We have a CanoScan 4400F. Recently I've been trying to scan lots of pieces of paper into PDF format so I can dispose of the originals.

Annoyingly, the scanner is completely unsupported under Linux, so I'm having to do this all with Windows. After looking around at the free options for a while, I settled on using the bundled "CanoScan Toolbox" software which mostly works quite well and integrates with buttons on the scanner so I don't have to change focus on my PC to the application to tell it to scan the next page.

In the process of using it heavily, I have discovered that

1. it leaks virtual memory, so you have to restart it every 100-200 pages or it hits the 2GB limit! Naturally you discover this when it has a whole lot of pages you just scanned sitting in memory which you now can't save.


2. it seems to use a quadratic time algorithm for writing PDF files to disk.

So all in all it's not going too badly, as long as I only scan long things in batches of 50 pages or so and remember to restart it every so often. It's a shame that stupid things like this spoil what's generally a reasonably usable piece of software.

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

This just popped into my head:

Many years ago I was listening to a sermon. The priest held up two pieces of paper. "What makes this one worth five pounds, and this one not?"
(I don't know what his text was; something like Ps.145:13, perhaps.)

The same man kept calling out:
"It doesn't have the watermark."
"It doesn't have the hologram."
"It doesn't have the silver strip down the middle."

Eventually, the priest peered down at him and boomed, "Are you an expert forger, sir?"

So suppose there was a spod client for the N900. Suppose it had a dialogue at the start to pick a talker. Which talkers should it come preloaded with?

(Snowplains, obviously; what else is still around?)

I'm making plans to head down to London this weekend. I've got a moderately busy itinerary planned - Bruce Schneier talking to the Open Rights Group on Friday night, marching against climate change on Saturday with the Liberal Democrats, attending No2ID's AGM on Sunday, and having a job interview on Monday.

Everything's a bit up in the air at the moment, but is there anything else going on this weekend that I shouldn't miss, or does anybody fancy meeting up while I'm in the land of gold and poison?

An interesting conversation with mr_parsnip a while back had me thinking about political activists and moral judgements.

If somebody's doing something which is popular but morally dubious, it's not a big stretch to assume that their motives are impure; likewise if they're doing something righteous but unpopular, they're probably doing it for the right reasons. But what if they're doing something which is both justified and popular? How do you know whether they're doing it because it's right, or because they're jumping on the bandwagon?

More interestingly, how do they know themselves? I know a lot of activists and campaigners who set out to achieve a particular end, deliberately in a manner which isn't going to win them any friends. I'm starting to suspect that this is because they don't trust themselves to be nice for fear that they're selling out, or might be accused of selling out by others.

Personally, I think it's easier to be nice and more effective, but I'm also very self-confident that I'm generally doing the right thing for the right reasons. Not least because I have a bunch of awesome mates who're likely to slap me if I screw up on that one...

As some of you may know, I've spent four nights a week in various hotels since mid-April while working in Hemel Hempstead. I figured it would be best to document what I've learned from the experience, in case someone else is thinking of weekends at home and weeknights in hotels.

#1 - There's always a cheaper deal.

Your first port of call should *always* be a hotel site such as hotels.com or laterooms.com, you'll find out where the local hotels are, and how much you should be expecting to pay. Never take anything with less than three stars, as chances are it's got serious negatives such as crap or unsafe parking, stupidly thin walls, or a really uncomfortable bed.

Once you've found the hotel you're interested in, check their site. If they don't have a website, don't go there - that'll save you from a poor or mediocre experience in 90% of cases. Ignore any reviews on the site, especially anything that mentions "the staff being foreign" or "tea making facilities were dire" - these are nutjobs, and you should ignore them out of hand.

If it's a chain, look into whether they have a rewards programme. Whether you plan on staying one week or twenty, sign up to the programme, get the card, and put it in your bag. It might pay off one day! I've got the Best Western Diamond Rewards Card, and I get free upgrades to my room, free newspaper and lots of points for free nights.

#2 - It can never hurt to call.

When calling the hotel, ask what their rate is for tonight, mentioning you've stayed there before and you'll be there for a few nights. Don't mention you might want a recurring agreement, stick to one week at a time. I've often got 30% off without even trying, purely by calling the front desk rather than going through an agent. If they offer you a stupid rate, such as £44.95, they're not going to move on the price - that's their public rate. Accept it or move on.

