VueScan – getting an old scanner to work on Mavericks

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I had an old Canon USB scanner sitting in my home office and had wondered how to get it working with my iMac running Mavericks. I also have an ancient parallel port Canon scanner and an elderly Fujitsu ScanSnap on an old WinXP Gateway PC. Whenever I wanted to scan something, I had to fire up the old XP box. There had to be a better way! I googled around a bit, and stumbled across VueScan. I downloaded the code (in demo mode, it puts a watermark on the output, but you can use all the features) and was amazed that it very efficiently drove the old Canon. At $40 for a basic license (cross platform, PC, Mac, Linux, and up to 4 systems), it was more than I was hoping to pay, but it got me a scanner with a lot of software functionality for less than buying new hardware. Plus, it appeals to my “green” side, trying to keep old electronics functional without sending them to the landfill. I knew I’d kept that old scanner around for a reason. I’m just beginning to play with the functionality of the software, it’s very full-featured. If you find yourself trying to bring an old scanner to life, or if you are just unsatisfied with the software that came with your scanner, check out VueScan.

Book Review, “Average is Over” by Tyler Cowan

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I read this book after seeing a review in the Lexington column of The Economist magazine. The Economist review is good, but I do have a few quibbles with the book. First, let me say that the general theme, “average is over,” is I believe, right. I agree with Cowan that those who are able to work effectively with electronic devices and tools will be those who are able to hold down the higher paying jobs of the 21st century. Effective education is a part of the equation, as are motivation, perseverance, and native intelligence. Those who lack one or more of these qualities will have a hard time being in the “top 15%” of society, as Cowan postulates.

Now, on to my issues with the book. Cowan’s focus on chess, while understandably important to him, is but one case study, and I think that he uses empirical observations about chess and chess computer programs to project a narrow domain on both human endeavor and computational theory. Not only that, but he lets this example run on far too long. More important, though, is Cowan’s focus on “genius machines” and their ability to develop theoretical frameworks beyond the ken of humans. In chess or other computational problems, there are data and algorithms. Lots of data and sophisticated algorithms can produced results that are beyond human abilities due to the immense amount of computation and number crunching involved. By mining data, computers can find correlations that we didn’t know existed. But, can they determine if a relationship is causality or coincidence? To the extent that the answer is “computable” a computer is a wonderful tool.

I’m much less sanguine about a set of silicon having a spark (perhaps at the Kurzweil singularity) that allows it to develop theoretical frameworks (without significant fundamental changes in the science of computers). More data and faster execution won’t make the qualitative changes necessary for those results. Cowan is right that we are getting further removed from understanding the technologies behind our tablet computers and smartphones. However, as “magical” as the iPad may be, as Arthur Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” At its heart, the iPad, your desktop computer, or a supercomputer is still a von Neumann computer with one instruction from a program being executed after another. The processor (running its own sophisticated microcode) may support parallelism, predictive execution of code, modification of the code it’s executing, and a myriad of other performance enhancing features. However, it still at heart is executing one instruction after another and processing data with those instructions…albeit very quickly with a precision that a human can never match. Cowan’s economic analysis may be good, and his theory on the impact of technology on the workplace generally accurate, but he’s not a computer scientist.

All in all, it’s a good book. While my left-leaning democratic tendencies make me believe that we do need to provide a higher level of social services for those who are digital roadkill, Cowan’s thesis that the economic impact of technology is just beginning to be felt is something that I agree with wholeheartedly. Cowan highlights problems that our politicians need to address and that the electorate needs to understand.

Mackerel are still running…

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I returned to the coast Thursday evening, but the weather forecasts had been going downhill all week. The cold front that was to kick out the low pressure area was going to stall and produce rain on Saturday. Hmmmm. I was planning to work remotely on Friday, including 4 hours worth of scheduled search committee phone interviews in the late afternoon, but Friday was going to be the best weather day of the next three days. OK, nothing time-critical that needs to be done on Friday morning, so shift a half-day to Saturday, when I’m sitting in the house watching it rain, anyway. Fish in the morning and do concalls in the afternoon. Sounds like a plan!

