Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, April 19, 2004

Selecting a color printer - revisited (Canon BJC i560) -- Comment()
I have checked out the low-end color printers, and it seems that Canon BJC i560 has got really good reviews. Also, the ink costs seem to be reasonable. But is i560 compatible with an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station? That is, can you connect a BJC i560 to the USB port on AEBS?

The i560 is not listed in the AEBS printer compatibility list. However, apparently some newer printers work with AEBS although they are not listed by Apple.

-- Comment()
Apparently Sunday, April 18th, was National Columnists Day: "The anniversary of the April 18, 1945 death of the great Ernie Pyle is a time to reflect on the way newspaper columnists connect, educate, comfort, encourage, celebrate, outrage and occasionally even amuse readers and a time to express appreciation for them for their hard work."

-- Comment()
InfoWorld: Can email be saved? "How can we change email to get ourselves out of the ever-escalating game of cops and robbers with spammers (and their pals the virus writers)? You can read the mainbar here. Better yet, download this PDF file of the full 5000-word package..." [Paul Boutin]

Updated the CV -- Comment()
I updated my CV with some recent additions. See here: pdf (recommended for best readability), html, txt. There is also a longer version of the CV, which includes a list of popular articles and columns: pdf.

-- Comment()
The death of e-mail: "Probably spawned by Paolo Valdemarin's observation that he received over a thousand spams during a week's absence from his computer (well, what's so special about that?), there's an intense discussion going on [see Schockwellenreiter, Randgänge, WorldWideKlein, shutterclog] whether E-mail is still in any way useful or needs to be replaced by some other format. [...] Especially as a new and particularly nasty security threat, Mail Non Delivery Message DDoS Attacks, is looming on the horizon." [The Aardvark Speaks]

-- Comment()
Music Magic Found in the Shuffle: "What feature of the iPod and software jukeboxes has had the most profound effect on listening habits? It's the unsung random shuffle." [Wired News]

What printer to buy (for printing wirelessly through a WLAN base station)? -- Comment()
I'm pondering which printer to buy for connecting to the USB port of a AirPort Extreme Base Station at home. Here are some possibilities: Canon i455, Epson Stylus C84, HP Deskjet 5150, and HP Deskjet 5652. I'm a bit worried about the durability of these printers, and the cost of printing. I'll mainly print text (b&w) and web pages. Photo-quality printing is tempting, but I think making prints through an online site would be cheaper. My digital camera is a Canon Digital Ixus 400, so a Canon printer would seem to be a natural choice. But which of these printers actually work with AEBS as well?

Update: I noticed that Canon i560 has got good reviews - but is it compatible with AEBS?

Notes on using WLAN at home -- Comment()
On Friday I started to use a WLAN base station at home (an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station). Setup of AEBS too three minutes, mainly opening the package and plugging in the power and ethernet cables. Connecting to the net took half a minute (logging in to my iBook and starting up AirPort).

After getting the connection to work, I upgraded the AirPort software to version 5.3 on the base station, and made a few security settings (WEP etc.). This was done easily using the AirPort management program.

Wireless networking worked fine for the whole weekend, I didn't miss the network cable at all. For extra security I connected to the net through a Cisco VPN connection, which was routed through the AirPort/WLAN and ADSL broadband connections. This works fine also, although the transfer speed of ADSL is a little smaller, and starting and stopping VPN makes for example music streaming stop.

I listened to some net radios (jazz, classic, r&b etc.) through iTunes, and this seems to be an extra benefit to broadband and WLAN at home. I can listen to these net radios from my portable even from the garden outside the house (although it is still too cold to be sitting in the garden right now).

All in all, I'm really pleased about getting WLAN to my home.

NR commented my purchase as follows:

If you do need to build a VPN and have a machine on both 'ends', try OpenVPN (http://openvpn.sourceforge.net/) - it requires very little configuration and is extremely robust. OpenVPN is not suitable for enterprise use because it does not support multiple usernames/passwords, but for individual use it is wonderful.