Healthy food is ... healthy ?

Just come back from a weekend away ... in the middle of a couple of hours chillout before bedtime (Everything But The Girl's excellent Amplified Heart is on right now).

Let's see :

Almost turned around inside 20 miles of driving because conditions were pretty bad. The inside lane of the M5 was flooded in quite a few places and it was almost bad enough to avoid the lane entirely. I didn't, pushed through it and the sun came out around Worcester. I still needed to divert off my first choice route (there's fun roads near Grantham) because part of it had a major road (A52) closed.

Cue a bit of magical mystery tour ... One of the things I'm a huge fan of with my car is the satnav.

It gets criticism from some numpties cos it is a bit crude compared to some. However ... it works 100%, unlike the attempt at using my Android phone for satnav which was abandoned before it even figured out where it was. It also does traffic avoidance via FM Radio, so while I was seeing "Long delays M42 J6-J9" (another part of my route) on the overhead signs the satnav was figuring out how to let me avoid that traffic without losing too much time. It works too - taking me around Birmingham to the North instead of the South only cost me about 10 minutes.

That's enough about the car though, except that I quite like that it cost £46 in petrol for all the driving this weekend (+maybe £2 for the last 25 miles) at 53mpg. The Focus would have done 32mpg over the weekend costing £77. The Lexus is a far better drive too.

Arrived on Friday to find a new toy ... And commenced fiddling with it to set it up as desired.

Cue some hours of being incredibly frustrated with Google's software. You should be able to "Cloud Print" via Google Chrome. Get this :

Grab a bit of software for your printer.
Install the Google Chrome web browser.
Tell Google Chrome that you want your printer hooked up for Cloud Printing.
Keep the Chrome browser open (WTF!)
Attempt to print to it from an Android device.
And commence the hair tearing frustration.

I may try it again with the Kodak printer I've inherited. It's fairly new, it just doesn't understand Cloud Printing the way the new ones do. Oh - the new toy is an Asus Transformer Pad. It's quite Shiny. Not sure about its shininess compared to an iPad but it's still quite Shiny. It comes with a detachable keyboard that lets it pretend to be a laptop. It's a little ... different but it redeemed itself from early frustration which was more to do with Google software being crap. They promise the world but miss crucial things out. I'd expect the Tablet Pad to have a help system reasonably visible with a "This Is How To Print" in big letters somewhere.

Currys & PC World lie through their teeth. Currys refused to take the Transformer Pad back or let us switch it for a Windows laptop. That would have sorted out a lot of issues (but I think the Transformer Pad will do them ok). The result is that Currys are blacklisted by my mum & dad for a while - and I'll be avoiding them to.

What's this about lying ?

The Staples guy was honest. He said he didn't know whether the printers in his shop supported Cloud Printing. The Currys guy pointed us towards HP printers "They're the only ones that support this". The PC World girl (charming she was and apparently holding the store's brain cell) admitted that HP and Epson printers could do what we wanted.

I wonder what printers they are desperate to sell ? Duh. Here's the gen from Google for what supports Cloud Printing. You'll notice Kodak on there too. We avoid the Canon, HP, Epson, Lexmark cartel because they rip you off for cartridges and we avoid HP in particular because their build quality nosedived when Carly Fiorina got hold of them. They went from making industrial bombproof strength bits to epic fail.

We came out of Staples with a shiny new Kodak Hero 5.1. Me Like. I can print to it from half a world away just by emailing it. That's Shiny. Or I could print to it from my phone. I've inherited their not-so-old Kodak ESP5250 all in one scanner to replace my Piece Of Shit HP (broken page feeder and it would have been £40+ to get the cartridges to reactivate it).

Yeah - talking techie, weekend started with the hair being torn out and ended very happily. Everything works, Shinies were acquired and the Shinies do what we want them to. If the printer is new enough to support Cloud print properly without needing A-Chrom-ination active, then Google Cloud Print (and Kodak print by email) is quite Shiny.

Happy days.

It's good to see the mob up there too and catch up. Also means I get fed properly :-) I should really do that myself as it really wouldn't be that much extra effort or attention to add veg to the "chuck it in oven & forget about it" cooking strategy. Yep - I'm a bit lazy there ... but it's part of preferring stuff that isn't messy, bearing in mind it's me that's going to be clearing up the mess.

In terms of weight - hopping on the scales before my shower saw me at 12st 8-9lbs, which is down another few lbs over the weekend. Healthy eating = good for you. Then again, I'd not eaten that much today, just a big dinner at the pub plus a Twix and assorted Minstrels left over from Friday.

Bit sad at missing out on a potential RCA hug though !