Bizarre printer issue solved

Plug hp Deskjet F2480 printer/scanner in, it prints out an alignment sheet, feed it to the scanner, hit the Black Copy button & it makes a copy if it — & in the process recalibrates the print-heads a little.

But it won’t print anything.

The print job takes about as long to fail to print as it would do to succeed in printing, with no action at all in the printer, & no errors thrown either.

D’oh?

It turns out that the nearest PPD file (for the Deskjet F2200 series) is not near enough. The PC is feeding the entire document (rasterised) down the USB cable, to the printer, which simply, silently throws it away.

Using the name of the F2200 PPD file & altering it to be an F2400 PPD file, I search to discover the ferpectly correct PPD file tucked away in a package archive for some random Linux distribution... which happily includes the ability on-site to display the contents of the package & download individual files from it.

Done.

Fire up web browser, aim it at http://127.0.0.1:631/ then redefine the printer (in CUPS) with the precisely correct PPD file, & she’s all good.

Making SANE work, however, is a different story so far.

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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