I clicked “next” and IE8 came up with a window asking me to choose my settings. I closed it and selected Firefox from the available options. Internet Explorer opened and downloaded Firefox. I installed it and the browser ballot window was still there. I closed the ballot window and rebooted.

The ballot came up again, but this time even worse:

This thing is horribly broken. Even when you have installed another browser it tries to force you back to IE. It didn’t delete the IE icon off the desktop or Quick Launch either.

The PSX uses a SPI bus. The device is supposed to put data on the bus when there is a high to low transition, then read the command on the low to high change. Sure enough the official controller sets the data line within 0.3us of the clock transition.

The problem is that some revisions of the PSX hardware don’t wait for the low to high transition to read the data line. They read at some random point during the clock cycle.

It seems to be some kind of bug because Sony fixed it in later revisions. That is of course assuming that the information on the net about the controller protocol is correct. It may be that the controller is supposed to assert the data line within a few hundred nanoseconds but that seems somewhat unlikely. It would force you to use a hardware SPI bus and thus limit the choice of microcontroller. Maybe Sony don’t care about the needs of third party developers…

I saw a PSX dev-kit for sale last year and wish I had it now. Oh well, it’s sorted now. Make sure the data is there before the transition, just like the PSX does with the command line, and it works.

Anyway,

The interface is quite basic. You can add tasks and indent them to give it a bit of basic structure. It gives you multiple lists which at first seemed a bit cumbersome; I’d like to see an overview of all tasks. Having used it for a while I think it’s actually not such a bad idea.

Tasks is integrated into gMail and iGoogle, but I mostly use it via the Firefox sidebar (use https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig) and gTasks on Android.

It’s not as advanced as some services, but it is fast and simple.

I am pretty impressed by this. The order was for about £10 and I’m sure most places would just write it off (hi Weycrest). They  have requested samples from the bad batches and samples of how the colour should print. I will send the package off on Monday and fingers crossed they can get it right this time.

Thanks for your further e-mail.

Please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. 

We've raised your concerns with those responsible for managing the Have
Your Say board.

They recognise the board is open to abuse and there are other systems being
used to run forums elsewhere on the web. Nonetheless the moderators do
their best to try to ensure a representative response is published.

They will very shortly be making some changes to the HYS system which will
have an impact on this kind of behaviour.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.

Regards

Gemma McAleer
BBC Complaints

I was hoping for some more concrete proposals to sort this out, but hopefully whatever they are planning will improve the situation.

As a bit of an aside I think this sort of thing is unfortunately symptomatic of the BBC’s attitude towards the viewers. The opinions of the public are held in high regard, and it’s normal for them not to be challenged at all. To me that seems completely backwards. Members of the public are usually the least likely to have any kind of reasoned and informed opinion, while those who can bring those qualities to the debate are interrogated vigorously (as they should be).

With regards to HYS specifically, the decision not to allow any kind of structured debate where people can respond to each other is, IMHO, a clear example of treating the public’s opinion with more reverence than it deserves. If someone says something which cannot stand up to scrutiny or debate then the BBC should not shield them.

A nice shade of red I thought. Unfortunately, Vistaprint can’t print red:

I included a few red and different colour items in the photo for comparison. I was a bit surprised at this as I had followed all the suggestions on the Vistaprint web site, and indeed the site itself seemed to render red correctly:

I contacted them and they kindly offered to try again. I sent them a few samples of the first lot so they could see the problem. The second batch turned up, and it was a slightly darker brown that the first. I contacted them again, and got this interesting response:

We currently do not have persons in place to check orders before they are printed nor shipped.

So they just press print and hope everything turns out okay.

They suggested I try converting the colour to CMYK, so I did. Sent them another proof, which again looked perfect on the web site preview. Third lot of cards turned up and sure enough they are still just as brown.

FFS Vistaprint, is it that hard to print red? Every cheap inkjet can do it, so why can’t you? How can your prints be so far from what is shown on screen? I can understand not being able to match colour to a professional level but we are talking completely different parts of the spectrum here.

FAIL.

