Last week I bought a shiny new Epson Artisan 800 all-in-one printer. I already had a Canon printer and an HP scanner, but the former is not so great, akshully and the latter's bundled software was annoying as hell. For faxing, I was getting by with what's built into XP, which is fine for receiving and for sending documents that already exist as files (but then why not use email?...); even with the scanner though, there was no simple way to fax anything else - like something I'd had to sign. So the all-in-one concept seemed useful, and I've been an Epson fan since I got my first RX-80. I also liked that the Artisan 800 has WiFi connectivity, so I could make it part of my home network.

I knew that the 800 had slots for memory cards, so I can just take a card from my (or any) digital camera and print directly, but what I didn't notice or anticipate in my pre-purchase research was the USB port on the front. After I got it home and set it up, I thought "hey cool, I can dump a bunch of photos to this USB stick and print them," which of course is true. But what I suddenly realized is that I can plug in a portable drive, enable read/write access, and whammo, I have a network attached storage device.

I'd been looking at many of the NAS options out there, and hadn't quite decided on any of them, primarily due to cost, or sometimes to bad reviews on Newegg or wherever. I'd also considered re-configuring an old dormant PC using FreeNAS, but that requires planning and thinking and scary stuff like that, so I just never got around to it.

Now I suddenly have "free" solution - OK sure, the printer wasn't cheap, but I worked the price-match and converted some credit card points to gift cards, making my out-of-pocket price less than half of suggested retail.

Nope, can't say that I have meta-moderated lately. I've tried, but the system changed to something that doesn't render on this corporate mandated IE6. I don't really care that Idle is unusable on IE6, because it truly is a waste of my time. But that's a whole nother topic.

Of course I tried to find some information about this change to the M2 system, but the FAQ is about as useful as tits on a bull. And dog forbid that any announcement of this change be made in somewhere that is obvious and accessible.

Aside from the new whizzy non-functional interface, from what I can tell, the new system isn't even about meta-moderation anyway. I'm supposed to decided if a given comment is "good or bad." So it's not really about moderating the moderation anymore.

There is an amusing part to all this, though. The title on each and every comment that's presented on the "Metamoderation" page is WHY. Yes indeed, Taco, WHY?

Jebus, people like to hear themselves talk. Or see themselves write. Something like that. And I guess I'm going to jump on in.

I downloaded and used Chrome as soon as I could on Tuesday. I used it for a couple hours and thought it was OK, although I had a bad tendency to click on the bookmark bar instead of the tabs, since I seem to navigate my screen as much from muscle memory as anything else, and those tabs are not where I expect them to be. There was not anything specifically wrong with Chrome at all, but I'm going to stick with Firefox for primary browsing, simply because of AdBlock Plus and NoScript.

I am going to use Chrome though, for GMail and other AJAX heavy sites. Over the next few days/weeks/months, I'll figure out which sites I want to run in which environment, and if I'm lucky, FF will get snappier as I use it less for the AJAXy sites.

In the case of GMail, I'll probably make an app window out of it. And that's my own theory about what Google's up to anyway . . . they probably don't care so much about overall browser market share as they do about creating a framework within which one can run their apps. In the meantime, other browsers can take some of the better bits (V8?) and incorporate them, and in the end, everybody benefits.

To close this out, a quick note about those who screech "OMG, WTF, it's phoning home!!!111!!!1!" There's a simple way to turn that off. Don't download and install Chrome. There's no gun pointing at your head. See? Easy peasy.

A Honda ASIMO robot walked on stage and acted as conductor for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra last night, leading them in a performance of "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha. Although some musicians found the little robot to be more lifelike than expected, it still can't respond to the musicians. "It's not a communicative device. It simply is programmed to do a sense of gestures," said Leonard Slatkin, the orchestra's musical director. "If the orchestra decides to go faster, there's nothing the robot can do about it. Hopefully, I keep that under control."