Monthly Archives: August 2009

Looking for a Linux-compatible scanner

August 30, 2009UncategorizedJohn Goerzen

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 the precision of a sheetfed scanner just isn’t up to a flatbed.

The Epson has never been supported by SANE directly. There was an epkowa driver, but the 4180 epkowa driver hasn’t been updated in ages and isn’t compatible with any modern Linux distro.

So, I’m looking for a flatbed scanner for photos and documents (no need for negatives; that’s the THIRD scanner on my desk.) The most important requirement is that it work well with Linux. The next most important requirement is that it have as good scanning quality as possible for an under-$200 scanner.

If it’s an all-in-one (with a printer), I’m fine with that, as long as it meets the above requirements. Any suggestions?

Preschool Update

August 27, 2009UncategorizedJohn Goerzen

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 car when we got there, and Jacob went it full explore mode. He walked a few feet, and happily said “Ooo! There a ditch here! It has water sometimes.” We went inside, and he looked around for about 5 seconds, then was off. It didn’t take him long to find the toy train, the bulldozer, and the school’s bird. He was so busy, in fact, that he didn’t even notice the snacks that were set out until I pointed them out to him.

It’s hard to describe the building. You walk in and you immediately understand that the owner knows a lot about kids, and providing them a creative, interesting, and educational environment. In one corner, there’s a record player that’s probably older than the preschool, and a CD player right above it. Then there’s a little reading nook with some books, headphones, and cassette player. I’m sure Jacob will enjoy learning about cassettes and records, which we don’t really have out at home anymore.

The owner’s husband built most of the furniture for the preschool himself 30 years ago. He figured it would last maybe 10 years, but is still holding up well and gets a new coat of paint every few years. So Jacob will be sitting on the same chairs I used to sit on.

Most importantly, there is no TV to be seen anywhere in the preschool. No computer in there, either. But there is a large outdoor playground — the fun type that I used to enjoy as a child, not the boring plastic type that I see so much these days.

It reminds me a lot of Mr. Rogers. There isn’t expensive technology or a fancy building, but good old-fashioned creative play. Just what children need. I’ll be very happy that Jacob will be there, and I think he will be too.

Resurrecting Old VHS Videos (and Panasonic DMR-EZ38VK Review)

August 26, 2009Family, Reviews, TVdvd, vhsJohn Goerzen

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 as far back as 1987.

You might imagine there are several problems here. One is that VHS tapes degrade over time. Those that were recorded in EP mode (6 hours on a T-120 tape) are especially prone to this. I’ve been worried about how well those 22-year-old tapes will perform even now.

Another problem is that VHS tapes are getting hard to watch these days. We own a VCR, but it’s probably been 7 years since it was hooked up to anything on a regular basis.

So I have meant for some time to convert these old VHS recordings to DVD format. My initial plan was to use the PVR-250 hardware MPEG-2 encoder card that is used with MythTV to do that. But it’s in the basement, used with MythTV, and would generally be a hassle. As a result, I’ve been “meaning to do” this project for about 5 years, and haven’t.

Last night, I found that tape from 1987. It has a few priceless seconds of my grandpa Klassen on it — he passed away in 1990.

The Panasonic DMR-EZ38VK

I initially set out looking for a dedicated DVD recorder with an S-video input, but wound up buying one with an integrated VHS deck as well: the Panasonic DMR-EZ38VK.

I started with a DVD recorder review on CNet. I was primarily interested in video quality. Surprisingly, it seems there is significant difference in video quality among DVD recorders, which was what led me to the Panasonic line.

I was initially planning on a DMR-EA18K or DMR-EZ18K (the difference is whether or not they include a TV tuner). I was having trouble finding them in stock at the vendors I normally use, and wound up with the DMR-EZ38VK instead. B&H had a open-box demo unit at a special discount, so I snapped it up.

Video Quality

I’ve been recording most items to DVD in “SP” mode, which stores 2h per single-layer DVD. I’d concur with CNet: this produces spectacular results. I don’t think I’ve noticed any MPEG compression artifacts at all in this mode.

Some items, such as TV programs or home recordings with little motion, I’ve recorded in “LP” mode. This mode stores 4 hours on a single-layer DVD. It’s also surprisingly good, considering the amount of compression needed. I have noticed MPEG artifacts in that mode, though not to an extremely annoying degree.

The copying process

I start by popping an empty disc in the drive. Then I’ll put in the VHS tape and position it to the place where I want it to start copying. Then I hit Functions -> Copy -> VHS to DVD -> without finalizing, and away it goes. It automatically detects end-of-tape and helpfully won’t copy 6 hours of static.

