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Reading about Jason from 37 Signals’ recent bad Kinko’s experience reminded me of a bad Staples experience I had over the holidays that I wanted to share because it was so ridiculous.

This is a penguin holiday card picture I painted on my tablet PC in December, with the intent to make it into cards to send to friends and family. So, thinking that Staples was probably better-equipped to print decent holiday cards than I was, I put the image on CD to take to their print center. I handed it to the guy and said I wanted it made into cards, and here’s where I encountered the first problem.

I had saved the image as a Windows bitmap (.bmp) file, since that file format is ubiquitous and non-lossy, and I figured any halfwit competent enough to work in a print center would be able to convert it to another format if needed. The halfwit who was helping me, though, didn’t. He complained that it wasn’t a JPEG (hooray, compression!) but said he’d do what he could.

The next problem was that he took the CD and walked away without asking me even basic information about what type of card I wanted. I expected to be able to choose a card size, stock, whether I wanted a matte or glossy print, etc., but no.

A few minutes later, he returned, handing me a flimsy sheet of glossy paper with the image to the right printed on it. I was astonished. I had designed the image in such a format that it could easily be either 1) reduced to half-size, rotate, and printed on a half-page, or 2) reduced to quater size and printed twice on a page to make two cards per page. This imbecile had decided to squash it vertically into the top half of a page, and the printing program stupidly put the filename in big, black letters in the top corner.

Rolling my eyes, I told the guy never mind, and went and bought my own card stock and a new ink cartridge, took them home, and printed the cards the way I had wanted them, the way anyone with half a brain would choose to print them. And amazingly, they came out looking very nice, and the people we gave them to seemed genuinely pleased.

Gizmodo posts a brief review of a Fujitsu tablet PC which includes the following quote:

I like the tablet PC concept, but in real life they’re kind of glorified PDAs that are excellent for very specific apps and useless as an every day PC.

Uh, Gizmodo? Your prejudice is showing. Have you ever actually used a tablet PC as your everyday PC? I’ve had one since last November, and it’s incredibly useful. Much of the time I’m using it, it sits here on my desk just like any other non-tablet laptop, and works perfectly well as such. It’s not underpowered, not lacking in features or accessories, and the tablet functionality doesn’t detract from its usefulness in any way.

When I’m going on the road, or just feel creative, then I love to use it in tablet mode. It’s excellent for making artwork, very useful for making notations on ongoing projects (since I can scribble notes on an image by hand, the same I’d do with a printout but without requiring paper), and handy as a space-saver when I don’t have the room to set it up like a laptop.

The Fujitsu tablet PC that Gizmodo reviews appears to be a piece of overpriced junk, I admit; it’s tiny (only a 9-inch display), has a smallish hard drive and no optical drive, and costs three grand. But it’s not representative of all tablet PCs at all; my Toshiba tablet PC is full-sized, with a 15-inch display, a 60 gb hard drive, and a CD/DVD reader/writer drive for a total price less than 2/3rds the price of the Fujitsu.

In conclusion, Gizmodo, don’t diss the tablet PC unless you’ve really taken the time to use one. It’s perfectly useful as an everyday PC, and the tablet functionality is an excellent creative bonus that simplifies many everyday tasks.

Boing Boing: Big theater chains refuse to show Soderbergh’s “Bubble”

Soderbergh is taking a novel approach to distributing this movie, one that I’ve thought of in the past: he’s releasing it in theatres, on pay-per-view television, and on DVD all on the same day. His rationale is that movies are already hitting the internet the same day they hit theatres, so why not give people other options than illegally downloading it?

The movie theatres, understandably, are upset. They say giving people these options will decrease their profits. This is potentially true, and I’m curious to see how it goes.

However, occasionally I’ll see a movie in a theatre, and love it so much that I’d be willing to buy the DVD immediately, if it were available. If the movie theatres simply set up a DVD stand in their lobby where you could purchase the DVD of a movie you just saw, at a lower price than in a DVD store, by presenting your ticket stub, I bet lots of moviegoers would take advantage of it.

In any case, bravo to Soderbergh for attempting to tackle the movie-downloading problem through unconventional means. Instead of engaging in pointless lawsuits that have been proven to discourage nobody, this approach is productive and thoughtful, and could help to update the film industry’s business model to compete in today’s high-bandwidth world.

Edit: Mark Cuban, who owns Landmark Theaters (which is the only chain actually showing “Bubble”), agrees with me, but is a much more eloquent guy, so go read his post.

