I had a suspicion that this was the case:

> Did it really need new toner—or was my printer lying to me? [...] This guy had also suspected that his Brother was lying to him, and he'd discovered a way to force it to fess up. Brother's toner cartridges have a sensor built into them; OppressedPrinterUser found that covering the sensor with a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into thinking he'd installed a new cartridge. I followed his instructions, and my printer began to work. At least eight months have passed. I've printed hundreds of pages since, and the text still hasn't begun to fade.

It should really go without saying, but when the people responsible for making the system that tells you when you have to replace supplies and the people selling the actual supplies are one and the same you should double check that whatever level indicator it is is telling the truth.

Oral-B electric toothbrush heads are supposed to be replaced when the blue colouring of the bristles fades to white on half the length of the bristles. Turns out, when you look at them new and fresh out of the pack they already have a slight fading down to half. If you follow their advice you'll spend a small fortune in toothbrush heads.

Same thing with Gillette razor blades. You're meant to replace the blade when the indicator strip fades. That, incidentally, happens suspiciously quickly too, and the blades are good for quite a few shaves after. I've stopped using their crappy products all together and have opted for a tub of Geo.F. Trumper, a badger shaving brush and a good old fashioned single blade safety razor. Cheaper in the long run and a much better shave with the added benefit of knowing exactly when I'm out of supplies: the tub is empty. As for the blade, the precision you have to use with a safety razor makes it much easier to tell when the blade isn't doing its job anymore.

Not really related, but all this talk of Gillette reminds me of an article from The Onion from 2004. It was meant as a joke back then, and Gillette had sworn that 5 blades was overkill - there was no benefit. That was in response to the Wilkinson 5-blade razor though, and look where Gillette is now. No benefit indeed!

Habitually insightful essay on The Eternal Value of Privacy from security guru Bruce Schneier.

Via Daring Fireball, Jeff Atwood talks about the rise of Javascript frameworks:

> But now something else is happening, something arguably even more significant than "JavaScript now works". The rise of commonly available JavaScript frameworks means you can write to higher level JavaScript APIs that are guaranteed to work across multiple browsers. These frameworks spackle over the JavaScript implementation differences between browsers, and they've (mostly) done all the ugly grunt work of testing their APIs and validating them against a host of popular browsers and plaforms.

Not only do these libraries guarantee cross-browser compatibility, I'd go as far as to say that it's the only way the current state of web front-end development could ever work. Browser developers - including the future space men of the Safari camp (seriously, check out the WebKit blog and see how much cool features they're up on before anyone else) - could never keep up with the desires of web developers. Nor should they aspire to. The Javascript frameworks provide anchors for the browser developers to bake into their next version, as cool features for the web with enough clout behind them gets baked into the frameworks. The Javascript developers fake it today, make a reusable class of it tomorrow and the browsers eliminate the need for faking it a year or two down the line.

End result: browsers in general are stable (if a bit lacking in features for a JS developer) and the web is a fun target to program for.

My wife tipped me off today that George Orwell's diaries is being republished in blog form. Imaginative idea! The posts are published in real time, day-by-day in the same order that Orwell wrote them in, 70 years ago. Here from the 10th of August:

> Drizzly. Dense mist in evening. Yellow moon.

Highly subjective I would suspect, but here's a very interesting post about why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers to learn. Fun examples of some Norwegian words that are so straight forward that they make you laugh when you realise their meaning:

> One example is the word selvstendighet. Looks like a completely foreign word at first, but each part has an equivalent English word: rewrite it as self-standy-hood and suddenly it looks more familiar. It means independence, which is a state of being able to stand by oneself.

It seemed fitting that I had the spaced out dreamy tones of Sigur Ros in my headset as I read this:

> At closest approach, Cassini was set spinning to cancel out the apparent motion of Enceladus so as to capture unsmeared images during the 40,000-mph flyby.

The astonishing quote is from a Slashdot summary about the Cassini-Huygens space probe's flyby of one of Saturns moons. The resulting pictures were released today. The pictures themselves are not particularily interesting unless Saturn moon geology is your thing, but the description of the flyby from the Cassini team is interesting enough:

> Cassini will be flying over the surface of Enceladus during this flyby at enormous speed – a bit under 18 km/sec (about 40,000 mph) – making image-taking very difficult. The challenge is equivalent to trying to capture a sharp, unsmeared picture of a roadside billboard about a mile away with a 2,000 mm telephoto lens held out the window of a car moving at 50 mph.

Wow!

