Scanner on Linux, Anyone

And, speaking of things which annoy me, I’m about to return the third scanner that I have bought, brought home, and discovered is not supported. Two of these scanners are listed as supported, but SANE doesn’t find them when I plug them in.

Yes, I expect I could spend 5 hours tinkering and get it to work, but I don’t have the patience for that sort of nonsense, and, besides, that would probably result in something that sort-of worked, most of the time. And I *really* don’t have the patience for that.

Can someone please tell me what scanner I should buy, if I just want to plug it in and have it work? Am I really going to be tied into the $200+ range to get something that will work out of the box? That would suck, but I’d rather know that now than go through the entire inventory at CompUSless one at a time.

It would probably be faster to write down their inventory, and bring it home to compare against the supported list, since the list is 31 pages printed, and I don’t particularly want to print it all out.

I look forward to the day when hardware manufacturers are aware of Linux to a sufficient degree to mention it on the box, ship drivers, and mention it on their web site.

mod_auth_mysql? Anyone?

I’ve spent the last half hour trying to find mod_auth_mysql, and I’m getting very irate.

There appear to be two main mod_auth_mysqls out there. One was written by Zeev Suraski, and abandonded in October of 1998. The other was written by Vivek Khera, and abandonded some time in summer 2001.

From each of these, there are several forks, resulting, I assume, from folks that like the code, but needed it maintained going forward. I don’t think I’ll list all of these.

And, to further muddy the waters, MANY sites contain a partial mirror of Zeev’s site, including mod_auth_mysql version 2.20, which released in 1998, and contains at least one well publicized security problem.

The most promising versions out there appear to be the version on sourceforge (http://modauthmysql.sourceforge.net/) and the version maintained by Debian (http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/liba/libapache-mod-auth-mysql/, with additional information at http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages2.pl?keywords=libapache-mod-auth-mysql&searchon=names&version=all&release=all)

For those upgrading from earlier versions, note that that Debian version derives from Zeev’s code, while the SourceForge project derives from Vivek’s code. It would be nice if each *CLEARLY* stated this in the documentation, or even in the primary project description, to ease the upgrade path. And perhaps even pointed off to the other project somewhere in the docs.

All of the folks keeping up a page with Zeev’s stuff are not doing anybody any favors. And modules.apache.org … well, there’s a topic for another day. We really need to do something about modules.apache.org. Soon.

Oh, and I should mention that if you are using Apache 2.0, you should take advantage of the new authentication framework, and use mod_authn_dbi, which you can get at http://open.cyanworlds.com/mod_authn_dbi/

“Take a picture at Starbucks” day

I don’t know what to think about this. Evidentally, Starbucks feels that it is a violation of their copyright if you take a picture in any Starbucks store. This strikes me as so utterly absurd, I’m almost inclined to drive right down to the Starbucks in Lexington and snap a few pictures.

Optical mouse

I finally got so fed up with my mouse that I went and bought a Logitech optical mouse. The difference is absolutely astounding. The movement is smooth, regardless of the surface it’s on. It doesn’t get hung up on rough surfaces or inconsistencies in my icky ancient mouse pad. And, best of all, it glows an evil red color when you touch it. What more can you ask for?

..

Wine coffee

I told Denise that I would write up something about their new Cabernet Sauvignon Chocolate Truffle flavored coffee, which is evidentally the only wine-flavored coffee available anywhere. Well, I liked it, but it took me a while to figure out why. My favorite coffee is Kenya and/or Tanzania coffee, which are usually described as having a wine-y flavor. Well, this cabernet coffee tastes like Tanzania coffee, because of the wine flavor. It is really worth trying, and pretty soon you’ll be able to buy it from their web site. Assuming I ever get done with this book so that I can spend any time on other stuff.

