Every few years I treat myself to something special, traveling in style that only one airline can provide. An airline that prides itself in being an agent of market forces, and the cleanest, easy-to use pricing structure. Where you are never far away from a smile, where your personal comfort is…

Ok, enough of the irony. Today I traveled Ryanair, something I had promised myself long time ago that I would never do. After all they did destroy my laptop (thankfully just a Vaio) and almost made my whole family miss a flight. Anyway, long story short, I am always amazed how a 1 Kroner ticket ends up costing much more than that. In the spirit of helpfulness and sharing, I would like to present this list to Mr. Leary, or whatever the name is of that Ryanair boss.

10 ways Ryanair could extract more money from their passengers

1. Want an experienced pilot? That’ll be 20 quid extra, sir.
2. Safety belts take 1 pound coins to open.
3. Life vests can be rented for 5 pounds per hour.
4. Seats where you are less likely to die are 50% extra.
5. Charge for oxygen consumed during the flight.
6. Surcharge of 5 pounds if you do not buy a Bingo ticket.
7. Charge 50 pence for every second you need to get off the plane.
8. Falling asleep and not listening to the announcements? 10 pounds, madam.
9. No change will be given.
10. Charge 10 pounds for every piece of luggage that did not get damaged during transport.

Barb Dybwad has collection a nice list of online resources where you can find free multimedia content for your use. My favourite one would be the Creative Commons search.

While our wax printer was away for repair, I bought a cheap Canon MP610 ink printer. Turns out, it also prints on DVDs, and better than our outrageously expensive Bravo II dedicated DVD printer.

A friend told me I could save buckets by getting a so-called CISS system, continuous ink supply system.

Looking on eBay, there are many different offerings, all from cheap Asian to custom-built solutions for each printer. I chose an offering from down-under rihac. Installation is just a bit complicated, but if you manage to install memory in your computer, you´ll be fine. Rihac provides an extensive installation manual, which is adapted to your specific printer model.

The result: cheap printing (did you know that drugs – the illegal type – are cheaper than printer ink?), never having to worry about which colour might run out just as an important printing job is up, and saving the environment.

Rihac uses very good ink, and I did some printouts just before installation, and afterwards, and could not see a difference. Some reviewers wrote that the Rihac ink is more light resistant than the original one.

Bottom line

If you rather spend money on film gear than ink, get yourself a quality CISS system. Search on eBay, there are many different providers. I for one can recommend the one I chose, but find out for yourself.

Happy printing.

For the financially challed film producer, Good Music often is out of reach. There are many so-so sources for CDs full of royalty free music (we own a huge library of those and hardly ever use it – unless we need something cheesy).

Then there are places where you can preview and download music for a fixed fee per piece (Shockwave Sound and Q Music being my preferred ones), and then there is our dear Kevin MacLeod. He offers his collection of music free, as long as he gets credit in the film. If, for some reason, you cannot or do not want to credit him, you can pay a little fee (30 USD).

And now music artist Moby has made his own mini-website where he published over 60 tracks that can be used free of charge for non-commercial productions (commercial productions have to pay a standard fee, the full amount of which will be donated to a good cause). Here’s the incredibly blurry announcement: