OK, unless you print using a PCL driver for a Konica Minolta Biz Hub Pro 1100 or similar (geeky moment), this will mean nothing. But, for those that might…
Occasionally you need to do something that you have not needed to do before… like, print a 6000-page document and separate it into units of 30.
So, to do the above, we want to insert a blank coloured sheet into page position 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 etc of a multiple-page (150+) document.
Here’s how:
Under the Cover Mode tab, select ‘Per Page Setting’, and ‘Edit List 1’
‘Add’ a detail between Body1 and Body-End
Edit the page numbers such as 30,60,90,120 etc
Click the ‘Print Type’ and Change Settings [Insert Blank Sheet]
Click the ‘Paper Tray’ and Change Settings eg [Post Inserter Tray1]
Click the ‘Paper Size’ and Change Settings [A4]
And that should do it! Little things please little minds.
The first time this year, I took the dog out on the field this morning.
Syston, dog walk – Jan 2020
It was glorious. The sound of birds, the smell of thawing field, the warmth of the sunrise, the bright glistening frost, the hints of buds and capillary-like branches stretching with imminent hope of something… the sensational experience was more than I can describe here. More than most of us might capture with words, images, music or dance… though I love and applaud those who try! (Like Bill Withers)
Usually, my better-half takes the dog out, but on Saturday’s it’s my duty while E’s at work. As I say, it seems a duty, a ‘thing that needs to be done’, and like any chore it can be ‘seen’ as a chore. Googling an antonym for ‘chore’ we find happiness or peace ! Two sides of the same coin – flip the coin! Surely what makes a chore a chore is its relativity, its context, the way we perceive the task or situation. Many of us find ourselves doing routine things and tasks that ‘need to be done’. Yes it’s easily said, and I’m the worst at seeing above the clouds, but sometimes it really can take a small twist of perspective, a grounding of our perception to see something differently, to see something for what it truly is, to realise. Relax the clasped hand, and instead of a fist we have an open palm.
I process stuff, we all do, but as an over-thinker, and a visual artist, I like to process stuff a tad more. This can be a problem, though being creative can make more of stuff, the process can perhaps take away and detract from the reality of life. We need a little unfiltered reality every now and then. Or we might say, to a generation swimming in hyperreality, we need a little unfiltered experience more regularly!
As I say, I am the worst culprit. I, like many of us, find myself routinely consumed with pretty perfect polished pop cyberspace. Snap out of it. As a counselor once suggested to me, time for a ‘wet fish’ grounding.
I took the dog out on the field this morning. It was more vibrant than any Instragram post, it was warmer than any edifying TED video, it was more exciting than a game of Mario, more rewarding than a win on BingoBingo… it was real.
Easily said I know… but, turn off the device. Take off the filters… Breathe.
My young daughter said to me, “Dad, I like the birds, sunsets, candles and smiling people too, but I don’t get overwhelmed by them, you’re way too emotional…”
We were with friends, sitting around flickering flames in the fireplace, with a spicey drink… and the room was gently warming… I am not a fan of the fuss and festivities, but the rituals and traditions of the end-of-year midwinter season help us reform structures and foundations in our lives. They help us define our past, and shape who we are. Seasonal traditions give us a sense of comfort and belonging and enable people to reconnect with others. Christmas themes help reinforce values such as freedom, faith, integrity, hope, personal responsibility, ethics, and values. If you try and take it all on board, and juggle festive with fact, or tradition with truth, it can become too much.
Charles Dickens – Friedrich Nietzsche – John Bunyan
It will be no surprise to you that, yes, I get overwhelmed by it all – with all the stimulation, tradition, memories, energy, expectations, hopes and fears… to the point that I just hold up my hands, my thoughts, my curiosities, suspend disbelief and have to yield to the pleasures and the perils… breathe… centre… accept these things we do… #recognise
It’s these ‘things we do together’ these ‘interactions’ that make us what we are. It’s about people. The heart of the village is the people. Home us where the heart is. The tradition of warmth and a flame in the hearth…
While the flames are still flickering, this year I hope we can remember the hearth. Where your treasure is, there is your heart(h) also. It needs regular cleansing, maintenance, fuel, space, care and attention. The heart needs to be true, especially if you’re someone who gets overwhelmed and “way too emotional…”
“Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food”, the glorious Douglas Adams said this back in 2001. Yes, I am a lover of print but as a visual artist, I am also a lover of the content, and how it’s compiled on the page/plate. The format of what we print is important. How it’s graphically designed, AND how it’s reproduced can add value(BPIF Stats).
