Robb's Blog

Editing the layout in Transkribus

2023-03-23T13:08:00.000+01:00

Transkribus is an AI-powered platform for automatic text recognition and transcription of historical (usually handwritten) documents.

Most Transkribus users probably do the automatic layout analysis and text recognition in one step or even upload, layout and text recognition all in one step.

However, you may have issues with the layout analysis, for example putting lines in the wrong order, breaking lines in the middle, or inventing non-existing lines. This is especially true of text in tables, where the columns are usually processed before the rows, contrary to what is usually desired.

That's why I routinely do the upload, layout analysis and text recognition in three separate steps and optimize the layout created by Transkribus manually before doing the automatic text recognition.

I use the web-based Transkribus App (also called Transkribus Lite) rather than Transkribus Expert (the standalone version that you install on your PC), which is no longer being further developed.

Transkribus changes the user interface often in their attempts to improve it, but that means parts of the following guide may become obsolete quickly. However, the main principles will no doubt be valid for some time.

Do not click "Text Recognition" in the menu on the left or "Select files" under "Quick Text Recognition" on the right.

Instead, choose "Upload" in the menu on the left.Choose "Image" or "PDF", then upload one or more files from your PC's file system.

Once you have uploaded the file(s), go to the overview of the page(s) in the document, but do not go to an individual page. You should see miniature views of the page(s) that you just uploaded. You will see checkboxes with the word "Select" to the lower left of the miniature views of the pages.

Click the checkbox of the first page you want to do the layout analysis for. The grayed out menu items on the left now become activated. Do not choose "Text Recognition".

Instead, choose "Layout Recognition".

At the time of this writing, you now have a choice among ""Printed Block Detection", "Preset Model", and "Choose Model", but this may change.

Choose "Preset Model" and click "Start".

As of this writing, a window now appears explaining what is currently being changed with the layout analysis models. Click "Start" again.

Close any open windows. Click "Jobs" in the menu on the left. Wait for the automatic layout analysis of the first job to finish.

When it is finished click on the document link in the column "Action".

Click on the miniature view of the page you just did the automatic layout analysis for.

At the time of this writing, a window explaining the new document editor is displayed. Close this window.

The layout of the page consists mainly of regions that contain lines that contain points.

The "Info" icon shows you a cheat sheet on how to edit the layout. Read this.

First check to see if the regions are OK. Often any text written in the margin is included in the same region as the main text and the lines may even run into each other.

So you need to create a new region for the text in the margin. Click the "Add Region" icon on the left. Define the new region by clicking on one corner with the mouse, then click on the opposite corner with the mouse.

If lines run into each other, you need to split the line. Mark the line by clicking on it with the mouse. Then hit the "V" key (for "vertical split"). While holding the "V" key move the mouse cursor till the vertical line is where you want to split the text line. Then tap the left mouse button.

Now mark the line that needs to go into the new region. Hit the line you marked with the right mouse button. A context-sensitive menu will open. Choose "Assign to new region"; then choose the new region with the mouse. Repeat with any other lines that need move to the new region because this does not automatically happen when you create the new region.

To split a region, mark the region with the mouse, hit the "H" key (for "horizontal split") then move the mouse cursor to where you want the split, and hit the left mouse button. You can also split a region vertically with the "V" key, but that is more seldom.

To delete a region, mark it with the mouse, then hit the "Del" key.

To combine regions, mark the first region with the mouse, then hit the "Ctrl" key, and mark the second region with the mouse. Then hit the "M" key (for "merge").

To redefine the size of a region, drag the corners of it with the mouse.

Save your work by hitting the "Save" icon near the top right (a diskette symbol) to . Do this often.

Now check the lines. For this part it is extremely helpful to see the line numbers in the image in the left-hand panel (not just in the right-hand panel). Click the "Configure" icon on the extreme bottom right. Click the "Layout" tab. Click "Show reading order". Close the window. Now you will see little numbers indicating the order of the regions and the order of the lines within the regions.

Click on the first line in the first region in the image. The corresponding line in the right-hand panel will also be marked, and vice versa. To move from one line to the next in the image, hit the "Ctrl" key. To move from one line to the next in the right-hand panel hit the down arrow key.

To add a line, hit the "Add Line" icon, click the left mouse button at the beginning of the line, and double-click the mouse button to end the line. If the line is jagged or curved, you can add points on the line with a click of the mouse button anywhere in between before double-clicking at the end.

To reorder lines, mark one of them, then hit the "Layout" icon on the left. Then drag the currently marked line to where it belongs with the mouse. Unfortunately the lines in this window are not numbered, so it can be confusing.

Splitting lines is explained above when explaining how to add a region.

To merge lines, mark the first one with the mouse, then hold the "Ctrl" key and mark the second one with the mouse, and hit the "M" key (for "merge").

To extend a line to the left or right, mark it with the mouse, then drag the first or last point to the left or right.

When you have finished editing the layout, don't forget to save your work.

If the layout is so wrong that optimizing it is too cumbersome, you can delete all the regions and all the lines, then add the regions and lines manually as described above. Or don't do the automatic layout analysis at all, and add the regions and lines manually.

Up to this point, no credits have been used.

Now you can do the text recognition by clicking the "Recognition" icon near the bottom left. This is when a credit is deducted.

Homemade Phonescoping Adapter

2014-07-21T13:39:00.000+02:00

Many of my previous posts dealt with digiscoping adapters for compact digital cameras and spotting scopes, but what if you don't have one of those three ingredients with you? You're more likely to have your smartphone and binoculars with you when birding, so here's how to make your own smartphone digiscoping adapter. Is it still called digiscoping? I guess it's called phonescoping.

What you need:

A case that fits the back of your phone.

Self-adhesive hook and loop fastener ("Velcro"). I found some 5 cm (2 in.) wide at Amazon. Try to get the widest and strongest you can find.

A 35mm film container or similar item that will fit snugly inside the eyecup or outside the ocular of your binoculars, here my trusty old Swarovski Habicht 7x42s. I saved a bunch of film containers when digital cameras arrived on the scene, but you can still find them online, e.g. at eBay.

Use a jar lid or similar item as a template to mark the back of the soft side ("loop" part) of the hook and loop tape. You want it to be 6 or 7 cm (2.5 to 3 in.) wide in order to accommodate several sizes of adapters. Cut along your marking.

Now use your smartphone case as a template to mark the hole in the middle. Then cut it out.

Take the backing off the tape, and press it firmly onto the phone case, centering the holes. Cut off the excess.

You will want to weigh the tape down with a stack of books overnight in order to create a stronger bond.

Now do the same thing with the hook part of the hook and loop tape, this time using the film container as a template. Cut a hole in the middle that's as big as the hole in your phone case. I used a 14mm (6/16 in.) drill bit. Then cut off as much of the rest of the film container to get your phone as close as possible to the binoculars (to avoid vignetting). I used my trusty table saw. Here's the result:

The surface area looks pretty small, but it works surprisingly well. Now insert your phone into the case, and stick your new adapter onto it.

Now insert this into the eyepiece of your binoculars.

