I noticed that this has been a problem since time began, well at least as far as Windows is concerned.  Every time something goes a little wrong with your printer, the whole queue jams up, and sometimes even a reboot won’t fix it.

I was printing off some code in Visual C# last night, and my printer ran out of paper, I loaded the paper back in and clicked “OK” on the little popup on screen, and…. nothing… 30 secs later…. nothing.

I was so frustrated by the seemingly undeletable “Deleting - Printing - Waiting - Restarting - Spooling” print job in the queue, which by now seemed to be doing every possible verb a print job can do, yet nothing was happening, spooler was using 0% CPU and it just seemed to have given up.

Therefore, I solved the problem the same way I do most, sit down and code a solution, and here it is, my little C# Console app called ClearQueue.

Forgive me if you have problems running as admin under vista, I’m just getting my head around this whole manifest thingy which seems to restrict applications from running others or accessing protected Operating System areas, the mind boggles.  However they are quite simple to set up and there are some helpful hints in the XML comments for the factory preset file.

So here it is:

http://damienwalsh.net/projects/ClearQueue-0.12.zip

Just try double clicking it first, If I got my manifests right it should run fine, otherwize if all else fails, right click and Run as Administrator, not sure about XP, maybe it won’t matter?

Nonetheless, thanks for reading.

Once in a while, we all head down to the local country park and bike around, or just chill for a bit.  It’s a nice relaxing place and there aren’t usually many dicks there, so it’s actually quite a nice place to go for an afternoon, just for a walk around the reservoir.

Anyhows, here are some pics we snapped while we were there

You can view all the pics at my public Image directory: http://image.damienwalsh.net/Public/

I woke up to the BBC news woman blabbing on in her techno-weeny way about music piracy this morning, and after I got over that woman’s mindless mispronunciation of “Bit  — - —  Torrent”, I realised what was going on.  The bottom line is they’re gonna send out nasty letters to people who share music.

Alright, lets get it clear now that I have NOTHING against them stopping people stealing music, but the root is at the source, they need to kill off P2P apps like Limewire, which, lets face it, are used 80% of the time for illegal music downloads.

What annoys me more is that so called “Bait files”, the kind used by those “Wall of shame” websites to track people searching for given keywords are being used to track illegal downloaders.  I think this is deception of the highest order, and it should be made more clear to people who use these services that it is in fact illegal.

Any intelligent mind reading the above statement would say to me: “But Damo, surely it’s obvious that by getting the stuff for free, you’re breaking the law to anyone?”.  In my experience, it’s not; so many people that I’ve asked have told me that they were unaware that they were breaking any laws by using such a service to obtain music, some, predictably, simply didn’t care.

As a faithful iTunes convert, I know I won’t be getting any of this garbage in the mail, but seriously, in an industry which already reaps it’s customers for everything they’re worth, is this really going to make a difference?

I’d like to share a recent problem I’ve had with you all.

My old hosts, Newista, have, in the long run, been a disappointment to me.  I paid several PayPal payments, only to find that their back office had crashed, an error regarding lack of the IonCube loader module in PHP, a simple error to rectify even for the PHP noob.

After emailing Newista (No response) and PayPal (Normal “Virtaul goods” bullshit), I found myself out of a small amount of cash, with a suspended account and no website up.

I just got an email asking to renew a domain today, and I was so angry about the shitty service they had provided that I gave the good people a dressing down, Damo style.

Please do read on…

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since an early age, lasers have interested me so much that I must have spent hours on end just watching the beams and dots they produce.

Only in recent years have I taken to building them myself, buying diodes and driver parts on eBay, sitting for hours on end soldering and swearing at my mistakes.  But it’s all fun, and over time, I have amassed quite a collection, some self-made and some purchased from sites like WickedLasers or Dragon Lasers.

One of the lasers I recently obtained was the Wickedlasers Pulsar P125, which I actually bought off my good friend Chigley.

Nonetheless, here’s some of my lasering pictures:

Well there we have it, I’m sure ill get around to uploading some of my Galvos eventually, but one isn’t working as well as the other so the patterns are distinctly disappointing for now.

Till next time, -damo.

For those that don’t know already, Xenon is my eCommerce package which I am developing to sell.  Pretty soon, I am going to be Beta-ing Xenon out so that people can try it.

Xenon is pretty unique in that it is a fully user installable ordeal, yet I can also Install it for companies, offering them an oppertunity to have a full ecommerce site which they can have set up, themed and running for an affordable price, especially when compaired with some of the custom ecommerce systems offered by webdesign companies.

I hope that Xenon will be successful, and that I will get a few applications for Beta testing of both Xenon StoreFront (The actual web-end system), StoreControl (the control panel) and BaseStation (the PC-Based VB.net application for live order printing and other functions which need to be performed on the Store-owners PC, inculding a small EPOS system).

My name is Damien Walsh.

I am 16, I go to Bolton School 6th form (as of September) and live in Greater Manchester, UK, with my parents, pet cat and goldfish.

Welcome to my blog, which I have named “Eternium Shards”.

I’ve been using the Internet for a good 5 years now and over the years, I’ve seen things develop and move along, some for good, and some for bad.  I think my interest in the Internet is one of desperation, an attempt to avoid what is happening outside, in the real world, but unfortunately, for anyone online, we know things here in the virtual world haven’t been going too well either, yet here isn’t the place for me to go into that, I’m sure you’ll get the message when I get some more posts up when I feel like it.

My interests are programming (PHP, XHTML, VB.net, JavaScript and a few others), Physics, Electronics, Lasers and all sorts of fun stuff.  I am single, needless to say.

I suppose this blog will be a development on my previous one “DamoW.net” which I lost all will to continue with a while back.

I hope that you will enjoy reading my thoughts and feelings, and that you will comment too.