Monthly Archives: March 2010

John E. Potter, the current Postmaster General of these United States, lists Five myths about the U.S. Postal Service. I happen to think the post office is pretty efficient, more so than most people would like to admit. We think otherwise because so many people fib about when they put things in the mail and then blame the post office. It's also a grand bargain that provides an essential service in this country, especially for those who for one reason or another (often, age) are not computer-savvy.

It may cut back and even go away as folks in those category grow fewer in number…but right now, I think it's amazing how much you get for the price of a stamp.

P.J. Perez writes about the device seen in the photo above…

Thanks for sharing info about your new Brother multifunction printer/scanner/fax machine/tire rotator. Figured I'd let you know that your statement "the thing is still a lot cheaper than the cheapest 11 by 17 scanner on the market these days" is slightly inaccurate.

I was on the market for an 11×17 scanner myself last year (also for comic illustration needs), and consensus among my fellows in the community led me to the Mustek ScanExpress A3 1200, a standalone scanner that retails on Amazon for about $150.

Yeah, I was pretty shocked by the price too. It does a fair decent job for my purposes (mostly scanning pencils for digital inking and the occasional line art for coloring), though on photos it's either less effective or I just don't have the settings properly configured.

That being said, I kinda wish I'd known about the $275 Brother, as I could have used an all-in-one solution as well.

I know of Musteks. The flatbed scanner I mentioned I was replacing with my new Brother? It was one of their earlier models.

You're right. They make an amazing piece of machinery for the price, maybe for any price. I used mine for many of the scans in my book on Jack Kirby. But before anyone rushes to order one, check the Mustek site for compatibility issues with your hardware and operating system. Some of the earlier Mustek models that were around wouldn't work with every system that the mail order folks claimed they would work with. I only got the Brother because I wanted the ability to copy and print 11 by 17, as well as the space I'd save in my office by not having a separate scanner. I stand corrected about it being the cheapest 11 by 17 scanner one can buy…and seeing as how I have one, you'd think I would have known better. But some of us never do.

I am intrigued to see Jerry Brown running for governor of California again. He served in that post from 1975 until 1983. Most news stories today say he served from 1974 but he was elected in '74 and assumed office in '75.

My recollections are that I found him very annoying and arrogant and humorless in his public statements but that he did a pretty good job of running an impossible-to-run state and cleaning up a large mess left by his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. (For what it's worth, I thought Reagan was not only a terrible governor his first term but that he did the kind of job that had it been done by anyone else, would have caused Ronald Reagan to demand the guy's resignation or recall. He was somewhat better in his second term and actually undid a fair amount of his own damage. Brown undid most of the rest.)

In a situation not unlike we see today with Barack Obama, and saw to some extent with Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown achieved many things as governor that were on Republican wish lists, mostly relating to fiscal responsibility. But because he was a Democrat, Republicans felt they had to figure out some way to trash him for them…and did. He also got painted as a kind of a nutcase for one or two ideas that have since proven to be eminently sensible. At one point, he proposed that the state investigate launching its own communications satellite and leasing its services out. It was prescient in terms of where technology was heading but at the time, his foes mocked him as some sort of stoned-out Trekkie who wanted to colonize the galaxy or something. "Governor Moonbeam," they called him and the label stuck — unfairly, I thought.

I have no idea what kind of governor he'd be today. Heck, I have no idea why anyone would even want to be governor of California these days. The financial crisis looks increasingly unfixable and may require not just a restructuring of our state treasury but of our state constitution, as well. But even as a Democrat, Brown has always been fiercer about controlling the size and spending of government than most Republicans who claim to believe in that kind of thing. I might change my mind the minute he starts campaigning but right now, I'm thinking he could be the right man for the job.

I recently bought one of these. It's the Brother MFC-6490CW all-in-one. It's a printer. It's a fax machine. It's a copier. It's a scanner. I haven't figured out how to use it yet to rotate the tires on my car but I'll bet it can do that, too. And win a gold medal for Curling at the same time.

This all-in-one may be of particular interest to folks in the comic book field because it can print, scan and copy up to 11" by 17", which is the size to which a lot of comic book originals are drawn. 11-by-17 scanners are beastly expensive. I know folks who've spent $1200 for theirs and all it does is scan. The Brother MFC-6490CW can be purchased via an Amazon affiliate for $275 and that includes shipping. It's a bigger printer than the Lexmark I had on the stand before but the Lexmark would only scan up to 8-and-a-half by 11, so I also had an 11-by-17 flatbed scanner I can now get rid of. Thus, I'm gaining a little space in the upgrade.

Printing-wise, it seems fine. Copying-wise, likewise. The automated document-feeder, so far, remains unjammed, even copying 11-by-17 originals. And here's a biggie: I've found that the top paper tray (it has two) will handle thicker paper than the manual says. I was able to copy onto the kind of two-ply drawing paper that we usually use in comic book production. That info will probably excite someone reading this. In theory, what I could do would be to lay out a page on my computer, place all the panel borders and word balloons, then print out the drawing paper with all of them in place so an artist could just fill in the pictures. I can think of other uses, as well.

Set-up on my network took a while, including one phone call to the Brother tech support folks, who couldn't have been nicer and more effective. It does look though like a machine that's been priced way low because they figure to make a heckuva profit on selling me ink cartridges for it. That seems to be unavoidable these days, at least with any printer that will service all or most of my needs. One feature I may miss from my old Lexmark is that the Brother doesn't do automatic two-sided printouts. But if you need that, wait a week. Now that I've bought this machine, they're sure to come out with a model that does that.