And fire up your favorite camera app (or just the one that came with the phone).

Now point the whole thing at a bird (this one's hiding in the foliage).

As you can see, depending on how snugly the adapter fits into the eyepiece, one hand is free to zoom in (getting rid of the vignetting) and snap the photo.

This contraption also fits into the eyepiece of this newer model Swarovski SLC.

Here are a few photos taken with this setup:

If your new adapter doesn't fit into your eyepiece (here on a Swarovski CL) you can screw in the eyepiece where the adapter is and rest your phone on the other eyepiece.

With this setup you need both hands to hold the phone and adapter to the binoculars, making it hard to operate your camera app.

However, there are camera apps that react to your voice. You can take a picture, for example, by saying "take the picture"!

This can all be very tricky, however, so here's how I made an adapter to fit this model:

A friend had an old plastic vacuum cleaner nozzle that tapered slightly from one end to the other:

I cut off slices about 2 cm (1 in.) thick till I had a ring that fit snugly over the ocular:

Then I got a hole saw that would cut a circular piece of an old CD-ROM to fit exactly inside the plastic ring. First I pre-drilled a hole in a scrap of wood and clamped the CD-ROM centered on the drill hole:

This is the result of drilling the disc:

I had to cut off some extraneous plastic and flash with a Stanley knife to make the disc fit inside the ring. Then I cut off a piece of the hook and loop tape and stuck the ring on it:

Then I put the disc inside this:

Then I cut off the corners of the tape:

Then I made a few more snips to create some tabs:

Then I folded the tabs up and stuck them to the ring:

Then I taped some duct tape around the ring:

Then I cut a hole in the bottom of the hook and loop tape as large as the hole in the disc:

Done:

A couple photos from this new contraption:

None of these pictures will win prizes in a print publication of course, but if that's what you wanted, you wouldn't be using a smartphone. However, they're perfectly good for documentation purposes and for posting on your favorite social media site.

Testing the Swarovski ATX Spotting Scope

2014-03-15T18:32:00.000+01:00

Swarovski's modular spotting scope system ATX/STX allows you to interchange 3 sizes of objective lenses with one ocular.

The oculars are also available in angled (ATX) or straight (STX) versions.

The objective sizes are 65 mm (25 to 60 power zoom), 85 mm (also 25 to 60 power) and 95 mm (with a whopping 30 to 70 power zoom).

The objectives have the further advantage of having the zoom ring right next to the focus ring of the ocular... no more fumbling between the two when focussing and zooming on a distant subject.

65 mm objective and ATX ocular separate

65 mm objective and ATX ocular connected

I have been testing the ATX for several months with the 65 and 85 mm objectives.

65 mm and 85 mm objective comparison

My main focuses are identification, observation and digiscoping with a compact digital camera (both photos and videos). For this I've been using the DCB II digiscoping adapter.

65 mm objective with ATX ocular, DCB II and camera separate

65 mm objective with ATX ocular, DCB II and camera connected together and ready

The great advantage of this adapter is that you can easily fold it up out of the way to view through the scope.

65 mm objective with ATX ocular, DCB II and camera folded up

Once you've attached the adapter, there's really no reason to ever take it off again even if you switch objectives. I walk around all day with this setup (plus tripod) on my shoulders. The only reason to take the camera off the adapter is when the battery runs down and you change to a freshly charged one.

The advantage of a larger 85 mm (and 95 mm) objective lens, of course, is to allow more light to reach the eye under suboptimal lighting conditions. The 65 mm lens is so good, however, that for me the advantages of lighter weight and less volume mean that I usually leave the 85 mm lens at home before leaving on my hours-long treks, often in mountainous terrain. The 85 mm objective lens alone (without the ocular) weighs 1.15 kg (2.53 lb.) compared to 0.84 kg (1.85 lb.) for the 65 mm lens, a difference of 0.31 kg (0.68 lb.).

With practice changing the objectives is easy, but since this is the part that attaches to the tripod, you have to change two attachments every time (the attachment to the tripod and the attachment to the ocular). Therefore, unless the lighting conditions are really bad and I won't be walking around too much, I would stick with the 65 mm lens. Your mileage may vary.

Another piece of optional equipment is the balance rail, the reasoning behind which is that the added weight of the camera will make the ocular end of the scope heavier, causing that end to tip down.

85 mm objective with ATX ocular and balance rail separate

85 mm objective with ATX ocular and balance rail connected

In the photos the foot on the balance rail is closer to your body (and the camera) than the foot on the scope. With a push of the green button on the balance rail you can easily slide the center of balance to any desired position.

The balance rail fits both the 65 mm and 85 mm (and presumably 95 mm) lens, but not without considerable fiddling. This is not meant to be done in the field.

The balance rail is much more sophisticated than in the ATM system. Swarovski obviously put a lot of thought into it, but it adds 0.34 kg (0.75 lb.) to the system. At first I thought the problem of the camera tipping down when you least expect it would be larger. Admittedly I've gotten into the unconscious habit of tightening the corresponding knob on the tripod before taking my hands off the positioning handle. And with compact digital cameras becoming more and more compact and lightweight, this is becoming less and less a problem.

The tripod head I tested with this system was a DH 101 and the tripod was a CT 101, the same as in this blog post, so I won't go into further detail.

As you can see the Swarovski ATX/STX spotting scope system is truly modular to fit any need.

In summary the system I usually use consists of:

Swarovski 25-60x 65mm spotting scope objective
ATX ocular
DCB II digital camera base
CT 101 carbon tripod
DH 101 tripod head
Nikon Coolpix P310 compact digital camera

The total weight of this system is about 4.5 kg or 10 lb. as measured by my luggage scale, about the same as my previous system.

For photos made with this system see my previous post and my Flickr Photostream. For videos, see my YouTube wildlife playlist.

German-language version of this post

First Impressions of the Swarovski ATX Spotting Scope

2013-06-30T11:25:00.000+02:00

I have the opportunity of testing both the 65 mm and 85 mm Swarovski ATX spotting scope. As soon as they arrived I went outside and digiscoped a few birds at my feeder. It was late afternoon/evening, and the sun was coming from slightly behind and to the left. Considering this I think these shots aren't too bad.

Eurasian Blue Tit

Female Eurasian Bullfinch

Female Eurasian Blackbird

Male Eurasian Blackbird

A few days later I went to the local lakeshore and got these shots under rather windy conditions.

Song Thrush

White Wagtail

Still a few days later I was lucky enough to discover Austria's rarest woodpecker, the White-backed Woodpecker. Both the male and female were feeding their young. In this shot the male's head is a little fuzzy, but they stopped coming after a few minutes, so I couldn't get a better shot.

Here's a video of the young at the nest, also digiscoped.

German-language version of this blog post

Digiscoping with the Swarovski ATM 80 and DCB Camera Adapter

2012-11-04T19:58:00.000+01:00

After testing a tube-type digital camera adapter and a rail-type universal adapter, I decided to test the digital camera base from Swarovski. This is also a rail-type universal adapter, but it has the added advantage that it can easily flip out of place on a hinge for viewing purposes. This saves loads of time since there's no screwing or readjusting needed. You just flip a lever to release the adapter and clamp it in place.

