Proxy Unsupported Printers

February 21, 2011 under Computer, Driver, Printer, Windows7

I have an older LaserJet 1000 that HP has sunsetted. It is our workhorse at home for everyday printing. It is a host based printer…meaning it needs to be attached a computer to spool and print. We have its USB cable plugged into our Windows Home Server as a shared network device. My wife got a new 64bit PC, Windows7. I was shocked when I realized that she couldn’t connect. No 64 bit drivers are available.

As an alternative, I installed a shared PDF printer on our WHS.

Install PDFCreator on the workstation/server that is still supported by your printer. Make sure you select “Server” when you install.
Run PDFCreator Options
Turn on AutoSave

I specified a temp directory that was UNC because this was on a WHS.
Turn on AutoPrint
Under Printers, Share the PDF Printer

I renamed it to be the model that I was proxying. Also, make sure to include x64 bit drivers.
From the new unsupported workstation, add the new PDF Printer that was shared.

Every so often, you might need to delete out the temp PDF’s that it creates. You will lose some options that are printer specific but it general it works perfectly.

comments: 0 » tags: HP, WHS

Call for Backup

February 19, 2011 under Computer

Over the years, our digital life represents more and more of our real life. Whether documents, financials, music or pictures, we have an enormous amount of personal data on our computers that cannot be replaced or lost.

In the last couple weeks, I have first hand experience data loss. I lost my main data hard drive about 700 GB of data (not the system drive). My sister lost her hard drive to our desktop computer. That hard drive contained not only the OS but also all of her documents and pictures. Fortunately, the net result is that we had no data loss. I have lost data before and it made me feel ill. Never again. In the last month, it was a good fire drill on our backup strategy.

First off, there are different types of failures. I like to refer to these as different scopes of disasters.

Scope	Reason
A few files or folders	Human Error Corrupt files	I refer to this as the “Whoops” scenario. How many times have you done a “File—>Save” vs. a “File—>Save As”? Overwrite & delete are the most common culprits. Sometimes, it could be as innocent as editing a picture and overwriting the original. In the end, it usually just our own fault.
Entire hard drive or computer	Hardware failure Virus	This situation seems to occur the most often in life. Just last month, a hard drive failed. I bet I have worn out at least 10 hard drives in my life.
Entire house	Lightening Strike Natural Disaster Fire	The most unplanned for situation.

A good comprehensive backup strategy will keep all 3 of these in mind, In general, no solution fits all situations and none of them are bullet proof. Each of them has a cost associated with it…whether time, money, bandwidth or discipline. I personally use a combination of solutions for my needs. Your mileage may vary.

Windows Home Server

Hands down this is one of the best products for backing up Windows desktops and laptops. Microsoft already put in all of the intelligence of what to backup. It knows that you don’t need a backup of your Internet Explorer cache or other temp files. It also keeps a single copy of the same file found in multiple directories or computers. It backups the entire computer, including programs and operating system. You can boot from a CD and restore a hard drive in an hour or two with little effort…perfect for a crashed hard drive. I have personally replaced broken hard drives this way twice in the last year or so. I have also used the disk restore one other time to revert the system drive to a previous state after installing some software I didn’t really care for. You can restore individual files and folders to previous point in time. This is done via Explorer like approach and is intuitive enough. I wish they would have wired up “Previous Versions” in the desktop’s Explorer.

I have all my computers backing up to this. In addition, my in-law’s computers also backup to this. I brought their computer over to my house and did the initial backup. Subsequent backups are done via Hamachi. WHS is only good for “local computers”. At least they have be local for initial backup and any restores.

The good: cheap…you can build your own frankenstein server or buy an OEM. I got my Acer for $300 plus the cost of some extra harddrives. Simple to use. Just works and is rock solid.

The bad: doesn’t cover the whole house disaster. If I had a major lightning strike or EMP go off at my house, this would not save me. There are some plugin’s to do some backup to the cloud but you have be really selective about what gets sent because of network bandwidth and cloud storage fees.

Scope: operates very well on restoring a PC to any given point in time. Restoring individual files is decent, as well.

