Tag: Technology

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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.

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Life with the iPhone

I’ve been using an iPhone for a few weeks now (I have a very nice client that sent me an iPhone) and must say that I kind of like it. I’m not a huge voice person, so I’ve only made a few calls and can’t really comment on it.

I’m getting used to the email client and web browsing is pretty nice. In addition, the iTunes interface is pretty slick. I even watched some Simpsons episodes on it on one trip. My biggest complaints about the iPhone are 1) it is on AT&T, 2) it is on the EDGE network and 3) it suffers from the GSM buzz. As I don’t do much text messaging, the lack of a physical keyboard isn’t an issue for me.

At first, I was jealous of the iPhone as I’ve spent many years dealing with Palm based devices and have had a lot invested in working with Palm OS, but with the lack of life in the Palm OS and my shift of focus in my work, I realized that I had no reason to be jealous and am embracing the device.

I’m sure that future versions of the iPhone will be better, but for a first version of a device by a company that has never produced a cell phone, this is quite amazing. Nokia, Palm, LG, Motorola, etc. have had years to come up with something like the iPhone, but have not managed to come close.

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iPhone Update and Self Signed Certificates

I updated my iPhone today to the latest firmware and found that I couldn’t check email. I remember reading something in the release notes about man in the middle attacks. So, I tracked down the issue to a self-signed SSL certificate I use on my mail server. Luckily, I have a real wildcard certificate for receiptwallet.com. So, I reconfigured my mail server and changed my settings to mail.receiptwallet.com and presto, things started working again. So, unless I missed a setting, self-signed certificates can’t be used with the new iPhone update; I see this as a big problem for people that don’t want to fork over the money for a real certificate. Oh well, I learn something new everyday.

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The GSM buzz

Now that I have an iPhone on my desk, I’m constantly reminded that GSM radios produce a buzzing sound when they’re near speakers or other phones. I’ve had various other GSM devices on my desk lately, but have generally placed them on the other side reducing the buzz. However, the iPhone is close to my Mac, so I have to turn off my speakers and remember to turn off (or move) the iPhone whenever I speak on the phone (landline). I’m amazed that this issue is still around. My main cell phone is a Sprint CDMA phone and never hear this buzz.

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Faster than a speeding bullet

Now that I’ve migrated most of my web traffic to another server, I took a look at some settings on my server. Awhile back I added QOS rules so that I’d still have good VOIP traffic even if people were hitting my website. I turned off the rules to run a speed test and almost fell off my seat. I’m consistently getting over 13 Mb/s down and about 1.5 Mb/s up. Last time I checked, I had 6 Mb/s down and 1 Mb/s up. Thanks Time Warner!

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Virtual Server – Day 2

I managed to move over most of my domains to the virtual server and am pleased so far. However, I had to jump up to their next plan because I was running out of memory. So due to the limited amount of memory (512 MB with no disk swap), I’ve decided to leave mail on my server as SMTP has built in retries so if my server goes down, my store and website don’t do down with it.

So going back to my post about servers, I now get the best of both worlds, but pay a higher price. My virtual server has 3 IP addresses (I’m not sure what to do with the other 2) and has 500 GB of monthly bandwidth which is more than plenty for me. The bandwidth is also significantly faster than my current connection, so people should see better performance. I still have to keep my server running for mail, music server, and source control, but I now feel better knowing that I have a backup in case my cable modem goes down or my server decides to die again.

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Too quick to blame Time Warner

I called Time Warner this morning and we worked on some basic troubleshooting steps I should have done before (restart the cable modem and restart the networking on my server). Low and behold, everything worked again. Why? I have no idea.

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Thanks, Time Warner

My ReeceiptWallet sales yesterday were down significantly (I sold 1 copy) which I thought was extremely odd. When I checked my logs today, I saw that no one had visited my site yesterday which was impossible as search bots hit it all the time. I logged into an outside server I have access to and tried to connect to my site; it failed. Hmmm…my main site (www.gruby.com) worked fine. What was the difference? I remembered that receiptwallet.com was on a different IP address. I switched everything back to the main IP address and will give Time Warner a call in the morning and find out what they screwed up (it appears to be their routing tables) and see about a nice service credit for this. This also explains why someone said that mail to receiptwallet.com bounced, but to gruby.com didn’t.

Uggh, computers suck.

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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.

In addition, I put in a request for a quote for a commercial OCR engine. However, I suspect that it will be cost prohibitive. If it costs $5,000-$10,000 upfront plus a per copy licensing fee, I can’t afford that as it would completely wipe out any profit unless I significantly increased the cost of ReceiptWallet.

If anyone has more information on OCR engines for the Mac (commercial or open source), please let me know.

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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.

Back to Fry’s today and I picked up a macally keyboard. It seems to work well, doesn’t require drivers (they have drivers, but I have no idea what they’re for) and fits my keyboard tray. The only problem is that I paid $10 over retail. It’s not worth my time to return it to Fry’s and then order it online (or maybe it is as it is $45 from Amazon with Free shipping).