When a tape is done copying, you can copy from more tapes to the disc, eject it and finalize it later, or work with it.

When I’m ready to finish a disc, I’ll go and change the “disc name”, which is what shows up at the top of the disc menu that the unit generates. If I feel ambitious, I might change the titles of individual titles as well. But all of this has to be done with an on-screen keyboard, and thus takes awhile, so I usually don’t. Finalizing commits the menu to disc and fixates it, and takes about a minute.

Track Detection

This feature is both a blessing and a curse.

The Panasonic recorder can often detect the break between a recording on a VHS. Newer VCRs would explicitly mark these, but it can detect it even with older camcorders with reasonable accuracy.

When it detects this, it creates a new title on the DVD. This takes a few seconds, so it also rewinds the VHS tape a few seconds, then starts copying again.

Unfortunately, if you’re just wanting to watch one long recording all the way through, this results in a few seconds being duplicated right before each scene transition, which is rather jarring. There is no way to disable this feature, either. The only workaround is to read from an external VCR. But if you do that, you lose the end-of-tape detection.

Generally I’ve decided to just live with it for now. It’s a cheap price to pay for an otherwise pretty good workflow.

Other annoyances

While copying, you can’t access the position indicators for either the VHS deck or the DVD recorder. So you don’t know how far along on the tape you are, or how much space is left on the DVD, until copying stops.

Also, it would be very nice to be able to tell it “copy 23 minutes and 15 seconds from VHS to DVD” when you know you don’t want to copy the whole tape.

The unit also has SD and USB ports for reading digital video. Frustratingly, a USB keyboard can’t be used to edit disc or track titles. That seems like an obvious and cheap feature to have.

Overall

Overall I am happy with the unit. It produces very good quality results, and is pretty easy to use overall. I don’t think I’d pick a different one if I had to do it again. But it could be made better for people that are copying large numbers of VHS tapes to DVD.

Generally, though, I can just start the copy and let it sit for a couple of hours, trusting it to do the reasonable thing with a tape. That’s convenient enough that I can get other things done while it’s copying, and takes little enough of my time that I’m actually working through stacks of tapes now.

Update 8/27 I have now tried some discs from this playing back on my PS3 connected to a 1080p HDTV. On that setup, compression artifacts are noticeable at the 2hr setting, and more are noticeable at the 4hr setting. I don’t think that they are any necessarily any more noticeable than any other home-produced DVD, though, especially on the SP setting. They had not been very visible on SD equipment.

Prebuilt PC suggestions?

August 16, 2009UncategorizedJohn Goerzen

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 don’t really know what’s good.

My general requirements are: works with Linux, has a flexible BIOS (many of the low-end home PCs have a limited BIOS with few options), is a quiet and energy-efficient as possible, quad-core, 2GB or more RAM, SATA. Nice to have would be fanless nVidia video, but I could also take one with cheap onboard video and move an existing PCIe card to it.

Suggestions?

Mailing List Hosting

August 10, 2009Online LifeJohn Goerzen

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 Listar). Unfortunately, Ecartis has not seen upstream work in several years, and as a result was removed from Debian in May.

That got me to thinking: what am I going to do with the mailing lists I host? I’m not pleased with my current list archives, which are very similar to what you get from Mailman: no search engine, and every thread is broken at the end of each month.

I also want to preserve my archives.

I’m presently looking at whether to continue hosting the lists myself, or turn to something like Google Groups or Nabble. Hosting it myself, the main choice is Mailman, which really has more features than I need in most areas, and fewer than I need for archiving.

For other hosts, I’ve looked at Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, and Nabble. Google Groups looks like the best option, and even has a (somewhat hidden) way to subscribe via pure email without having a Google account. They can import and export subscriber lists, though not archives.

I’m thinking I’ll also make sure all the lists have full archives at Gmane. Then, based on message IDs, I can generate a bunch of RedirectPermanent lines for Apache to links to the archives don’t get broken.

My current thought for list hosting itself is Google Groups. It would be nice to be free of the hassle of administering a mailing list host, which is nothing special these days. Another benefit of Google Groups is that those people that like web forums (who ARE those people anyway?) get a forum-like interface to the list if they so choose.

Nabble has some interesting features, and can optionally import a full history of a list, but it concentrates far more on the forum than the email aspects. It doesn’t even appear to have basic moderation settings.