Also, don't miss Cassini's imaging director Carolyn Porco's TED Talk for some other inspiring pictures and stories from the travels of the Cassini probe.

Doveman's understated and solemn tribute album to Footloose is a beautiful example of how much arrangement, instrumentation and production means for a song.

I heard part of this album when Bob Boilen played it on All Songs Considered and was reminded of it today. The piano, unsurprisingly in-demand piano man Thomas Bartlett has a gorgeously deep sound and Bartlett's voicing and chords sends chills down my spine. I wouldn't mind if the voice rose above that gentle whisper sometimes, but as a whole it's well done.

As an aside, if you feel the need to build up your moral justification for downloading music, read the red text on the Footloose link above first, and then read the update in the white box. Copyright and sentimental feelings do not mix!

Via NRK beta, great slow motion footage shot by a RED camera. At USD 17.500 it's jusssst out of reach, but there's always the Casio EX-F1 should I feel the need to feed my hunger for cool slow motion clips. It'd give me a reason to stay up for the next thunderstorm!

I've funded the killing of a whale!

<img src="/static/album-rock-n-roll-jesus.jpg" style="float:right;" alt="Kid Rock - Rock N Roll Jesus album cover" />Allright.. to kick us off, Kid Rock, stage-prancing show off celebrity with a modestly titled album. Hey, this series is about albums I wouldn't even consider buying so I don't have qualms about revealing my prejudices. That said, I'm also supposed to give the albums a fair listen, so.. fingers to temples.. clear head.. slow breaths.. let's go:

Kinda cool phaser effect on the snare in the opening drum riff! And then, ugh, that wah guitar solo intro that Santana has flushed his cred by laying down on too many soul/rock/pop crossovers lately. Makes me aware how used I am to listening to 'band'-records these days, where all the musicians take part in shaping the songs and the sound. On Rock'N'Roll Jesus, the relationship between the front man and rest of the sound is less connected. You get that, quite frankly rather boring, session musician feel.

The rest of the song is a straight ahead soul rocker, 'gimme shelter'-style backing vocals, horn stabs and all. I hope the rest of the album provide more originality.

Ugh, absolutely horribly botched looping of the acoustic guitar intro on the second track, Amen. I don't get why they chose a looped riff there at all - through the whole intro and build up. I could imagine this track with a kind of Walking in Memphis-feel with a more dynamic guitar track. Instead it bounces between pop and pedal steel country and not in a good way.

Next!

Hee hee, Smells Like Teen Spirit drum intro on All Summer Long. I don't know how I feel about a song that more or less copies Sweet Home Alabama, even getting close to covering its guitar solo. I guess that's the point because Mr. Rock sings about that song in the lyrics too. It's a tribute of sorts, a very very slightly rewritten cover. Odd! Musically it's nothing special, so I'll move on.

All riiight! Power Ballad time! Fingerpicked guitar intro, womanly mmmm-oooh-aaaas-I-love-it-when-you-play-it-like-that-s intro. Bit more honesty in Kid Rock's vocals on the verse now, shows promise as he sings about the hardships and melancholy of life. I'm tired of this song before it's over but it's not uncomfortable to listen to.

It's not until Sugar that Kid Rock gains some cred, that funky rock rap number is the first track he actually stretches his voice a little. It's derivative, but at least it's energetic and well-produced.

When U Love Someone.. is it too much to sigh if I'm supposed to keep an open mind? Dixie Chicks sans musical prowess (and the willingness to show it off) and sex appeal. Next!

I like the drum machine and banjo intro on New Orleans. Cool idea. The rest is more of the aforementioned session musician stuff, a guitar with no bite or grit whatsoever.

The album closer Half Your Age is allright too, if a little tacky:

> Hey now darlin'. You thought it was all fun and games. Running around telling everyone why we're not together. I guess you just had to feel important. And I'm sure you thought I was just gonna sit back and take it on the chin. But honey, I'm a songwriter. And that, darlin', is where you end, and this song begins.

Classic broken heart revenge song with entertaining lyrics and the catch phrase "She's half your age, and twice as hot".

I would have expected more from Kid Rock actually, from what little I know about him. Maybe a bit more attitude or controversial lyrics, maybe a little bit more agressive sound. But Rock N Roll Jesus is everything but. Flat sounding and very radio friendly tunes. I'm also a little surprised to not really hear any really catchy songs on here, a song that sticks in your head a bit better. It has, unsurprisingly, sold like crazy in the US, and All Summer Long, the Sweet Home Alabama copy - ehm, tribute - is a hit in several other countries.

Kid Rock - listenable but far from great.