Archives: 2009 August
Looking for a Linux-compatible scanner
August 30th, 2009, 27 Comments
I own two scanners: a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 and an Epson Perfection 4180 Photo. The S510 is a sheetfed document scanner, and works great at that. It has perfect SANE support, duplex mode, excellent sheet feeder, and is a generally good document scanner. It’s passable for photos, but only that. The color isn’t great, and [...]
Preschool Update
August 27th, 2009, 6 Comments
Tuesday was open house at the preschool Jacob will start attending when he turns 3. It’s the same preschool I went to, and the only one in the small town closest to us. It’s been owned and operated by the same person for all of the 30 years it’s existed. We got out of the [...]
Resurrecting Old VHS Videos (and Panasonic DMR-EZ38VK Review)
August 26th, 2009, No Comments
I have a problem that I’m sure is pretty common. My parents used to rent a VHS camcorder from time to time. Not only that, but various school plays, musicals, etc. are on VHS tapes. As a result, they and I have a library of family memories on VHS. And it appears those tapes go [...]
Prebuilt PC suggestions?
August 16th, 2009, 14 Comments
My MythTV box died today, and I think I would like to buy a new workstation for myself, and cascade my old workstation to the MythTV. Trouble is, I don’t have time to spec out components and build it myself this time. I haven’t bought a prebuilt PC for myself since 6 years ago, and [...]
Mailing List Hosting
August 10th, 2009, 7 Comments
I’ve hosted email lists of one sort or another probably all the way back to 1995, when I first bought complete.org as an email-only domain fed off a UUCP connection on a long-distance dialup link. I’ve only used two mailing list hosting programs in that whole time: Majordomo and Ecartis (used to be known as [...]
The Thrilling Conclusion of Goerzen vs. Dell: Sweet, Sweet Victory
August 9th, 2009, 2 Comments
When United Airlines recently broke some expensive guitars but refused to pay for their negligence, the owner of the guitars made a Youtube video. United corporate HQ noticed, and were so embarrassed that they fixed things. I’ve had some trouble with Dell breaking the law, and their corporate HQ noticed, were embarrassed, but didn’t bother [...]
Review: Free Software Project Hosting
August 9th, 2009, 23 Comments
I asked for suggestions a few days ago. I got several good ones, and investigated them. You can find my original criteria at the link above. Here’s what I came up with: Google Code Its very simple interface appeals to me. It has an issue tracker, a wiki, a download area. But zero integration with [...]
Best Free Software project hosting?
August 6th, 2009, 15 Comments
I’m getting tired of running software.complete.org myself. Redmine eats up CPU like crazy when web bots hit it, despite me preparing the most restrictive robots.txt I’m comfortable with. So I’m looking at other options. Some features I want (though not really showstoppers if missing) are the ability to close bug tickets via changelog messages, ability [...]
Change
August 4th, 2009, 4 Comments
There’s a lot of change going on lately. Jacob used to go to daycare twice a week, but with Terah being a full-time stay-at-home mom, that’s not happening anymore. Thursday was his last day there, and I think he and I both are going to miss it. Jacob always got to ride with me to [...]
