Enabling Job Options > Scale to fit fixed the clipping, but the image was still off-center. I played around with the PPD file a bit, and achieved favorable results by shifting the ImageableArea values a bit in the opposite direction:

--- /usr/share/cups/model/DCP7065DN.ppd
+++ /usr/share/cups/model/DCP7065DN.ppd
@@ -85,18 +85,18 @@
 *CloseUI: *PageRegion

 *DefaultImageableArea: A4
-*ImageableArea Letter/Letter: "18 12 594 780"
-*ImageableArea Legal/Legal: "18 12 594 996"
-*ImageableArea Executive/Executive: "18 12 504 744"
-*ImageableArea A4/A4: "18 12 577 830"
-*ImageableArea A5/A5: "18 12 403 583"
-*ImageableArea A6/A6: "18 12 279 408"
-*ImageableArea Env10/Com-10: "18 12 279 672"
-*ImageableArea EnvMonarch/Monarch: "18 12 261 528"
-*ImageableArea EnvDL/DL: "18 12 294 612"
-*ImageableArea EnvC5/C5: "18 12 441 637"
-*ImageableArea EnvISOB5/B5: "18 12 463 697"
-*ImageableArea EnvISOB6/B6: "18 12 336 487"
+*ImageableArea Letter/Letter: "0 0 576 768"
+*ImageableArea Legal/Legal: "0 0 576 984"
+*ImageableArea Executive/Executive: "0 0 486 732"
+*ImageableArea A4/A4: "0 0 559 818"
+*ImageableArea A5/A5: "0 0 385 571"
+*ImageableArea A6/A6: "0 0 261 396"
+*ImageableArea Env10/Com-10: "0 0 261 660"
+*ImageableArea EnvMonarch/Monarch: "0 0 243 516"
+*ImageableArea EnvDL/DL: "0 0 276 600"
+*ImageableArea EnvC5/C5: "0 0 423 625"
+*ImageableArea EnvISOB5/B5: "0 0 445 685"
+*ImageableArea EnvISOB6/B6: "0 0 318 475"

 *%==== Information About Media Sizes ========
 

Since I’d already added the printer to CUPS, I also had to edit the corresponding file under /etc/cups/ppd/, but removing and adding the printer again would have worked as well. The Scale to fit setting was still necessary; alternatively, similar results could be achieved by tweaking the PaperDimension values.

This might work for other Brother printers as well.

A male conference participant makes a silly joke to his friend. A female participant overhears this and finds it offensive. She publicly criticizes the behavior, posting his photograph to some 10000+ Twitter followers. The male participant is fired from his job. Commenters make hateful statements about the female participant, and anons threaten to attack her company. She is fired as well.

This is not about men, women, or anons; nor is it about sexism or dongle size. Because of inappropriate reactions to what began as an inappropriate joke, two people are out of jobs and there is much outrage in the community. There are better ways to handle situations like this. Let’s always try to be tactful, give each other the benefit of the doubt, and treat fellow humans with respect.

AT&T Free Msg: Did you know a data plan is required for your Smartphone? We have added an appropriate data plan. Learn more at www.att.com/dataplans.

This is funny, because I had no idea that a data plan was required for my phone. Thanks, at&t, for preemptively adding services that I don’t need. They do this once in a while, and it’s getting ridiculous.

I was able to have a customer service representative remove the data plan.

Ostensibly, Ingress is an augmented reality MMOG by Google for Android devices. Players join one of two factions, collect “exotic matter” (XM) for energy, and capture portals associated with physical locations. Three or more portals may be linked into a polygon, and the population covered by the polygon is added to the “mind score” of the player’s faction. Since the game involves publicly-accessible landmarks, it is best played in more densely-populated areas. As a side effect of playing Ingress, players submit landmarks, GPS coordinates, and other mapping data to improve Google’s mapping service.

Ingress is currently in closed beta. To get an invitation, you could either lodge a request at ingress.com or nianticproject.com, or hang out on #invites at irc.irchighway.net. Details regarding Ingress lore could be found at the unofficial Niantic Project Wiki, and a list of in-game passcodes is on Google Docs. Good luck and enjoy!

Pocket calculators used to be banned at school many years ago, under the premise that calculators would prevent students from learning mathematics. Students were also tested based on their ability to perform computations quickly, and calculators would level the playing field during exams. Teachers soon realized that it was more important for the students to learn why computations were necessary in the first place, and how to express a problem in the language of mathematics such that it could be solved with or without the help of a calculator. Now, after students have a solid foundation in arithmetic, they are gradually introduced to calculators while they learn more advanced concepts.

Mobile phones would eventually be allowed in class, regardless of how we answer the question today. Furthermore, we would be encouraging students to bring their phones, and loaning units to students without them. In a society that is saturated with mobile Internet devices, we would be doing our students a disservice if we did not teach them how to use the devices effectively. Through their phones, they would have access to a massive amount of information shared on the Internet. We would need to teach them to ask the right questions and, perhaps more importantly, to validate the answers, finding facts in a sea of half-truths. We might actually need to teach them how to think rather than to learn everything by rote.

Thus, I propose a modification to the titular question: how should mobile phones be integrated into modern education?

