Print Messages On Your Beer

Migraineman writes "I stumbled upon a clever hack by Sprite. He reverse-engineered the pin functions on an HP inkjet cartridge and built a simple driver board that converts the cartridge into a hand-held inkjet printer. The driver board is programmed with a fixed message. Moving the 'print head' is your responsibility. Printing messages on a whiteboard was the original inspiration, but printing messages on the foam head of a Guinness is just inspired."

Nooooo!

[Tablizer (95088)]

You know Homeland Security is gonna find a way to use this on our foreheads. It MUST be stopped now!

Re:Nooooo!

[Goaway (82658)]

You understand Slashdot better than any person should have to.

Re:Nooooo!

[btlzu2 (99039)]

i was gonna scream "noooo!" because the web site said you could possibly ruin a pint of guinness...which i consider to be a federal offense!

homeland security? not as important as a pint. :D

Re:Nooooo!

[by Anonymous Coward]

It shouldn't just be a federal offense, it should be a hangin' offense.

An alternative punishment might be forcing those who ruin a good pint of Guinness to drink Bud Light for the rest of their lives (though I think most people would opt to take death).

Re:Nooooo!

[enharmonix (988983)]

You know Homeland Security is gonna find a way to use this on our foreheads. It MUST be stopped now!

You mean we can print messages on beer and foreheads? Brilliant!

Re:

[Tablizer (95088)]

You mean we can print messages on beer and foreheads? Brilliant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGQLdnyegA8 [youtube.com]
   

Re:

[Caffeinate (1031648)]

So those fundamentalists who thought the mark of the beast was RFID chips under the skin were wrong after all . . .

Re:

[orkysoft (93727)]

Apply directly to the forehead!
Apply directly to the forehead!
Apply directly to the forehead!

Re:Nooooo!

[d474 (695126)]

Apply directly to the beer head.
Apply directly to the beer head.
Apply directly to the beer head.

Seeing as people already use beer ...

[tomhudson (43916)]

... to print messages in snow, I guess this is reverse-enginnering at its finest.

Re:

[lanc (762334)]

right.
sell the gadget on ebay, drink the guiness, and ..erm...leave your message on the snow in more natural ways.

Re:Seeing as people already use beer ...

[lanc (762334)]

Hm, yes, one possibly should read first what one reacts on.

Guinness Wastage!

[joe90 (48497)]

If the ink is toxic, then it's a waste of good wholesome food!

Re:

[nwbvt (768631)]

Wasn't there a man law passed against that?

Re:

[antifoidulus (807088)]

Which is why we should restrict it to writing on Miller Lite, it's already toxic. Hell, the ink might make it drinkable.

Re:

[AndroidCat (229562)]

Maybe it'd be okay if they fill up the ink cartridge with Guiness?

Re:Guinness Wastage!

[ShaunC (203807)]

Why are so many nerds on Slashdot prolific drinkers of alcohol? Don't you know it kills the brain and is bad for your liver? Why would you purposely damage your own body?

Probably the same reason a lot of us smoke, even though we know damn well the effects it has ("sooner or later, everyone stops smoking"). Nerds are not generally known for our impressive social capabilities. Smoking and drinking are both highly social activities, avenues for meeting new people. Drinking, in particular, allows one to shed the stress of whatever's going on at work, lighten up, and become a bit more friendly with strangers. The results are often positive.

Oh, fuck it, I'm just trying to rationalize bad habits. We drink to be merry, and we don't need a reason why. Bottoms up! :)

Re:Guinness Wastage!

[Tim C (15259)]

Because it tastes nice and it's fun, and no matter how healthy you try to be you're still going to die one day. Might as well enjoy yourself in the meantime; rather a waste of a life otherwise.

Re:

[complete loony (663508)]

"Because it tastes nice ..."

Wait, we are talking about beer aren't we?

Re:

[Petrushka (815171)]

Wait, we are talking about beer aren't we?

The quality of Guinness varies in inverse proportion to the distance between St James' Gate and the bar it's served in. For better Guinness, go closer to Dublin. :-)

Re:Guinness Wastage!

[tomhudson (43916)]

The culling of brain cells is a necessary part of organizing the brain along certain pathways and not others ...

For a good example, cats lose 2/3 of their brain cells before adulthood.

Humans lose half [earthlink.net]

We know that children of about age eight have twice as many brain cells, and twice as many neuron connections between brain cell as do adults. After age 8, the brains of children begin to cull out brain cells and the interconnections between brain cells, and to reorganize its connections.

Think of it as a maze - the culling removes all the dead ends, and keeps the useful highways and roads.

Without this culling, you'd have MORE random posts on /., not fewer :-)

Re:

[Hortense Yaya (954830)]

I drink, therefore I am. -Descartes as quoted by Bruce

Join the Pen 15 club now!

[master_kaos (1027308)]

Even more ways to stamp "Pen15" on your buddies forehead at school!

Re:Join the Pen 15 club now!

[Mad_Rain (674268)]

Writing on someone's forehead, huh? You might find a useful writing implement at Pen Island [penisland.net]

Re:

[c_forq (924234)]

when we did it we always started at pen10 (with 5 guys in on it) and ask the victim if he wanted to join the club and be number 15.

Terrorism

[gravesb (967413)]

Why are the politicians wasting time trying to stop terrorists and piracy when they should be protecting valuable beer! That is true terrorism!

Beer???

[Spudley (171066)]

Okay... who's the philistine who referred to Guinness as "beer"??? ;-)

Re:

[DarkVader (121278)]

OK, I'll bite on this troll...