#3 - Ask at the front desk for "residence rates"

Never talk to the manager first, and don't ask for them - let them introduce you if you need to. Say you're going to be in the area for a few months, and you're wondering if you can block book a lot of dates in advance at a reduced rate. They'll offer something, you should smile, wince slightly, then say that you'll think about it. Don't say no, don't say you have cheaper elsewhere, just say you'll think about it.

When you come back one night, see if you can see the same person on the desk. If there's no-one around they're serving, go talk to them and say you are interested in their residence rate, but it's a little steep. Are they full much, or is it a little negotiable? I've been offered £22 a night before, on the assumption I take it 7 nights a week. I said no, wish I'd said yes - the next month their rates went up to £45/night.

#4 - Don't choose a motel

If you book three weeks in advance, you can get a travelodge room for £29/night, sometimes £19/night. Don't do it unless you can't find anywhere else. Seriously.

When you arrive at a hotel, you want a nice atmosphere, else when you get to your room you'll think you're in a hostel. Travelodges are always full of single dads visiting their children and families on holiday. Best Westerns are always populated with working people who will hang out in the bar and occasionally make nice conversation.

#5 - Don't buy wifi

Wifi at hotels is expensive, and you don't want to spend £30/month on it on a plan, nor £9.99/night in some places. Do yourself a favour, go to Maplin, pick up a Three dongle. It's less than £10, and you can top up 1GB for £10, 3GB for £15 or a whopping 7GB for £20. Sounds like no traffic, but if you're only doing iPlayer, email and *ahem* Google Image Search, I'll be surprised if you get through 1.5GB.

If the hotel has free wifi, it'll get slow about 10pm, you may want to try it out the first night, but try and avoid the 9-11pm times.

#6 - Don't go back to the hotel every night

You'll get really bored of hotels. Do something - find some friends locally or go to the cinema, maybe take up swimming. I did all three.

#7 - Don't eat out every night

Once a week, I'll go to a fast food joint - maybe the chippy or Burger King, and maybe once a week I'll visit somewhere like Harvester (their salads rock, their food doesn't) but in order to stop yourself getting fat-guy-depression, don't eat out every night. Here's a hint - find a pub. Pubs tend to do meals at respectable prices (under a fiver) and will do home cooked stuff like lasagne or casserole. It's good food, and you can get it with a jacket potato instead of chips. Do yourself a favour, and have it with a tea, coffee or orange juice rather than a fizzy drink.

#8 - Don't eat breakfast at the hotel

You may have all the best intentions, but you'll end up eating Full English Breakfast every morning. Do yourself a favour, and stop at a petrol station on the way into work. Pick yourself up an apple or a banana, or one of those nutrigrain bars. Don't get crisps, or a sandwich, or a sausage roll. Get a coffee if you want, I'd recommend an orange juice or something instead. Personal choice. Once again, this is to prevent fat-guy-depression - the fat in the breakfast will make you feel bleurgh really quickly.

#9 - If there's someone at the front desk when you get to the hotel, and there's no-one waiting, go say hello.

These staff get bored, and like the company. If you smile, go over, say hello and all that, they'll do anything for you - including a sly wink as they pass you a free glass of wine if you eat at their restaurant.

#10 - It's not cheaper.

If you work it out, you can get about £30/night, so £120/week total spend. That's cheaper than renting somewhere and paying council tax, bills etc BUT you're *going* to spend more due to not having cooking facilities, more regular trips to the cinema etc. I estimate it at £150-200/week once you factor in all the above, plus the fact that some weeks, you just can't get your cheap nights sometime. I've paid £65/night for an entire week once, because every hotel between £30-55 was full.

If you're going down this route, have yourself an exit plan - if it's for more than 6 months, rent somewhere and spend the occasional weekend down there, preferably in a flatshare from Globrix.com etc.

That's about it, any questions, whack them in the comments box!

We had our appointment with the midwife today and got to hear Baby's heartbeat for the very first time.

The first three months of the pregnancy have been very exciting for us. We found out that we were expecting a little one when Kim had a check-up appointment at the doctor's in September (which Andy attended for support) and recommended that we take a test - imagine our surprise when she turned to us and said "You're pregnant"! There were several tears of joy and lots of hugs (for us, not the doctor!).

