Whoppee!! I got a new printer. After filling the inkjet tanks for one to many times at a constant $10-14 dollars a pop per color, I just couldn't do it anymore. And since all four tanks were empty I figured the first $40-50 bucks was going to be spent anyways.

I settled on the HP LaserJet Professional P 1102w, a monochrome laser printer with wireless. After have a scanner for so long it was kind of hard to imagine not having one, but given that this purchase was destined to be on the thirfty side of the scale I really couldn't justify a scanner, when in almost every circumstance I can do what I need to with a camera phone.

I bought it at Staples in town, because the price was decent ($80, $96 after taxes and fees) and I suffer from got-to-have-it-today syndrome.

So all installed now, and I'm really happy with it. Printing wirelessly is awesome, we did have this previously via our usb enabled router, but it never really worked under windows, but this appears to be working for both windows and linux.

Now it's time for the time trial, lets see how the beast stands up to a few months of service.

As a side note, after declining the instore service warranty, my receipt was stamped in RED ink that I declined. Boy, the stores sure want to reinforce that you just made the wrong decision. Feel like I just failed a spelling test

Wow, lent started early this year. I was a bit surprised when I looked it up today only to realize that it started two days ago. Good news, is Easter is coming earlier too!

Part of Lent can involve giving something up luxuries as a form of penitence. This year I'm chooising to give up reading and watching the news. Of course being two days late, I've already blown the possibility of a perfect record, but rule keeping is really the focus here. So I've uninstalled google reader from my phone to remove one temptation and now just have to avoid it and a million other possibilities of reading, watching and listening to the news. Of course if people tell me the news, I'll consider that part of daily life, but I plan to not take my own time to seek it out.

I'm hoping that the void that is left by all the time that used to be spent in the news, can be devoted to things that have been squeezed out, or never squeezed into my life due to easy hits of information being so readily available these days. This isn't the first time I've tried to squeeze the news out of my life, So and it likely won't be the last, but it is my attempt to beat back the cultural expectation that I feel to be up on the news, and let long form study, reflection, physical work, project work and spiritual growth happen in the space that's left behind.

Finishing a book is a good feeling that I haven't had in quite some time. So when I bought an e-book reader I had to admit to myself that I would need to change some habits to actually be able to get soem use out of the machine. Luckily being a stay at home Dad allows some time for book reading.

Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig This was an interesting book that I read to get a better idea about the copyright laws and the changes to them that are going on in the USA. I've been an interested follower of the creative commons licensing and understanding how and why it has come about and how it is being used.

While the book is separated into sections for me it really boiled down to two sections the initial portion was the issues with the existing copyright system, and the later section being the court case to try and change the laws and then, given the outcome, the creative commons licenses.

The first section was a great read outlining what is lost in American society as a result of the copyright laws being what they are. As a Canadian reader I was constantly wondering if the same things were true here in Canada, I know that our laws are different, and have recently just changed with the introduction of Bill C-11, it seems like from a personal use standpoint if someone is caught infringing the damanges can only be stutory damages adding up to a total of $5000, which is good. I liked the fact that through this book there was a distinction drawn between legal activities, like making a mix tape/cd or backing up your stuff and illegal activities, like downloading mainstream movies and the like. I think any copyright discussion really needs to draw that distinction, at the end of the day it shouldn't be the case that any creator should be unable to make money (even a lot of money) by selling their work and not having it stolen via the great-copy-machine (the internet).

The second section, the court case was a little less interesting to me, just because now it was not so much principles that I could apply back to my own country but the specifics of the American court case. I read it all the same, but it was a bit of a slog for me.

All in all, I think the book is well worth reading if you're interested in copyright.

Being a stay at home Dad, it feels to me that it is suddenly my responsibility to keep up on the latest book on parenting. While no one recommended the book to me, quite a few people recommended it to my wife. And I started seeing it around at some of our friends houses. So I read/skimmed:

Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman

This book is a kind of research/personal reflection on raising kids in Paris by the author, a journalist.

The parts I found interesting were the french techniques for getting your kid sleeping through the night, ideas on helping kids behave appropriately, and a look at the parisian day care situation. There were a bunch of other parts that were more... womanly related to being pregnant, breast feeding, and social norms in Paris that I just skimmed/skipped because, they just didn't seem all that applicable for my situation.

I think the overarching principle that I took out of my reading was that babies, even infants are little people quite able to understand, control themselves and even empathize with what a situation requires if given a chance to try and parents are adults who have a duty to give their kids an opporunity to do these things. It seems to me that much of the stuff about sleeping and behaving is related to expecting the kids to be able to sleep and behave, explaining to them the importance of these things to them. And boy to they start this process very early, like one month in, but it seems to yield good results on the sleep and behavior front.

Another item that book brings up is the idea of giving the kids freedom within structure. There were some really helpful examples of how Parisian try and achieve this.

The last thing that I thought was interesting was the idea that seemed to come through the book that in general the french don't let their children make them into harried parents (they have a social system that very much supports them in that) and I think that is a point to be noted, that parents need to give plenty to their kids, but they also need to retain a sense of self happiness, confidence and enjoyment.