Il y a quelques semaines, j'ai eu le privilège d'assister à une promesse électorale plus grande que nature. Une promesse de la taille d'un rhinocéros en chef.

En effet, j'assistais au discours inaugural du chef du Parti Rhinocéros du Canada, Sébastien CoRhino Corriveau, dans sa circonscription de Québec, lorsqu'il promit que pour chaque promesse faite par un parti concurrent, le parti rhinocéros allait renchérir en promettant le double. Une promesse qui saura sans aucun doute attirer la clientèle la plus sélective.
Bravo aux rhinos, et que les résultats de la campagne soient à la hauteur de leur innovation!

A couple of weeks ago I was disturbed by a colleague while debugging an amateur 15-year old document parser, equipped with a badly buggy debugger. I was very displeased, but I realized I couldn't blame my colleague; I rather realized that now that I work in an open office, I need a way to indicate to colleagues when they shouldn't disturb me.

So I searched for devices which would allow me to turn on some red light when I need extreme focus. I quickly found Plenom's kuando Busylights. The hardware seemed great, and the price was right. I was about to buy when I realized the lights had a single year of warranty. Which made me question durability. I can afford shopping and setting up a device once, but I can't do that every third year.

I saw that Plenom offers a manual color control application for Microsoft Windows and "Mac / OSX". But I realized there was nothing for GNU/Linux. In addition, the source for the application wasn't provided. At the bottom of the download page was a reference to an interface specification:

At that point, I was disappointed to see that Plenom didn't offer any code nor support for GNU/Linux, but thought that with its SDK and interface specification, Plenom was close to an acceptable level, and figured that if Plenom was OK with it, I could patch this small flaw by publishing the specification on this website. So I sent the following message to Plenom:

Plenom courteously sent the following reply:

(The mail included documentation, but I cannot provide it here.)

I was disappointed that Plenom didn't offer redistributing, but found Plenom's concern justifiable, and its reply very courteous, so I tried finding a compromise with the following reply:

To my surprise, the next thing I heard from Plenom was a message in my voice mailbox (even though I hadn't provided my phone number), from Mitch Friend, president of Plenom Americas, who said he wanted to talk about my development project. Duh

I called back anyway and started by basically repeating my last message to M. Friend, explaining that I didn't work in a call center and would be paying from my own pocket. The funny part came when M. Friend reassured me that his company was in great health, so there was no reason to fear bankruptcy. He claimed I was the only one who had asked about this so far, visibly trying to convince me I was at the faulty end of the conversation. Then came the worst part. M. Friend asked if I would do the same with Microsoft and ask them to change their policies. I was caught off-guards and failed to point out that I wasn't asking Plenom to change its policies, or that most of Microsoft's hardware implements the HID protocol, or even that Microsoft had interest in keeping the cross-platform support of devices as low as possible.

The conversation certainly didn't help convincing me to get a kuando Busylight, but it had a bit of constructiveness when M. Friend mentioned there was some Busylight-related code available on GitHub.

Ultimately I didn't get any permission to redistribute the documentation, nor any further explanation of Plenom's apparent unwillingness to help itself. I even realized after that Plenom requests personal information just to let you download their end-user software. At that point, it seems safe to conclude that Plenom won't offer either redistributable source code or interface specification for kuando Busylight anytime soon.

After giving up on kuando Busylight, I searched a little for alternatives. I found a couple:

1. Jabra Busylight
2. Embrava's Blynclight

The first is not USB and apparently in a very different category, specific to phones, so not an option for me. As for Blynclight, it seems worse than kuando Busylight. There is visibly no support for GNU/Linux, no source for any controlling application offered, nor even any specification

So, if you're aware of a well-working and reliable availability display device, please let me know. (Meanwhile, if you see me stepping through a stack tens of levels deep, feel free to find someone else to discuss your backyard.)

Early in my eleventh year, I fell in a painful love for the first time. My parents bought me a Pentium 120 MHz machine, my family's first personal computer. Instantaneously, my reading time dropped by 98%, and all of my spare time (or more) went to this buggy, unstable, very limited, yet how-irresistible creature.
A tragedy since, like any love, it takes the place from other possible loves. And a tragedy since, like any real love, it can never be completely fulfilled.
Before this tragedy started, I thankfully had the time to study and read a lot and become excellent in maths, science, French... and any school topic which didn't require creativity So I could pick any high school I wanted, and my parents sent me to the International Education Program, which - at the time - was still only accessible to the elite. I learned I was accepted in Rochebelle high school's International Baccalaureate program from the acceptance paper my mother had wrapped in the Christmas tree.