This is my primary backup component and has not failed me.

Carbonite

Use a cloud based backup service such as Carbonite, Mozy & Amazon S3. This is a growing market and many more competitors are out there since I last reviewed them. I personally use Carbonite and have used them for years. They offer unlimited backup storage for a fixed rate. Carbonite has very simple program that just works. It is totally perfect for grandma and grandpa.

Carbonite is not a comprehensive solution. It works well to selectively solve the offsite backup gap. Unfortunately, it’s not very practical for my TB’s of data that need to be backed up. It backs up “precious” data for me.

I had installed it on sister’s computer. After she got her new hard drive and did the system restore, we installed Carbonite. It walked her through the restore. It took almost 2 weeks to get it all back. Biggest issue was we had to turn off the power saver features on her computer; otherwise, the restore would effectively only happen when she was in front of her computer. After that was adjusted, it still took several days to do the restore. It is simple math. It takes a long time to download 100 gig or so. It restored all of the user data except for video files, including some home videos. Overall, it did exactly what we wanted it to do at a time that we never wanted to happen.

The good: it just works. Very simple UI and is approved for even novice user. It uses incremental backups which is a phenomenal bandwidth savings when you dealing with a 2gig PST file. Also, no discipline is necessary other than paying the bill.

The bad: it takes a long time to get it back but an even longer time to get it up there. Carbonite is unlimited but storing your 200 gig music collection at most services would be cost prohibitive. Also, not all files are backed up (e.g. movies).

Scope: Works well for entire house disasters because it is offsite. Also, good for restoring a few files…Carbonite keeps versions.

Windows Live Mesh

Distribute enough copies such that all of them can’t be destroyed at once was my primary backup strategy for years. I had even wrote a Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) client that would upload my files safely offsite. It was way cooler than FTP but had about the same value. BITS was really good for slow bandwidth and restartability.

Today, Windows Live Mesh fills this need. I started using FolderShare, then Live Sync and now we are stuck with Mesh. I use this in my family to share our picture libraries It takes a while but it will eventually get there. This fits a functional need (sharing) as well as backup. However, a delete is quickly replicated! This option saved my sister’s home videos that Carbonite ignored. It don’t mind sharing your files unencrypted, this is a good choice.

The good: free and just kinda works

The bad: Slow, unencrypted, no versioning, etc. One big draw back to Mesh right now is that you cannot share your files readonly any more.

Scope: really good for entire house issues (offsite)

Shadow Copies

Certain builds of Windows have previous versions built in. The OS takes shadow copies of the hard drive typically twice a day. It is really easy to get back to a previous state when the occasional whoops occurs between backups. However, this is a backup convenience not a strategy.

Robocopy

I robocopy all of my “precious” data frequently (typically daily) to another computer (or could be a USB hard drive). This is just my OCD cropping up. This shouldn’t be necessary but it makes me feel good. The net is a have exact copies elsewhere in my house. Some people talk about taking a USB hard drive to work or a family member’s house to get it offsite but I have never been that disciplined.

comments: 0 » tags: Carbonite, Mesh, RoboCopy, WHS

I could be a sniper

February 10, 2011 under Computer

Reading a little about my colorblindness, I read a really interesting tidbit on http://vischeck.com/info/wade.php

On the positive side, there is some evidence that colour-blind people are much better than average at certain jobs. They are very good at finding green things hidden against green backgrounds – for example grass or leaves. They tend to find things by shape and get less confused by camouflage. Because of this, colour-blind entomologists still catch lots of bugs and in wartime, armies prize their colour-blind snipers and spotters. So, if you are colour blind and have trouble picking strawberries, why not try your hand at green beans or peas instead? You might be surprised at how well you do!

What else is really interesting about this site is their image/website check. It will simulate a colorblind person’s experience. 5% of men have this in some form…a population that shouldn’t be forgotten.

comments: 0 » tags: colorblindness

I heart the colorblind!

February 10, 2011 under Uncategorized

I personally don’t suffer from this particular version of colorblindness; however, I do fail most of the variations.

