Gallery: Garmin's new nuvi 7x5 and 2x5 navigators live and in person

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Once again your printer is out of ink way before you think there is any way it should be. Yet somehow, BOOM. It just refuses to print another page until you replace the cartridge. Well, when Farhad Manjoo’s Brother printer suddenly stopped printing; he started to wonder if his printer wasn’t simply lying to him that it was out of toner just so he would buy more before he actually even needed it. His prints hadn’t been fading at all; his printer just suddenly simply refused to keep going without a new cartridge.

Manjoo decided to look to the ‘Net for a way around this. And he indeed found some answers. He learned that by covering up the sides of his toner cartridge with a piece of electrical tape he could “trick” his printer into thinking it was full. He says the printer was been chugging along just fine ever since...eight months and hundreds of pages down the road...printing out perfect pages.

It’s not just Manjoo this had happened to, the whole “you don’t really need a new cartridge but your printer tells you that you do” bit.  The problem is actually becoming so widespread that there have actually been class action lawsuits filed against Epson and Hewlett-Packard over the trickery. It seems this is even more common for inkjets than laser printers...because inkjets make their money off, guess what? The ink.

There are many ways to get extra life out of your printer ink or toner, from the standard “shake the heck out of it” approach, to finding the options in your menus that will override “cartridge check” features. In his Slate article though, Manjoo suggests a web search for specific advice, since there are just so many kinds of printers out there. He suggests looking up the model of your printer along with words like toner, override, cheap, and perhaps lying bastards.  Although if that fails, FixYourOwnPrinter is a pretty good place to start.

Read [Slate]

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(Editor's note: This is the final installment in Chris Null's winemaking odyssey before the wine itself ages for several months in the oak barrel pictured above. Until we can actually drink and rate the vino, you can check out the links below for previous installments of Winebloggin'.)

[Episode I]                    [Episode II]                    [Episode III]                    [Episode IV]

By Christopher Null

After a few headaches (I get lost in the WineCoach software; the temperature on the WinePod resets itself — to 32 degrees — one night), the primary fermentation is finally almost complete. Punching the cap down daily has left my fingernails stained purple, and I'm beginning to really tire of the punchdown process, which involves spilling wet grapes everywhere and then dragging the dripping punchdown tool from the ground-floor alley, through the house, up the stairs, and into the kitchen for cleaning every day. I've got at least a couple of wine stains on the carpet, no matter how careful I try to be.

Primary fermentation is complete when brix hits -2, a level indicating there's just 0.2% residual sugar and "official" dry wine status. Finally I get there after two weeks (my fermentation is going dog slow), and I do a chemical test to make sure we're really at -2. (The test is pretty awesome, involving dropping a chemical tablet into a test tube containing a wine sample and watching it automatically boil(!), then comparing the resulting color to a laminated color chart in the WinePod kit. It's close enough.)

Technically it's wine now, just not very good wine. In fairness it smells better than it tastes, but it's very astringent and almost gamy. A couple of sips are all I can manage...and that's why we now move on to the second stage of the process: malolactic fermentation.

Malolactic fermentation is one of those things you hear about constantly in tasting rooms but only half understand. All malolactic fermentation does is convert the naturally occurring malic acid found in grapes into non-naturally occurring lactic acid. Lactic acid is less acidic than malic, and it's more "stable," which means microscopic critters will be less likely to grow in the finished wine. Plus, and this is not to be underestimated, it just tastes a lot better. A special bacteria culture goes into the wine and then it's back to daily punchdowns while we wait for the process to complete in another couple of weeks.

Provina CEO Greg Snell tells me that we can go from the WinePod to the barrel pretty much whenever I want, but once the cap of skins falls from the top of the wine, it's time to barrel immediately. This is a rather huge departure from the printed manual, which outlines a complicated process of pressing the wine, siphoning the wine into glass carboys, cleaning out the WinePod, then putting the wine back into the WinePod for another couple of weeks before finally going into the barrel. Snell says I can just go straight from the WinePod to the barrel and skip all that other stuff? Yeah, I'm sold.

