasion of springing on one of these latter innocents, has led to a lingering behaviour of mine which reminds almost daily of being in the heat of Agra.

My father a consultant surgeon, had many colleagues work with and for him who were originally from India or the Indian sub-continent. Many went on to consultant jobs themselves in the NHS. Sometimes they returned home. One of these latter was Mr Varshneya, a man my father regarded with affection and appreciation: for being a good surgeon and doctor, and a nice and thoughtful man.

Mr Varshneya lived and worked in Agra. One consequence of springing ourselves on his hospitality that autumn of 1971, was that he recommended other, just as interesting temples and mausoleums in Agra, as the glamorous and not to be missed Taj Mahal. The tomb of I'timād-Ud-Daulah was one and Fatehpūr Sikrī, although on our list, became a place we had to have a good look at.

Agra is not so very far from Dehli. I seem to think it only took a day to get there, and we arrived in mid afternoon. We arrived out of the blue, of course. We might have sent a postcard or short letter to inform Mr Varshneya of our intent to visit. Or we might not.

Mr Varshneya himself was busy at a clinic, and his household made contact with him, and when it was established that we were connected with “Dick Rees” we received our entrée, and were bona fide and should be allowed to settle in by driving the van in to the compound. This was the first time we had direct experience of being welcomed in to an Indian household. On reflection, I expect we were a bit of an alarming bunch – five big English blokes, examples of well fed post-war (WW2) babies grown in adulthood to giants in comparison to the smaller population we were travelling through.  A lot of people lived in Mr Varshneya’s household’s compound: relations, servants. On his return after the clinic, Mr Varshneya invited us to join in an evening meal which we delightedly accepted - Hindu and therefore vegetarian and delicious. The lack of meat apologised for at a time when we were grateful for any meal of any kind, and in truth, we were already appreciating vegetarian cuisine as more tasty, cheaper and less risky food.

Perhaps we would like to wash before our meal? They had an Indian style shower. Oh bliss, a wash. Somewhere private. Using soap. Such an alluring prospect. Bucket washing in India was always bathing to an audience.  Did we know how the system worked? Yes. We had come across it earlier in our time in India. The room itself standing apart in the garden quite near the house’s water supply, a tap or a well – I can’t remember which. Essentially a small cement lined dark room. A little light came in above the door. One corner of the space, about a quarter of the floor area of the room was taken up by a tank built up with bricks and cement lined. The tank was filled from the outside through the wall – a brick left out of the wall and a cement channel built in it to funnel the water to the tank.

On the broad edge of the tank sat an old small tin or aluminium pan with a wooden handle across its circumference. After taking one’s clothes off, hanging them on a wooden peg with washbag and towel, the idea was to dip the pan in the water and tip its contents over yourself. Doing this as often as was necessary. It was not that cold in Agra in November, and after the first shock it was easy to lather up and rinse in the same way. In this bath house, there was a wooden peg for dry things, but it was not always the case. Sometimes you had to use the top of the door. If you were lucky, the top of the tank was wide enough to put things on. It was essential to take care that nothing fell in the tank – leaving the place as you found it was an essential courtesy to maintain good relations with other users, so dirtying the tank water with one’s own detritus was to be avoided at all costs.

Drying off is not easy to complete. The floor would be wet and to dry oneself efficiently without stepping wetly into clothes not easy. I developed a system of doing this so that I would dry my body in sections, put on my clothes on the dried parts of my body, and toward the end, seek out the driest bit of floor I could see, and lying a part of my towel on the floor and stepping on it to dry my feet, and from it straight in to sandals, by the door.

Although this was not the first time I had washed in this way, it was the first time I had time enough and light enough to think about ablution as a process. And to work on a system which allowed me to emerge from it comfortable, and ready to meet the world refreshed.

This became a little ritual I would perform. A little dance. And I got quite good at assessing a washing space so I could find the driest route to drying myself, stepping on the towel to dry my feet, and emerging wearing dry clothes, and having used most of the towel to dry me and not the bathroom.

This little dance continues 40 years on. In much different circumstances – the power shower, the centrally heated bathroom, the hot water (cold running water – civilisation; hot running water – luxury!), the good soap and so on, and still the putting down on the floor of a quarter of the towel, and stepping on to it to complete the drying process started in the shower cubicle. It is the daily ritual that has stayed with me, a mark of carrying the journey of my youth into the journey of my life, making Agra and India linger in my life.

November 2010