#dot matrix x megabyte

[jurijurijurious]

"The tables have turned. You're in my court now. Don't you see? The virus to who I would once always say no is now a pitiful slave who can only answer me with yes."

Couldn't *not* doodle my favourite shifty OTP now the tablet's back out. It's time to revisit that fanfic of mine.

[jurijurijurious]

I have seen it but I'll most happily look again 😁💚💙

Viral dragon AU part 2: the Megadot-ening! Featuring Mochi’s Dot bean. This also blends into a war mount AU that @morsprocella came up with. Somehow Dot ended up being Megabyte’s rider :^)

[aspec-illustration]

Store Update!

Our 11x17 red foil Matrix print has been added to the store alongside the existing gold foil prints for Hexadecimal and Megabyte.

Did you watch this Canadian classic?

[ctcopier]

Guide to Buying a New printer

One of the more perplexing decisions when faced with choosing a new printer is which print technology is going to suit you the best.  At the moment there are two main printing systems: the laser technology, using toner cartridges and a transfer drum assembly; and ink jets using ink tank cartridges and fine-spray nozzles.  The method that will suit you best will depend largely on what you plan to print on your new printer, and cost factors that affect the costs of running it.  Laser printers are possibly better for high-volume printing, with lower 'per page' costs and they have better black intensity text, than most ink jets. Laser printers tend to have a faster page rate but ink jets still offer the important advantages in affordable color printing.

For home use, you'll probably want to print out digital photos or graphics, which makes color a must. The traditional differentiation between lasers and ink jets has been office versus home use; however, color offers obvious presentation advantages for business use as well.  Fortunately, prices for both categories of printers have come down enough to make it practical to purchase both a laser and an ink jet if you absolutely need both color and high-quality text.

The work you do

There are a number of different printer configurations available today, many of them are quite specialized in the applications.  There are specialized photo printers, direct disc CD printers, Multi-function printers, desktop ink jets and high-speed lasers.

If you want a printer that is specifically designed for printing photographs, you will most likely look for a color ink-jet system that is a photo printer, allowing very high quality color output and capable of printing all the way to the edge of the page.  Recent releases by major brands now include all-in-one Multi-function devices that include scanning and printing capabilities.  Many smaller units that are designed purely as a photo-printer to plug directly into your digital camera are also available.  Much the same can be said for CD or DVD printing, with specialized printers available for printing directly onto discs, saving label application.

On the other hand if you are a small home-office worker, then your requirements may be more general, in which case you need to make a printer decision based on the types of documents you produce and how many.  In general terms, ink-jet printers offer high quality color outputs, at a low hardware cost, but high consumable cost.  Lasers offer significantly higher speeds but at a much higher hardware cost. High volume usage however, reduces the cost per page considerably.

Multi-function printers (MFP) are often ideal for home office or student needs because they combine multiple functions into one unit, usually a scanner, printer, copier fax machine, doing a little bit of everything, and saving considerable desk and office space in the bargain.  Generally ink-jet style printers, some MFP's may trade-off performance for price and convenience (e.g. lower resolution, slower print speed) than if you were to buy a printer and scanner individually.

You can buy Multi-functional printers specially configured for printing photographs, with some machines providing the ability to scan directly from 35mm slides and store digital files and print them, which is ideal for archiving old photo libraries.  However, the scanned images may not exhibit the same clarity and brightness of digitally capture photographs, or as the kind of quality that you can obtain from a dedicated scanner.

Dealing with Technical Talk

One of the specifications that you will be faced with, is that of resolution.  Up to a point, a printer's resolution determines aspects of its print quality.  Images are made up of tiny dots of ink or toner that is applied to the page, and resolution is the term given to the number of dots per inch-quoted as dpi.  This usually is represented in a two-dimensional matrix (eg: 600 x 300 dpi).  Most printers today support a basic 600 x 600 dpi resolution that produces adequate quality in most instances.  Many ink jets, however, especially photo printers and high-end plotters, offer higher resolutions and more dots in the vertical plane than the horizontal.

Resolution ratings are not the whole story however.  Many printer manufacturers now incorporate smoothing and enhancing features through software algorithms.  This means that some output from printers with a lower dpi looks just as good as that from a higher dpi unit.  And, although some printers have very high resolutions, you're not likely to notice any difference in quality with common print jobs once you go above 600 x 600 dpi resolution.  What you will notice however, is much higher consumption of inks or toner.  It is noteworthy, and perhaps obvious to some, that the higher resolution you are printing at, the higher will be your consumable consumption, and this is the most expensive part of your printer.