I did this colorblindness test. Here are the results:

Estimate of color vision deficiency’s probability:75%

normal answers: 20/30

Your answer is randomly: 0/23

no similar proposal: 1/7

green color deficit (deutéranopia): 1/17

green color deficit (deutéranomaly) simulation wickline: 0/7

red color deficit (protanopia): 8/14

red color deficit (protanomaly) simulation wickline: 0/7

blue color deficit (tritanopia): 0/14

blue color deficit (tritanomaly) simulation wickline: 0/7

deuteranopia indicator:4%

deuteranomaly indicator: 0%

protanopia indicator: 57%

protanomaly indicator: 0%

tritanopia indicator: 0%

tritanomaly indicator: 0%

comments: 2 » tags: colorblindness

Ask Unclutterer: Organizing photographs

February 6, 2011 under Photography

Unclutterer

via Ask Unclutterer: Organizing photographs.

Has a pretty interesting take on photographs, as clutter. However, it has not been my experience that the original owner is not usually the person who wants to scan them. Estates are probably the number one reason why this topic comes up. Family reunions are probably a close second. Right now I am in process of scanning a few thousand pictures.

Here is what I have in the queue:

My wedding pictures (negatives) and some college pictures
Old slides from my dad
Old pictures from grandparents’ estate

my mom’s parents
my dad’s parents
my wife’s grandma

Realistically, most of the effort is taking out/putting in album and identifying. The actually scanning is the easy part. That’s why ScanCafe and other scanning services are not that much of a time saving. The risk is the outright lost of your pictures (lost in the mail, mishandled, damaged, etc.).

I guess my point is people are more likely to scan (usually other people pictures) to share vs. reclaiming space in their house. I, personally, don’t have a lot of attachment to the originals after their scanned I don’t mind returning them to the owner or share with other family; However, never throw away pictures.

comments: 0 »

Darth Small

February 6, 2011 under Star Wars

My brother linked to a great VW commercial

As a father, I can total relate to this commercial. I think you would understand after seeing our Halloween picture from last year:

Yes, that is Yoda on the left!

comments: 0 » tags: Halloween

Ronald Reagan’s 100th Birthday

February 6, 2011 under Family, Political

Today marks Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday. Reagan is really my first President of the United States. I was born a few months prior to Nixon resigning. I was potty trained during Ford’s presidency. I really don’t remember anything about Carter…except for waiting in line for gasoline in the backseat of a station wagon.

When he was President, I was between the ages of 6 and 14. Back then, I think we only had 12 possible TV channels (2-13). My first memory of Reagan is when he was on (almost) every TV channel when he spoke. I can even remember him speaking on TV during school when the Challenger exploded. He had a gift of communication. He could make us laugh (“age will not be an issue for this campaign”). He could give us hope (“shining city on the hill”). He could inspire us (“tear down this wall”). Not until later in life, did I truly understand and appreciate his contribution to this country and this world.

On a more personal level, I found out a few years ago that he’s my distant cousin. His great, great grandfather Thomas Reagan is my great, great, great, great grandfather. Here’s the simple view:

With only direct descendants, it doesn’t appear that we are that far apart. So here is a clip from http://www.genealogy.com/famousfolks/ronald-reagan/

ScreenClip

Here’s the additional information: Thomas Regan who was born in 1783 in County Cork, Ireland and had 7 children. He had only one child, Michael Reagan, from his second (?) wife Margaret Murphy. Julia Reagan Harrington was Michael Reagan’s half sister, one of the six children from Thomas Reagan’s first marriage. Julia is my mom’s great, great grandmother.

I know it’s a stretch, but we are related. My daughter is so excited to be related to a President. He will occasionally remind my wife that she isn’t!

By the way, if you have never been to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, it is a must see, regardless of your political views. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I have been in. Built on top of a mountain overlooking the value, it is truly breathtaking. The building, itself, is very modern and open. It is even built around Air Force One. Here are few pictures from a trip I had in 2006.