As mentioned in my last post, this adapter didn't fit my current (13-year-old) scope, so I asked Swarovski Austria if they would lend me a digiscoping setup for testing and blogging purposes, and they graciously obliged. Here's the equipment I tested:

Swarovski ATM 80 HD spotting scope body
25-50x W eyepiece
DCB-A digital camera base
CT 101 carbon tripod
DH 101 tripod head
Canon PowerShot A590 compact digital camera

The careful reader will notice that I switched cameras from a Nikon CoolPix AW100. I had bought the Nikon expressly for digiscoping purposes, but it turned out to be a less than perfect choice, at least for me, because I find it relatively difficult to focus the thing.

Both cameras have a 4x zoom, however, so for the purposes of comparing digiscoping camera adapters, this should not make much difference.

Unpacking the Boxes:

ATM 80 HD spotting scope body

25-50x W eyepiece

DCB-A digital camera base

CT 101 carbon tripod

DH 101 tripod head

The first thing I noticed was that one of the two clips on the lens cap got stuck and is difficult to slide into place when replacing the lens cap. The clips on my old lens cap are cast in one piece with the lens cap, meaning there is less technology for something to go wrong with.

Similarly the soft rubber cap on the eyepiece is very loose and easily falls off the eyepiece. The hard plastic cap on the old eyepiece screws on and therefore is almost impossible to fall off. In addition the cord holding the new eyepiece cap to the eyepiece must be detached when using the DCB and is easy to lose.

The new scope has a nifty new sighting aid, but alas, this also must be removed when using the DCB.

The DCB included a balance rail, but as delivered it couldn't be mounted to the tripod head. The little instruction slip was very minimalist with only pictographs and no text so as to cater to the international crowd, but I couldn't figure out how to make it fit the tripod head. Googling the problem didn't help either. In fact, the few websites I found mentioned flat out that the this balance rail (666-0253RM) doesn't fit this tripod head (DH 101). So I wrote Dale Forbes, Swarovski product manager, on Facebook. He said, "you just need to use an imbuss/ hex key to loosen the foot of the rail, and then re-fit it on the other side of the balance bar. It will then slot straight in to the DH101." That did the trick!

I have found that the balance rail is necessary. Otherwise the scope is too heavy on the end where the camera is and tends to tip down.

The tripod has a spirit level in it, but I don't see much use for that in the field. The maneuvering arm of the tripod head apparently isn't meant to be adjusted as often as I was used to with my old setup. Now you need to unscrew a screw with a coin to loosen it instead of turning a screw with your fingers. In addition the rod is no longer round (like a dowel) but rather hexagonal, so that you have to remove the whole thing after loosening it, then insert it again before tightening it. This hasn't turned out to be as much of a problem as I anticipated. Now, when traveling by foot, car, bus, etc., I just don't loosen it any more. If I'm putting it in a suitcase I remove the whole tripod head from the tripod.

Everything else about the tripod head is better than before. There are no longer hand screws to turn when adjusting the tripod head in the two axes, but rather all-or-nothing levers that work just fine (as long as you use the balance rail when a camera is attached).

Inserting the scope's foot into the tripod's shoe and removing it again are much easier than with the old system. There's no additional adapter shoe to add instability. The scope's foot itself (or the balance rail's foot when using one) fits directly into tripod head's shoe. I had problems with this setup loosening all the time on the old system, not so on the new system. The scope's shoe also fits very snugly into the balance rail and is adjusted with a screw that is loosened with a coin. Usually you do this only once.

The tripod itself has pretty much all the same features as my previous tripod and more. The only thing missing are the metal points at the end. These were built into the previous tripod and were hidden out of place by turning the rubber feet. Now you need to order the metal points separately and replace the standard plastic tips, I think. However, I didn't find a need for them in several habitats from fine sandy beaches to rocky mountaintops and everything in between.

The new tripod includes a hook on the bottom of the center rod to hang a weight on (e.g. your backpack) for additional stabilization in windy conditions. I haven't had a need for it yet, but it's good to know it's there.

I chose the CT 101 tripod rather than the CT Travel, even though I fly fairly often, since I thought it might be more stable because the legs have only three sections each instead of four, at the same total height. As you can see below, the tripod and tripod head fit in my suitcase just fine. If it still doesn't fit you can remove the tripod head.

When extending the tripod legs on my old system, I would routinely pull out both sections of all three legs. Then the scope was at perfect viewing height for me, but a little too high for photographing, since the camera setup adds length to the scope and I use the angled version of the scope rather than the straight version. When extending the new tripod to its full length, it's much too high for me, even in viewing mode, unless I'm looking high up in trees or mountains. So I usually just extend only the bottom sections of the legs and bend myself over. This works well with the angled scope, especially with the camera setup attached. Added advantages are increased stability and the ability to share your scope with shorter people and children without readjusting everything and searching for the subject again.

In the photo above you can also see the green bag containing the DCB and the hex key (Allen wrench) for adjusting its height. As with any camera adapter system you will want to do all adjusting and fiddling before you leave for your (first) birding tour. The advantage with this system is that the camera is attached with its tripod screw hole to a bracket that can easily be removed from the DCB with a simple lever if you want to use the camera for other purposes than digiscoping. It is then quickly re-attached. I usually have a second compact camera (and my smartphone) along so not even this is necessary. You can even attach the sliding bracket to the camera in such a way that the battery compartment isn't blocked.

Once the setup is complete, you usually hike along with the scope on your shoulder and the camera setup folded up, so that you are quickly in the viewing mode. Then when you want to digiscope, you just release the catch, fold the camera back down, fix it with the lever, turn the camera on, zoom the camera if desired, refocus the scope if necessary, and shoot. I have found that the field of view after flipping the camera down is slightly higher than before, so I automatically move it down a few millimeters.

Theoretically you can even zoom the scope's eyepiece while the camera is in shooting mode, but you usually do this before flipping the camera down, if at all. I have found that with the eyepiece's lowest magnification (25x) together with the camera's zero to four times magnification I often have a subject too large for the field of view. I rarely use the scope's zoom any more. This setup has some vignetting if I don't zoom the camera, so I usually do. I hope my next setup doesn't have any vignetting.

The entire weight of the new system is 10 lb. (4.5 kg). The old system weighs 15 lb. (6.8 kg); that's 50% more. This is of course very noticeable if you carry your scope around with you everywhere you go birding, even while hiking for hours in the mountains.

As to photos taken with this system, judge for yourself (click on the images for more and larger images):

2012-07-08 Ft Desota State Park, Florida (Nikon Coolpix AW100)

2012-07-10 Sun City Center, Florida (Nikon Coolpix AW100)

2012-07-17 Padre Island, Corpus Christi, Texas (Nikon Coolpix AW100)

2012-07-18 Padre Island, Corpus Christi, Texas (Nikon Coolpix AW100)

2012-07-31 Earlysville, Virginia (Canon PowerShot A590)

2012-08-18 Feuerkogel, Ebensee, Austria (Canon PowerShot A590)

2012-10-25 Heligoland, Germany (Canon PowerShot A590)

2012-10-26 Heligoland, Germany (Canon PowerShot A590)

2012-10-27 Heligoland, Germany (Canon PowerShot A590)

Die deutschsprachige Version dieses Blogeintrags finden Sie hier.