Why I don’t go to movies much

I didn’t read the entire review posted on Kuro5hin about Matrix Reloaded, but it contained an interesting summary of why I don’t go to movies much:

It’s not that I don’t like movies; I love them. It’s just that I don’t particularly care for the moviegoing experience. I’d rather wait until the DVD comes out and watch somthing in the comfort of my own home, where I can smoke cigarettes and have a drink, maybe pause it to take a leak or get a snack. Sitting in a freezing theatre without a cigarette for over two hours is too much like going to church, except religious institutions don’t gouge you on the $3.75 medium Pepsi.

While I don’t smoke, and don’t plan to start any time soon, and I’m more of a Coke man than Pepsi, but the spirit is there. There are very few movies that benefit enough from the big screen to offset the unpleasantness of theater experience.

Of course, just MHO, and I’m fully aware that millions of folks disagree with me. But then, that’s why this is *my* blog. Nyeah.

The un-blogification of Google?

According to Jeremy, Google is making some sort of concerted effort to de-value blogs in the determination of what matters on the web. This raises an interesting question – what matters on the web? Since the web was created ab initio to enable us to link from information to more useful information, sure, the stuff that we link to is, in fact, what matters? The fact that Google results change every day is a good thing, not a flaw. What matters changes every day also. That’s why folks watch the news every day, not just once. It will indeed be a great disappointment if he is correct in his assessment. While I don’t particularly care what algorithm they use, the concept itself – stuff that lots of people link to is stuff that matters – makes a great deal of sense.

The perceived danger is very understandable – momentary blips in interest in a particular thingy may cause search results to get skewed that direction for short periods of time, and the semi-permanence of blog archives may make that skew permanent. So then one has to figure out if there is a “correct” answer to a particular search term. That is, is Google an encyclopedia index, or a web search tool? With my loathing of folks letting Google be their research assistant (must elaborate on *that* some day), it seems to me that it should stick to what it’s good at — being a web search tool. And since linking is what the web is all about, if Google drops this aspect, they will quickly lose their top dog status to someone else who will give us what we want.

My first million

Thanks mostly to a large gift that *someone* gave me early on, I have just cleared my first million in the blogshares game. And, in the spirit of his generosity, I’ve been spreading the wealth a little bit also. It is indeed a lot more fun to play the game when you have a ton of cash to sling around. But, then, I suppose that’s true in the real world also. 😉

Strawberry fields

We went strawberry picking today. The farm is out on Handy’s Bend, but the signs for strawberry picking started over at Frankfort Road, over by R.J.Corman. From there, you go all the way to Figg’s Lane, and the whole length of Figg’s Lane, until you get to Handy’s Bend, and then another mile to the farm. If I had known to start with where the strawberry field was, I would have cut about 6 miles off of the trip, but then we would have missed a beautiful drive through the back roads of Jessamine County. This area that used to be all cow farms and tobacco now has some lovely new homes – not the ugly rows and rows of cracker boxes, but some gorgeous wood farm houses and log cabins.

We picked about 4 pounds of strawberries – me, and my mom, and Sarah – and paid just $4 for the lot. Actually, it was a lot closer to 5 pounds, but the farmer rounded down, as they have a tendency to do. He said that they lost a lot of the first crop in the hail and rain last week, but that the second crop was coming up nicely. Hopefully there will still be some left when Zanna gets here next week.

More about trackback vs pingback

So, if I understand Chris correctly, the main complaint with Trackback, compared to Pingback, is a complaint with a particular implementation of it, not necessarily with the concept itself. As far as I can tell, MT does the two things that Chris says that Trackback does not do. Viz, ping URLs which are just mentioned (linked to) in the body of the article, and be able to ping more than one URL with a single article. At least, that’s certainly the way that I understood it when I was setting configuration variables.

What I find irritating is that there are two incompatible ways to do this VERY simple thing, ensuring that no matter which one I choose, I can never be sure that my pings will be acknowledged.

Then again, that’s the nice thing about standards …

The Margin Is Too Narrow