We were booked in for our first dating scan at the Rosie Hospital at what we thought was 12 weeks but, due to confusion with the dates, it turned out to be only seven. At that stage, Baby was only about the size of a peanut. It was amazing to see small but very quick flashes of light on the screen with every beat of his/her little heart.



Our second scan on 12th November showed that we were then 13 and a half weeks - and how much Baby had developed since the first scan, growing from about 1cm in length to about 10cm and looking more like a little person! At the scan, the sonographer had to prod around on Kim's tummy for a bit as Baby was in a bit of a difficult position, making it hard to see his/her arms and legs (much to Kim's relief, they were all there!). As the sonographer tried to get him/her in a better position, Baby started throwing his/her arms around as if to say, "Oi, leave me alone"! But after a while, he/she settled down and started sucking on his/her thumb. Kim couldn't help but laugh at how cute the baby looked, and had to force herself to look away from the screen at one point to stop her giggles so that she didn't mess up the scan picture!



On the whole with the first trimester, Kim was very lucky and experienced only minor morning sickness for about five weeks or so. Everything smelt like eggs but, now that the smell has gone, omelettes and scrambled eggs are back on the menu! Unfortunately, for the whole of the pregnancy, she's had to give up such favourite foods as soft cheeses, sausages, paté, coffee and tea, and has massively cut down her chocolate intake (she's hoping that after Baby is born, Andy will sneak a hotdog, chocolate fudge cake and a cup of coffee into the hospital for her), but she's never enjoyed jalapeños as much as she is now, and at least she can still eat bacon! Andy is being very supportive and helpful and, as always, has been cooking lots of very tasty food. Nom nom nom!

Our next appointment with the midwife is tomorrow, Monday 30th November, for our 16 week appointment, where we get to actually hear the baby's heartbeat. We'll keep you posted!

HECK YEAH

IT IS ELITE

ON THE N900

THAT IS ALL

I didn't make any resolutions for 2009.

I am thinking of what to make for 2010.

I think I will try to write a sonnet every week.

I think I will try to write another children's novel.

I will certainly do my best to get the programming book I'm working on finished.

But perhaps I'm too close up to myself to see with the best resolution. If you could wave a wand and make a resolution that I'd keep-- that is, change something about or for me-- what would it be? Comments are screened, but anonymous ones are fine. Say if you want your comment unscreened.

I am going to contact my parents tomorrow and ask for the source code of Avaricius and Avalot so that I can release them as free software. (It was written in Turbo Pascal.) This may mean finding a way to read 5½" floppies. I wonder if I can just buy a very cheap very old computer and hook it up with a serial cable.

Some of the nifty things about Avaricius and Avalot, just from memory:

