Thursday, July 31, 2008

Renewable Energy Breakthrough ? An MIT scientist uses solar energy to "easily" make Oxygen and Hydrogen from water - using an catalyst - and says now you don't need to worry about power from solar at night. Story here. Sounds like such a technique could also have benefits for wind or tidal power also, neither of which is continuous.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Reviving a "clogged" HP Ink cartridge Just over a year ago I bought an HP5280 "Photosmart" printer when it was on sale at Office Depot. It prints, it scans, it automatically will print from Camera memory card to 4 x 6 photo paper, and it will print to "printable" CDs and DVDs. However for Black and white printing I use my LaserJet, at a far lower cost per page, and with little use, the black ink cartridge of the 5280 clogs up (HP74), long before they are used up.
Using Google, I found a web page that suggested how up clear the clogs. First they say run the print head under hot water, and if that fails, soak it in a dish with 50% hot water, 50% ammonia. I had no ammonia, so I used a few flakes of lye from a drain cleaner, to provide some alkalinity. A 10 minute soak revived the cartridge, saving me money, and restoring my faith in this printer.

Friday, July 25, 2008

AT&T offers free security software: If ATT is your Internet provider, they now provide free Security software, similar to how Comcast provides McAfee software. ATT provides Norton software that only can be installed if you're running Internet Explorer 6 or 7 under Windows. As I use Firefox 3.01; that makes the software useless for me. The web page fails to tell whether it daily checks that you're an ATT customer, or if it expires in a year or what.