What I am highlighting here is that print costs to a large organisation can be significant. If we think about how our print is reproduced we could save thousands of pounds.
It may seem like common sense, but as Voltaire, pointed out ‘common sense is often rare’. In a large organisation, if we all just printed a tad more thoughtfully, we could save thousands over a year.
Let’s serve it up thoughtfully!
Ask for it in Black and White (Mono).
Printing in colour costs 10 times that of printing in black.
If 100 colour clicks = £10, 100 mono clicks is less than £1. (plus the cost of paper etc)
Put it another way, you can print many times more in mono, as you might in colour!
Is colour on your page necessary? If you have a colour document with a mono page, copier machines can sense that and charge that page as mono, if there’s one small sentence in pink on that page it will charge 10 times as much and print the page in colour.
Where possible reduce your use of colour for printing. If you need bling, then mono print on coloured paper is still cheaper than colour print.
In short, print in mono if colour is not necessary.
Print back to back, or smaller, and half your paper costs!
If you print back to back it can use half the paper of single-sided printing.
Printing your page as A5 or A6 can reduce paper and print costs even further! Just ask for it as A5 or A6.
Reduce paper AND print costs…
Quarter your paper costs and minimise your print cost!
We can easily convert your A4 multiple paged document into an A5 stapled booklet.
If you print as an A5 booklet, four pages become one sheet of two sides.
An A5 mono booklet could use a quarter of the paper and a twentieth of the print cost, compared to an A4 colour single-sided booklet.
In short, it’s not always possible but try and think about costs.
Where possible make it mono, and seek to use paper economically.
Eeeek!
Printing your page as A5 (two per A4) or even A6 (four per sheet) can reduce paper and print costs even further! For example, print Powerpont docs as multiple slides per page where possible.
There is software that is designed to aid economical print reproduction. We recommend using this where appropriate. Think about batch printing, we can do this for you: Save money, paper and time…
So Christmas time approaches. Yes, every year it starts earlier, and the bling dong merrily starts in November. We did put up and decorate our tree early in December, to coincide with the annual Dance Show which A&P partake in (We just watched the DVD, v. proud of them all! Well done Q**), but to be honest I didn’t feel very Christmassy then, and perhaps rightly so… it was not Christmas time.
But yesterday, the penultimate Friday before Christmas, was Christmas Jumper Day at work with donations going to charity. As I cycled to work I turned off the main road and the peace was palpable… it often is at this part of the journey. There are a few places where I turn off the main road and onto a side track or lane and the transition from the noisy busy tense maniacal traffic into an almost silent still natural tranquility is often very striking. This morning the combination of new carols from BBC Radio 3’s Carol Competition, a full moon breaking through the clouds, the subconscious fridayness of the morning, and this momentary ‘glimpse’ of peace made me think of Christmas – …I think.
As the kids (and us) get older, Christmas loses its innocence and the sharper realities of life clutter the traditional tableau. The spirit of Christmas, the light in the shadows, the harmony behind the clatter, the healing within the wounds, the possibilities… can sometimes be hard to find. Sometimes we need to find something familiar to lean on.
This year it took us ages to decide upon a Christmas card/image, we were just not feeling it. But looking back over our year we are reminded of the blessings we’ve had. Some great times together… Cornwall, Wales, Derbyshire, Northumberland, and even Devon! We’ve had a good year, at home and away – and we’re reminded we’ve been in this house for two years now. Life’s recently been good to us.
So this weekend we have made traditional meat pies – something from my Cornish childhood. I dare say I will seek out some seasonal songs and tunes. Expectations of a few days off work with my ladies are most welcome. …and heaven and nature sing!
I truly hope that we all might sense a transition from the noisy busy tense maniacal into an almost silent still natural tranquility.
We hope that a spirit of Christmas visits you this season. I wish that we all might find the odd spark, glimpse, breath… of peace daily. And we truly wish you all the best for the coming year!
As the season of maniacal merriment mechanically approaches… breathe.
I am torn between contemplation and mere acceptance. Alas, it’s my nature to question and cogitate while the rest of the world seems to just get on with stuff.
Outside the window, there was no music… As winter bites, sometimes it feels (and feeling is a real thing, it can hurt) as though the vast quiet darkness is louder than no music… Yes, sparkles sparkle and prisoners of hope mean well, but sometimes it can seem that, as one famous droid said, “we’re doomed”. Perhaps what is required is less robotic and more creatural – less digital and more analogue. The language, pictures, and stories we create can become more real than the brain’s digitally sparking axons and synapses. A significant difference in our automatic behaviour and a more human or humane way is our breath.