I started growing an avocado today. What secrets lie dormant within the oversized seed? Since the seed had already cracked down the middle by the time I dug it out of the avocado, I guess I have a few weeks’ head start. Join me for a guacamole party in a few years, maybe.

Angry Lady: That’s my seat.
Occupant [disengaging earbuds]: What?
Angry Lady: You took that chair from my table.
Occupant: I don’t understand. You’re saying that my seat belongs somewhere else?
Angry Lady [pointing at her table]: It’s obvious! Now put it back, please.
Occupant: Oh… if it would make you feel better, I could move over.
Angry Lady: …
Occupant: I don’t really mind where I’m sitting, but I don’t know why you’re upset about it.
Angry Lady: …

Fortunately, a library employee brought another chair, and everyone was satisfied.

• an almost-complete busybox with 327 applets
  have more of your favorite commands without the bloat
• python and ruby
  script on-the-go, or run django- and rails-powered servers
• subversion and git
  access source code using two popular version control systems
• tcpdump and nmap
  analyze network traffic and query remote hosts
• lynx and w3m
  go retro with lightweight text-based Web browsers

BotBrew could be used with any terminal app that provides a local shell, but Hacker’s Keyboard and Script Manager might be helpful, too. Spread the word if you like BotBrew! If you have trouble with BotBrew or have bugs to report, feel free to email us at botbrew@inportb.com or chat with us at #botbrew on irc.freenode.net. And we’d love to hear from you if you want to distribute your own software using BotBrew.

The NDK is a GCC-based cross-compiler that lets you embed object code in a traditional Android app. It also works as a standalone cross-compiler, though it is not advertised as such. It is quite rough when used by itself, and agcc wraps the complexity in a little script. While agcc and agcc2.pl are written in Perl, agcc.bash is a Bash script. It also supports the latest revisions of the NDK, though r7 is slightly buggy.

With agcc.bash, building native Android software feels almost like working with GCC. As a quick example, let’s try the classic hello world:

AGCC_NDK=~/android-ndk-r6 ./agcc.bash hello.c -o hello

That wasn’t too exciting… but what happened there? I have the NDK installed at ~/android-ndk-r6 and I told agcc.bash where to look for it, using the AGCC_NDK environment variable. I then invoked agcc.bash as if it were GCC. Let’s see what agcc.bash did behind the scenes:

AGCC_NDK=~/android-ndk-r6 AGCC_ECHO=yes ./agcc.bash hello.c -o hello

=> ./agcc.bash hello.c -o hello
<= /home/jyio/android-ndk-r6/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-gcc -o hello -I/home/jyio/android-ndk-r6/platforms/android-8/arch-arm/usr/include -D__ARM_ARCH_5__ -D__ARM_ARCH_5T__ -D__ARM_ARCH_5E__ -D__ARM_ARCH_5TE__ -DANDROID -DSK_RELEASE -DNDEBUG -UDEBUG -march=armv5te -mtune=xscale -msoft-float -mthumb-interwork -fpic -fno-exceptions -ffunction-sections -funwind-tables -fmessage-length=0 -march=armv5te -mtune=xscale -msoft-float -mthumb-interwork -fpic -fno-exceptions -ffunction-sections -funwind-tables -fmessage-length=0 hello.c -Bdynamic -Wl,-T,/home/jyio/android-ndk-r6/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/arm-linux-androideabi/lib/ldscripts/armelf_linux_eabi.x -Wl,-dynamic-linker,/system/bin/linker -Wl,–gc-sections -Wl,-z,nocopyreloc -Wl,–no-undefined -Wl,-rpath-link=/home/jyio/android-ndk-r6/platforms/android-8/arch-arm -L/home/jyio/android-ndk-r6/platforms/android-8/arch-arm/usr/lib -nostdlib /home/jyio/android-ndk-r6/platforms/android-8/arch-arm/usr/lib/crtend_android.o /home/jyio/android-ndk-r6/platforms/android-8/arch-arm/usr/lib/crtbegin_dynamic.o -lc /home/jyio/android-ndk-r6/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/lib/gcc/arm-linux-androideabi/4.4.3/libgcc.a -lm -ldl

See how it transformed our innocent little command into a monster! This might be overkill for a hello world program, but it provides pretty good support for more complex software such as OpenSSL, cURL, and Python. It would be a good idea to add the NDK toolchain and agcc.bash to $PATH before trying to build a big program. In my case, the toolchain resides in ~/android-ndk-r6/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin. If you want to build some software that come with configure scripts, you might start with:

CC=agcc.bash ./configure

Do try this at home! Relevant links:

• Android NDK r6 (or, the latest version)
• agcc.bash
• hello.c

on the left, a stripped candle

So I scraped the wax off one of the candles and found some gray flakes (fairy dust!) surrounding the wick. The material could be seen through the thin layer of wax along the entire length of the candle. The sparkling effect suggests that the flakes are metallic. They should also have a low heat capacity and autoignition point, so that even after the flame appears to be extinguished, they are warm enough to continue burning and light the candle again. What are these metallic flakes? I burned a candle to find out.

burning the candle

The white sparks of light were reminiscent of burning magnesium. Magnesium burns at or above 473 °C (883 °F), which is more than sufficient to ignite the paraffin vapor streaming away from a recently-extinguished candle wick.

magnesium turnings on fire

Other metals could be added for a variety of spark colors.