[Disclaimer: I am in no way connected to the Swarovski company (besides being their customer), nor are any relatives or close friends of mine employed by them. Only a few of my social media friends work for them. Nor have I received any payment from Swarovski, either monetarily or in products. The system described above was lent to me by Swarovski with the understanding that I would blog my experience with it.]

Digiscoping with the ScopeTronix EZ-Pix Digital Camera Holder

2012-06-18T20:58:00.000+02:00

Admittedly this is an old adapter; I bought it in 2004. ScopeTronix mentions the EZ-Pix II on their website, but I can't tell what's new about it because the links on the website don't work.

No matter. This is to discuss a different approach to digital camera adapters than the one I mentioned here: Digiscoping Test

The scope setup and camera are the same. The digital camera adapter is a ScopeTronix EZ-Pix.

Rather than using a cylinder that slips over your eyepiece and another cylinder that slips over the first and attaches to your camera via its filter thread, this system uses a padded clamp that attaches to your eyepiece, which is attached to a slotted bar, which in turn is attached to your camera's tripod mounting hole via a screw and optional spacer.

High compatibility are ensured by:

2" and 1.25" clamps included
pivot post
slotted bar that slides backward and forward and pivots on the pivot post
camera attachment knob that slides up and down on the slotted bar
optional spacer
optional socket head bolt to use for more permanently fixing the adapter with heavier cameras
no looking for an adapter with the right size thread for your camera's filter thread or a camera that even has a filter thread (almost all cameras have a tripod mounting hole)

All these variables, however, make it a bit tricky getting the camera aligned to the eyepiece just right. Once it is, however, you "only" need to loosen the clamp, remove the assembly and replace it again when switching from viewing to digiscoping and back.

A further disadvantage if you're using a zoom eyepiece is that the entire adapter-camera assembly turns when you zoom in and out, making zooming impractical. In addition, the clamp covers the magnification markings on the eyepiece ("25x", "60x", etc.).

This adapter originally costed $49.95. I can't tell what the current model costs because, like I said, the links on the website don't work.

Digiscoping Test

2012-06-02T21:39:00.000+02:00

After getting my spotting scope repaired, I did a digiscoping test.

Here's my equipment:

Swarovski AT 80 spotting scope (13 years old)
Swarovski 20-60x eyepiece
Swarovski tripod
Foto Fennica SWA AT camera adapter with 27 mm adapter ring
Nikon CoolPix AW100 compact digital camera

The CoolPix AW100 is one of the only compact digital cameras I know of that has a filter adapter (40.5 mm). At first I tried connecting this to the SWA AT camera adapter with 2 filter adapter rings (that added a mm or 2 to the distance from camera to scope). I couldn't find an individual adapter ring that went from 27 to 40.5 mm. However, the vignetting was too pronounced.

In order to reduce vignetting by getting the camera lens as close as possible to the scope's eyepiece, I got my brother-in-law to screw the plastic AW100 filter adapter directly to the SWA AT camera adapter. This was achieved by boring threading for the screws used directly into the metal camera adapter.

In the photo below the Bullfinch was in the shade at a feeder in my yard. I used the 20x magnification of the zoom eyepiece and the maximum optical zoom of the camera (4x). The photo was not cropped. As one can see there is no vignetting when using the camera's optical zoom.

In the following photo the Bullfinch was at a different feeder in full sunlight. I was closer to the subject and couldn't use the full optical zoom because the bird would fill the frame too much. Notice the vignetting.

The following photo is the same as the one above except that much of the vignetting was cropped out. Here one can see individual feathers of this songbird and the black eye against the black background. Even using my scope I would not have noticed this level of detail. In the wild it is almost impossible to distinguish this bird's eye from its background. Click on the photo for a larger version.

With a little more practice I could probably make fairly good photos with this setup. However, if the bird wasn't relatively stationary at my feeder for several minutes, I'm not sure I could get set up quickly enough before the bird flew away. It takes some time to remove the rubber eye cup and affix the first half of the camera adapter to the scope eyepiece with the set screw. The other half of the camera adapter is clipped on quickly to the camera, but this is also its disadvantage: Due to its material (plastic) it sometimes comes off again too easily and might break easily.

Swarovski makes a similar camera adapter called the DCA that would fit my eyepiece. This may be more stable. However, I plan on trying a different setup altogether for the following reasons:

My scope isn't particularly suited to digiscoping since it's not HD.
My eyepiece isn't particularly suited to digiscoping since it's not wide-angle.
I think the digital camera base (DCB) by Swarovski would be more practical than the type of adapter I'm using, since it swings up and away for viewing and swings back quickly into place for taking photos, but the DCB doesn't fit my older model scope.
A different compact digital camera that allows one to do more settings manually might be more suitable.

So, except for the tripod, that means exchanging every part of my equipment. I might as well get a new tripod too, since they're lighter these days.

What are your experiences with digiscoping? Please comment below.

Chronology of a Customer Service Case

2012-06-02T15:23:00.000+02:00

I bought my Swarovski spotting scope AT 80 and 20-60x eyepiece in 1999 (13 years ago). When birding in a group, I don't notice anyone any more with this older gray-colored model. Almost everyone has a Swarovski, but it's the newer green-colored, ATM/STM model.

I noticed that my scope had play in the focusing ring, that is, when I switch directions when turning it, there was about 1 or 2 mm play before it started turning in the other direction. In addition it seemed to me I couldn't focus sharply at the highest magnification of 60x.

At the Pannonian Bird Experience, I mentioned this to a Swarovski representative who took a look through my scope and suggested I send it in to be repaired. Since I live in Austria, I visited the Austrian Swarovski website and got the e-mail address of the Head of the Customer Service department.

I still have the guarantee card (with dealer's stamp and purchase date) and noticed that they have a 30-year guarantee (!) but any work done after 5 years is to be paid by the customer. It also says that parts subject to natural wear (eye cups, etc.) are not covered. I couldn't readily locate the original invoice.

I e-mailed them on April 30 attaching a scan of my guarantee card and asked what to do. The next day (May 1) I received an e-mail saying to send it in and they would send me a cost estimate.

A week later (May 8) I mailed the scope and eyepiece to Swarovski in Absam, Tirol, Austria. Two days later (May 10) I received an e-mail saying the repair would be free of charge(!), although the attached estimate showed that the cost would normally be about EUR 200 (US 250), mostly for work but also a few parts.

Not quite 2 weeks later (May 23) I received my repaired scope and eyepiece. There is no longer play in the focus ring, the optics were cleaned, and the rubber parts (e.g. eye cup) were replaced. The light intensity is much higher, and I am now able to focus sharply at 60x magnification.

