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.

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!

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.

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!