A couple weeks ago I came across EverNote, a way to capture information and save it in a digital file. I have yet to unleash the true power of Evernote, but I’ve started.

To get my files scanned into my computer, I picked up the Fujitsu Scansnap S300 Color Mobile Scanner. This is one of the most important pieces of hardware I now own. In terms of productivity, I’d rank it right up there with the second monitor. This scanner is truly amazing.

First, I configured the ScanSnap to save the files right to Evernote. You have to create a new profile, and select the Evernote application in the profile preferences. Then left-click on the icon in the toolbar to chose the profile, then either press the scan button on the scanner or right-click on the icon and choose a Simplex (single-sided) or Duplex (doubled-sided) scan. That’s right… this scanner will scan BOTH SIDES of a document AT THE SAME TIME. Oh, and did I mention it does this in FULL COLOR, and it’s FAST?!?!

Here’s a video I took showing how fast the ScanSnap is:

So anything on my desk, I scanned, tagged, and then either shredded or recycled (by the way: you can recycle shredded paper. Save a tree). Right away my desk was cleaner. Then I attacked the pile of business cards from the last couple Affiliate Summits.

The business card software is clunky, but it works (most of the time). I still have to figure out how to export it to GMail, but that can wait. I rarely use these cards, but felt like I had to save them. Now they can go, as I have the data in a database, along with the image of the card (front and back, if applicable).

Looking for more to scan, I thought it’d be a good idea to scan my articles of incorporation, so I’d have a digital backup of them. I created a new journal just for these papers, and in a few minutes had them scanned in. Now I have a digital copy of the papers (convenient to send to my accountant or attorney if I have to), a copy saved with Evernote, and they’re backed up with Mozy (my online backup provider).

What’s nice about the files is that when they’re scanned, they’re PDFs. I haven’t played much with the OCR functions, but that’d make it easier to search & find things (right now, searches are limited to my titles & tags).

Then I figured, since I could use the ScanSnap with Evernote, why not set up a profile for Picasa. So I did. I set the profile to save to Picasa as a JPG, and scan at a higher resolution. Then I took a packet of photos that a Cub Scout parent had given me about a year ago, stacked them about 8 at a time in the ScanSnap, and hit the button. In about 10 minutes, I had all of the photos scanned. Now the quality isn’t the best, but that’s the fault of the disposable camera, not the ScanSnap.

I’ve also used the ScanSnap to quickly make a PDF to then fax with MaxEmail and to make a hard copy of a paper document.

There’s so much more I could probably be doing with my ScanSnap and Evernote, but I have to learn all of the functionality. At least my office is now considerably cleaner.

First, you have to set it up yourself, which is OK if you know what you’re doing in Plesk, but Plesk backups SUCK. You can’t extract a single file from them, or get the SQL commands to rebuild part the database.

Furthermore, Plesk restorations SUCK. Plesk removes the current (live) site, then attempts the restore. Oh, and if the restore fails? Sorry – you have nothing now. Talk about back-asswards.

The final nail in the coffin is the fact that you can ONLY access the GoDaddy backup FTP server from your main server. So if your main server fails, don’t worry: you have a backup – you just can’t get to it.

After all that, I decided to write my own backup script. If you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself.

I started with a basic script that saved the files an FTP server, which was a good first step. But I couldn’t find a cheap FTP server for backups, so I looked at Amazon S3. While the pricing is a bit confusing, I know it’s cheap. It looks like I can backup my entire server, daily, for about $0.02 / day. You’re not going to find a better deal than that!

Enough already! Here’s the script. It’s completely free, and probably has more comments than actual code in it. Just PLEASE don’t ask for support on this one – get a sys. admin if you need help configuring it. Or figure it out with trial & error.

Storing your data in “the cloud” can be dangerous if you don’t have permissions set right. A webinar by @WilsonMattos cleared that up for me (previous webinar available for download).

So, get your server backed up, and once you do, make sure you can successfully restore the data!

First ever Barcamp in Buffalo is at Pearl Street Grill on Tuesday March 3rd at 7:30pm. The idea is to create ongoing events for people involved in new technology and web related development to connect and learn from one another.

If you’re in the WNY area, RSVP for the 1st BarCamp Buffalo! If all goes well, maybe I’ll speak about something interesting at BarCamp #2

First, you need a temperature sensor for the Hot Tub. I use the Wireless Temperature Sensor with Cabled Probe. The temperature sensor is secured inside my filter, and the transmitter is mounted to the outside of the tub. Now I did have the Waterproof Floating Remote Thermometer, but they’re not really waterproof. Soak it at 105° and turn the jets on, and water gets in there.

Now you need something to grab the signal from the wireless transmitter; I’m using the WMR968 Complete Wireless Weather Station. I also have all the other sensors hooked up, including the outdoor temperature sensor. This is important… I’ll show you why later.

OK, so the transmitter is sending data to the receiver, which then feeds it into your PC. We now need to make this data readily available, which is where VWSql comes in. This handy bit of software sends the data to a MySQL database. Oh yeah, almost forgot… you need MySQL and some sort of hosting.

