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October 22, 2005

Is your printer spying on you?

I know I've read about this in the past, and yet I always forget: the EFF reports on color laser printers putting tracking info in your printouts. So, yes, if you print something on a color laser printer, it is possible there is an embedded code which would allow the printout to be tracked back to the printer that produced it. The EFF page has some nice information about finding and decodinig the yellow dots used for these markings, as well as a list of printers that do and do not print these tracking dots. They are continuing to update their list, so if a printer you use isn't listed, don't forget to check back later. I'll be checking whether the one at my office is on the list on Monday.

October 20, 2005

Teaching Carnivals

I'd never heard of the "Carnival" concept in weblogging before, but it is apparently an arrangement among a number of webloggers to post articles around a central theme during a month and then one weblogger maintains a list of all of these posts, organized into subthemes. I found out about it after seeing a link to Teaching Carnival II - a Carnival about secondary education teaching.

It's a very cool idea for pulling together posts on a particular topic, and I found the Teaching Carnivals (I also went back to check the previous one) really great - people are posting some wonderful advice and assignment/activity suggestions. Definitely worth checking out if you teach, or even if you're taught.

October 19, 2005

Office Supply Woes

I don't understand why it is impossible to find a pad of blank, unlined 8 1/2 x 11 paper. Not an art pad or anything - what I think is called a "glue top scratch pad". I've been getting them at the campus bookstore, but they don't sell them anymore, and it turns out nobody else does either. What is so difficult about what I am looking for? Yes, that website I linked sells them, but not cheaply and I shouldn't have to go online to find such a thing.

While searching around, though, I found the best Wikipedia entry ever: Notebook. How awesome is it that they have four paragraphs on notepads, and can't avoid a Star Trek reference in that space. Awesome!

October 11, 2005

What I Need

I'm feeling uninspired about posting, so I'll jump on a meme seen over at AAYOR: asking Google what I need. Google's top ten suggestions:

Amanda needs gnutar?
Amanda needs to be rebuilt.
Amanda needs to be loved.
Amanda needs a mom in her corner with lots of time and attention to give her.
Amanda needs a small config change.
Amanda needs X11?
Amanda needs her local food bank to put food on the table for herself and her daughter.
Amanda needs to know: Why?
Amanda needs new ones, STAT!
Amanda needs to be recompiled on landon.

I think Google is confusing me with the Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver, a unix utility for backing up machines over a network to a single tape destination. Though, I do miss X11.... Maybe the small config change would be enjoyable too!