The Thrilling Conclusion of Goerzen vs. Dell: Sweet, Sweet Victory

August 9, 2009GeneraldellJohn Goerzen

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 fixing things.

However, I have discovered something that Dell does care about: FEDERAL PROSECUTORS.

I Hate Junk Mail

Before continuing, I need to answer a FAQ: why I hate junk mail. It’s bad for the environment, takes time to process, and fills up my recycling bins. We only get our recycling picked up once a month (we’re lucky to get that where we live), and I hate filling them up with catalogs for things I’ll never use. Also junk mail has a way of multiplying like rabbits. Get on one list, and pretty soon you’re on dozens.

Normally when I get junk mail, I’ll find the website or call the company that sent it to me and ask to be removed. And then they will stop sending me junk mail.

That approach has worked with every single company that I’ve tried it on. With one exception: Dell. Even though ignoring my requests puts them in violation of their own privacy policy.

The Story So Far

It’s been a little while since I’ve written about this, so here’s the condensed version. Click the links for more details.

Back in early 2007 — yes, more than 2 years ago — I had a lapse of judgement and tried to get a Dell monitor serviced under warranty. After a frustrating evening of trying to explain to them that I have a Dell monitor but not a Dell PC, they finally agreed to fix it. And put me on their “flamingo pink Inspiron catalog” mailing list.

I went to their website trying to get off the list. They have many different list removal forms, and I tried them all. I called them. I even got a comment from Debbie at Dell HQ in Texas, offering to try to help. Despite repeated attempts, she didn’t (or couldn’t).

So, in December of 2007, I decided to let Jacob rip apart my junk mail (with associated cute photos).

By August 2008, I still wasn’t off their list. I tried everything, and Dell customer service replied to my request to be REMOVED from their snail mail list by saying they would ADD me to their email list. Lovely.

So I finally obtained a prohibitory order (see scanned copy on that link) in July 2008, which enforces federal law (39 USC 3008) prohibiting Dell from mailing me any more of those catalogs. From August 25, 2008 on, it was a federal offense for Dell to send me any more catalogs.

Guess how successful that was. By September 2008, they were back at their old tricks, sending me catalogs.

The New Bits

So — I sent in a couple these catalogs to the USPS as evidence of violation. By February, I received this letter, which made me Very Happy:

(see also larger version)

Yes, that’s right. The United States Postal Service went to court to obtain a court order against Dell, prohibiting them from sending me more catalogs.

And — it was successful! It’s been several months since I’ve received any more catalogs from Dell.

It took two years (it wouldn’t have had to, but I didn’t push things along very fast from my end, giving them lots of time to comply each step of the way), but I am finally free of Dell mailings.

I suspect some federal attorneys in some remote office somewhere owe their jobs to Dell’s noncompliance of postal and privacy regulations.

Now if only I can get Rep. Tiahrt to stop sending me junk mail… He keeps sending me literature, and I don’t even live in his district.

Review: Free Software Project Hosting

August 9, 2009Programming, Reviewshosting, projectsJohn Goerzen

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 git. That’s not necessarily a big problem; I can always keep on hosting git repos at git.complete.org. It is a bit annoying, though, since I wouldn’t get to nicely link commit messages to automatic issue closing.

A big requirement of mine is being able to upload tarballs or ZIP files from the command line in an automated fashion. I haven’t yet checked to see if Google Code exports an API for this. Google Code also has a lifetime limit of 25 project creations, though rumor has it they may lift the limit if you figure out where to ask and ask nicely.

URL: googlecode.com

Gitorious

Gitorious is one of the two Git-based sites that put a strong emphasis on community. Like Github, Gitorious tries to make it easy for developers to fork projects, submit pull requests to maintainers, and work together. This aspect of it does hold some appeal to me, though I have never worked with one of these sites, so I am somewhat unsure of how I would use it.

The downside of Gitorious or Github is that they tie me to Git. While I’m happy with Git and have no plans to change now, I’ve changed VCSs many times over the years when better tools show up; I’ve used, in approximately this order, CVS, Subversion, Arch/tla, baz, darcs, Mercurial, and Git, with a brief use of Perforce at a job that required it. I may use Git for another 3 years, but after 5 years will Git still be the best VCS out there? I don’t know.

Gitorious fails several of my requirements, though. It has no issue tracker and no downloads area.

It can spontaneously create a tar.gz file from the head of any branch, but not a zip file. It is possible to provide a download of a specific revision, but this is not very intuitive for the end user.

Potential workarounds include using Lighthouse for bug tracking (they do support git integration for changelog messages) and my own server to host tarballs and ZIP files — which I could trivially upload via scp.