I am extremely satisfied with the handling of this customer service case and can only recommend it to all other companies, most noticeably consumer electronics companies I have dealt with. Swarovski has gone far beyond their already very generous guarantee. The only costs I incurred were the shipping costs to the company. Sure, they're a little more expensive than other optics companies, but the quality of the products and of the customer service more than make up for the price difference in the long run.

[Disclaimer: I am in no way connected to the Swarovski company (besides being their customer), nor are any relatives or close friends of mine employed by them. Only a few of my social media friends work for them. Nor have I received any payment from Swarovski, either monetarily or in products. Nor did they know beforehand that I would do this blog post.]

Does anyone else have notable customer service experiences they would like to share?

Does anyone else have experience with Swarovski or other birding optics companies they would like to share?

Please comment below.

Handy Bird-book Bookmarks

2012-05-27T21:41:00.000+02:00

So, you're tracking down a confusing fall warbler or other difficult bird. You're taking looks through the bins and simultaneously consulting your favorite bird book. As you switch back and forth from book to binoculars, you awkwardly clamp the book, opened to the right page, under your arm or between your legs. You know from experience that traditional bookmarks made from pieces of paper don't work since they inevitably blow away in the wind. Besides, they block the view of text or pictures in the book.

Here's a handy tip: Get a piece of thin ribbon about three times as long as your book is tall. Fold it in half, and glue the folded part into the spine if it's a hardcover book or between the cover and first or last page near the spine if it's a softcover.

Then reap the praise of all your fellow birders as they notice what a great idea you had! If they remark that it looks like a bible, you can remark, "Well, it is my birding bible!"

How to install and implement Sphinx Search on XAMPP for Windows 7 with MySQL and PHP

2011-07-30T16:04:00.030+02:00

If you have a MySQL-based website with lots of records (like hundreds of thousands) and run a full-text search on them, you will probably run into performance problems. The first thing most people probably do is use LIKE with the % wildcard. This quickly becomes too slow, of course, because MySQL has to search through the entire text of every record of the table and can’t use any indexes.

The first solution most people think of is MySQL’s own full-text index capability. However, this doesn’t work very well if you run the query on many text fields per record. In my case, the search was even slower.

Sooner or later, you have to think about creating additional full-text indexes. At a seminar once I heard about how powerful the Apache Lucene project is, so that’s the first thing I looked into. However, I quickly found out that it’s very complicated and requires a larger learning curve than I was willing to invest. In the online documentation for Lucene somewhere it said that if Lucene is too low-level for you then to try Apache Solr, so I looked into that. Solr is based on Lucene and runs on Java, so that means you need to install Apache Tomcat if you haven’t already, which I didn’t. I looked into installing it on my XAMPP installation and realized I would need to either update XAMPP to a version that included it or add it manually. This was turning into a larger project than I wanted it to be even before I could begin to think about the search server itself. So I looked into something else.

Here are some lists of search engine software (search servers):

Sphinx Search caught my eye because it was specifically designed to index MySQL databases, which is what I wanted primarily, although you can index just about anything else too, like XML files and web pages. It was also mentioned as particularly easy to implement.

This is true, although, of course, there are pitfalls, especially since, like most things web server, it is mainly aimed at Linux and not Windows installations. And this is the main reason for this tutorial, to help Windows users install and implement Sphinx Search with as little trouble as possible.

Resources that helped me:

Decide which release you want, generally the latest stable beta release as described here: http://sphinxsearch.com/downloads/

Download “Win32 binaries w/MySQL support” here: http://sphinxsearch.com/downloads/beta/

Unzip the zip file to C:\Sphinx. This directory should now include a few files, such as sphinx.conf.in, and subdirectories, such as api and bin.

Add the subdirectories data and log.

Copy the file C:\Sphinx\sphinx.conf.in to C:\Sphinx\sphinx.conf.

Open C:\Sphinx\sphinx.conf in a text editor.

Change the settings sql_user and sql_pass to match your MySQL installation.

Find and replace all occurrences of @CONFDIR@/ with C:\Sphinx\, at least in the uncommented lines.

Find and replace all occurrences of forward slash (/) with backslash (\) in these same lines. For example @CONFDIR@/data/test1 becomes C:\Sphinx\data\test1.

Leave the source and index settings as they are for now for testing purposes.

If MySQL isn’t running already, start it now.

Start cmd.exe as an administrator (click the Windows Start icon, type cmd in the search box without hitting Enter, right-click "cmd.exe", click “Run as administrator”). On Windows XP this is easier: no need to worry about administrator rights.

Go to your MySQL installation directory, for example enter cd c:\xampp\mysql.

Create the test database and fill it with data by entering:
mysql -u [youruser] -p < c:\sphinx\bin\example.sql (replace [youruser] with your user name).

Enter cd c:\sphinx\bin.

Index the test database by entering indexer.exe --config c:\sphinx\sphinx.conf test1.

Install Sphinx as a service by entering:
searchd.exe --install --config c:\sphinx\bin\sphinx.conf --servicename SphinxSearch

Start the service: Go to Control panel > Administrative tools > Services. Right-click on "SphinxSearch" in the list and click "Start".

Test the search by entering: search.exe --config c:\sphinx\sphinx.conf test. This should result in some matches for the search term “test”.

Copy the Sphinx Search PHP API from C:\Sphinx\api\sphinxapi.php to your site’s HTML directory, for example C:\xampp\htdocs\[yoursite]\sphinxapi.php.

Create a test PHP file with the following contents:

<?php

mysql_connect("localhost", "root", [yourpassword]);

mysql_select_db("test");

require_once('sphinxapi.php');

$s = new SphinxClient;

$s->setServer("127.0.0.1", 9312); // NOT "localhost" under Windows 7!

$s->setMatchMode(SPH_MATCH_EXTENDED2);

$s->SetLimits(0, 25);

$result = $s->Query("test");

if ($result['total'] > 0) {

echo 'Total: ' . $result['total'] . "<br>\n";

echo 'Total Found: ' . $result['total_found'] . "<br>\n";

echo '<table>';

echo '<tr><td>No.</td><td>ID</td><td>Group ID</td><td>Group ID 2</td><td>Date Added</td><td>Title</td><td>Content</td></tr>';

foreach ($result['matches'] as $id => $otherStuff) {

$row = mysql_fetch_array(mysql_query("select * from documents where id = $id"));

extract($row);

++ $no;

echo "<tr><td>$no</td><td>$id</td><td>$group_id</td><td>$group_id2</td><td>$date_added</td><td>$title</td><td>$content</td></tr>";

}

echo '</table>';

} else {

echo 'No results found';

}

?>

Run the PHP file in a browser. You should get a table of results that include the search term “test”.

Now it’s time to RTFM to implement this in your own application. You’ll need to adapt sphinx.conf to index your own MySQL database (http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/2.0.1/conf-reference.html) and adapt the API settings to suit your needs (http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/2.0.1/api-reference.html).

For example, in sphinx.conf you probably want to change the source src1 section to something meaningful. I use [database]_[table], for example source mydb_yourtable, since there can be more than one source section. I figure that avoids confusion, and if I have multiple databases/sources I can simply specify the list of indexes to search in the Query() call, for example:
$cl->Query ("test query", "db1_table1, db2_table3");

Change sql_db to your database.

