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How to disable Chrome’s Print Preview in Chrome 20+ (on the Mac)

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Google introduced their Print Preview functionality back in the Chrome 15 days, and until Chrome 20 or so, you could go into “about:flags” and turn it off. In Chrome 20 or so, they took that option away. Now all the threads online are full of “just use the “Command-Option-P” crap ((Google seems to think Adobe had the right idea when they created their own Print dialog, when in fact, it’s really stupid. Augment the dialog, don’t replace it with something completely different than every other app)). While I rarely print, I do frequently “Save as PDF”, and I find the process, and output much easier/better using the system dialog.

But! It’s still there. Just not easy to set via the GUI. So, open up a terminal, and paste in the following:

defaults write com.google.Chrome DisablePrintPreview -boolean true

And then quit and relaunch Chrome. Enjoy your native print dialog.

Thanks to the Chromium Admin documentation here. I knew this had to be there still for all us admin’s that want to enforce this stuff on labs, etc.

UPDATE: Google (Chromium) have killed this ability as of Chrome Version 39. This makes our lab environment very annoying as printers show up as “mcx_0”, etc. Not their actual names. Sad.

The Dark Knight Rises

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The Dark Knight Rises, as a friend put it, was more like a sequel to Batman Begins than a sequel to Dark Knight. Yes, the story largely took off from where Dark Knight left off, but in Gotham, it’s been 8 years, so the connections were tenuous. The movie SEEMS to feature Bruce Wayne more than Batman (similar to Begins), and the “league” features the over-arching meta-nemesis. Casting was overall very well done, though largely from previous Chris Nolan cast members. The movie does not fall into the constant action trap that many other action movies do, and much like begins, is more based on story than action (like Dark Knight, which often seemed like Action punctuated with story).

After seeing the movie again, I still stand pretty firmly behind what I wrote above. And I actually feel Rises may have a greater re-watchability than the previous two movies. There are plenty of in-depth reviews online, so I won’t go on anymore. It’s already taken me over a week to write out this review. =)

[xrr rating=4.5/5]

Mac Pro 1,1 CPU Upgrade

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My work machine is a Mac Pro 1,1, and it’s obviously getting a bit long in the tooth. I upgraded the video card from an X1900 to a Radeon HD 5770 (which works fine) last year, and just yesterday, I undertook the process of installing two Xeon X5355‘s rather than the stock 5150 processors. The process is pretty simple (I’d call it a medium difficulty), but is easy enough to follow instructions online ((I’ve actually found this to be the best written instructions on getting MOST of the way there)) (the hardest part was removing the cowl from the processors). You’ll need a 3mm 9″ hex key (I happened to have one), and some thermal compound (I used Arctic Silver 5).

The processors I used were purchased off ebay for all of $54/each with free shipping. BTW, make sure to buy the SLAEG revision, as this version halves the idle power usage down to about what the stock CPUs use ((The stock 5150’s use 24W idle, and about 65W full power. The X5355 SLAEG use 25W idle, and 120W at full power. Decreased power usage seems to be from the SLAEG supporting Demand Based Switching.)). Install time was about an hour with pulling everything apart, and doing the thermal compound correctly (clean the CPU/heatsink, prime/tint both surfaces, etc).

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