So after receiving my thermal printer in the mail yesterday, I spent all day experimenting with it and what not. It’s black and white and can print out images and text. It’s pretty nifty however that doesn’t mean I am going to keep it. I, definitely, will sell this thing on EBay when the semester ends.

Using a receipt printer isn’t as easy as it sounds. The hardest part is trying to get the receipt printer to print in its own format rather than the document it receives from the computer.  I know that’s kind of confusing to understand (as I’m not very articulate anyways), but what I mean to say is that you can tell what looks more an authentic receipt printer versus a document printed from a text file/Microsoft Word/etc.

So I spent a lot of time researching how programs/scripts send RAW data to printers to, well, print stuff. I found a Visual Basic script that worked alright. Whenever I pressed the button from the scripted program, it prompted my receipt printer to print what was written in the code. The only problem now is that I don’t know how to program AT ALL so I am the mercy of figuring out that stuff *ugh!*.

Also, I had to do all this experimenting through my boyfriend’s Windows laptop. The printer is not compatible with Mac OSX so he’s been gracious enough to lend me the laptop. It’s sort of awkward however as I don’t use PCs much at ALL (I use Mac computers just about everywhere now-a-days), so that whole interface in itself took some getting used to.

Weeeeell, anyway, at least I know that I can print from regular programs and whatnot. Here’s some of the crap I made while I was figuring out the printer:

And here’s a close-up:

I am a receipt!

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I had also spent sometime looking on the internet to see if anyone online had done art related to receipts and whatnot. Surprisingly, most receipt-related art work I found on the internet was those drawings waitresses sometimes put on receipts. The most interesting receipt-related art I found was Tom Taylor’s Microprinter work. He rigged a receipt printer to print out notifications, reminders, etc. as it was connected to the internet:

It’s neat how he takes this mundane medium and exercise and transforms it into something really nice and engaging. I really REALLY wish I knew how to do something like this but I’m not about to take apart my new thermal printer.

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And I also checked out the book No Logo by Naomi Klein. I felt it’d be a good book to sink my brain into because almost all the other books I read, regarding consumerism, mentioned No Logo. Hopefully it lives to the hype.

It seemed to be one of the more reasonable priced ones (and it had the most reviews)…also, I read in some reviews that it’s easy to print from Microsoft Word/etc. etc. to it (it’s USB so it goes in like a normal printer they said?). I’ve been freaking out about finding a dot matrix printer because I don’t have an old enough computer to hook an older dot matrix printer up to (if that had to be the case and if I couldn’t get the right drivers) and I don’t really have experience with those printers at ALL. The newer ones are crazy expensive as well. Also because of the direction that my senior project is heading in, I thought about it and felt that thermal printed receipts were a better direction logistically.

I sound like I’m trying to convince myself that I did the right thing. AND I NEED THIS FOR SENIOR PROJECT so I definitely justify my purchase with that excuse.

Anyway…I probably won’t get this in the mail for another week…and if I’m unhappy with it…I’ll just return it I suppose.

And apparently, these are what the receipts look like too:

I’m really excited about this

…that receipt printers would be so damn expensive!?

WHY?!