Jan and I headed out after breakfast Friday (and a quick beach walk for the dogs, who were quite pissed about getting left), launched and motored thru Bogue Inlet, and started searching the sky for birds working fish. Didn’t see any, so we just rolled the trolling lines off the stern and headed east. After 10-20 minutes, I spotted a disturbance on the water, soon followed by a flock of gulls, as we headed in that direction. We picked up a couple of small blues on the Gotcha’s. Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, we started seeing fish and bird activity all around. We caught a couple small Spanish along with more blues. We trolled for probably an hour more until we’d boated a half-dozen mackerel, all I wanted to clean and for eating while fresh. We released a good number of blues. I tried to plug up some fish while they were active, but the pods were quick to the surface and then sounded, and I couldn’t get in range with the plugging rod, much less the flyrod. Besides, the bite had slacked off, anyway. We toasted another successful fishing trip and headed in.

more mackerel-1024

Going thru the inlet, the tide was running out fast, and the rollers were big at the bar, several feet up and down the waves as we went thru. The “Defined Benefit” did a great job on that. When I got past that and sped up to plane, I noted that there was at least a 5mph difference between the GPS speed and the “water speed” on the boat speedometer, and the buoys were leaning heavily seaward.

Got back, did calls, hosed down the boat, pulled the fish out of the fridge and cleaned them.

That’s my kind of multi-tasking day…

Listening to the raindrops already falling outside…

First fishing trip on the “Defined Benefit”

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The weather this past weekend was not the best, but Sunday was nice enough to take the boat out for a few hours of fishing. I’d moved some fishing gear on board, putting on a couple of boat rods for trolling, as well as plugging rod, and a variety of casting and trolling lures. I’ve also put my 9wt flyrod on board as well for times when the fish are on the surface.

It was overcast and cool with a 10 to 15 mph north wind as Jan and I headed from the ramp, around Archers Point, under the bridge, and out of the sound thru Bogue Inlet. The beach here faces south, so the north wind flattens out the ocean like a lake for the first couple miles offshore. As we headed out the channel, I spotted a cluster of boats around the first sea buoy. Didn’t see any birds working or signs of obvious fish activity, but I dropped a couple of lines off the stern and headed generally east (parallel to Bogue Banks), about a mile offshore. After a while, I took off the Hopkins and gold spoon I’d been trolling and put on two Gotcha plugs. Then I looked and saw some birds working the water several hundred yards away and we turned and headed in that direction. I got out the plugging rod and moved to the bow while Jan had the helm. Soon, she said, “is this rod supposed to be bouncing like this?” I put down the plugging rod and went to the stern and pulled in a nice Spanish Mackerel. We trolled a bit more, and picked up some small bluefish. A couple times we had more than one on, and Jan had to bring one in. The blues were vigorously working the water all around and I caught several on the plugging rod. I thought about rigging up my flyrod but decided to leave it in the rack.

We moved around the area, which oddly only a few boats were on. There was some vigorous disturbance on the water and we moved closer. I’m not sure what was there, but they were big. Saw dorsal and tail fins that made me think it was a pod of sharks. Jan asked if we could put some distance between us and them 😉 . One of the boat rods dipped again, and it was another Spanish, bigger than the first. By now, the sun was out and it was warming up, contrary to the forecasts. We puttered around a bit more, plugging up some more blues, and then decided we’d had a great time and headed for port. A great day! I’ll be back this coming weekend, and hope to repeat!

Picture of Joel with two mackerel

Nice Spanish Mackerel!

New Chromebooks

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More new Chromebooks are trickling out. This week, HP announced their new ARM-based Chromebook (uses the same processor as the Samsung XE303, introduced a year ago), but more interesting, I believe, is the first formal announcement of an Intel Haswell-based system (a modified version, with less cache and lower speed, so it doesn’t carry the Haswell branding), the Acer C720. This system should have performance equivalent to standard Celeron-based Chromebooks (i.e. a bit better than the HP) and phenomenal battery life (in the 8-9 hour range). It also has 4GB of RAM, which makes a significant difference in Chrome OS performance. Rumors are that new Chromebox announcements are right around the corner as well.

As always, you need to understand what a Chrome OS device is and is not in determining if it’s right for you. It does not run Windows. You cannot install Windows programs on it. It does not run Mac OS X. It runs a variant of Linux, but you do not have administrative rights and can only install software from the Chrome Web Store, or run web-enabled applications from a hosted site. However, if you live your technology life in the cloud, and in particular if you have embraced the Google ecosystem, it’s an amazing device. Cheap, simple, foolproof.

Google will now sign HIPAA BAA for Google Apps…

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A very significant development that I’d missed. Last month, Google announced that they would sign HIPAA Business Associate Agreements (BAA) for Google Apps. This is a significant sign of maturation in the cloud, and was important competitively for Google, since Microsoft will do the same for Office 365. As the HIPAA Security Officer for UNCG (a Google-adopting school) this is potentially a very big thing. We, like many universities, are a HIPAA Hybrid Entity (parts of the institution are subject to HIPAA and parts are not). We have HIPAA responsibilities in some of our clinics as well as our Student Health area. I’ve not looked at the BAA so I can’t speak to the terms, but this is quite interesting.