#viewsource {
color: #f8f8f2 !important;
}

body {
background-color: #272822;
color: #f8f8f2;
border: 0 0 0 0;
padding: 0 0 0 0;
margin: 0 0 0 0;
}

body > pre {
background-color: #272822;
color: #f8f8f2;
}

body > * {
background-color: #fff;
color: #00f;
}

pre {
background-color: #272822;
color: #f8f8f2;
}

pre > a:link {
color: #65ff00;
}

div[class=moz-text-html] {
background-color: #fff;
color: #000;
padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;
}

div[class=moz-text-html] > table {
background-color: #fff !important;
color: #000 !important;
}

div[class=moz-text-plain] {
background-color: #272822;
color: #f8f8f2;
padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;
}

*[_moz_dirty] {
color: #f8f8f2;
background-color: #272822;
}

*[_moz_quote=true] {
color: #ffcb00;
}

/* Quote Levels Colors */

blockquote[type=cite] > pre {
color: #ffcb00;
}

blockquote[type=cite] blockquote > pre{
color: #fd6500;
}

blockquote[type=cite] blockquote blockquote > pre {
color: #00a000;
}

blockquote[type=cite] blockquote blockquote blockquote > pre {
color: purple;
}

blockquote[type=cite] blockquote blockquote blockquote blockquote > pre {
color: teal;
}

Anyway, here is the current list:

AutoRewarp *

British English Dictionary

Compact Header

GMail Conversation View

keyconfig

NoBlankQuote *

PlainAddress

Quote Colors

SmartTemplate

SmoothWheel

Text Link

I use a dark but vibrant colour scheme:

Add the following to userChrome.css:

@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");

#folderTree {
 background-color: #272822 !important;
 color: #f8f8f2 !important;
}

#folderTree treechildren:-moz-tree-cell-text(selected),
#folderTree treechildren:-moz-tree-cell-text(selected, focus),
#folderTree treechildren::-moz-tree-row(selected, focus),
#folderTree treechildren::-moz-tree-row(selected) {
 background-color: #555753 !important;
 color: #f8f8f2 !important;
}

#threadTree {
 background-color: #272822 !important;
 color: #f8f8f2 !important;
}

#threadTree treechildren:-moz-tree-cell-text(selected),
#threadTree treechildren:-moz-tree-cell-text(selected, focus),
#threadTree treechildren::-moz-tree-row(selected, focus),
#threadTree treechildren::-moz-tree-row(selected) {
 background-color: #555753 !important;
 color: #f8f8f2 !important;
}

#content-frame[editortype=textmail] {
 padding-left: 5px;
 background-color: #272822;
}

Add this to userContent.css:

#viewsource {
 color: #f8f8f2 !important;
}

body {
 background-color: #272822;
 color: #f8f8f2;
 border: 0 0 0 0;
 padding: 0 0 0 0;
 margin: 0 0 0 0;
}

body > pre {
 background-color: #272822;
 color: #f8f8f2;
}

body > * {
 background-color: #fff;
 color: #000;
}

pre {
 background-color: #272822;
 color: #f8f8f2;
}

pre > a:link {
 color: #65ff00;
}

div[class=moz-text-html] {
 background-color: #fff !important;
 color: #000 !important;
 padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;
}

div[class=moz-text-plain] {
 background-color: #272822;
 color: #f8f8f2;
 padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;
}

*[_moz_dirty] {
 color: #f8f8f2;
 background-color: #272822;
}

*[_moz_quote=true] {
 color: #ffcb00;
}

/* Quote Levels Colors */
blockquote[type=cite] {
 background-color: #272822;
}

blockquote[type=cite] > pre {
 color: #ffcb00;
}

blockquote[type=cite] blockquote > pre{
 color: #fd6500;
}

blockquote[type=cite] blockquote blockquote > pre {
 color: #00a000;
}

blockquote[type=cite] blockquote blockquote blockquote > pre {
 color: purple;
}

blockquote[type=cite] blockquote blockquote blockquote blockquote > pre {
 color: teal;
}

Print quality isn’t bad. Blacks are very deep and should hopefully stay that way since it’s a thermal printer and does not use ink. That also means no smudging. It’s 300 DPI which is fine for labels and some basic graphics like logos and barcodes.

The supplied P-Touch Editor software is okay. All the usual functions are there for working with text, except for a spell checker. It can generate barcodes too, including QR code. The interface is actually pretty good, presumably because this is a business printer and so forgoes all the usual consumer oriented fluff. I have not tried the Address Book software yet as it looks like it’s oriented to mail-merge tasks, but there is a MS Word plug-in which lets you select an address and print it directly from the context menu. It seems to work well enough.

The printer can use both separate label rolls and continuous rolls, and comes with one of the latter. It has a cutter built in which slices the roll up automatically. Unlike the Dymo at work it’s very quiet too, in fact you don’t realise it’s printing until the cutter kicks in. Even set to quality mode it’s pretty fast too, printing a 62×50mm label in less than 1 second and taking about 1.5 seconds to cut it.

Oh, and being a Japanese company Japanese language support is naturally excellent. For example, you can enter Japanese text into the barcode generator which is something most online ones can’t do.

With the recent success of Rage Against The Machine thanks to a Facebook group I’m starting to think it might be a good way to sort this out. Unfortunately Facebook’s privacy policies go against my nature but maybe this time needs must…