I searched around on the internet this morning and I couldn’t find an example of exactly what I wanted to do, but I DID figure it out, so I thought I’d post it  here in the hopes that it would be useful to others.

Here’s the situation:

• You have a new printer on your network.
• You’ve set up a shared printer queue on your Windows-based server, and it’s printing just fine.
• You can connect to the shared queue from other computers, and it works alright.
• You now want to deploy the printer to all the other Windows machines on your network, but it’s a pain in the ass to walk around to every single machine and set them up by hand.

Solution — remotely deploy the printer to your clients by means of your login script.

And here’s the magic formula:

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /b “{Printer Name}” /n\\{server}\{shared printer name}

Put that line into your login script, replace {Printer Name} with the name you’d like the printer to have on the client machines, and replace \\{server}\{shared printer name} with the correct UNC path to the printer queue on your server, and BAM, you’re done!

Now, the next time your users log in, they’ll get the new network printer automatically set up on their machines, all ready to go.

Your mileage may vary, of course, and this solution won’t work for Mac client machines.  Those you still have to touch.

Was this tip helpful?  Leave a comment and let me know!

Another day, another phone cam video.

This one was shot on the Fourth of July on the shore of Lake Michigan.  You could see fireworks stretching all the way from downtown Chicago to Evanston.  What’s even better is that the beach was just full of people, all shooting off their own arsenals before, during, and after the “official” Chicago shows.

Lots of fun.  I’m glad that Chicago decided to split up the city’s show into three different ones that ran the length of the coast.  It spread people out, and made it easy to get a great view.

This comes my way via Anna Tarkov. First of all, the content is excellent; a look at what motivates each of us to do our best work, and surprisingly, why money is usually not the best motivator. But also, the whiteboard cartooning animation is just awesome. Mad props to the person that put this together.

Taken this evening, at Loyola Park

A. Entwistle, English Cottage Scene, oil on canvas

I recently acquired two small oil paintings in an auction. I paid very little for them. They’re nice enough paintings, and certainly a deal for how little they cost, but they’re not exactly in the style of my home decor.

So naturally, I got to thinking, maybe a fun thing to do would be to use these paintings as raw material; as the basis for a couple of collage pieces.  For instance, I could use digital images of the paintings, and construct layers in photoshop which could then be applied physically to the canvasses themselves.

Many visual collages are based on reproduced images, such as pictures or typography from magazines.  But to use a one-of-a-kind painting as the base layer raises some interesting ethical, aesthetic, and value questions which collages based on mass-produced media do not.

Namely, is it right to destroy, for all practical purposes, the original work to build a new work from it?

All those red stamps are the seals of previous owners

Now, I know that legally, objectively, since I own the canvas, it’s mine to do with as I please.  However, these are works that someone created at some point in the past, a part of the legacy of another human.  Part of the value of these works is that they are old(-ish); they’ve survived in their present form since their inception.  Just watch Antiques Roadshow — don’t clean it, the patina is part of the value, it’s in the original frame, et. al.

There is a tradition in Asian art where the owner of a work of art adds his stamp or signature to the work upon acquiring it.  By this method, the provenance of a work is preserved as part of the work itself.  Part of the value, part of the story of the painting or scroll is found in the history of its ownership.

I mentioned this to a friend the other night in an instant message conversation, and she brought up some good points.

Her: but it does make one wonder what the focus is, there.

is it the work?

the journey?

the prestige of ownership of something fine or expensive?

Me: I think that all those are valid.

perhaps it was a melange.

Her: but again, the owner can do as the owner chooses.

and that’s fine.

I have no issue with that.

the difference is that in our culture, it’s frowned upon to alter the original work for something that’s basically a record-keeping measure.

while in that culture, clearly, that’s either 1) part of the art or 2) more important than the piece itself

Me: do you think there’s a good argument why one school of thought should be preferrable to the other?

Her: not really. I think cultures vary, and there are much bigger issues at stake there.

She’s right, of course.  In the West, there is a taboo against a subsequent owner altering a work of art.  There’s an unspoken rule that those who own artworks have a responsibility to preserve them in the same condition in which they acquired them.

So do we have a duty to preserve the art and artifice of those who went before us?  To what degree?

As I’ve been thinking, it occurs to me that there are a number of factors to consider for any particular work.

The only reason I’m considering modifying these particular works is because I got them so cheaply.  I’d be way, way less likely to modify a $10,000 painting than I am a $10 painting.

I wouldn’t modify a painting by a “name” artist like Picasso or something.  I mean, it’s priceless as it is; I would be adding no value.  However, I can imagine a world in which my modifications to an existing work might add value, as in the case of my little pieces — they would cease being relics, and would be re-inserted in to the dialog of modern art by the very act of being modified.

