Category Archives: Geek Stuff

Geek Stuff, General

Time Warp

I decided to try cataloging my home library on the PC. I really like Readerware, I first looked at them about 8 years ago, but didn’t have the energy to do a serious inventory. One of the neat things with Readerware is that you can use a bar-code scanner to read in the ISBN from a book and the app will go out into the internet and get all the relevant details for you. I downloaded their latest version for Linux and tried it out. It has promise.

But, Elaine has convinced me to use Alexandria, an open-source Linux app available through Ubuntu, so I have been spending the weekend getting started entering books. Being able to enter an ISBN number and then get all the title, author info entered automatically is certainly helpful. Still slow going. Alexandria also can use a bar code scanner, I just wish I could find that CueCat I got eight years ago when I first contemplated a catalog.

I need to see how the system works under load. I have entered a couple of hundred books so far and Alexandria seems to bog down a bit at startup but runs OK once the database is all loaded.

Readerware seemed to work well under a load, I got about 160 books into Readerware before copying the ISBNs to Alexandria. I did notice that Readerware accessed better source databases than Alexandria. RW uses the Library of Congress and Powell’s, which Alexandria doesn’t. They both use Amazon and B&N

It is nice to get the cover art downloaded as well

I did download one ISBN for “Time Future” by Maxine McArthur. The publishing date was 1954, the author was born in 1962. I doublechecked the frontpiece and found it was published in 1999. I just thought it was interesting the the dates were so off for the time story.

Onward

Geek Stuff, General

1+1 equals whatever you want it to

This is what happened:

On September 3, 1967, at 04.50 in the morning, the traffic everywhere in
Sweden was directed over to the right side of the road and stopped. Everything
stood absolutely still for 10 minutes, and at 05.00, when it started again,
all road users in Sweden from heavy trucks to cyclists were already on the
right side of the road, and they have stayed there since.

from

And this is how Dvorak starts a rant on the Digital TV conversion (coming Feb 17, 2009):

By John C. Dvorak
Last update: 3:46 p.m. EST Dec. 12, 2008
BERKELEY,
Calif. (MarketWatch) — There is a story about how Sweden changed from
driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right side back in
1967. The Swedes, being orderly, decided to let the trucks and buses
switch to the right side of the road for the first week of the
transition, and then cars switched on the second week.

Is there a story about Sweden changing the way he says? I don’t know, I never heard of it. But it sort of defeats the purpose of his rant to start off with a lie. If it is supposed to be a joke then it doesn’t seem appropriate since the digital TV cut over is being done in one fell swoop.  Of course it might defeat the purpose of his rant if he mentioned that the Swedish car accident rate reached a low point at the time of the cut over.

Geek Stuff, General

That was fast

Elaine posted a link on how to use leftover Netflix flaps and I surprised her 5 minutes later with this:

Netflix Tray Origami
Netflix Tray Origami

I have a few extra flaps laying around.

I also wanted to show off my new monitor, a Samsung 943BWX. It has a 16:10 aspect ration and you can rotate the screen so you get a profile instead landscape presentation. Very neat. As you can see on the screen, I was able to get the equivalent of two screens of the origami instructions at one time.

Elaine was rather surprised at how easy it was to configure the X11 file to rotate the display and to have it actually work.

Note to self- don’t use a black-sided flap for the origami if you are going to take a picture of it.

Geek Stuff

A New Cross Poster

My old Cross Posting application seemed to stop working when I upgraded to the latest version of Word Press, so I am trying a new one:

Live+Press allows WordPress posts to be automatically crossposted to a LiveJournal user blogs. This fork of the plugin is licensed under GPLv3. All contributions and suggestions are welcome. More plugin details and help can be found at the plugin home page on google code. Originally written by Jason Goldsmith By Tania Morell (aka digsite).

The old one was

LiveJournal Comments 1.0.3

This plugin displayes a number of comments in posts crossposted to LiveJournal. You can see how if works here. By Alexander Bishop.

Geek Stuff

It’s getting weird

When I looked earlier at LJ it didn’t have my posts for the past month and wouldn’t let you comment on the LJ test posts. Now they are all there with comments. Boy, Elaine is good. Didn’t even get on the PC and fixed the problem.

Geek Stuff

Crossposting

My Live Journal postings have been scarce for the past month. This has been because I typically write my posts on eg and let a crossposter put them in my Live Journal (not quite Live Journal) But, Word Press was updated and the crossposter didn’t work for a while. Elaine finally figured how to make it work. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to change the parameter that allows LJ comments to stay on LJ. It looks like for the moment you have to jump over to eg to comment.

Maybe Elaine will figure it out.

Jack