New boat, “Defined Benefit”…

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Boat picture

The Defined Benefit

I’ve been wanting a new boat, one that was a bit bigger to make it easier to expand fishing opportunities (such as running over to Cape Lookout), as well as carry more people and more dogs 😉 . We’d actually planned to buy it next spring, but Jan found a 2013 closeout model like I wanted, with a good price. That’ll teach her to Internet shop! Anyway, the bottom line is that I got a Carolina Skiff “Ultra Elite” 21, with a 150 Suzuki. Took her out today for her maiden voyage. Ran very well, especially on a very windy, choppy day on Bogue Sound. Nice dry ride. The hull is a semi-vee that flattens out at the stern for a relatively shallow draft of about 10″ (excluding lower unit) so it should be good for running around the shoals in the sound. We toasted the first voyage with a glass of prosecco at the Point.

So, what to name this boat? We called the previous boat (a Carolina Skiff 1765 DLX) Sandbar Hopper, and we’ll have fond memories of the last five years with her. This new boat is more or less my retirement present, as I’m stepping down at the end of December, so I’ve decided to call this one Defined Benefit as without a pension, there wouldn’t be a boat 😉 . The next step is to figure out the font, color and size of the lettering and order it from Overton’s! I’ve got to install the VHF radio, but will have to wait for Santa to bring me a chartplotter.

Enough for now…tomorrow, I’ll sort out some fishing rods and load up. See you on the water!

Adding memory to the Acer C710-2833 Chromebook

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I decided to take the plunge and upgrade the memory on my Acer Chromebook. Ostensibly it’s up-gradable per the Acer website, tho each system ships with a “you void the warranty if you remove this” sticker over the single screw that closes the case on the Acer. The system has two SODIMM slots but only one is populated. I’ve been quite happy with the 2GB C710-2833 with vRAM configured, but it did suffer from lags repainting the screen when switching from tab to tab. On compatibility recommendation from Chromebook Central, I bought a “Kingston Value RAM 4GB 1600MHz PC3-12800 DDR3 Non-ECC CL11 SODIMM SR x8 Notebook Memory (KVR16S11S8/4)” from Amazon for $38.99. I put it in the open slot and Chrome OS was quite happy with 6GB total (the new 4GB stick plus the OEM 2GB stick). I did turn on vRAM at 3GB, but it’s not been used so far. I’m showing 2.5GB free, with 15 tabs open (plus the Weatherbug, Google Keep and Files apps), with the system up for over a day (per “top”). A very good upgrade! With the original $187 cost of the C710-2833, this takes it to $226 for the system as it’s configured today…not bad for what it does for me!

Have mobiles (phones/tablets) entered their “stable” phase?

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Perusing the tech news this morning, I came upon a very cogent article from Wired on the current state of the smartphone technology space and marketplace. I think this crystalizes a number of things that I’ve been observing and thinking. I’ve still got my 2010 original iPad. It is beginning to have a harder time running today’s software, but getting a new one is simply having a better tool that works in the same way. I can still do a lot of productive things with my iPad that I could not do before, such as as grading papers for my class using PDF markup, which is a great use case for a tablet. I’ll eventually get a new one, but not yet. My iPhone 4S is not the sleekest or fanciest phone around, but it does run the new iOS 7, giving it new life. There’s nothing radical in iOS 7, but it continues to make the iPhone experience very satisfying. I’d like a new phone, but I think I can stretch it for another year, plus I just got a nice, new waterproof case that won’t work with the new form device form factor. There are nice Android-based tablets and phones out there, but what’s the difference, other than slightly different ways of doing the same things, plus variations in screen sizes and a few interfaces?

That’s where we are now, incremental evolution, and “me too.” I think that this is the reason for the buildup and subsequent denouement when Apple didn’t introduce “one more thing” that was truly revolutionary. Folks want to think that there is some new paradigm waiting to be exposed, when in many respects, I think that the next paradigm changes will be in business models, particular in entertainment content, as we leverage our existing tools (or incremental innovations in those tools). We’ve reached a plateau in mobile that reminds me of the PC marketplace once the basic design, form factor and software stack had been determined in the early 1990’s (Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, with the subsequent wave of application software innovation that built upon that foundation).

I think that is one reason that I’m excited about Chrome OS. It’s not that it’s new amazing hardware, it’s that Chrome OS is a new (old, back to terminals 😉 ?) way of looking at things. It challenges business models, but it’s not about hardware innovation. It may be another 10 years (or more) before we see another industry-shaping, game changing product like the iPod or iPhone. Or, it may be happening now with 3D printing and we just don’t quite know it, and 3D printing hasn’t yet had its “iPhone moment.”