I wouldn’t modify the work of a still-living artist.  Even if I own it.  After all, those folks might still like to refer back to the work for, say, a retrospective or something.  If the artist is still alive, isn’t right that they should have final say about how the image or work should look?

If someone else bought a painting I had made, and then chose to modify (or destroy) it, I would have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I think I should get the final say or at least first right of refusal.  On the other hand, it IS their property, so why should I get any input on it at all?  That’s part of the risk you take when you release a singular, one-of-a-kind piece out into the big, wide world.

And what about the idea that if I WERE to buy and then modify some really expensive or important work, couldn’t I spin that in such a way as to interject myself into the conversation of art history?  My name would be associated permanently with the original artist.  My work would co-opt some legacy, and would instantly become something more than simply a mere work of visual art; it would be a piece that required a huge sacrifice to pull off at all.  It would be more famous by virtue of being both a destruction and a creation.

So, dear readers, I put it to you then:  What do you think?  Should I try the experiment and modify my little paintings?  Should I leave them be?  Do I have any moral obligations either way?

Post in the comments, and let me know what you think.

Perhaps not the most exciting video ever, here’s a quick, 45-second look at the environment at Millennium Park yesterday evening, during a free show by legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen and his band.

Once again, shot with Motorola Droid phonecam. This one is hosted on Youtube, because I wanted to get an idea of quality differences between the videos that I encode and upload to my own host, and those which are encoded and hosted by YouTube. Consider it an A/B test with the Maifest video below.

This was shot win a Motorola Droid phonecam on June 4, 2010.

This is an extremely useful study guide to help you remember what kinds of biases can effect your decision-making skills.  All of us are subject to these biases, no matter how smart we think we are.  The only way to get around them is to understand them, and try to recognize them when they occur (both in ourselves, as well as in others.)

The file was created by the Royal Society of Account Planning, and came my way via Lifehacker.

Cognitive Biases – A Visual Study Guide by the Royal Society of Account Planning

Image Courtesy of: gesturetek.com

(Note – This article was first published by h+ Magazine, on May 12, 2010.  It’s republished here for my own archives.)

Chances are, you’re not using the same computer you were twenty years ago. But chances are, you’re still using the same basic user interface — a mouse for pointing, a keyboard for typing. While generations of hardware and software have come and gone, the paradigm for interacting with our machines has remained pretty much the same. But that’s slowly changing: Nintendo’s Wii system has gotten video gamers off the couch, Apple’s iPhone has acclimated us to using touch to control our devices, and a new generation of user-interface systems are beginning to come to the consumer market which promise more natural, intuitive, and engaging experiences.

Vincent John Vincent, president and co-founder of GestureTek, thinks next-generation user interfaces will be driven by movement. His company makes systems that use cameras and computer vision to watch a user’s movements, and then translate those movements into controls. “As the interfaces that we see on the screen become more dynamic and deep, with 3-D jumping off the screen or deeper into the screen, then the ability to reach out with your hand and manipulate them in that 3-D space is a much more natural way to go than just to have one point of control with the mouse,” Vincent said.

GestureTek has been building equipment and displays that respond to movement since the 1990s, according to Vincent. “We are the inventors and pioneers in this space, and luckily, early enough in it as well that we’ve been able to get a lot of patents on what we’ve done,” he said. “We’re very lucky that we were way ahead of our time for a long time, we sold thousands of installations of that technology, into museums and science centers and retail in various locations.”

“In the early 2000s, we started expanding and we created a number of different technologies that were interactive surfaces like floors and walls and windows and whatnot that would just be reacting to your motion and movement and being able to let people walk over those in front of them and just pick up your general gestures,” Vincent said. “We just found it to be very, not just natural, but engaging. It captures people’s attention, it makes the experience more entertaining and dynamic.”

And gesture controls are coming to a screen near you sooner than you might think — Microsoft’s Project Natal, which was announced at last year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, is due to be released by Christmas of this year. Project Natal promises a 3-D, depth-sensing camera peripheral for the Xbox 360, which will use software licensed from GestureTek to enable gamers to play without any controller at all, simply by using the movements of their body. Hitachi has demonstrated a prototype HDTV that uses an embedded 3-D camera to replace the traditional remote control. Users simply wave their hand to change the channel or turn down the volume. Mobile phone manufacturers such as DoCoMo have licensed software from GestureTek as well. “We looked at the mobile phone market and said well, there is a processor, a display and a camera, what a perfect product,” said Vincent. “So we took what we had already created and evolved it even more so that we could use a phone in the hand to act like a joystick, and the camera would watch how the phone was moving in relationship to the world, or you could gesture at the phone, etc.”