For Christmas, I gave Sarah a Pasta Machine. Basically, it’s a pair of hand-cranked rollers that you use to flatten pasta dough into a very thin sheet, and then another set of rollers that cut that sheet into linguine or spaghetti.

Twice now, we’ve made pasta with it, and it is by far the best pasta I’ve ever had. (Mind you, I haven’t been to Italy yet, so that statement may change in the future.) And as it turns out, making pasta is a relatively simple process. I was intimidated before we tried it, but now that we’ve done it a couple times I know just how straightforward it can be.

Here’s how we did it. First, you make the pasta dough. You can look up all sorts of recipes for this, but when it comes down to it, you crack a few eggs into a bowl and then you mix in enough flour to make a dry, but not crumbly, dough. The dough can’t be sticky, because pasta machines aren’t designed to be thoroughly washed at all; in fact, the directions say you should just wipe it down with a dry cloth, and occasionally add a little olive oil to the ends of the rollers to keep the machinery lubed. So if your dough is too sticky, it could get stuck inside the machine’s works, gumming it up and possibly causing it to rust, which you don’t want.

The first time we did this, we used two eggs and ended up with enough pasta for two servings. Last night, we used four eggs and ended up with enough pasta for about eight servings. Next time, we’ll use a dozen eggs and feed the entire state of Rhode Island.

We generally start with about one cup of semolina flour per egg, and then add a little more flour if the dough’s too sticky, or a little bit of water if it’s too crumbly. Then, you knead. Semolina is a flour with a very high gluten content, so the dough quickly becomes extemely solid and claylike, and takes serious effort to stretch and fold. At this point, it’s ready.

Tear off a small chunk, about the size of a golf ball, and flatten it with your hands. Then, with the rollers set to their thickest width, roll it through, flattening it and elongating it. If necessary, you can fold the edges or pinch together any holes. Ideally, your flattened dough will be oblong and less wide than the rollers. Keep rolling it through, adjusting the rollers one notch tighter each time. We usually stop at notch 3, which results in thick, hearty pasta, but you could easily go all the way to 1.

The flattening process is designed, it seems, for a person with three hands: one to hold the sheet of dough above the machine, one to catch it as it comes out the bottom, and one to crank the handle.

Once the flattened dough is as thin as you desire, you crank it through one of the cutter-rollers, and voila, a small handful of uncooked pasta. We tend to drape these over whatever’s handy, since we don’t have a pasta rack, and they get stuck together slightly. Don’t worry too much if this happens; as long as you get the rest of the dough done relatively quickly, it seems the uncooked noodles will come apart while cooking.

You noodles aren’t going to look like the ones that come in a box at the grocery store. They’ll be lumpier, and many will have ragged edges. Who cares? They’ll still taste great.

When you’ve finished flattening and cutting all your dough, just toss the pile of noodles into a big pot of boiling water, stir them a bit, and let them cook for three to four minutes. Then toss on plates with fresh marinara or (like we did last night) alfredo and sautéed vegetables, and you’re done! Buon apetito!

Browncoats Rise Again. The fund-raising drive to revive Joss Whedon’s Firefly. (Warning: loud Flash movie.)

A group of Firefly fans is trying to raise enough money to produce 24 new episodes of Firefly. That’s $24 million, they estimate. While I’d love to see this happen, I somehow just can’t see that kind of money being raised. But if you really love the series, go donate! At the very worst, all the cash donated will end up going to a charity of Joss Whedon’s choosing.

When she gets too burned out on studying, Sarah’s been playing the game “Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life” on our GameCube since I bought it for her for Christmas. It’s a lot like both Animal Crossing and The Sims in that you’re controlling a character in all aspects of his life, as he attempts to run his farm, make friends, engage in romance, and more.

Meanwhile, I’m attempting to learn basic Italian for our upcoming trip. I’ve been using the short lessons at LearnItalianPod.com as well as at the BBC website, and I’ve got a book out of the library to help me.

While watching Sarah play for a few minutes the other day, it struck me that combining these two activities could quite possibly be the best way to learn a new language. When I start learning a language, I find it pretty easy to learn the rules of grammar: how to construct sentences, in what order to place words, how to manipulate endings to form plurals, etc. What I have trouble with is learning enough vocabulary that I would feel comfortable, or at least not totally lost, in all the various situations I might find myself.