If you visit, you must visit the Ronald Regan Pub beware that “Alcohol For Display Purposes Only”

comments: 0 » tags: genealogy, reagan

Establish a Photo Library

February 5, 2011 under Digital Assessment Management, Lightroom, Photography

Everyone has different ways of organizing their pictures. The really only wrong way is no organization at all; unfortunately, this is the most common. Your mileage may vary but I will try to outline my approach that seems to serve me well. First off, my pictures are family centric. I don’t have clients or jobs that are clear ways of separating your pictures.

Let’s start out with a few rules:

Assign a picture a filename and never change it. Use a naming convention that will grow overtime and be consistent. Most Canon’s have a naming convention of IMG_NNNN.JPG. That might sound like a good start, but you will quickly outgrow 10,000 pictures. The filename should never change after it is loaded into a library. Many times I have shared pictures and need to reference back to the original
Do not modify originals. Never edit the official copy of a picture to make an adjustment (crop, contrast, etc.) but metadata is ok (GPS, keywords, etc.). Non-destructive edits are also ok (e.g. Lightroom).
A picture is only in place in the library. Don’t make copies with in your official folder structure for the sake of making copies. Let me explain. If you copy the an original and suffix the filename with _BW to represent a black and white version of it, that’s fine to have both copies as long as the location and names of the files are predictable. Don’t get me wrong, I often make copies of the originals in a working directory for some creative project. However, the originals are in their safe, known place and there is no confusion about the where the golden version of the pictures are. The side benefit is you have to only tag a picture once.

Naming Convention

So what’s in a name? I have tried a few patterns and this works well for me. I have 2 different naming conventions:

Date Centric: The Date Centric pattern is used for all pictures that I have taken using a digital camera. The filename is YYYYMMDD_NNNN, where NNNN is the number from the original file. An example file is 20100101_1234.jpg. In Lightroom, the pattern looks like:
Sequence Centric: This format is used for all pictures that I receive from other people or scans. The filename is PNNNNNNN.jpg, where NNNNNNN is a sequence number that started at 1 (zero padded). An example file is P1234567.jpg. In Lightroom, the pattern looks like:

So why 2 different? Well, at first, I only used Date Centric. It was nice and clean and seem very easy to find things. However, I soon found out that I didn’t always know what the date was at the time of import. Often with scan of family pictures, the date information was late arriving if even known. Sometimes, it would even change. That caused huge headaches because I would have to break rule #1 and rename the file. Therefore, the genesis of the Sequence Centric approach. I could use the Sequence Centric approach for all types but I enjoy the natural organization of the dates compelling. As listed above, I also use the Sequence Centric for other people’s digital photographs that have full EXIF information (dates). However, I find that not everyone is diligent about keeping their time AND date accurate in their camera. I just don’t mean Daylight Savings issues, either. Regardless, there is this visual indicator to me if this is mine or someone else’s.

Folder Structure

Library

2000’s

2001

2001-01

2001-01-01
2001-01-03
etc.

2001-02
etc.

2002
etc.

2010’s

2010
2011

P0000

P0000100
P0000200
etc

P1000
etc.

Output
Originals

The date centric guys are dynamically built (except for the decade) via Lightroom during import:

That coupled with the naming format makes pattern #1 really easy to implement.

The PIX folder structure just supports the sequenced approach. Each leaf folder supports a max of 100 files. The nesting just makes it easier to navigate around. Unfortunately, Lightroom cannot support the automatic creating of the folder structure. However, I just import and move around, as necessary. I have also used IMatch and it is easy to script either pattern.

All of the important, sacred stuff is under the Library folder. But I have also listed Output. This is my default folder to make working copies of any my pictures. Anything from photoshopping to exporting to print at Sams. I could lose any picture under this folder and not shed a tear. The Originals folder is an optional one. Since I do modify my library pictures (metadata only), it is another place to go when bad things happen. Lightroom can “make a second copy to” when importing. I never do anything with these. The only overhead is storage. One other note about the Originals. I use DNG’s and Lightroom will put the original CR2 here during the import. But RAW vs. JPG and DNG vs. CR2 is a discussion for another day.