Change sql_query_info to your table.

You also need to change sql_query to access the MySQL table you want to index. The first field must be a unique, unsigned, positive, integer ID. If your table doesn't have one, you need to add it to the table first. This is how you will later reference the rows found in PHP.

For example:
ALTER TABLE yourtable ADD id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY FIRST;

Adapt or delete the settings sql_attr_uint and sql_attr_timestamp.

If you changed the name of the source section then you need to change the name or comment out the section source src1throttled : src1.

You probably want to also change the index test1 section to something meaningful. I use [database]_[table] as above, for example index mydb_yourtable.

Change the source setting in the index section to the whatever you named the source above, e.g. mydb_yourtable.

You can also change the path directive to something more sensible than test1.

If you want wildcard support, set enable_star = 1. This means that star (*) can be used at the beginning and/or the end of the keyword. The star will match zero or more characters, similar to % in MySQL. A star in the middle of the keyword doesn’t seem to be supported (but see below). Nor is a question mark or underscore to match exactly one character. You also need to set min_infix_len = 1 for example.

If you changed the name of the index section above then you need to change the name in the sections index test1stemmed : test1 and index dist1 or comment them out.

Be aware that max_matches = 1000 or change this value in the searchd section.

Until and unless you decide to use real-time indexes, you may want to comment out all the lines in the index rt section or delete them.

In the searchd section I set preopen_indexes = 0 because otherwise I had problems with delta index updates (see below).

Index this database as we did above for the test source by entering:
indexer.exe --rotate --config c:\sphinx\sphinx.conf --all

The --rotate option means you don’t have to stop and restart the Windows service running the searchd daemon. However, if you change sphinx.conf, you should manually stop and start searchd. The --rotate option should be used only when reindexing. As of version 0.9.9-rc1 this is no longer absolutely necessary; a --rotate should be sufficient. However, it is usually best to avoid ambiguity.

If you’ve gotten this far and are using real data, then indexing will take a few minutes.

If you ever need to remove the service entirely, start cmd.exe (as an administrator) and enter sc delete SphinxSearch. Somewhere along the line the changes I made to sphinx.conf didn’t work till I did this and reinstalled the service.

Adapt your test PHP file from above to access the database and table you just indexed and load it in a browser.

Now that you’ve gotten Sphinx Search to run in your web application, you need to think about how and when to automatically reindex the data. As of this writing there is no way to automatically do a live index update, at least not with wildcard support. However, you can do an incremental update:

Set up sphinx.conf for delta index updates as described in the manual (adapting to your situation): http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/current.html#live-updates

Use the Windows Task Scheduler to index the main source once daily at slack times. I did this:

c:\sphinx\bin\indexer.exe --rotate --config c:\sphinx\sphinx.conf --all
Once daily at 4:00 am.

Use the Windows Task Scheduler to index the delta source every few minutes at peak times. I did this:

c:\sphinx\bin\indexer.exe --rotate --config c:\sphinx\sphinx.conf mydb_yourtable_delta
Every 5 minutes from 6:00 am to 11:00 pm.

Only new records are indexed every 5 minutes. Modified records only get re-indexed once a day.

You might want to put these commands in batch files.
Re-indexing from the Task Scheduler in Windows 7 didn’t work for me, but it did work in Windows XP. See: http://sphinxsearch.com/bugs/view.php?id=860

In PHP you then need to list both the main index and the delta index in the Query() function, for example:
$cl->Query ("test query", "db1_table1, db1_table1_delta");

Update: You can simulate for example %one%two% in MySQL with *one* << *two* in Sphinx Search. There's no way to simulate an underscore for exactly one character.

Update: *one* << *two* finds one two but not onetwo.

My list of favorite Android apps

2011-03-13T21:58:00.009+01:00

I recently had to hard reset (i.e. factory reset) my Nexus One, meaning all the apps I had installed were gone, so I thought I'd list the apps I had on it or want on it to help me reinstall all of them and for future reference. Admittedly I should have done this before the hard reset since my brain's memory isn't very reliable. But what the hey!

The side effect is that my faithful readers may benefit from my suggestions. I will probably update this post as I see fit.