1. Compilation. One of the odd things about Avvy is that only the code was compiled, not the data. The data was a significant part of the whole, and these days I would have created it in some easy-to-edit format and compiled it. But in those days, with a few exceptions, I first designed the binary format in which it would ship, and then wrote an editor for it. So I think, in order to make it at all useful, one of the things I'm going to have to write is a decompiler for all the data formats, so you can read them as XML or something.
2. How the images got included. This actually extended to having to write a general image editor "hiz" for Avaricius, because I didn't have any information on the save file format of any image editors I had access to. But for Avalot I wrote a screenshot program and my brother used Dr Genius to edit the images (he drew almost all the images in Avalot, which is good, because the images I drew in Avaricius rather sucked).
3. Why EGA? The game required EGA (and used sixteen colours) because we didn't have VGA when coding started.  By release time we had VGA, but the only concession to it was to use its ability to redefine colours to make change "bright magenta" to be more Caucasian-flesh-coloured.
4. Codename. Avalot was codenamed "Project Minstrel" during development.
5. Dogfood. One of the jokes that was so laboured that I never explained it: the minstrel who plays games against you was briefly called "Winalot", because almost all the characters' names ended in -alot; "Winalot" is a brand of dogfood, so he was soon renamed "Dogfood".
6. Cameos. Dogfood, Spludwick, and Baron du Lustie were cameo appearances by the development team.
7. Beta testing. We had different beta testers complain that both the Dogfood and Jacques puzzles were both incredibly difficult and ridiculously easy.
8. Scroll drivers. You could embed ASCII control codes in what was effectively standard output (the "scroll drivers"), which would otherwise have gone into dialogue boxes on the screen, and affect lots of things about the game. Much of the moment-to-moment control of the game happened in this way.
9. Wordwrap. The scroll drivers in Avaricius didn't do wordwrap, so I had to do all the wordwrap by hand. Big mistake, rectified in Avalot.
10. Bootloaders. "avalot.exe" was merely a bootloader that allocated a few kilobytes of empty memory and ran "avalot9.exe", which was the real program. It pointed one of the user interrupts to the empty memory, and by manipulating this memory the child processes could instruct the bootloader either to load a given other child process after they quit, or to quit itself. This meant that a lot of the cut scenes could be implemented in separate executables. There was also space in the empty memory to store the current game state, so that you could seamlessly return to the game. One of the possible subprocesses was command.com, so that you could shell out to DOS and not have Avvy resident in memory, so there was actually space enough to do something.
11. Edna. The save-game format ("edna") had generalised header information which meant that if you attempted to load a file from any other Avvy game, the correct game could be loaded to handle it.
12. Chunk. Each room had a set of associated sub-pictures in a format called "chunk" which could be set to display at set intervals, meaning that animations could be put together without changing the code.
13. Also. There was a resources format called "also" which allowed you to define things about each room such as where the doors connected to the next room and what direction you'd be walking in when you got there, and it had a set of opcodes which could be made to run a given cut scene, put up a given piece of boilerplate text, etc, when you walked into a given area or touched a line between two given points. Strangely, I never unified these opcodes with the scroll driver control characters.
14. Skellern. There was the usual routine which hooked the clock interrupt to slow the game down.  Around the time I was writing it I heard a song called Slow Down by Peter Skellern, and the whole subsystem is littered with references to that song.  In particular, the slowdown routine couldn't be enabled during debugging, and therefore was disabled during development in general, so there was a standalone terminate-stay-resident utility called "skellern" which stood in for the real thing.
15. The onion puzzle.  This is the puzzle I'm most proud of.  People were still asking how to solve it almost a decade later on Usenet.
16. Avalanche. The whole magic opcodes system was going to be generalised in the third game "Avaroid" into an architecture for a virtual machine called "avalanche". I had no idea about virtual machines; I pretty much made up the idea. But the third game never shipped because I went to university.
17. Z-machine.  I've occasionally thought of doing a Z-machine port, as a plain-text adventure.  I've never actually started it, though.  I think it would be ineligible for the IFcomp.

I am wondering what else I'll discover when I finally find the source.

Update: I just phoned my parents:

• My brother Andrew knows where the disks are and will find them when he comes home for Christmas vacation
• My brother Mark is one of the copyright holders so we have to clear it with him as well, so there's no knowing what'll happen until he decides.

More news as we get it.

You know how sometimes people on your friendslist post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Well, here is some completely irrelevant information about me. Copy it to your own journal if you like, delete my answers, and substitute your own.

1. What toys did you take to bed with you when you were a kid?

A teddy called David, a squirrel called Mrs Squirrel, and a cat called Joanna. I wish I knew where Mrs Squirrel is now. Here is a picture of me with David.



2. What is your favourite colour?

Orange, then black, then green.

3. What was your first experience of computers?

When I was about five, my parents took me along to a computer course they were attending at Hitchin Technical College, for which I will be forever grateful.  A short while later, my headmaster bought a BBC Micro for the entire school, and invited me up to his office.  "I've noticed", he said, "that your handwriting is the worst in the school.  This computer has a thing in it called a wordprocessor that might help you."

4. When you were a kid, who did you want to win the Boat Race?

Cambridge, honestly!  It was because they lost about a dozen times in a row and I always cheer for the underdog.

5. What was the title of your first book?

"The Squirrel Army".  I was about seven.  It was the first of a series of four.  I'm sure my mother still has them.

6. What was your favourite Christmas present ever?

This thing.  I spent hours solving all the levels.  You had to solve ten addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems in four different levels within a certain time limit.  I loved it.

7. What clubs did you join as a kid?

The Puffin Club; Mensa; the National Association of Gifted Children; the Vegetarian Society.

8. What was your favourite part of Christmas?

I was asked this by a teacher once, and after some thought I said it was Boxing Day, because you had plenty of time to look at all the things people had given you.  She stared at me and said "That's rather boring."

I neglected to mention in my last post that the latest series of Curb was entirely fucking awesome.
Well, perhaps not entirely.
But it was fucking awesome.