NOW, write a quick PHP script… get the data “select * from weather order by RecDate desc limit 1″ and check the temperature:

if (
($rsWeather['CH2Temperature'] < 70) &&
($rsWeather['OutdoorTemperature'] < 50)
) {
echo("too cold!");
} // ends
else {
echo("OK");
} // ends else from


What this says is if the Hot Tub is under 70, and the outdoor temperature is under 50, it's too cold! Otherwise, it's OK. This is why the outdoor temperature sensor is important, because if its 80 outside and the water is 70, that's OK... it's not going to freeze.

Finally, set-up a check in pingdom. I have pingdom check my page every 30 minutes, and under "Optional Settings" I set "Check for string on page" "Should contain" "OK". If it's down just 1 time, I get a TXT message to my phone.

So if you've got some unused checks in pingdom, put them to use!

What bothers me about Chrome is that it’s not integrated with other Google products nicely. Two prime examples:

1. I can’t write an HTML email in Gmail because Gmail doesn’t recognize Chrome as a browser that supports their WYSIWYG editor. Didn’t the Gmail people know Chrome was being developed? Don’t you think at least ONE of the Chome developers uses Gmail and realizes this is going on?
2. Bookmarks are not integrated with Google bookmarks. So now I have Google Bookmarks, Chrome Bookmarks, and del.icio.us bookmarks. Right now I’m cleaning up my Chrome bookmarks, which are typically temporary things that I just don’t want to lose as I find them, and either moving them into del.icio.us or Google Bookmarks. This needs to be integrated better (user option).

Common, Google. At first, I was joking about being your Director of Common Sense, but maybe you really need one…

I logged into my DirecTV account and got to the DVR Scheduler and set it to record Disney from 8 to 9pm. Imagine my surprise when we got home and it actually worked!

Searching for the TV show didn’t work at all, so I just guessed at the time and got it. I don’t know if it was called something else, but I searched for lots of things & nothing gave me the result I wanted (I wanted to Tivo Studio DC but only found Hannah Montana in the guide).

The DVR Scheduler is a free add-on from DirecTV. If you have DirecTV with DVRs, do yourself a favor and set this up now, so when you need it, it’s ready.

What we have here, from left to right, is:

• SimpleTech USB drive – this is used as a backup to the…
• Buffalo Link Station NAS – which holds my MP3 collection & all photos.
• Next is the Linksys WRT54G3G Wireless Router (WRT54G3G-ST) which I use with my Sprint broadband card as a backup network connection, in the event Time Warner goes down.
• Next to that (blue, horizontal) is my new Linksys 8-Port Switch. I had to add this recently to accommodate Laura’s PC being added to the network via a wired connection (previously, she was wireless).
• Next to the switch is my cable modem. I lease this from Time Warner for my Roadrunner internet access.
• Moving along, the next thing that looks like it belongs on the International Spacestation is the Linksys WRT350N Wireless Router. This takes the connection from my cable modem and begins all that routing magic. It’s also a very powerful wireless station. This allows me to work from my livingroom or back deck.
• Finally, there’s 2 Vonage phone adapters. Why 2? I first had one for my business lines (2 lines – phone & fax). Then I decided to switch to Vonage for my home service, and had to add another.

So there it is – my messy home network. I’ll spare you photos of the hole in the wall that I created on Saturday. I was trying to drop a line inside the wall, but after hours of trying, I gave up & ran the line outside along with the cable / satellite lines.

The new TomTom IQ Routes technology is based on actual average speeds on roads, rather than the posted speed limits. This intelligent routing technology is based on anonymous historical speed profiles of over 6.2 billion miles of driven roads, gathered over the years by millions of TomTom users. It takes into account all the factors that may influence the time it takes drivers to get to their destination, including traffic lights, rotaries, steep slopes and speed bumps.

The TomTom IQ Routes speed profile database continues to grow at the rate of over half a billion measurements per day, so the time and spatial accuracy of TomTomIQ Routes technology will continually increase.

This pushes TomTom way up the ranks of GPS companies. Maybe even past Garmin. Although I am happy Garmin took back my 2-1/2 year old refurbished StreetPilot to put a new battery in it for me

Getting the IonCube error?

The Loader must appear as the first entry in the php.ini file in Unknown on line 0

The answer can be found here.

I created a “zend.ini” file with the Zend lines from php.ini in there and placed it in /etc/php.d.

zend_extension_manager.optimizer=/usr/local/Zend/lib/Optimizer-3.3.0
zend_extension_manager.optimizer_ts=/usr/local/Zend/lib/Optimizer_TS-3.3.0
zend_optimizer.version=3.3.0a
zend_extension=/usr/local/Zend/lib/ZendExtensionManager.so
zend_extension_ts=/usr/local/Zend/lib/ZendExtensionManager_TS.so

That fixed this error. Then I had a new error, “Fatal error: Unable to read X bytes in file.php on line 0″, which I found the answer to here.

So upload the files in binary. Now I have Plesk + ionCube + Zend Optimizer all installed together

I have a Moto Q, which is notorious for having a short-lived battery charge time. I have a desk charger at my desk, but when it’s sitting next to me all night long, it’s not charging. Then I wake up in the morning and, if I was using it the night before, the battery is crying for help.

Well, I took the USB cable (which I don’t use) and plugged it into my Tivo. Then I can charge my phone using power via the USB cable from the Tivo.

In the living room, I have a notebook cooling pad under the Tivo, again plugged into the USB port in the back. If they’re there, put them to use!