To paraphrase Aldous Huxley; Above the silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is our breath. “From pure sensation to the intuition of beauty, from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death — all the things that are fundamental, all the things that, to the human spirit, are most profoundly significant, can only be experienced, not expressed. The rest is always and everywhere silence. After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” AH
I recently had a chance to experience recording the solo vocal on a new song. Exciting, fun and enlightening (Thanks RM). I greatly enjoyed the opportunity but after a few sessions my inexperience showed through. Like an unpractised painter might paint an unconvincing painting or an amateur actor might have limited depth of character etc. Though the production of this ‘recording’ is arguably a good thing, the experience of creating it was by far a greater more impacting thing. I’ve sung with a big world-music choir for many years, I was part of a small harmony group for a few years. In the past, I sang in folk singalongs in the pub, and if course as a child and teenager I absorbed the spirited congregational singing of Cornish Methodism. Singing is essentially breathing sounds but why we sing and what we think/feel when we sing is a far bigger thing. As Oliver Sacks said, “Music is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional…” To paraphrase Nietzsche; Life without music would be a mistake…
As I said, the season of merriment approaches…
As I looked through the window, all was sharply still, not a sign of movement in the trees, the sky is grey and still. Somehow, sometimes, time slows. I am reminded of the Buddhist practice and the idea of the space between our breathing. Tempo rubato, stolen time, is what it says on some musical notation. Less robotic and more creatural breathing. Take a moment to know you are alive, to know your breathing… before the maniacal merriment mechanically takes over… jingle jingle… Tempo rubato… breeathe…
Out beyond ideas … there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When you travel, anywhere, you can open yourself to the opportunity for ‘encounter’.
When we travel via car-riage we are to varying extents limiting our exposure to encounter.
When you travel by bike (or indeed walk) regularly, you will find that one of the things that might strike you is your exposure for encounters.
My Instagram captures above don’t portray the people, but it’s the human interactions that are most memorable. From the trio of ladies on their way to work that say hi every morning, and the senior citizen with her two dogs, the people on bikes going the other way, the mechanic who opens his garage at the same time every morning, the man returning from the shop with his paper, the lady who feeds the ducks, the people waiting for the bus, the schoolboy with his rucksack, the rough sleepers under the bridge…
If you consider your ‘approach’ appropriately, often your encounters can be remarkable and delightful. From the natural and the humane, to the juxtaposition of our creations, traditions, and behaviours. Yes, you also encounter the broken, the disturbed, the unfortunate (and ‘misjudgments’ as a professional correspondent recently excused it). But in the main, exposure to ‘life’ can bring growth. Life by its nature brings growth – it’s the lack of life, or broken life, that might cause disruption, disease, and emptiness. As a ‘creative art’ student, one of my favorite quotes was ‘the interaction between things is what makes them fecund’ from Wallace Stevens (referenced by Damian Grant in his book ‘Realism’).
I consider myself fortunate. The times I am shaken by glimpses of wonder, by people, nature, song, life’s riches… far outway the angry disappointed brokenness that also colours our society.
On another not unrelated topic: I have a small part in a play by a local amateur theatre company QT Theatre. It’s a play called ‘Chance Encounters’ written by Jamesine Cundell Walker. One day… One bench… Nine encounters… QT say “a mixture of comedy, pathos and surprise!” .. a day centred around a park bench … Chance encounters; from a couple meeting to discuss division, to a lady settling herself on the bench for the night.
Easily said, but for some, not so easily put into practice… but, I will say it again; ‘the interaction between things is what makes them fecund’. Here’s hoping.
Another seemingly small but important job for a friend who needed a logo styling for a new venture.
What might seem like a small thing, is, in fact, a very important consideration. Your identity, your visual signature, the flag you wave, your calling card, your shop window, your brand. This matters. It’s about sharing values, promise and reputation. It’s about shaping perceptions.
“Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business”
— STEVE FORBES, FORBES MAGAZINE
From their
brief, I offered a few initial draft ideas…
One of which developed into the chosen logo.
Leonum Property will soon be looking for property in Leicestershire and are planning a promotional push with the help of flyers and social media.
OK, unless you print using a PCL driver for a Konica Minolta Biz Hub Pro 1100 or similar (geeky moment), this will mean nothing. But, for those that might…
There are a few places where I turn off the main road and onto a side track or lane and the transition from the noisy busy tense maniacal traffic into an almost silent still natural tranquility is often very striking. This morning the combination of new carols from 
You can see more of what I do here: ‘
Jules P Richards 