URL: gitorious.org

Github

At first glance, this is a more-powerful version of Gitorious. It has similar community features, has a wiki, but adds an issue tracker, download area, home page capability, and a bunch of features. It has about a dozen pre-built commit hooks, that do everything from integrate with Lighthouse to pop commit notices into Jabber.

But there are surprising drawbacks, limitations, and even outright bugs all throughout. And it all starts with the user interface.

On the main project page, the user gets both a download button and a download tab. But they don’t do the same thing. Talk about confusing!

The download button will make a ZIP or tarball out of any tag in the repo. The download tab will also do the same, though presented in a different way; but the tab can also offer downloads for files that the maintainer has manually uploaded. Neither one lets you limit the set of tags presented, so if you have an old project with lots of checkpoints, the poor end user has to sift through hundreds of tags to find the desired version. It is possible to make a tarball out of a given branch, so a link to the latest revision could be easy, but still.

Even worse, there’s a long-standing issue where several of the tabs get hidden under other on-screen elements. The wiki tab, project administration tab, and sometimes even the download tab are impacted. It’s been open since February with no apparent fix.

And on top of that, uploading arbitrary tarballs requires — yes — Flash. Despite requests to make it scriptable, they reply that there is no option but Flash and they may make some other option sometime.

The issue tracker is nice and simple. But it doesn’t support attachments. So users can’t attach screenshots, debug logs, or diffs.

I really wanted to like Github. It has so many features for developers. But all these surprising limitations make it a pain both for developers (I keep having to “view source” to find the link to the wiki or the project admin page) and for users (confusing download options, lack of issue attachments). In the end, I think the display bug is a showstopper for me. I could work around some of the others by having a wiki page with links to downloads and revisions and giving that out as the home page perhaps. But that’s a lot of manual maintenance that I would rather avoid.

URL: github.com

Launchpad

Launchpad is the project management service operated by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. While Launchpad can optionally integrate well with Ubuntu, that isn’t required, so non-developers like me can work with it fine.

Launchpad does offer issue tracking, but no wiki. It has a forum of sorts though (the “Answers” section). It has some other features, such as blueprints, that would likely only be useful for projects larger than the ones I would plan to use it for.

It does have a downloads area, and they say they have a Python API. I haven’t checked it out, but if it supports scriptable uploads, that would work for me.

Besides the lack of a wiki, Launchpad is also tied to the bzr VCS. bzr was one of the early players in DVCS, written as a better-designed successor to tla/Arch and baz, but has no compelling features over Git or Mercurial for me today. I have no intention of switching to or using it any time soon.

Launchpad does let you “import” branches from another VCS such as Git or svn. I set up an “import” branch for a test project yesterday. 12 hours later, it still hasn’t imported anything; it’s just sitting at “pending review.” I have no idea if it ever will, or why setting up a bzr branch requires no review but a git branch requires review. So I am unable to test the integration between it and the changesets, which is really annoying.

So, some possibilities here, but the bzr-only thing really bugs me. And having to have my git trees reviewed really goes against the “quick and simple” project setup that I would have preferred to see.

URL: launchpad.net

Indefero

Indefero is explicitly a Google Code clone, but aims to be a better Google Code than Google Code. The interface is similar to Google’s — very simple and clean. Unlike Google Code, Indefero does support Git. It supports a wiki, downloads area, and issue tracker. You can download the PHP-based code and run it yourself, or you can get hosting from the Indefero site.

I initially was favorably impressed by Indefero, but as I looked into it more, I am not very impressed right now. Although it does integrate with Git, and you can refer to an issue number in a Git commit, a Git commit can’t close an issue. Git developers use git over ssh to interact with it, but it supports only one ssh key per user — so this makes it very annoying if I wish to push changes from all three of the machines I regularly do development with. Despite the fact that this is a “high priority” issue, it hasn’t been touched by the maintainer in almost a month, even though patches have been offered.

Indefero can generate files based on any revision in git, or based on the latest on any branch, but only in ZIP format (no tar.gz).

Although the program looks very nice and the developer clueful, Indefero has only one main active developer or committer, and he is a consultant that also works on other projects. That makes me nervous about putting too many eggs into the Indefero basket.

URL: indefero.net

Trac

Trac is perhaps the gold standard of lightweight project management apps. It has a wiki, downloads, issue tracking, and VCS integration (SVN only in the base version, quite a few others with 3rd-party plugins). I ran trac myself for awhile.