The availability of depth-sensing cameras is driving the speed with which these innovations are getting into the hands of consumers. “The depth cameras that are coming to the market use infrared light and three depth sensors, so that when an array of light is pulsed out into the environment, much like an ultrasound, it bounces back,” Vincent said. “The sensors can tell how quickly it’s come back and therefore build up a depth perception of the world in front of it. It’s very similar to ultrasound but done with light. Obviously, the lenses that are capturing that information are very sophisticated and that is what has kept them very expensive up till this point in time.”

Of course, those hardware costs will drop over time. And that means one day soon, you might be able to ditch that mouse once and for all.

Traffic? You're soaking in it.

So, for the first year that I lived in the city, I barely drove at all. I literally would go for weeks without so much as looking at my car.  I bought a mere four tanks of gas for the first twelve months that I lived in Chicago.

However, since I’ve been needing to get to work on time in the mornings for the last few months, I’ve been doing a fair bit of driving, between home in Rogers Park, and work in the West Loop, a commute of about 10 miles.

Now, anyone that knows me well knows that I’m a pretty safe driver.  My philosophy is that it’s more important to arrive safe, in one piece, with no damage to your car, than it is to arrive exactly “on time”.  Consequently, I follow the speed limit (generally), use my turn signals when changing lanes, and I like to do my best to be courteous to others on the road.  In exchange for these little things, the universe has generally tended to be good to me.  I’ve never been in an accident that was my fault.  I’ve gotten a ticket or two before, but you could count them all on one hand.  I’ve never killed anyone.

But I have to say, driving in Chicago is really, really a pain in my ass.  I’m sure it’s the same in every bigger city.  Here’s why:

5. The traffic.

Ok, I know, everyone hates the traffic.  There’s not much that can be done about it.  More people = more cars = more traffic.  It’s unavoidable, but I hate it still.  I mean, it can take me as much as an hour to drive 10 miles in the city.  That’s just ridiculous.

4. Bicycles.

Hey hipster, I know you’re in a rush to get to Whole Foods to pick up some tempeh for your girlfriend’s vegan potluck stich-and-bitch, but that fixed-gear ten-speed you’re riding counts as a VEHICLE.  That means you’re obligated to follow the same laws as every other vehicle.  Which means stopping at stop signs.  Which means not zooming in between cars which may well start moving on you unexpectedly.  Which means signalling when you intend to turn.  Oh, or does your zero-carbon-footprint entitle you to act like you’re the only person on the road? (Edit — this goes for you motorcycle jerks too.)

3. Parking.

So, if you have an Illinois plate and you want to park in the city, you have to buy a city parking permit.  Which authorizes you to park … well, nowhere, actually.  Anywhere you’d want to park requires you to pay.  Now, ok, fair enough, the money benefits the city, right?  Nope.  Actually that parking money goes to a private corporation.  None of it goes to the city.  Unless of course you’re parked illegally, in which case the “Department of Revenue” (oh, the delicious honesty) will ticket you.  Because you didn’t pay the corporation.  Three tickets and it’s the boot.

2. Big-ass trucks.

A week or so ago, I was driving my normal route home, when I discovered that traffic was extremely snarled in an unusual way.  After meandering for about 25 minutes to make it a mile, I saw why.  Some idiot had driven his 18-wheeler under the Loyola Red Line stop without taking into account the clearance for the trailer, and had peeled back the top of the trailer like the lid of a sardine can.

This is why we have truck routes, people.  This is why trucks are prohibited on many roads.  If you don’t know where the truck routes are, YOU’RE NOT QUALIFIED TO DRIVE A FREAKING TRUCK.

1. Taxis.

Seriously, taxi drivers, I hate you.  You are the worst.  Literally, the worst.  Your driving is like a fart on an elevator.  It stinks up the whole place, and latches on to your clothes, so the stink is still around even after you’re gone.  Taxi drivers are such terrible, terrible drivers, that they make MY driving worse, simply by being on the same road as me.

I’ve seen taxi drivers make an illegal u-turn on a one-way street.  I’ve seen them drive over medians so they wouldn’t have to turn around at the end of the block.  I’ve seen taxi drivers break every traffic law you care to name.  And they’re jackasses about it.  They routinely cut off others for no good reason, tailgate, stop short, you name it.

I’m seriously thinking about filing a FOIA request to find out how many accidents in a given month involved taxis, versus how many were simply private individuals.  I’m willing to bet that taxis are the single greatest cause of fender benders in the city.  By a wide, wide margin.

And tell me, who are they constantly talking to on their bluetooth headset?  Is the life of a taxi driver so incredible they all have to narrate it constantly to some mysterious third party?

Wanna raise money for the city?  Just deploy some cops downtown between 4:30pm and 6:30pm on weekdays, with the sole point of ticketing asshole taxi drivers casually breaking the law.  Revenue problem fixed.  You’re welcome.