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First look at OCR
A recent comment on my blog struck a nerve where the commenter said that OCR would basically put a competitor to ReceiptWallet above it. While I still don't believe that OCR is all that useful for receipts (if there is one mistake when you're generally only entering 3 small pieces of data, you've wasted time because you have to review each entry carefully), I took a look at an open source OCR package. While this code is a bit rusty, there has been some recent work on it. My first test was a Rite-Aid receipt where I was looking to see if it could read 3 pieces of data, the merchant name, date, and total. It failed on the merchant name because it was a graphic, however, it picked up the date and total in such a way that I could parse the data and grab what I needed. I then tried 2 other receipts, both from Costco and the results were completely miserable such that I couldn't get anything from them. I'll keep plugging away and testing to see if my results are better.
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Goldilocks and the 3 keyboards
I somehow managed to spill stuff on my keyboard (not the internal one in my MacBook Pro) and have been looking for a replacement for awhile. I dried it out enough so that it has mostly worked, but I kept missing keys. So I bought an Apple keyboard from CompUSA a few months back (when they still had a San Diego store) and had 2 problems with it; first off the unit was defective as not all the keys worked and second, it was too small for the keyboard tray that I have (it has spring loaded holders on the side). I returned it and ignored the problem for awhile. On Friday I went to my most hated store, Fry's, and got another keyboard. It looked OK, but when I got it home, I discovered that the command key was too small. My choice of wired keyboards is quite small for the Mac; I want wired so that I don't need drivers and it works with my KVM switch. I also want a Mac keyboard as the Windows keyboards that are Mac compatible have the command and option keys switched unless you install the drivers.
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Running my own server vs hosting elsewhere
With all my problems with my server, you'd think I'd give up and just host my server somewhere else and make it someone else's problem. After a little thinking, I've come up with the pros and cons of running my own server.Pros--------------Physical security of serverMusic server - I need a server to run my SqueezeboxesUnlimited bandwidth (at 1 MBps upstream, but unlimited)Full backups - I backup the server to an external drive and take it offsiteLots of storage (currently at 300 GB, but only about 15% used)It's a learning experience5 static IP addressesFull control over serverAbility to run my own PBX and have good voice qualityCons------------Electricity usageI have to keep it runningLimited upstream bandwidthPotentially more costly (it costs about $50 per month for me to host my own server); however for the hardware I have, a hosting service might charge more for RAID 1 and backupsWhile there are more items I'm missing here, it's pretty clear to me that running my own server is the right way to go. My issues last week appeared to stem from drives that were failing; it just happened that when I was putting in the new drives, the drive I left running was failing causing some issues. I'm now up and running on my 2 new drives and have been for about 5 days now. Lesson for the future...replace drives about once a year if they need it or not as the drives are relatively cheap ($150 for both drives) and run 24/7 which puts a lot of wear and tear on the drives. Now the question is, what do I do with the old drives? Would a reformat on the drives do the trick and keep them running? What less mission critical role can I put them in?
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The new world of IMAP
I realize that IMAP isn't new, but I just started using it yesterday. I've resisted for years as I've always had one main store for my email. However, lately, I'm checking email using web based email and everything I've heard about IMAP make it sound like it is perfect for using in multiple locations. So far it's working OK, but I'm getting used to it. For instance, if Mail on my Mac filters messages out of the Inbox, they're pulled off the IMAP server which kind of defeats the purpose of using IMAP. Most of my email is filtered. I created a rule in Mail that moves all messages < 1 day old into my Inbox and made it my first filter. This should leave everything in my inbox, but when I run the filters over my inbox manually later, it should put everything in the right spot.