ScanSnap S1300i

Just received my ScanSnap S1300i today.  It took ten days for the order to reach me from Amazon USA. Not too bad! As I mentioned before at Officeworks the same scanner cost AUD$400, with postage from Amazon it only cost me $280!

I am very happy with the scanner. The one downside is the software comes on a CD. But most modern Macs do not have optical drives!
Fortunately you can download the software.

Other useful links:

Manual Downloads: ScanSnap S1300i

FAQ: ScanSnap S1300 / S1300i

Compatibility Status With OS X v10.8 (Mountain Lion) ScanSnap S1300 / S1300i

We are so ripped off in Australia

Just purchased a Fujitsu S1300i ScanSnap scanner from Amazon USA.

Its a duplex scanner for text documents, i.e. Like a fax machine you put in the paper and it scans both sides and saves it to a PDF on your Mac. Better yet it can OCR the paper and you can add tags for latter searching.

This model is the portable version. The more expensive models are much bigger, but the postage is a killer.

This price from Amazon?

– $260.99 + shipping of $19.44 for a grand total of $280.43!

The price here in Australia? … well, it’s not on Fujitsu’s Australian site yet, despite being out for several months.

At Officeworks it is $399! … and the AUD is worth US 1.03 (although amazon only gave me 1 to 1)

Why is this so?

To make matter worse if I was an Americian I would get a full year of Evernote Premium chucked in for free.

Python 2.7.3

I am now relearning statistics, oh what an exciting life I lead.
Since no learning is complete without procrastination, I though I would learn Python first.

Python is actually related b/c it is an ideal vehicle to screen scrape websites to get data for statistical analysis. And if you are so inclined you can use python for stats itself (SciPy, NumPy) as well as making pretty graphs.

Anyway, the latest version of Python is 2.7.3 and yes I am aware of version 3, but a lot of the popular modules still do not with with version 3.

Mac OS X 10.7.8 Mountain Lion comes with Python 2.7.2, to upgrade to 2.7.3 I used the following to help:

 

http://superuser.com/questions/388854/the-suggested-way-to-handle-pipeasy-install-with-homebrew
http://www.insomnihack.com/?p=442
http://www.insomnihack.com/?p=421 (old version of the link above)
http://www.thisisthegreenroom.com/2011/installing-python-numpy-scipy-matplotlib-and-ipython-on-lion/

 

Once I get confident with Python, I might just reinstall everything, but this time using a virtual environment for Python.

Kim Chi Virgin

Like porn, it is goo-ee, smelly and a little bit disgusting, I am off course talking about Kim Chi. The ubiquitous Korean side dish consisting of spicy fermented Chinese cabbage.

Well after much procrastination I have finally cooked my first batch of Kim Chi.

Bowl of KimChi

The Avengers 3D

Been looking forward to this movie since I heard it was in production. I was hoping it would have the humour of the Ironman films and I was not disappointed.
The script was witty, no major cringe moments and a good deal of personal development for the major characters.

In addition there was a sh##t load of CGI action, all in all a great movie.
I have only seen two movies in 3D and the 3D didn’t seem to get in the way of the story, so I was happy with it.

ebooks

Just finished reading George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords on my Kindle. I actually own the books, but I find the Kindle is better for reading with the exception of:

– Pictures, in this case maps
– Quickly moving from one section of the book to the other, like you would with a reference book. The Kindle sucks at this unlike the iPad. But the Kindles e-ink is so easy on the eye, very different to using an iPad.

Memory Lane

PC Mag has an article 10 Classic Computer RPGs

It included one game based on D&D which I spent hundreds of lunchtimes at high school playing with four other guys – Wizardy

Wizardy RPG on an Apple Ice

I still remember killing an Orc with 7 hp with a tiltowait spell causing 85hp damage

Tiltowait is “somewhat like the detonation of a small tactical nuclear weapon. The party is protected from its effects. Unfortunately for the monsters, they are not. The spell causes 10-100 hit points of damage to all monsters. ”

Games you played when you were a child are like old Doctor Who episodes, best left to your memories because when you replay them you regret it. It destroys your memories and makes you think what bad taste you had, case in point the TV show Knight Rider

New Camera – Canon S100

I recently purchased a new camera. I wanted some relatively cheap, but flexible and small.

Small is important because no matter how good the camera is, if it is too big to carry around then it is useless. The S100 fits in a shirt pocket.
It also has RAW capability as well as full manual control so when my skills grow, the camera will grow with me.

At $469 (with a 8GB SD card) it is not exactly cheap, but it is good quality. The lens goes down to f/2

Update: 🙁 Never used the camera much, ended up buying a Micro 4/3 Olympus camera and lenses. The camera died somewhere in Asia on a friends trip.

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