Speed is another important consideration.  Vary rarely will you find that your printer performs at the 'pages-per-minute' rate (ppm) that is advertised or cited in the specification.  There are a number of reasons for this including the size of the file being printed, the amount of ink coverage on the page, the proportion of black to other colors, the weight of the paper stock and possibly even the constancy of the power supply of electricity to your premises.  This is not today, that the manufacturers, under laboratory conditions are not able to make the machine perform at spec, just not to rely on the claim as a gospel figure.  However, you can use the speed ratings to make some judgment of performance differences, between brands and models.  If speed is an important consideration, then you can short-list printers that claim to perform above a certain rate and then compare other factors.

Laser printers use powder toner that is electromagnetically attracted to the page by an image temporarily made on a transfer drum through a laser scanning process, and then fused to the page with a heat-setting system.  This toner is supplied in cartridges, usually one for each of a four-color printing system (cyan, magenta, yellow and black).  Manufactures give some estimate of how many pages of a given size each toner cartridge will print, based on a predetermined proportion of coverage (say 10%). As with the speed claims, these estimates are rarely accurate, but can be used to make some judgment between makes and models.  The higher resolution of image you are printing, the more toner will be used in the process.  Ink jet printers use a liquid ink stored in tanks that are sprayed by very fine nozzles onto the page as they are required.  Just as you replace the toner cartridges in the laser system, you replace ink tanks when they're depleted in an ink jet printer.

It is important to understand that even though the printer might be cheap, consumables is where the manufacturers actually make enormous profits, so be sure to consider replacement consumables when doing your cost comparisons.  With ink jet printers, some have color cartridges in one unit, others have separate color units.  In the long run, separate tanks will most likely work out cheaper, because as one color runs out, you replace only that color.  When all colors are housed in the one cartridge unit, you may have a nearly full tank of cyan when the yellow is completely gone, and you have to throw away unused ink.  Not only does this waste your money, it can also be environmentally expensive.

Cost

There are two parts to your cost assessment of a printer.  The first is the purchase price of the printer itself.  This can vary considerably between brands and models, and is usually differentiated through different features being offered.  However, possibly more important is the ongoing cost, often measured in cost per page.  A typical ink jet printer may cost you 40-50 cents per printed page, depending on how much ink you are using on the page, it may even cost more.  By comparison, a color laser may work out to 15-20 cents per page.  These costs don't usually include the paper stock, and are based on consumables and maintenance costs.  Companies like Xerox often supply large color Laser printers for a cost per page fee.

One cost assessment technique is to estimate how much printing you will do in a given period, load your calculations with a percentage of ink coverage (if you are printing all full gloss and high resolution photographs, for example, you might load the cost per page by a factor of 8-10), factor in the machine cost and make a comparison of what you will spend in a year, including the cost of the printer.

Other things you might consider

How paper travels through a printer can affect your whole printer experience.  The closest you can get to a 'straight through' paper path, the more trouble-free your printer will be.  If all your printing is only on plain white bond paper, then paper path will possibly not be a major consideration; but if you're printing on photographic stock, thick paper, envelopes, transparent film or other materials, then be sure the print path is compatible with your requirements.  How you connect to your computer might also be a consideration, especially if you work with large files where connection speed is a consideration.   Most printers today offer relatively high-speed USB interfaces. You might also want to consider wireless connections or networking capabilities.

When choosing a Laser printer, on-board RAM (read only memory) might be a consideration.  A printer with a standard 64 Megabytes of RAM will be slow to print a quantity of documents that are larger in size than the printer's memory.  If large documents are a consideration, make sure you can upgrade the printer's memory.  The printer driver provides the software interface to your printer, offering you on-screen control over copies, page size, orientation, resolution, text smoothing and paper thickness and type.  Many drivers now include advanced features and enable you to create your own custom-setting profiles for quick selection.  Moreover a good driver provides complete printer management from on-screen, including paper jams and job queue management.  Ink-jet drivers often provide graphical indications of remaining ink levels for each color.

For More Info - http://ctcopier.com/

[jurijurijurious]

What's this, what's this? I can't believe my eyes, I must be dreaming... A fic update??

ReBoot: Dodge and Burn - Chapter 16

Megabyte x Dot. Rating mature. Foe yay, baby.

