Posts

Posted on

Sad day for NotifyMail

Monday marked a sad day for NotifyMail. After 13.5 years of using the product that I wrote (it helped launch my career), I have finally stopped using it. Do I still want to be notified instantly of new mail? Absolutely. Do I still believe in the product? Well, sort of. Several months back, I wrote about my switch to IMAP. While I was having an email exchange with a friend, I couldn’t understand how he responded so quickly. He said his mail client just kept putting new messages in his mailbox and I soon learned about IMAP IDLE. I found a plugin for Mail.app and sources tell me that this is a standard part of Leopard’s Mail.app client. IMAP IDLE basically keeps a connection open to the server and just gets pinged when there is new mail or a new transaction. This is much better than NotifyMail because there is no server configuration required and no separate desktop app to run. It does keep a connection open, but sends/receives very little traffic.

Please, a moment of silence for NotifyMail.

Posted on

Strange markings on cables

Most people don’t look at the markings on the side of cables, but sometimes I do to see if it is Cat5 or Cat6 and see what other ratings are on it. Today as I was helping my dad with his dying computer, I look at the GeekSquad cable he brought over (I’m not a fan of anything from BestBuy) and start reading. “FIREWIRE 6-6 CABLE-6′ • GEEKSQUAD.COM • IF YOU NEED TO DETAIN A BURGLAR UNTIL THE AUTHORITIES ARRIVE, THIS FIREWIRE® CABLE CAN RENDER APPROXIMATELY THREE PERPETRATORS IMMOBILE WHEN PROPERLY HOG-TIED • 1 800 GEEK SQUAD • © 2004 GEEK SQUAD”

Wow, I wonder how that go through marketing and got put on shelves. What’s more interesting is that the product page for a similar item actually has that text on the page.

Posted on

Upgrading from particleboard

When I first moved back to San Diego about 8 years ago, I searched for a large desk to fit in my apartment. I ended up buying 3 desk pieces (2 the same, one a large corner piece). The desks gave me a lot of room and weren’t cheap. Over the last 8 years, the desks have moved into 2 different houses, moved because we had carpet installed twice and then the last time they were moved is when I got a new floor in my office. The problem with this is that particleboard doesn’t move very well when there are screws, pins, etc. in them. I had drywall screws holding it together.

This past weekend, my wife and I were at Ikea looking for a new kitchen table (we both came into the marriage with the same small, square table that is a bit small for the two of us to use for anything) and I saw some desk systems. When we got home, I went to Ikea’s website and started looking at tables where you pick the top and legs and put it together. I found a solid beech top with some legs. Wow, a solid wood top that actually looked nice! I was thinking of getting the adjustable legs, but when I went back to look at them, noticed that they were a friction fit such that if something gave way in the leg, the desk would fall down. I only sort of trust stuff from Ikea as there is a reason it is inexpensive. I ended up getting 3 tables with fixed legs and am quite happy with the setup.

In addition, I picked up 2 of their cable racks so that I can hide most of my cables under the desks.

I feel like a kid in a candy store with my new desk!

Posted on

Scary presidential candidates

Lately the news (NBC Nightly News is what we watch) has been talking about the Republication candidates for president and has said that while Giuliani is the front runner, the conservative base has no clear candidate. They keep bringing Pat Buchanan in to say that conservative Christians have no clear candidate. Basically this means that no candidate has the same views on the 2 issues that appear to matter to them, abortion and gay marriage. Am I missing something or is that all they talk about? I find it ridiculous to vote for anyone just to vote along party lines or for 2 issues as there are so many issues affecting our country. While I’m not a Republican (nor am I a Democrat), Giuliani (and for that matter Schwarzenegger, though he can’t run for president), don’t really scare me because they seem to stand up for what they believe and don’t just do what their parties say they should do.

I have no idea how things will turn out next year, but I want a president that can think (we clearly don’t have that now), and one that isn’t a puppet for his or her party.

Posted on

Popular baby names

Several types lately, people have said that our son’s name, Aiden, is very popular. While this may be true in some people’s small sphere of knowledge, facts don’t seem to back that up (at least not this year). The Social Security Administration’s website lists popular baby names for each year. For 2006 (the last year data is available), Aiden isn’t in the top ten. Certain baby websites put Aiden in the top of the list. What can be the cause of this discrepancy? My theory is that the people that visit these websites are of a particular socioeconomic background and therefore the list doesn’t reflect the general population. Now that children must have Social Security numbers to be claimed as a deduction on taxes, the SSA basically has all the data on the names and I trust them as a source.

