Yesterday I got the Logitech Revue delivered, now that updated software for the device was confirmed I figured that I could take the chance and ordered it from Amazon. As I live in the Netherlands I expected some stuff to not work out, and I’ll talk about that as well for anyone else considering.

Unboxing

The box comes with the Revue, a wireless keyboard with batteries, power adapter with US power plug, HDMI cable and 1 IR Blaster. Nothing fancy, but then again, the magic should happen onscreen.

The power adapter is 100-240V, so can be used in the Netherlands, you do need a US 2 Euro adapter. I have a few cheap ones from dealextreme.com, so it was a minor hurdle. But if you do order one, be prepared for that.

Setup

Hookup was pretty simple, HDMI to my receiver, Network cable and power. It supports wifi, but didn’t test that.

When switching on you get a simple wizard, it will make internet connection and start updating the software. All steps are simple and clear, just make sure you skip stuff like zip code, as it will not expect nor understand dutch zip codes.

IR Blaster

The Revue also works as a universal remote in some way, if you provide your brand/type TV and Audio Receiver during setup it will allow you to control volume and power. A nice feature as I can do everything I want from the Revue Remote Keyboard. I was surprised by how good this works. Even when there isn’t a direct line of sight.

DLNA

For me the most important feature would be the ability to play stuff that’s on my QNap 419P+ storage, this machine has TwonkyVision DLNA build in, and that works as expected. The interface is a bit boring, and search takes forever on the moment, but it plays video’s without issues and the image is clear. I hope that the new software update will allow for a better interface, either shipped or 3rd party.

Browser

This is something that makes the Revue much better than most, a full browser with flash enabled. This means you can use nearly all sites. Things get a lot nicer though when the site is optimized for Google TV.

I first tried youtube, but got the normal site and this didn’t feel relaxed at all, then I got a popup requesting me to try “Leanback”, an optimized page for Google TV and this turned out to be a joy to use. No more using the trackpad to click stuff, but everything working with the quick hotkeys.

Verdict

Clearly, the limit isn’t the box, but on the moment the software. Everything works as expected and if you have a DLNA enabled machine to stream your media from it’s excellent. If you are looking for a media player than the current pricepoint of 99$ is good even if you can not use all the functions it was designed for.

Expect a second review once the new version hits, and maybe a 3rd when I get a set-top box with HDMI so I could use the HDMI-in part.

Introduction

I hate paper, it’s never where I need it, lacks a search function and in general takes up space. So getting rid of it was a long time quest on my list. Now I though of burning it but in the end settled for a more civilized option.

Unfortunately, as soon as you put a document through the shredder you will get a call asking exactly for that information. So, I needed a work-flow to digitize my documents before going all psycho on them.

Collecting

I don’t always have my scanner setup, I lack a nice flat surface where it could always be available to me. As I want to get rid of stuff asap I setup the next best thing, a parking spot.

Processing

Once every month (or 2, depending on how much I can postpone stuff), I collect everything from the parkingspot and prepare for scanning. So I get my trusted ADF equipped HP Printer. While you could get something like a Snapscan, I already spend all my money on videogames and this is available.

For the scanning I use gscan2pdf, it’s a nice tool that allows you to do a lot of scanning in a row. It has options for OCR but only adds this to notes, that’s not good enough for me. 

After a lot of testing I found that using Lineart at 300DPI, gives good results and doesn’t generate huge files.

Of course, I you got full color holiday cards send by mother, I would keep those separate and scan them later using a color setting.

I love computers that are working for me, so I just fill the ADF with documents and switch on scanning. I get some coffee and stand next to it, going, “Hmm, yeah, HP did you file your TPS reports last week?”

Once this done, you should have a long list of files in gscan2pdf, now all I do is Save and pick PNG. Select a directory and name to generate a nice directory full of files.

A good tip is to re-order the files in gscan2pdf, as it’s much easier than doing it by hand later.

Adding OCR and creating PDF files

So, now we have the .png files, we need to generate PDF’s from them. I created a small bash script to do this. It will call scripts to OCR a single or group of PNG files and generate a nice PDF ready to upload to Google Docs.

https://github.com/bgrolleman/png2ocrpdf

Now the following is still on the prompt, but I would like to add this to Nautilus scripts so you can just select a group of files and say “OCR and PDF”

For now, usage is like follows

png2ocrpdf -l ‘eng’ -t ‘Hello World’ -a ‘Me’ Hello_01.png Hello_02.png Hello_03.png

This will use English OCR and create a file ‘Hello World.pdf’ with 3 pages

Script isn’t supporting spaces for the input filenames yet

Final step

Once the .pdf files are generated, you can upload it to Google Docs or Evernote to find later. I use Google Docs and switch off all conversion options. This will result in a nice readable PDF file online that’s fully searchable. And available on any laptop or my phone so I can access it anywhere and anytime.