In spite of my mother's efforts to present this to me under a positive light, during all the months before I started at Rochebelle, as I imagined how it would be, I anticipated one downside. Not the higher academic expectations we would have to meet, but the less pretty girls I thought I would study with. In my 11-year-old mind, the intelligent girls which were selected had to wear glasses and be physically unattractive. Either I developed this preconception from the girls I saw at the admission exam, or - and I have no doubt it's the latter - I had already been exposed to enough Western culture to associate geekness with lack of physical attraction. My preconception was right in that both of my elementary school ex-"girlfriends" were in the regular program, but thankfully, there were more than enough interesting girls in my program too.

During my first grade, I would spend my evenings at my friend Guillaume's house, since he not only had a computer, but was lucky enough to have dial-up Internet access. At the time, we had to connect to the Internet, and to do so, we needed to enter our ISP password. One day, I saw Guillaume enter his password in the wrong field, unobfuscated. It was hard not to remember that his password was "12345". Even though Guillaume was my best friend at the time, some time after, while I was home, I stole his password so I could connect to the Internet from my home (ah, the good old days of dial-up). I probably never even thought that my own parents could catch me when they would notice that the phone line was busy. But it's Guillaume himself who caught me while I was using his account to use the irresistibly cool Palace chat application.

Thankfully, my theft had unexpected consequences. Instead of rejecting me, Guillaume remained my friend, and his mother accepted my family's proposal to share his Internet connection. I would bring them 15 CAD per month so we could use their connection, and we shared for a few months, until we got sick of having to synchronize who could connect or not all the time and each got our own.

Long story short, when I entered high school, my mind was constantly thinking about the Internet and several interesting girls. Girls to whom I didn't dare to disclose my attraction, and who - I thought - may also have been keeping secret reciprocal interests.

During my first years in high school, I had this idea of a system allowing all students to secretly indicate who they were interested in, which would tell 2 students if they were interested in each other. There were design difficulties though; how would the system ensure that interest was genuine, and not just a dummy indication someone would enter to know who was interested in them?

Fast forward many teenager crushes, even more computer crashes, and many less tricky ideas which would replace that one in my dreams. With the advent of social media, this kind of system has become much cheaper to develop. So much so that in fact, a couple months ago, Facebook started deploying one, called "Secret Crush". Which got me aware of the fact that Orkut had done it last decade.
Welcome to the future, the geek paradise! (Just too bad it's 20 years later and I've forgotten with whom I was hoping to use it)

Microsoft's electronic book business wasn't profitable enough. So Microsoft is closing its DRM servers:

Philippe, happy not to own (if that word still makes sense) any DRM-encumbered book

7,99$ pour un sac de pommes sans pommes, ça fait cher :

Marketing qui ne vaut pas cher au supermarché Provigo, sur l'avenue Myrand

One of the things I remember best from my high school and college days is the communist pantry. Back then I would share a locker at school with friends to store shared food. We would buy several types of non-perishable food appreciated by teenagers and store it in that "communist locker". In these good old days when we took our health as granted, one of my favorite contributions was packs of Pringles chips. One pack would sell for 1.99 CAD and weight 200 g.

Shortly after, I was disappointed to see the contents diminished from 200 g to somewhere around 170 g. I suspected that Procter & Gamble would eventually increase quantity back to where it was increasing the price. But I didn't suspect just how premeditated the move was.

Before increasing back, Procter & Gamble (or the current owner, Kellogg's) would reduce again, to 148 g. Without changing the can's size at all. And it's only last weekend that I could finally see the result of this well-planned crime, when I saw a tall Pringles can called a "Mega pack", with 30% more Pringles. This can now sold for 2.75 CAD (as a promotion) contains a Mega stack of 194 g of Pringles - which is less than the original can.

I now wonder what Kellogg's next moves will be. One possibility is that the can keeps growing by 30% every 15 years. In that case, I would estimate that Pringles cans can no longer fit in communist pantries in 2 to 4 centuries. But there's another avenue which I suspect Kellogg's considers. Instead of restarting such an inflationary cycle again, they could market a communism-friendly and "eco-vegan Pringles can", with the ecological achievement of reducing the packing material by 25%.

I will not make an exact prediction about what Kellogg's is premeditating, but with climate change, one thing is sure - the stackstakes are higher than ever.

P.S. This is written with all respect for Procter & Gamble, which used to sell the most dense pack of chips on the market.

2020-12-23 Update: Kellogg's is now making Pringles cans eco-friendly by reviewing their composition.
2023-11-12 Update: The Mega pack is now called the Party stack, and now sells for 3,57 CAD. And rampant inflation has gotten the practice Procter & Gamble pioneered a name: shrinkflation.

After some emotion with my first order from DirectCanada, the story was too good to stop so early. The second episode from that sequel is on shipping.