Words with Friends: The Android version of this game is extremely buggy at the moment (it crashes about 6000 times before I manage to finish a turn), but it was the first app I reinstalled so I could continue the games I was playing with my friends. A pleasant side effect of the hard reset was that games that had disappeared (due to bugs in the game I presume) magically reappeared. My opinion is that many of the bugs are due to the profuse use of ads. I would buy the paid version, but there isn't any for Android yet.
Scrabble Helper: For amazing your friends on how many obscure words you know in Words With Friends. OK, so it's cheating.
Google Sky Map: This is simply awesome! Don't know what that shiny thing in the night sky is? Just start up Google Sky Map, point your phone at it, and you'll amaze your friends with your astounding knowledge of astronomy. ("Oh, that's Venus.") Or point it at the day sky to see what you would see if the sun wasn't blotting everything out.
Satellite AR: Google Sky Map only shows you natural objects, but this app shows you satellites, space junk and all kinds of other man-made objects in the sky. It's especially fun to follow the International Space Station, which you can actually see with the naked eye, but who knew that without this app?
Iridium Flare Forecast: Satellite AR will show you what's happening right now, but this app will tell you when and where in the sky to look for the next pass of a satellite or the ISS. Now you can plan ahead for when to amaze your friends!
Google Goggles: There's not much I can add to what's already been said about this amazing app. Am I using the word "amaze" too much here? Well, I am amazed at everything you can do with these tiny handheld devices.
Barcode Scanner: Google Goggles does what this does and more. So why did I add this? I don't know. Go ask your mother.
Microsoft Tag Reader: You know those 2D "barcodes" with little black-and-white squares instead of bars that are called QR codes? Those things are great. You can do all kinds of stuff with them after you scan them with Google Goggles. So what does Microsoft do? The same thing they do with all great ideas. They reinvent them so they can brand them with the Microsoft name. I'm surprised they haven't come up with the "Microsoft Wheel" yet. Anyway, in case you see 2D "barcodes" with little colorful triangles (or other shapes) instead of black-and-white squares, they serve the same purpose as QR codes but are called Microsoft tags and you need a separate app to be able to read them. This is it. I only ever needed it to see a video about body painting after seeing a Microsoft tag in a magazine ad for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. (By the way, barcodes [with bars instead of squares or triangles] are 1D.)
Google Translate: This isn't quite a Star Trek universal translator, but it's getting there! Did I say it's amazing?
LEO dictionary: My favorite German-English dictionary. I also use it for German-French, German-Spanish and German-Italian.
Amazon Kindle: I didn't consciously choose this over other e-book readers. It's just the first one I happened to install. Still working my way through the free e-books.
Cardio Trainer: This is similar to Google's My Tracks, except that you're not limited to exercise where you move from one place to another. I use it mostly at the gym. Another advantage is that it automatically exports to Google Health, which Google's own app doesn't! The free version is adequate for me.
Blood Pressure Log: I use this to record and analyze my blood pressure, pulse and weight. It makes great graphs that you can export or send to e-mail addresses. It was worth it to me to make a small donation so it's ad-free. It doesn't export to Google Health yet, but the developer has said he's working on it. I don't know of any Android blood pressure app that exports to Google Health.
Catch Notes: This used to be called 3banana, and I use it to take text notes in all kinds of situations. No more searching around for pen and paper. It also syncs automatically to the web version. Its features have grown immensely since I first installed it. I just hope it doesn't get too bloated.
D-Measures: I work for a company that makes shower enclosures. With this app you can, for example, take a picture of your bathroom, then add little measurement lines with arrow points. For example, you can add dimensions of where you want your shower, e.g. 90 x 100 cm and 200 cm high. You can also add angles. Then e-mail the result to your bathroom supplier for an offer. The uses are (almost) endless. It costs $1.99 and has a 15-day free trial version.
Compass: For when you need a compass. I don't recommend using it while driving on the freeway to figure out if you're going the wrong way.
Mein A1: The remarkably featureless app of my mobile phone plan provider. For example, it doesn't tell me how high I've run my roaming fees or warn me if it gets higher than a certain amount.
Kik Messenger: Send text messages without paying highway-robbery texting fees. Supposedly similar to BlackBerry Messenger, but I don't have a BlackBerry, so I wouldn't know. The disadvantage is that both partners need Kik Messenger, so if your partner doesn't have a smartphone you're out of luck.
Skype: Use your data plan instead of your telephony plan to call someone for times when it would be cheaper that way.
Microsoft Tag Reader: You know those 2D "barcodes" with little black and white squares instead of bars that are called QR codes? Those things are great. You can do all kinds of stuff with them. So what does Microsoft do? The same thing they do with all great ideas. They reinvent them so they can brand them with the Microsoft name and hope to make billions of dollars with it. I'm surprised they haven't come up with the "Microsoft Wheel" yet. Anyway, in case you see little 2D "barcodes" with little colorful triangles instead of black and white squares, they serve the same purpose as QR codes but are called Microsoft tags, and you need a separate app to be able to read them. This is it. I only ever needed it to see a video of the history of body painting after seeing a Microsoft tag in a magazine ad for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. (OK, I know you can store more information in them because of the colors, but basically it's a reinvention of the wheel.)
Labyrinth Lite: One of the few games in my list, I don't play it much, but I like to keep it installed to show people some of the amazing things you can do with a smartphone. Yes, I still have some friends who don't have a smartphone.
Lotus Notes Traveler: My work mail, calendar and contacts apps. Unfortunately they don't sync with Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts, but at least I can check both calendars when making a new appointment, and I can answer work e-mails when I'm at a seminar or whatever for work.
Calvin and Hobbes: 'Nuff said.
Daily Dilbert: 'Nuff said.
Dropbox: Syncs your files online and across devices for access anywhere. Also a good way to send someone large files.
eBay: Everybody's favorite auction site.

I don't really see much point in installing competing apps to the ones pre-installed on my phone such as: Browser, Calculator, Calendar, Clock, Facebook, Gmail, Gallery, Maps, Navigation, News and Weather, and YouTube. The two exceptions are:

Winamp: Since Google Music is still vaporware and even if it was available wouldn't be available outside the US for about umpteen years, I used the Winamp app along with Winamp on my PC to import my iTunes library and sync that with my Nexus One. UPDATE: I would probably prefer Amazon Cloud Player, but it's not available outside the US. Darn!
TweetDeck: Lets you manage several Twitter accounts without having to log off and on all the time.

Following are apps that I'd kinda love to have or at least try out but can't because they're not available outside the US. Come on, guys!

Google Voice: Competition for Skype.
Square: Accept payments from anyone with an e-mail address on your Android device. Not even PayPal can do that, because the payee needs to have a PayPal account. People are much more likely to have an e-mail address than a PayPal account.
Amazon MP3: Including Cloud Player

And finally I'm testing the following:

Qype: A place rating service that seems to be based in the UK. It doesn't recognize some large cities in the US, for example Fairbanks, AK.
Xing: A business-oriented social network sorta like LinkedIn.

I'm looking forward to your comments on the apps above and on your favorite apps. I plan to update mine above as occasions arise.

Comparison of online invoicing systems

2010-02-13T22:43:00.005+01:00

In my first post I promised an evaluation of online invoicing systems. Well, I finally got around to it. Which is to say our current system finally got unbearable enough. Our current system is Excel Invoice Template by office-kit.com. The price couldn't be beat; it was about $30 one-time. And it served us well for several years. The developers were responsive to e-mail support requests, and with their help I learned how to add custom address fields and modify the Excel template to our needs. However, it was just these modifications that messed us up when we upgraded from Windows XP to Vista. They just didn't work any more.

That's when I decided to look into a cloud-based system. It looks like the office-kit.com system has evolved in the meantime, but with a cloud-based system I don't have to keep checking if the software has updates. It updates automatically. And I don't need to worry about surprises and headaches when I update my operating system.

Besides we're ready to evolve ourselves to a system that is more sophisticated than an Excel add-in.

First I defined our needs and then based my evaluation on them. Your requirements will be different, so don't take my review for gospel. Also keep in mind that this is a snapshot in a quickly evolving area. By the time I publish this, I'm sure many of my assertions won't be true. However, I like to think some people can benefit from the work I put into the evaluation.

Here are our current requirements:

Mainly an invoicing system for goods rather than services. Customer order entry, ordering from suppliers and payment reminders might be added benefits.
Affordable price for a home-based business.
Multiple languages. We are based in Austria and ship internationally, so we need to define the language the customer prefers.
Multiple currencies. See multiple languages above.
Line discounts, that is, the ability to define a discount for each line of the invoice. This is important when invoicing other companies rather than end consumers.
Line tax rates, that is, the ability to assign a different sales tax rate to each line, article or product group. For example, books have a different tax rate than CDs in Austria.
Output invoice in PDF format, for e-mailing and storing.
Customer database, that is, the ability to enter customers and select them when invoicing rather than entering the entire address for each invoice.
Product database, that is, the ability to enter products and select them when invoicing rather than entering the entire item description for each invoice.
The ability to import customers and products from our current database.

And here are the online systems I tested or at least looked at:

Google Checkout
http://checkout.google.com
Country: us, uk
Price: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
Multi-language: ?
Multi-currency: no (GBP with separate account)
Line discount: no lines
Line tax: no lines
PDF output: no
Customer database: no
Product database: no
Comments: customer must sign up for Google Checkout, no PayPal, no bank cards

PayPal
https://www.paypal.com
Country: several
Price: 1.9% to 3.4% + EUR 0.35 per transaction
Multi-language: no (except multiple accounts)
Multi-currency: yes
Line discount: no discounts
Line tax: no
PDF output: no
Customer database: no
Product database: no
Comments: Google Checkout and PayPal aren't really invoicing systems but checkout/payment systems, but I wanted to see if they would fit our needs. They don't.