[jurijurijurious]

Yes!! It can't end well but that's the point.

And you can't leave all this in the tags, damnit!

#I'm looking at a couple of oneshots #or possibly a three parter #they make an accidentally on purpose habit of running into each other laaaaate at night at Al's #when all the other sprites and such are tucked up safe at home #like good little boys and girls #and these two can snipe at each other to their hearts content #and then fuck in an alley to their loins content probably #Megadot #Dot needs someone on her level who understands the work she puts in #Megabyte can respect her work ethic #even if he thinks its wasted on a city that takes her for granted #can I make #control freak in the sheets a tag? #control freak in the excel spreadsheets?

We can also definitely make control freak in the sheets a tag. Or Excel Spreadsheets is probably more on point. 💙 I am ready, give it to me.

Also one of your tags is like literally so close to something Megz says to Dot in one of my future chapters, I nearly cried. Same wavelength. 😭

falling asleep while editing and accidentally woke myself up by noting down a couple of lines of the amorphorous Dot/Megabyte fic idea that has been swimming in the back of my mind for weeks and fuck. now I’m gonna have to actually write it.

[jurijurijurious]

👀👀👀 It's been a while...

[jurijurijurious]

Reboot fanfic update! TWO chapters (though one is a tiny teaser one, sorry not sorry.) Tick tock tick tock...

*Music in the vid is from Doctor Who, wonderful Murray Gold.

[jurijurijurious]

So... I'm sick and apparently it's blue Monday. So here are some sketches from the vault of a blue thing that gives me joy. 💙😊

[jurijurijurious]

Yesss, this is on my frequency, baby. 💚 Looks like it's time to bring back last Hallowe'en's DracuByte madness!

🧛‍♂️🦇😈 Careful he... Bytes... badumtish

Megavlad by WeB ViRuS

You guys… the colouring. I am so mesmerised by the way the light has been captured. It looks like firelight. I love it. I also love the concept of the piece–Megabyte as Dracula? GENIUS. He has the teeth for it. All the details–lovely. The cross necklace falling off; the stake tumbling to the ground. And Bob running in to save the day.

I LOVE IT. I’m terrified and spellbound all at once.

[jurijurijurious]

I don’t need an excuse to draw them but, damn, give me one and I’ll gnaw on it like a meaty bone.

Bit of a film noir-esque sketch inspired by the fab end visual in @buginateacup​‘s first chapter of their Dot x Megabyte fic. I took liberties because I found a photo I wanted to ref and refused to lose the single lamppost which absolutely doesn’t belong in Mainframe.

Full image plus links to the photo ref’ and to the fic under the cut. Thanks for feeding me, Bug!

Photo reference in this article: John Alton: Master of the Film Noir Mood

Bug’s fanfic: Same Time Next Week?

[jurijurijurious]

"See what you are when you take off your mask?” [Megabyte] snarled with delight, “When you unlock your shackles?"

Ugh, I love them. Competitive, spicy hate fcks all the way. I need to get him on a collar for her in my fanfic, damn it.

(Why did I censor this with a Gavin Blair quote? I was just looking for a random image to whack over Megabyte's hardware tbh and found that classic response on my laptop, which I saved because Gavin came to the defense of those of us who drew/wrote shippy ReBoot fan stuffs that was being attacked by a member of the Reboot Revival FB group as being "creepy and unhealthy". I think we're very lucky to have Gavin. And he's thus asked for this. Love you Gavin.)

Want the uncensored version? On my AD Twitter HERE or drop into my personal Discord HERE

[jurijurijurious]

I'm so happy with this commission of my ReBoot OC Codec that KoVee has drawn for me. 💚 Totally nailed him. Such "Hex's lil protégé" vibes. I don't make many OCs but I'm massively invested in Codec and I feel like, after many years, he's just about fully evolved in my head and reaching his final form. I just need to write his story. 🙃

[jurijurijurious]

I've not forgotten them. Just stuck in a bit of creative paralysis. I will hopefully be back on my bullshit soon.

[jurijurijurious]

"What is easy to make but impossible to keep forever"...?

More illustrating fanfic ideas with impunity. I like Codec's mask on this sketch, I may have to come back and finish him properly.

[jurijurijurious]

Had to put together a quick ref sheet for Codec for a commission I'm getting. I didn't realise how little of him is consistent in my drawings, he'll probably change again before the commish is done.