I spent all day talking to Germans.
They all love minutae almost as much as I love sweeping generalisations.
I Recuva(TM)d my harddrive but I have lost all my Earnest Cox and Family Machine. Does anyone have any?
I have spent most of the last two evenings going through the 5000 music files on my hard drive and deleting the garbage ones.
Fun it is not.
Strangely satisfying though.
Second free meal of the day now.
Being a grown up isn't too bad.

So it was pointed out to me last night that 2 months ago i wrote 'I'm about to start rowing, you may not here from me'...well that proved to be true, so what have I been up to (in small chunks)

Rowing - twice a day, every day - 90 minute ergs twice a week, 5 outings (with 9 mile cycles to get there), 3 weights sessions a week, a 30 minute test, endurance circuits and whatever else they throw at us, again and again with no letup and screams of 'cambridge are laughing at you'. It's hard and horrible but the improvements are unbelievable, even having rowed for 5 years already. But I'm always tired, and this makes Mike sad :( and I'm poor because we still don't have a sponsor/enough people and are therefore splitting the horrific costs between us (1500 pounds for 6 months) and I'm constantly frustrated at when I try to gauge my progress against others. I have a 2k test tonight though, so we'll see for sure how I'm comparing.

Because of the rowing I also spend alot of time eating, I get to eat about 4000 calories a day, although I keep forgetting and so have ended up losing weight (ordinarily a 'woo' but not when you're trying to gain muscle). Mike's enjoying that part though (the eating, not the weight losing part, I'm sure he'll not be impressed to discover I've gone down 2 cup sizes and my already resized ring may be feeling slightly loose if it carries on)!

More sadness about bikes/the flat....they never did put the doors on, and Mike's entire £1000 bike got stolen. I have literally no idea how to make him feel better about the excess he has to pay on the insurance, and how difficult they make it to actually get any money back. It took the thieves no time atall to get through a motorbike chain, insanity! And of course the police don't care (errr...surely if it's worth as much as a small car they should look into it?). My road bike is still in bits so we're both going woefully slowly on townbikes at the moment.

I finally finished the heart project and so am reinstalled in the stroke-research lab looking into the way the brain regulates flow to prevent/following a stroke. My funding body are not best pleased at me being funded to do something 'cross-interface' and i'm still doing medical engineering, but never mind it's an awesome and useful project. I've done a bit of teaching too which I think I'm not horrific at, though I feel I might be one of those geeky enthusiastic rather than cool teachers.

Mike and I have had our last anniversary before restarting the count in June, we went to straford-upon-avon to H&M, and bought ridiculous gloopy hot chocolate (mmmmmm) and walked along the river. I had the day off rowing due to the stupid weather and we went out for dinner too :) Acutally, I'm quite bored of being engaged, I just want to be married. Planning the wedding isn't really happening because I need to find 1 dress for 3 different bridesmaids that they all agree on, I'm just basing the colour scheme on that!. But we have the church, weddingdress, band, food and vicar so we can acutally get married. Unfortunately, our miniscule budget (£5000, it doesn't sound small but for this is sort-of is) means that we are staying here for our honeymoon, that my dress is not my dream dress (but is still gorgeous), that we can't afford a photographer (and are therefore trusting that people will take lots for us), that we can't invite half our friends (because my parents think a wedding is for them to invite their friends to) and that the alcohol may not be of excellent quality. It's a shame, but I'm glad I'm not someone for whom the point of marriage is the wedding (which when I read things on the internet about what I can't possibly have a wedding without infuriate me), the point of marriage to us is that we become one flesh with God's blessing on our lives together and that we leave our old selves behind, laying them down for the new body that is us both with Christ. And this means that we have all we need.

Anyway, I should always be working - keep in touch in real life!

If you are planning to place an order on the US site this week, please be aware that our Rhode Island office is closed for Thanksgiving and Black Friday (26th November and 27th November).

You'll still be able to place orders online of course, but there will be a little delay in shipping. Our US CS team will also be taking a four day weekend, so if you contact customer service please be extra patient - we'll get back to you as soon as possible. (In fact, our UK CS reps will be helping out while the US takes a break.)

Orders placed on the UK site, for Europe and the rest of the world will be unaffected.

The GNOME Women edition of GNOME Journal has been released, including an article by yours truly on Telepathy and MC5. Check it out.