Soms is de oplossing eenvoudiger dan je zou denken. Mijn vrouw is fotograaf en heeft als gevolg daarvan behoorlijk wat foto’s in Lightroom staan. Dat is geen probleem totdat je harde schijf begint vol te raken.

Mijn eerste poging was om de oude foto’s te exporteren naar een nieuwe catalogus op de QNAP, maar ik kwam er al snel achter dat hoewel dit werkt, je vervolgens deze oude catalogus niet meer mag openen. De reden, hij staat op een netwerk schijf.

Dat heeft dus geen zin, het moet mogelijk zijn om bij je oude foto’s te kunnen. Als eerste geprobeerd om haar Mac te laten denken dat hij lokaal bezig was, maar dat was geen oplossing.

Nog wat verder zoeken kwam het eenvoudige antwoord, gebruik de “Mappen” van Lightroom, en dan is het kinderspel.

Je voegt een nieuwe map toe aan de catalogus, en verwijst die naar een gedeelde map op de QNAP. Vervolgens kan je vrolijk binnen lightroom foto’s van je lokale schijf naar de netwerk schijf sleuren en zelfs rechtstreeks importeren naar deze nieuwe folder.

Uiteindelijk blijkt dus de enigste eis te zijn dat het catalogus bestand zelf lokaal staat, de foto’s mogen overal staan.

Bijkomende bonus, ze kan nu door alle foto’s zoeken, ook de gene die al jaren geleden gearchiveerd zijn.

So, I was looking for some way to create blog posts on my machine without having to go to the webinterface all the time. So doing a quick test with Blogilo, it requires me to load half of KDE on my Gnome box, but if it works I can live with that.

So I got a Sony Touch eReader, and that means I not only need books, but I want some of my favorite feeds in there.

After playing with Calibre it seems to have a lot of very cool functions, and I though I share my recipies in here.

Eurogamer – Reviews

The only real challenge, the rest is more basic. This fetches the review feed, then guts out everything unrelated to the review and fetches the other pages.

Eurogamer.recipe

class EuroGamerReviewsRecipe(BasicNewsRecipe):

title          = u'Eurogamer.net Reviews'
oldest_article = 7
max_articles_per_feed = 25
recursions = 1
use_embedded_content = False
no_stylesheets = 1
cover_url = u"http://www.frictionalgames.com/images/news/200704eurogamer.jpg"
match_regexps = [r'page=[0-9]+']
feeds          = [(None, u'http://www.eurogamer.net/rss/eurogamer_review_feed.rss')]
keep_only_tags = [dict(id='article-title'),dict(name='div',attrs={'class':["copy"]})]

Roleplaying Tips

Nothing major, mostly removing the stylesheet to avoid a dark background. Also removed the advertisements, I’m not against that but after conversion they look like regular articles and I can’t act on them from the eReader. To make it up to Johnn Four I bought his book GM Mastery: NPC Essentials.

Roleplayingtips.recipe

class RolePlayingTipsRecipe(BasicNewsRecipe):

title = u'Roleplaying Tips'
oldest_article = 28
max_articles_per_feed = 10
recursions = 0
use_embedded_content = False
no_stylesheets = 1
cover_url = u"http://www.roleplayingtips.com/images/rpt_logo_onblue_notxt_120x132.gif"
feeds = [(None, u'http://feeds.feedburner.com/roleplayingtips')]
keep_only_tags = [dict(id='divMain')]
remove_tags = [dict(name='div',attrs={'class':["ad_block_colored"]})]

Conclusion

Writing a calibre Recipe is easy, and makes an eReader more usefull

Ik haal graag een soyberry bandit bij de Shakies, maar dat heeft 2 nadelen,

1. 4,50 is best veel, dus zoiets doe je niet dagelijks
2. Shakies zit in Utrecht en Amsterdam Amstel, niet handig op zondagochtend

Dus zelf een beetje aan het spelen geweest om iets te bouwen wat in de buurt komt.

Ingredienten

• 750ml Soja melk
• 250ml Sinaasappelsap
• 1/2 Citroen
• 2 Bananen
• 5-6 Aardbeien

Voorbereiding

Snij de aardbei en banaan in kleine stukjes, en doe deze in een bakje of zakje in de vriezer, ik doe meestal direct een heel groep maken.

Bereiding

Doe de soja en sinaasappelsap in een blender, knijp de halve citreon erboven uit. Vervolgens de bevroren aardbei en banaan erbij en blenden.

Zoals je zie kan je met goede voorbereiding dit heel snel in elkaar zetten, je hebt ongeveer 1 1/2 shake hiervan, heerlijk en gezond.

http://tinyurl.com/9mfvb8