So - of course - free shipping can't be perfect. You don't select the transporter and you get the cheapest - Purolator. And as it's free, you can't really add a few dollars to get Canada Post. You'd have to pay a full normal shipping fee for that, which kind of beats the purpose of ordering from DirectCanada. So DirectCanada ships via Purolator, I'm not home when the shipments arrive, Purolator brings the shipments back to the other end of the town, and we have the setting for this great sequel.

The story begins 3 business days after my order when I receive a mail claiming that "[my] Order has been shipped". As I took care to select only items in stock, that's not what DirectCanada's "Fast delivery" slogan would evoke, but the real story starts in that mail's content. The mail refers to 2 shipments, Shipment #1 (marked as shipped), and Shipment 2, marked as Pending.

The next day, DirectCanada says my order was shipped again... OK, so when DirectCanada says your order was shipped, what they really mean is that part of your order was shipped.

But which part? That's the question; the mail indicates the products you ordered - but not those shipped. Nothing tells you.
In my case, the second mail referred to a pending "Shipment #3". Purolator attempted to deliver shipments 1 and 2 quickly after, while I wondered what would be in shipment 3. Later that week, Purolator started to nag me so I would come collect my shipments (even though I didn't know their contents). Reluctant to spend an hour just to collect some of the shipments and having to go back just after, I waited until Friday evening. At that point, all I knew was that part of my order was shipped and part of it was still missing (the website suggested the CPU might be missing, but that turned out to be me being misled by some kind of bug). I decided to call DirectCanada to be told that there was no Shipment #3. Shipments 1 and 2 were it. Something had been wrong with my order's status (something which persists 2 weeks later), and I had been waiting for a shipment which wouldn't come

Now, to be fair to DirectCanada, shipments 1 and 2 indeed contained all of my order's products, and these worked perfectly (except for 1 or 2 glitches). And, although I called in the last hour of DirectCanada's business week, my call was answered after 2 minutes.
For these reasons, I'm not going to discourage you from shopping there. DirectCanada is a good choice if you're looking for an amateur reseller.

Over 2 years after the last article in my Windows Firewall insanity series, it was time for the next chapter. So Microsoft pushed Windows 10 1809, which, like all prior Windows 10 updates, will start warning again about walls which aren't on fire.

But there's a new twist this time. On one of my Windows 10 installs, I can't disable notifications anymore. Now, instead of "Turn off messages about network firewall", the Security and Maintenance center merely links to Windows Security, which has many things, but obviously not the one thing which would keep administrators safe from mental insanity. If you see "Turn on messages about network firewall", you may think enabling and disabling again will do the trick, but Windows won't let you disable anymore after you re-enable.

Sorry, I don't have any solution this time.

The first PC I bought online was my third (OK, the first PC my parents bought online). I bought it from NCIX, despite the distance between British Columbia and Quebec. My next 3 PCs also came from NCIX. After an epically bad experience with months of delay, I bought my seventh PC at Future Shop. Last weekend the time to buy my next PC came and I came close to buy it at NCIX, but my friend Xavier suggested considering DirectCanada instead. In the end, I decided that was the better choice.

The good

• Prices appear to be lower (compared to NCIX).
• Total price is even lower as DirectCanada offers free shipping for most orders.

The bad

• Website as flaky as NCIX's
• Product categorization is basic - more than NCIX's
• Product categorization is incorrect - my RAM stick and many more are considered as "Physics card"
• No price matching (unlike NCIX)
• Product catalog might be slightly inferior to NCIX's

The really bad - almost

After completing all checkout, I was about to place my order when I had a last minute idea. I replaced an item in my cart in a different browser tab and came back to my checkout tab, which of course showed the outdated cart. I then clicked "Go Back". But instead of going back, my order was placed! Thankfully, the system ordered my current cart, so it did what I meant to do, even though that's not what I requested. In a sense, that's worst - the system not only ordered when I said to go back, but it ordered something other than what it offered me. I'm still struggling to believe it.

But what is DirectCanada?

I was amazed to realize that only 1 out of the 7 items in my NCIX shopping cart was unavailable at DirectCanada - I simply had to take a somewhat slower CPU. After noticing so much similarity between NCIX and DirectCanada, I realized they're actually associated. I'm not sure of the exact nature of this relation, but they essentially share the same products, website engine, physical location and policies. I wonder why they're not the same - perhaps history.