The issue, he explains, is temperature. The instructions were written by a winemaker who kept the WinePod in a 55-degree cellar, which is too cold and would stop the malolactic fermentation process, so the wine had to go back into the heated 'Pod until malolactic completed. In a typical house, temperature isn't a problem, so long as I bring the barrel inside.

How and where to prep the miniature oak barrel for the wine is perhaps my greatest challenge so far. Where does one put a leaky eight-gallon barrel where it can be filled with hot water and then drained five times over four days? After much headache I finally settle for a guest shower that's never used, filling the barrel by carefully shooting water into the bunghole, which I've outfitted with a funnel, then emptying it down the drain the next day. (And yes, I wrote that because it's probably the only time in my career I'll be able to make legitimate use of the word "bunghole.")

I instantly wish I'd chosen to do it outside: Filling the barrel with hot water immediately makes the entire house smell like a lumberyard. But it's wholly clear how the wood will impact the wine, which is still very astringent on barrel day (though Provina tells me that's normal).

Twenty-four days after I started, the wine goes into the barrel (and two one-gallon jugs for the overage). Moving 10 gallons of liquid from the WinePod to another container is easier said than done, and even the WinePod instructions warn me that this will be the messiest part of the entire process. The WinePod includes a built-in, motorized press which slowly (very slowly) pushes the skins and seeds down, squeezing out the juice. After an hour of pressing, then we start the siphoning (with many thanks for the extra hands of my editor Danny Dumas), and the barrel fills up quickly. Getting the last of the wine out of the bottom is an amazing chore, but not nearly as amazing as the pomace "cake," a 30-pound cylinder of the pressed skins and seeds, that we pry out of the WinePod at the end of the day.

Cleanup is back-breaking work and takes another two hours.

There's more work to be done now, but it's easier going forward, just monitoring the wine in the barrel, topping it up with wine from the glass jugs, tasting it regularly, doing various chemical tests, and waiting for it to improve enough to drink. In about five or six months it will be theoretically ready for bottling (another fine mess, I'm sure).

But for now, it's time to relax... with a bottle of wine produced by someone else.

Looking back on the most labor-intensive part of the process, I really feel like I've learned a lot about winemaking, no matter how good or bad my batch turns out. It really is as much art as science, and it will be interesting to compare my wine to the one that Provina has been producing at the same time, using the same grapes. Greg has more experience, has made some different decisions, and has a different environment than me, and we've agreed to swap bottles early next year to see how the other side fared.

It's been exciting, but at the same time, the proscribed process can be a little tiresome, feeling a lot like you're memorizing lines and following a script for the school play. I'm not sure how often I'd want to repeat the process, especially with the same grape varietal, and now I realize why the most interesting WinePod projects I've read about are ones for which there are no instructions, including white wine, cider, and even sake. They're really exploring new ground, making it up as they go along.

It's all food for thought while the wine's at rest. Winebloggin' will be offline for several months while we wait for the wine to age. As soon as it's in the bottle, I'll be back for a last dispatch, complete with a tasting report on the finished wine and final thoughts. Stay tuned, and keep hydrated.

[to be continued]

(Photos by Emily Lang for Wired.com)

Electric bikes are moving up in the world -- they're now receiving a breezy embrace from public radio. On a recent airing of NPR's All Things Considered, Senior Correspondent John McChesney featured the E-bikes and found out the difference between a fully powered e-motor and his own pedaling will.

His early verdict: E-bikes make him wheeze, but delightfully, and not as much as regular bikes.

In the segment, McChesney talks with a few commuters that fit one specific e-bike profile: older and slightly out of shape. One particular couple simplifies the attraction: E-bikes 'make biking possible for more marginal riders.'

As a couple living in San Francisco's Potrero Hill district (renowned for hills that attract biking masochists), they see their move to e-bikes as a consequence of the hardship of bike commuting -- it's too much sweat and a hard slog to do it every day after a hard day's work.