It also has quite a few failings. Chief among them is that you must run a completely separate Trac instance for each project. So there is no possible way to go to some dashboard and see all bugs assigned to you from all projects, for instance. That is what drove me away from it initially. That and the serious performance problems that most of its VCS backends have.

URL: trac.edgewall.org

Redmine

Redmine is designed to be a better Trac than Trac. It uses the same lightweight philosophy in general, has a wiki, issue tracker, VCS integration, downloads area, etc. But it supports multiple projects in a sane and nice way. It’s what I currently use over on software.complete.org.

Redmine has no API to speak of, though I have managed to cobble together an automatic uploader using curl. It was unpleasant and sometimes breaks on new releases, but it generally gets the job done.

I have two big problems with Redmine. One is performance. It’s slow. And when web spiders hit it, it sometimes has been so slow that it takes down my entire server. Because of the way it structures its URLs, it is not possible to craft a robots.txt that does the right thing — and there is no plan to completely fix it. There is, however, a 3rd-party plugin that may help.

The bigger problem relates to maintaining and upgrading Redmine. This is the first Ruby on Rails app I have ever used, and let me say it has made me want to run away screaming from Ruby on Rails. I’ve had such incredible annoyances installing and upgrading this thing that I can’t even describe what was wrong. All sorts of undocumented requirements for newer software, GEMS that are supposed to work with it but don’t, having to manually patch things so they actually work, conflicts with what’s on the system, and nobody in the Redmine, Rails, or Ruby communities being able to help. I upgrade rarely because it is such a hassle and breaks in such spectacular ways. I don’t think this is even Redmine’s fault; I think it’s a Rails and Ruby issue, but nevertheless, I am stuck with it. My last upgrade was a real mess — bugs in the PostgreSQL driver — the newer one that the newer GEM that the newer Redmine required — were sending invalid SQL to it. Finally patched it myself, and this AFTER the whole pain that is installing gems in Ruby.

I’d take a CGI script written in Bash over Ruby on Rails after this.

That said, Redmine has the most complete set of the features I want of all the programs I’ve mentioned on this page.

URL: redmine.org

Savannah

Savannah is operated by the Free Software Foundation, and runs a fork of the SourceForge software. Its fork does support Git, but lacks a wiki. It has the standard *forge issue tracker, download area, home page support, integrated mailing lists, etc. It also has the standard *forge over-complexity.

There is a command-line SourceForge uploader in Debian that could potentially be hacked to work with Savannah, but I haven’t checked.

URL: savannah.nongnu.org

berlios.de

Appears to be another *forge clone. Similar to Savannah, but with a wiki, ugly page layout, and intrusive ads.

URL: berlios.de

SourceForge

Used to be the gold-standard of project hosting. Now looks more like a back alley in a trashy neighborhood. Ads all over the place, and intrusive and ugly ones at that. The ads make it hard to use the interface and difficult to navigate, especially for newbies. No thanks.

Conclusions

The four options that look most interesting to me are: Indefero, Github, Gitorious, and staying with Redmine. The community features of Github, Gitorious, and Launchpad all sound interesting, but I don’t have the experience to evaluate how well they work in practice — and how well they encourage “drive by commits” for small projects.

Gitorious + Lighthouse and my own download server merits more attention. Indefero still makes me nervous due to the level of development activity and single main developer. Github has a lot of promise, but an interface that is too confusing and buggy for me to throw at end users. That leaves me with Redmine, despite all the Rails aggravations. Adding the bot blocking plugin may just get me what I want right now, and is certainly the path of least resistance.

I am trying to find ways to build communities around these projects. If I had more experience with Github or Gitorious, and thought their community features could make a difference for small projects, I would try them.

Best Free Software project hosting?

August 6, 2009UncategorizedJohn Goerzen

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 to script the uploading of new tarballs, and quick and easy operation.

SourceForge

Immediate fail. It feels like some seedy alley these days. Ads all over, terribly cluttered, and slow. No thanks.

Google Code

Initially it looks great. A couple of things bother me: one, they have a lifetime limit on 25 different projects. I have more than that in my git repos already.

They don’t directly support git right now, which is fine (I like using my own git server anyhow). But even for the VCS they do support, there isn’t a way to close a ticket without having to go to the website.

Savannah

Looks like an interesting option. Still the lack of support for closing tickets from the changeset. I hope that the service will stay around indefinitely, but not a big deal to me if it doesn’t.

Alioth

Similar to Savannah, I guess. Not sure what the pros or cons would be either way.