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Dell CN 3100 for OSX

January 24, 2007 By Bruce Kroeze 9 Comments

I just got my beautiful new color laser printer from Dell. I did a lot of research, and I really think Dell’s CN3100 is the best color laser currently available for under $400 (if you buy it from delloutlet.com). Besides the 100s of dollars of savings you get from buying from Dell Outlet, you also get full print toner cartridges, instead of starters. That will save hundreds by itself a few months down the line.

I had just one issue getting it to work with my Mac OSX machine. Most of the instructions talk about how to set up on Windows, and there is little information for Mac setup. At least not if you want to print to the network.

A bit of experimenting got me to the answer:

1) Do Install the printer driver that you download from Dell’s support site. Even though it knows Postscript, installing Dell’s driver makes a difference.
2) Install the printer using “HP Jetdirect (Socket)”, not “IP Printing Protocol”. If you need to find the IP address, press “menu” on the printer, then the checkmark when the screen says “print settings”. A page will print (very fast) showing the current IP Address. I always make a label to put on the printer, it is amazing how often you end up needing that information in the future.
3) You can browse to the printer and control most of its settings via a web interface.

Update: Download the driver here

[tags]cn3100, dell-cn3100,osx,color laser,color-laser[/tags]

Filed Under: Equipment, Macintosh, Tips

Howto use Satchmo as an App

January 10, 2007 By Bruce Kroeze 3 Comments

Note: This article is out of date. Since I wrote it, I’ve become a core developer on the Satchmo project, and Satchmo is usable by default as an App (or rather a collection of apps) rather than as the whole project.

I’m going to be using Satchmo to power the backend of a highly customized store that I’m building for a new client. This is an early-stage, yet strong Python ecommerce framework, which gets much of its power by being built on Django.

Of course, anyone reading my site can clearly see that I am strong in favor of that choice.

I ran into one little issue when I was first setting it up according to the directions. I was told to modify files in the Satchmo directory itself. No! I won’t do it! Not on an actively developed application like that. How would I keep my modified branch in sync with the development branch?

Why is that wrong?

In general, you never want to modify something that is a moving target. Even if it is a hassle, you should set things up so that the thing-which-will-be-getting-updated is isolated from your own code. Otherwise you’ll certainly have to face that most annoying of development tasks, merging someone else’s code.

Well, luckily it wasn’t so hard to set up Satchmo for use as an App, rather than as the base site.
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Filed Under: Best Practices, Django, Open Source, Python

Django Newforms HiddenInput Values

January 3, 2007 By Bruce Kroeze 4 Comments

I really like Django’s newest module for forms, “newforms”. Despite its currently lacking documentation, it is well worth learning.

It feels much more “Pythonic” than the old manipulator-based method. Less magic is going on, and less constant reference to the manual is needed. However, I found myself beating my head against one undocumented, and also lacking any test case feature.

How to get newforms “hidden” fields to have a value

I’ll spare you the trials, tribulations and shrewd guessing, here’s the answer. Put the value in the widget attributes, not the form field.

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Filed Under: Django, Python