Now that the easy part is done, let's hope the hard part won't reflect cheapness too much and DirectCanada won't be a topic again on this blog

After giving up on my Epson WF-3620 all-in-one, I had gone through a sixth consecutive defective inkjet printer. 6 printers of 3 different models, from 2 manufacturers, in 2½ years. Going through such an ordeal is much less fun than looking back at it. Fearing loss of even more of my time and mental sanity by getting a seventh printer which would also fail near-instantly, I reviewed our needs and choices. Although I had always avoided laser because we print little (most of our usage is non-business), I decided to drop inkjet printers altogether and chose to replace with a laser all-in-one. After realizing that color laser printers were too massive, I decided to go with a monochrome HP all-in-one. After I gave up trying to add a M227fdw to my cart, I called HP and was told by an agent that was because HP had no such device in stock...

I then decided to go with a slightly less flexible but immediately available and considerably cheaper M227fdn (no touchscreen, no front USB port, no wireless). I thought I was lucky, since Debian stretch offers the very first hplip version which supports the M227 series. Setting up the printer was indeed easy after I remembered I needed to install the hplip package. I was impressed by printing speed.

Things got considerably worst with the scanner, which I connected via USB. I tried launching Skanlite, which refused to open with an error message. When I tried launching from the command line, it whined:

With such a helpful error message, I decided to try Simple Scan, which opened, but failed when asked to scan, complaining it was "unable to connect to scanner". After searching the web significantly, I was lucky enough to find the solution, given by another poor LaserJet user. The solution is to install hplip-gui, launch HP Toolbox, and install a proprietary plugin for that scanner (UPDATE: I can't get figure out how to do this in Ubuntu 19.04. I ran $ hp-plugin -i; instead.). While that solution does fix the problem, if the M227fdn does require a proprietary plugin to scan, it's easy to consider HP Linux Imaging and Printing's table of supported printer models, which lists the M227fdn as having "Full" support and as having "Scan to PC", as fraudulently misleading.

The LaserJet has a relatively powerful web interface, but reports cannot be viewed, only printed. Inexcusably, the 10 reports offered, including the usage report, can only be directly printed on the LaserJet, even with firmware 20180510. If you want to see how many pages you actually printed before buying a new cartridge, you can thankfully use Supplies Status in the Home tab. That will also give you the total number of pages printed (in fact, the number printed with your drum, which should support about 18400).

I thought setting up the scanner on Windows would be easy, but I was overestimating HP once again. After installing HP's software, I was somewhat able to scan using Microsoft's built-in utility, but I could not see a user-friendly application from HP. I tried the menu entry "HP TWAIN Administration". It is not clear whether that application is purely administrative or if it's supposed to allow scanning directly. The home screen says to click on "Numériser" ("Scan" in French), but there is no such button. The name suggests it's just an administrative tool, but I could not find where the presets controlled there show up.

So I went to the manual and found that after installing the software on Windows, there should be an "HP Scan" shortcut in the Start menu. Unfortunately, even though I installed 2 different versions of the software on 2 Windows 10 installs, none had such a shortcut.

Thankfully, I then noticed that in one session, HP did install an application called "HP Smart", which does allow easy scanning (among other things), and which works. Yet, it wasn't installed on the PC on which I used the latest installer, and it apparently only installs for the current session (you have to repeat for each user!).
A big applause for HP for such a failure... how Smart is that? It's HP Smart.

But, after all this time wasted, it seems to do the job. So here's hoping I didn't get a seventh consecutive defective HP all-in-one, and that this will be my last post about printers for a very long time...

Update 2019-01-02: After trying to copy a document, I must say this printer's interface is crap. I knew it would be less intuitive than a touchscreen, but having to use 4 different buttons to launch a copy, only 1 of which is labeled, caused 2 adults together to fail to copy a document until we gave up and consulted the user guide.

Update 2019-03-02: We printed 1979 pages on the original cartridge, but the output was starting to get gray rather than black. The web interface didn't show any fill percentage anymore (although a bar suggested 1% left). It had been several weeks since the printer started whining about low toner though, so I just adjusted the low toner threshold from the factory default 7% to 4% in the web interface's System tab (Supply Settings), since it's apparently quite annoying on Microsoft Windows. Changing the cartridge is not as easy as it was with previous printers, but it's straightforward enough once you know you just need to follow the pictograms, letting the printer figure out automatically it needs to initialize the cartridge.

Update 2021-01-27: Although printers apparently still stuck, this one has now lasted longer than the combined duration of my 5 previous printers. I am not going back to inkjet.

Update 2022-12-11: Although the M227fdn I purchased in March 2018 still works fine, I purchased a M227fdw in June 2020. Even if they have considerable flaws and the M227fdw has had a moderate print quality issue, I have now operated M227-s for more than 7 printer-years and still have 0 complete breakage, which should be well enough to conclude the HP M227 series is vastly superior to inkjet printers in terms of reliability for my use case!