We’ll see what happens when the 2007 data goes out next mother’s day.

Posted on

Eating my words about OCR

I’ve said in the past that I thought OCR was pretty ridiculous for receipts as it isn’t 100% accurate and receipts have so many wacky formats. Well, after a lot of work and evaluation, I have managed to integrate the Tesseract OCR engine into ReceiptWallet. It is an open source engine that has OK results for the price. (I did investigate some commercial engines; there are 2 that are on the Mac, and the costs were outrageous and currently one doesn’t even work on PowerPC machines.) As Google continues to work on the engine, I’ll be integrating the new versions into ReceiptWallet.

So, how did I manage to get things to work and get OK results? How about I just say magic? :-). Turns out the hardest part is attempting to recognize merchant names; I cheated on this and simply recognize merchants that the user has already used. This works quite well as I find that I keep going to the same merchants, so while it won’t recognize a merchant the first time you visit it, it has half a chance on subsequent visits.

I’ve been using my ScanSnap for testing and it produces very clear images that the OCR engine seems to like. My DocketPORT, however, has had mixed results. I think I need to change the contrast/brightness settings for better results. I’ll leave this up to beta testers to try out.

My goal is to push out a beta this weekend and see what happens. There is no way that this will be 100% accurate, but it might help a little and then I get to say that it has OCR!

Posted on

Made in China, the ultimate warning label

Yesterday I took Marley (our dog) to the vet because of some redness on his belly (yes, I realize we keep taking Marley to the vet, but he’s our first “child”). As I was talking to the vet, I mentioned we just bought him some Kingdom Pets chicken jerky treats at Costco. The vet said that they were made in China and he stopped giving his own dogs anything made in China. When I got home, I looked at the package and sure enough, it is made in China. Looks like the treats go back to Costco (luckily they take just about anything back; I just have to pull up the receipt from ReceiptWallet and print it). Looks like it is back to Trader Joe’s peanut butter treats (as long as they aren’t made in China).To top off my day with Chinese made products, I was grilling dinner and ran out of propane. Why is this a Chinese product issue? I had purchased an electronic gas gauge that shows me if my propane tank is full or needs refilling. As I was grilling, I ran out of gas despite the gauge saying that the tank was full. Yes, the gauge was made in China. That goes back to Costco, as well.

Posted on

iPhone not syncing on dock (Solution)

I noticed that my iPhone didn’t launch iTunes when I dropped it in the dock even though I specified automatic sync. It dawned on me that in the past I saw an iTunes Helper app as a Login Item. Sure enough, this wasn’t in my Login Items. I dug into iTunes.app/Resources, launched iTunes Helper and also dragged it to Login Items. Now when I dock my iPhone, it syncs automatically. You’d think that Apple would make sure that the iTunes helper is always running, say on each launch of iTunes. Anyway, I have a solution to my problem.

Posted on

6 weeks with a VPS

It’s now been six weeks since I moved all of my web sites to a VPS (virtual private server) on vpslink.com. So far, things have been smooth sailing. They have had 100% uptime, good performance, and nothing to complain about. They did get hit with a DOS attack which made things slow, but they quickly resolved that. In addition, I have 3 IP addresses on my account which made it quite convenient for me to host a client’s wiki as well as some work I’m doing for them.

I still run the server in my house for email, but I consider email less critical as SMTP has built in re-try mechanisms so if the server goes offline, it isn’t the end of the world.

Overall, I’m glad I decided to get a VPS; hopefully my enthusiasm for it continues.

Posted on

Buggy QuickBooks

You’d think that an accounting package would be 100% reliable or as close as possible to that as people rely on them all the time. I just happened to be looking at some reports in QuickBooks for Mac and noticed a $4000 difference in a particular section (expenses) and checked the filters; they were identical. I unchecked some fields in one and rechecked them and presto, the difference went away. It’s a good thing I noticed it otherwise I would have paid myself more than I deserved which would have made a royal mess out of the accounting.

While I realize it is software and there are always bugs, it seems that the software costs so much that Intuit could afford a few more QA folks to bang on every aspect of the program.

I read the other day that QuickBooks for Mac 2008 would be coming next year. I always have to question, what more can be added? I don’t use the integrated online banking and my needs are simple. The only thing I want is a stable product; features don’t mean much for me. This is apparent as I still use Quicken 2005; all I want for that program is an Intel native version…that I’d pay for as I don’t like running PPC binaries on my MacBook Pro.