Harvest Moon takes your character and has him engage in a large number of common real-life activities: cooking, shopping, ordering food, looking for people, exchanging small-talk, sleeping, cleaning up, and so on. What if, instead of all English, it began the game by replacing a few common words with words in another language. Instead of “bring your milk to this cooler,” it could tell you to bring your latte to the cooler. Instead of picking a flower, you’d pick a fiore. Instead of your cow being hungry, it could be affamata. Slowly, as the game progressed, more and more common terms could be replaced with their foreign equivalents. At some point, new characters could appear who only spoke in Italian, and you’d have to figure out what they’re saying in order to interact. Eventually, all the text in the game could be in Italian, and if the change was gradual enough, over the course, of many dozens of hours of play, the player might not even miss a beat.

This would, I think, work better than other methods, because 1) people love playing videogames, and will gladly do them for hours, even if they don’t necessarily understand all the words, 2) part of playing games is solving puzzles, so players’ brains would just interpret the foreign language as another type of puzzle, and 3) all the words used would be shown in a familiar sort of context, with visual cues to aid in understanding.

Videogames appeal to young and old alike, so this could potentially be a great learning tool for anyone. Kids are naturally more adept at learning languages, too, so it would work even better for them. And the marketing opportunities are tremendous: sell it to videogamers as a game, or to parents or educators as a learning tool.

I use AudioScrobbler, a service provided by Last.fm that keeps track of what songs I listen to when. Even though I know anyone can observe my listening habits and judge me based on that, I don’t let it affect what I listen to. As you can see on my profile page, along with such inarguably fantastic music as Thievery Corporation, Zero 7, and The Ditty Bops, I’ve also got some remarkably cheesy artists like Neil Diamond and Mannheim Steamroller.

If you use AudioScrobbler, do you try and show off your good musical tastes and hide your poor ones? Or do you choose to not care, like me, and just listen to whatever strikes your fancy?

Apparently Verizon is selling a phone for kids called “Migo.” Maybe they didn’t know that this term is already in use, and refers to something that kids would probably want to avoid:

Mi-Go, the Fungi from Yuggoth

“They were pinkish things about five feet long; with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal fins or membraneous wings and several sets of articulated limbs, and with a sort of convoluted ellipsoid, covered with multitudes of very short antennae, where a head would ordinarily be…. As it was, nearly all the rumours had several points in common; averring that the creatures were a sort of huge, light-red crab with many pairs of legs and with two great bat-like wings in the middle of their back. They sometimes walked on all their legs, and sometimes on the hindmost pair only, using the others to convey large objects of indeterminate nature. On one occasion they were spied in considerable numbers, a detachment of them wading along a shallow woodland watercourse three abreast in evidently disciplined formation. Once a specimen was seen flying—launching itself from the top of a bald, lonely hill at night and vanishing in the sky after its great flapping wings had been silhouetted an instant against the full moon.” (“The Whisperer in Darkness”) (From A Lovecratian Bestiary)

Sarah and I are planning a trip to Italy for the middle of the year, and as a result, I’ve been searching various travel websites for plane tickets on a regular basis, trying to get the cheapest and most convenient flights I can find. Every site I’ve used works nearly the same way, but they all suffer from similar little usability problems that could easily be improved.

1. Save my search details in a cookie.
   I keep going back to these sites and having to re-input all the flight details: airport codes, dates, number of passengers, etc. It wouldn’t be hard at all for the site designers to store this data in a cookie for me and let me recall my most recent searches with just a click. And I shouldn’t have to register an account on the site to do this.
2. Let me specify broader time ranges.
   Every site lets me choose an hour for my flights to depart. Some let me choose more vague time ranges like morning/noon/evening. But what I want to be able to specify is “10 a.m. or later,” and nobody lets me do this. Surely I’m not the only one who wants to specify a range like this.
3. Include nearby airports.
   Several of the sites have methods to include “nearby” airports in their searches. However, one of them doesn’t define “nearby,” and one limits that to “airports within 80 miles.” Why don’t I get to tell you what airports I consider nearby? Let me specify the search radius, or, better yet, show me a list of airports that I can check off.

Also, I won’t be using CheapTickets.com again.

Someday when I own a house, I’ll want a generator to provide emergency backup power in case the grid goes down for one reason or another. This page says, why spring for a slow-to-start old-fashioned generator when people like my wife and me who own Toyota Priuses or other hybrid vehicles can just hook them up as a generator? This is a really cool solution to an annoying problem. Props to the guy who thought it up.