• Jun 5, 2008

    Misinformed Runner

    In today's local paper, a reader wrote that he was disappointed that the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon was 26.5 miles and not the standard 26.2 miles according to his Forerunner 305. The letter annoyed me as the author is a bit clueless about marathons. I've thought about writing letters to the editor all the time, but finally pulled the trigger.

    I read the letter from Joe Chavez about the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon and was very annoyed that the author thought he knew more about the marathon than the organizers. If he had done any research, he would have known that a marathon is measured as the absolute shortest distance along the course; this means taking all of the inside corners and not zig zagging on the course, like many runners have to do in order to pass slower runners. In addition, while the Forerunner 305 is an excellent training device, it is not 100% accurate. I ran the marathon in 2006 and 2007 and my Forerunner 305 also registered 26.5 miles; I know that I had to zig zag to avoid runners and definitely didn't take all the inside corners.

    Joe should have done a little more research before accusing the organizers of stretching out the marathon.

    Scott Gruby

    San Diego

    I'm not sure if they'll publish it, but it felt good to write it. If the author was around, I'd slap him upside the head.

  • May 30, 2008

    Asking for (USB) trouble

    Scotts-MacBook-Pro.jpgI was doing some testing today and had to re-arrange my USB hubs to put certain devices at the beginning of the chain. Hubs, you ask? Yes, I have 3 powered USB hubs and a ton of devices. Does it all work? For the most part, yes. I really wanted a 14-21 port hub and not have to chain hubs together, but I've been unable to find one, except for one that someone hacked together. Am I that unusual to have so many devices? OK, I may have a few more devices than most people, but aren't people collecting more devices? Here's my current list of what is plugged in:

    • iPhone
    • iPod Nano (2nd generation)
    • Fujitsu ScanSnap
    • DocketPORT 465 scanner
    • NEAT Receipts scanner
    • Playstation 2 headset (actually a Logitech headset)
    • Garmin Forerunner 305
    • DYMO LabelWriter 330
    • Generic Flash Drive
    • EVDO Rev. A modem
    • EPSON CX9400
    • Sewell DisplayLink
    • MacAlly Keyboward
    • Logitech Trackball
    • UPEK Fingerprint scanner
    • WiebeTech TrayDock
  • May 28, 2008

    Hacking ICA - NEAT Receipts scanner working with ReceiptWallet

    After a lot of work today, I managed to get the NEAT Receipts scanner to work with ReceiptWallet. It wasn't easy as there are issues with ICA and the driver that NEAT Receipts ships is quite buggy (if I tell it to scan the entire width, it fails; I have to divide by 3 to get it to work). I suspect that they just got the scanner working with their software and called it a day. Some comments in their forums seem to back this up as the scanner works quite poorly in Image Capture. I'm only going to be supporting 10.5.3 (which was just released) and higher for using Image Capture and this scanner. A large number of ReceiptWallet users are using Leopard, so this isn't a huge problem.

    I'll be posting a beta probably tomorrow with preliminary support for the scanner. I'm sure I'll have to keep tweaking the support when they fix/change their drivers. If you don't have a scanner, I wouldn't recommend their scanner as the drivers still need work; I'd recommend the Pentax DS Mobile 600 or the ScanSnap S300M. If you already have the scanner, now you can use it with a stable, mature product.

  • May 28, 2008

    Ouch

    I read the following in a forum about a new product:

    Calling something "advance release" instead of "beta" isn't the greatest way of garnering a loyal customer base. Especially in light of an absence of tech support...

    Wow, almost seems like this company tried to rush something to market just to appease users.