As for scanning: The Brother interface, which I access through a piece of software called ControlCenter, does a nice, quick-and-dirty job of it without things like cropping or sophisticated color correction. If I address the scanner through Adobe Photoshop though, it does all the fancy stuff. The Brother claims to be able to go up to a 1200 by 1200 dpi scan, which is a lot more dots per inch than I've ever needed. The art I scanned for my Jack Kirby book was plenty detailed (and the files sizes were almost too big to work with) at 600 by 600.

So far, so great…but don't buy one just because I'm happy at this moment. I wouldn't want your purchase on my conscience if the thing went kablooey next week or it turned out that the $100+ I just spent on ink cartridges will only last 'til Thursday. I would think though that if you have need of an 11 by 17 scanner, it might be worth the purchase just for that. Even if the copying and printer functions didn't work at all, the thing is still a lot cheaper than the cheapest 11 by 17 scanner on the market these days. I'll post more about this as I learn more.

I mentioned here last week that on his show, Craig Ferguson was complaining about how his show isn't promoted and he said there were "no bus ads for Craigy." This kinda baffled me because I see plenty of ads on the sides of buses for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Every time I've been out lately, I see one in my neighborhood…which happens to also be his neighborhood.

Someone needs to take Craig outside and show him a couple of them. Or if he doesn't want to do that, he can just try watching his own program. There's a shot of one in his opening titles.

Tomorrow, March 2, is my birthday. I'm only mentioning that for one reason: If you are a friend of mine and you'd like to give me a gift for my birthday…or if you are an appreciative user of this website and would like to give me a gift for my birthday, I know what I want.

I want you to go to the website of Operation USA and make a donation.

This is not just a matter of them needing help in Chile or needing help in Haiti or even certain disaster spots in this country. There are plenty of places where human beings are suffering and/or dying and there will be more. There are many worthy organizations that help these folks and I'm certainly not suggesting that Operation USA is the only one doing good work. But I did some investigating and research on this a few years ago and I doubt the following has changed. I found that no charitable effort put the money to better use. Operation USA spends very little on the administrative stuff. They spend almost all the money on the actual, hands-on helping of people. And perhaps what is most important is that they spend the money wisely and effectively.

Last year, a number of you donated money to me on my birthday as a nice gift…and all through the year, people send me loot because they appreciate this silly weblog. That's great but right now, I'd like you to send the bucks to Operation USA. Here's that link one more time: Operation USA. Thank you.

I've now had an iPhone for close to three months and I'm still adding and deleting apps. I expect to be doing this for the rest of my life or until the iPhone becomes hopelessly obsolete and I pitch it and get something better. I'm guessing this will occur by May.

So what do I like in the meantime? Well, for one thing, the way Mobile ME enables me to sync my home computer's contact list and calendar with the ones on my iPhone. I haven't lost my iPhone yet but I'm bound to…so it's great that you can use Mobile ME to track its whereabouts down via GPS. And hey, if I were still writing detective stories, I bet I could use that in a plot. The hero hides his iPhone on the criminal and then uses Mobile ME to track the crook's travels. Don't anyone steal that idea before I have a chance to use it.

In the "app" department: I gave up on Reqall, which is a program that combines a "to do" list with voice recognition software. It works but, I decided, not as well as a parlay of the Toodledo "to do" list app and the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition program. In fact, Dragon is a must-have because you can turn speech to text rapidly and with pretty decent accuracy, and you can use that text in any other program. And Toodledo has been great in helping me organize my tasks and things I must get done. You can access it on your iPhone but also on the web from home. I put a little icon on my desktop and when I think of something I have to do (or, less often, when I've actually done one of them), I pop open ToodleDo and add or check off the duty. At last…a "to do" list that works for me…and it and Dragon are both free.

OpenTable has proven to be another useful free app. OpenTable enables you to make reservations at zillions of restaurants around the country. Better still, it allows you to change those reservations when everyone's running late. I also like using Yowp and the Yellow Pages apps to find restaurants and other businesses near my current location…wherever that is at the moment. Neither is perfect but they're better than nothing.

I've tried using i.TV for remote programming of my TiVo. It'll do in an emergency but it's clunky and slow. TiVo is rumored to be about to introduce a new generation of their DVRs — TiVo Series 4, although they may call it something else. Speculation among TiVo owners seems high that they haven't introduced a good programming app for the iPhone because they're waiting to roll out the upgrade and they'll have an app that will work with that. Okay, fine. But in the meantime, what about those of us who have Series 3 and may have it for some time?

I enjoy using Pandora, which is an Internet radio juke box. You pick out an artist or song or style you like and it crafts a "station" that plays that kind of music (not necessarily the artist or song you specify) through your iPhone. They claim to be drawing from a library of half a million songs but somehow, every time I "tune in" any station that features Classic Rock, I get Elton John singing "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road" or Frankie Valli unable to take his eyes off of me. Still, it's handy and between it and TuneIn Radio, which brings in actual stations, I may never use conventional radio again, not even in my car.

My biggest problem seems to be battery life and I'm starting to think I may have a faulty iPhone in that regard. It seems to leap from 100% charged to about 80% in two blinks, even when I'm barely using it. I've been playing with one of these, which is a chargeable external battery that's supposed to recharge your iPhone — and it does but it takes a while and only goes so far towards keeping me energized. I'm trying to decide if I should take my iPhone back to the store and see if they have any way of testing it, or if I need to compile some sort of usage/time stats first. If anyone has any experience in this area, I'd appreciate an e-mail.

Otherwise, very happy. No desire whatsoever to roll back to my old BlackBerry — and I liked my old BlackBerry. I just like my iPhone more.