So, Guinness is mass-produced, and not the most amazing stuff in the universe, but I'd say it certainly qualifies as beer. It's even pretty good beer.

What are your beer choices?

Re:Beer???

[mj_sklar (888539)]

Yes, it is a stout! And, by the article you linked to, a stout is a beer!

Stout is a style of dark beer made using roasted malts or roast barley.

Alcohol abuse!

[hellfire (86129)]

printing messages on the foam head of a Guinness is just inspired.

And also a waste of a very good beer. Vandalism should not be encouraged!

Re:Alcohol abuse!

[S.O.B. (136083)]

What we need is pretzel flavoured ink.

Outrage!!!

[the Gray Mouser (1013773)]

The only thing that should be written on a head of Guinness is a shamrock!

Obligatory Keats reference

[dpbsmith (263124)]

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

Epitaph of John Keats, [wikipedia.org] 1795-1821, on his tombstone in the Protestant Cemetary in Rome.

Re:Obligatory Keats reference

[by Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory Keats reference? On Slashdot? Do you know what most of these people are like?! Oh well... I for one welcome our new dubiously-relevant-Keats-epitaph-quoting overlords! (See what I did there?)

Against the grain (the hops?)

[Wilson_6500 (896824)]

I think this may be the only comment thread so far that has nothing to do with beer. Until now, when I just mentioned it. Oops.

Something like...

[Yetihehe (971185)]

This http://www.printdreams.com/ [printdreams.com] ?

Clogged heads

[ortholattice (175065)]

The author doesn't mention that when you are not using the print head, you should put scotch tape over the ink holes to prevent them from drying out, especially for a use like this where the head parking mechanism that normally does this is no longer available. (I do this for half-used cartridges I have lying around for everyday use, and it works well. The official cartridge storage caddies that come or use to come with some printers really don't work too well for preventing the ink from drying over a lon

Re:

[DarkVader (121278)]

You mean everybody doesn't do this?

I mean, it tastes nasty, but it's not particularly dangerous...

Favorite Writing Utensil

[WhatsAProGingrass (726851)]

Thats easy, I use the HP inkjet cartridge as my writing utensil of choice. Who needs pens?

Bikes Against Bush

[prakslash (681585)]

A dude in New York City, Josh Kinberg, used a similar internet-enabled, dot-matrix printer mounted on a bike.
He used it to spray paint anti-Bush grafitti on New York's streets during the last elections.
Very cool. The cops arrested him and took his stuff but he was let go and won a case against them.
Video [youtube.com] of the printer in action. His site [bikesagainstbush.com].

Spray paint?

[way2trivial (601132)]

that would be malicious.. his device dropped chalk dust, which easily washes away...

Ok, that's the hack of the month.

[jcr (53032)]

Bravo, for an inspired bit of hardware munging.

-jcr

Been Done Before...

[Chabil Ha' (875116)]

On an egg... [parallax.com]

Slownewsday

[mobby_6kl (668092)]

Who the hell keeps tagging this story "slownewsday"?

This is exactly the stuff that belongs on slashdot, the kind of cool geeky hacks that when you do them, normal people go, WTF? With countless idiotic political flamewars, Apple pimping, and anti-MS FUD, it's stories like this that keep slashdot sane. Would you rather have another flamewar where nobody convinces anybody, but still keeps shouting their point of view till they're blue in the face? How about "Guns, good or bad?", I don't think we've had a firearms flamewar here in a while.

I realize that this isn't the first time a HP cartridge was used outside its printer, but it also isn't something most people did, or maybe even knew about.

A Guinness Story

[rumblin'rabbit (711865)]

Let's see, take cartridge, move over foam...

b-e-s-u-r-e-t-o-d-r-i-n-k-y-o-u-r-o-v-a-l-t-i-n-e

Doh!

Practical uses? Let's start with...

[Duggeek (1015705)]

BEST IF CONSUMED BY 5:30 PM

For those blokes who just don't know when to stop yappin' and drink their pint.

OR...

CERTIFIED OWL-FREE GUINNESS

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's an owl in my beer.

OR... better still...

BRILLIANT!

Obviously, his printer was rendered unusable...

[soren42 (700305)]

This is a really cool idea, and, as a computer engineer, I see the geek-cred the author earned in creating it...

But, obviously, this was his only printer, as evidenced by the poorly-drawn pencil sketch circuit diagram [spritesmods.com], this must have been his only printer!

All in the name science... or at least, all in the name screwing around with science! ^_^

Reverse engineering???

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

As well as being old news, HP cartridge driving have been reverse engineered by many for many years. Heck I was involved in a company that used HP cartridges in a wide-bed plotter we developed in the late 1980s/early 1990s (before HP did a wide bed printer plotter). There was not much secrecy back then. HP published almost all the details in the HP Journal somewhere around 1988.

Back then we drank beer. wtf with the geeks of today?

Re:

[6Yankee (597075)]

his next step has to be to find an edible ink

I would hope that the naff "your photo on a cake" service at my local supermarket has already cracked this...

Re:Technically Guinness stout not beer.

[Omestes (471991)]

A stout is a beer. I think that the American in you is confusing beer for the nasty pissy lagers they sell round these parts, and while pissy 50% rice lagers are beer, Guinness too is beer. There are better beers than Gunness, btw, try some Young's Double Chocolate Stout, it makes Guinness look like Budweiser. Well not quite, but still. Also support your local micro-brews, up in Flagstaff, Az there is a bar with the greatest stout known to man, I'm sure you can find something like it where you live. :)