In addition, the couple mentions the 'shock pity' they were continually subjected to by bike enthusiasts and shop managers. Like we mentioned previously, hard-core bikers often scoff at the mere suggestion of bikes assisted by electric motors. But that’s just something people are going to have to get over.

After all, hush puppy-wearing hipsters have been seen hanging out aimlessly around Brooklyn bars riding these bikes, so it's only a matter time before everyone gets on them.

Source: NPR (All Things Considered) - Electric Bikes Remove Strain Of Riding

See also:

• Electric Bikes Are Blowing Up and Gadget Lab Readies an e-Bike Test List
  

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Are you bored at the office? I’m sure we’ve seen plenty of remote controlled toys in the past, but that won’t stop me from adding the R/C Mini Tank to our annals.

R/C Mini Tank is the coolest racing car you have ever seen. It is designed in the military tank shape. It can be charged on the remote control which is powered by 3pcs AA batteries only. Just install the batteries and enjoy playing it with your friends. Here comes with Green Tank and Camouflage Tank.

It certainly doesn’t look too professional, and too bad there are no laser fights you can hold with this, otherwise you and your mate could build an elaborate obstacle course, waiting for someone to make that fatal move first. The R/C Mini Tank will retail for $14.50 a pop.

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Gallery: DLO introduces HomeDock HD Pro: its latest upscaling iPod dock

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Ask any dad and he’ll tell you that he wears many hats, and among the more popular ones would be that of a driver - at least until the kid is old enough to drive. Enter the Dad’s Cab novelty taxi meter.

Gifts for dads don’t come much better than this Gift of the Year Award winner, Dad’s Cab. Dad’s Cab is a novelty taxi meter that comes with an assortment of forfeit cards that overworked dads can dish out to their blood-sucking children by way of a bill. Payments include ingenious tasks like ‘tidy your room’ and ‘make dad a cup of tea’ – that’s no more free rides for the kids and some well-deserved rewards for dad! Using the adhesive strips provides you can safely secure your Dad’s Cab taxi meter to the dashboard of your car. Turn on the taxi meter every time you find yourself acting as the household taxi driver and let the meter clock up and up! There are additional signs for ‘mum’s cab’ and ‘family cab’ as well as a Terms of Carriage Notice. And for early morning starts, Dad’s Cab also doubles up as an alarm clock! This is a fantastic gift idea and the perfect present for dad’s everywhere – order yours now!

The Dad’s Cab is powered by a quartet of LR44 batteries and will retail for £9.95.

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In private beta testing mode since January, the England-based ProofHQ has just opened it’s program up to the the public. What makes it so appealing to so many is the obvious allowance for collaboration. ProofHQ makes this simple with the use of several formats on the web. Blogs, social media applications...users are able to comment and give feedback on a project that can be seen by anyone working on it by using embeddable objects.

There is no cost for this new personal version, unless you want to upgrade to a more advanced package that offers more storage.  The free package only allows for five proofs a months (50 megabytes of storage), and the upgrades run anywhere from $29 to $99 a month. However, you can get a feel for it to see what you think by taking advantage of their 14 day free trial offer. It is both PC and Mac compatible.

The whole “cloud collaboration” idea isn’t a new one. There are several other companies out there doing much the same thing. You have for instance, Conceptshare, Octopz, Scribd, and the well known Basecamp.  What is especially handy about ProofHQ is that users of Basecamp are able to integrate ProofHQ right into their Basecamp program. Or for those more familiar with Scribd, in ProofHQ, you can also embed items you need to proof right into your site and have other people leave feeback since your document lives inside an embedded file viewer that runs on Flash. When it’s time to make edits, just kick over to the full editor. One downside is that there isn’t any video conferencing or chat (like Octopz offers), but although there isn’t any real-time collaboration in these modes, changes do get shown to other viewers as soon as they are made to a project.

At this point, the biggest perks separating it from the others really are the ease of use, and the fact that you can merge it with another program you may already be using.

Via [CNet]

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