OnlineOffice
http://www.winweb.com
Country: uk
Price: GBP 142.80/yr. + tax (EUR 13.80/mo.)
Multi-language: no
Multi-currency: ?
Line discount: no
Line tax: yes
PDF output: yes
Customer database: yes
Product database: yes
Comments: complex, complete business office solution

FreshBooks
http://www.freshbooks.com
Country: ca, us
Price: free to $149/mo.; $39/mo. for 500 to 2000 customers
Multi-language: no
Multi-currency: yes
Line discount: no
Line tax: yes, up to 4 tax rates
PDF output: yes
Customer database: yes
Product database: yes
Comments: invoicing, time tracking, expenses; very active on Twitter; added multi-currency since my first post

Smart Invoice
http://www.smartinvoice.com
Country: us
Price: $39/mo. for 25 to 5000 customers
Multi-language: yes, but not clear if one can invoice in different languages simultaneously
Multi-currency: yes, but price is not converted
Line discount: no
Line tax: yes
PDF output: no
Customer database: yes
Product database: no
Comments: invoicing for freelancers and small businesses; was AcuInvoice; addresses only in US format

Saasu
http://www.saasu.com
Country: au
Price: AU$25/mo. up to 2GB
Multi-language: no
Multi-currency: yes, with exchange rates
Line discount: no
Line tax: yes
PDF output: yes
Customer database: yes
Product database: yes, including inventory control
Comments: online accounting

CurdBee
http://curdbee.com
Country: lk, us
Price: $5/mo. for Pro version
Multi-language: no
Multi-currency: yes
Line discount: no
Line tax: no
PDF output: yes, in Pro version
Customer database: yes
Product database: yes
Comments: replied to my initial tweet; billing for small businesses & freelancers; they let me test the Pro version for 24 hours after asking for it

invOOice
http://www.invooice.com
Country: es
Price: $5/mo. for Pro version
Comments: replied to my initial tweet; invoicing, customer relationship management; currently in test phase, sign up to be notified when demo accounts become available

Harvest
http://www.getharvest.com
Country: us
Price: $12/mo.
Multi-language: translations, but no multiple languages
Multi-currency: yes
Line discount: no
Line tax: yes
PDF output: yes
Customer database: yes
Product database: no
Import clients/items: no
Comments: replied to my initial tweet; time tracking, time sheet and invoicing; time tracking via Twitter commands

Intervals
http://www.myintervals.com
Price: free to $175/mo.
Comments: replied to my initial tweet; emphasis on time tracking, task management and project management

Zoho Invoice
https://invoice.zoho.com
Country: us, in
Price: $15/mo. for 150 to 500 invoices/mo.
Multi-language: yes, via custom templates
Multi-currency: yes, with exchange rates
Line discount: yes
Line tax: yes
PDF output: yes
Customer database: yes
Product database: yes
Comments: replied to my initial tweet; invoicing; integrates with other Zoho modules; custom address fields is a big plus

MeinAuftrag.net
https://www.meinauftrag.net
Country: de
Price: up to 10 addresses free, up to 50 addresses EUR 4.95 + tax, up to 100 addresses EUR 9.95, over 100 addresses EUR 14.95
Multi-language: yes, via custom templates
Multi-currency: yes, with multiple currency fields in item database
Line discount: yes
Line tax: yes
PDF output: yes
Customer database: yes
Product database: yes
Import clients/items: not yet implemented but will import for you at no charge on request
Comments: user interface German; very responsive to e-mail support calls and feature requests

If your requirements are similar to ours and you understand German, you might want to try MeinAuftrag.net. If you don't understand German, then you can try Zoho Invoice.

In addition to our main requirements above, MeinAuftrag.net also lets you maintain suppliers and make orders. Future possible requirements that it doesn't have (yet) is inventory management, sales reports, and exporting data.

AC/DC concert threatens rare birds

2009-12-27T23:23:00.025+01:00

There's a story spreading like wildfire on news and blog sites (http://tinyurl.com/ac-dc-concert-birds). Very many of them have exactly the same wording, and many don't quote their sources. Here's an example:

"Rockers AC/DC may have to cancel a sold-out concert because their big sound poses a danger to rare birds.
Animal rights campaigners are threatening legal action if the band goes ahead with a gig planned for Wels airport in Austria in May.
Hans Uhl of BirdLife said birds nesting in the area at the time would be threatened by anthems such as 'Highway To Hell' and 'You Shook Me All Night Long'.
'The second biggest colony of curlews in Upper Austria and various other ground-nesting birds must not become endangered,' Mr Uhl said.
The 80,000 tickets for the event sold out within hours, after going on sale earlier this month."

(I got this from http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=411151.)

I'm a hard-rock fan myself and enjoy AC/DC's music (although I prefer Alice Cooper for example), but let's get a few facts straight here:

Eurasian Curlew nest and eggs
(photo: Wikipedia)

Many of the blog replies go something like this: "It's an airport, for heaven's sake; can't the birds take a few hours of AC/DC music?" Yes, they probably can. It's not the music that threatens the rare birds but the 80,000 fans unwittingly trampling the nests, young birds and eggs that are actually laid directly on the ground where the concert is to take place in the middle of the breeding season. The stage would also be built directly on the same ground where many of the nests are. Note the "ground-nesting birds" in the quote attributed to Hans (a friend of mine, by the way). The stage and audience area will take up the entire meadow where the nests are.

BirdLife, the group Hans Uhl represents, is not an animal rights group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_rights) composed of activists or campaigners, as stated in the reports, but a wildlife conservation group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_conservation) composed of ornithologists (including me, by the way). There's a big difference between those kinds of groups.

BirdLife is not requesting cancellation of the concert but postponement till after the breeding season when the young have hatched and gotten out of harm's way (or relocation of the concert).

Some of the blogs imply that Hans thinks the bird species in question will die out ("be wiped out"). This is not true, but it is true that this particular colony of these rare birds could be wiped out, never to return, if all their nests are trampled this year. I will happily name the various bird species in question to anyone interested (it's not only curlews).

There are plans to protect the meadow as a natural area. It isn't one yet, or else this wouldn't have happened. However, the town of Wels, where the airport is located, neglected to inform the organizers that they need to go through a permit procedure involving government conservation agencies before they started selling tickets.

All this doesn't come out in the original reports that all the online sources refer to, quote and/or copy, but I live here and am involved with the issue, so I know better.

As a strange twist of irony, the UN has declared the day of the concert (May 22) as the International Day for Biodiversity (http://www.cbd.int/idb).

Here's Wels Airport. As you can see, it's a little smaller than, say, Chicago O'Hare. The airport's own website (http://www.wmw.at/Aerodrome/Aerodrome_Nature.aspx) brags about rare species of plants, bees and frogs as well as birds. The site's in German, but it has nice pictures :-)

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Migrating a web server from a hard drive to a portable drive

2009-09-15T21:25:00.006+02:00

When it was time to retire my 3-year-old Dell Inspiron laptop, I decided to buy an Asus Eee PC netbook. I did all my web application development on the laptop, whereby the application and development environment were on the hard drive. Although the netbook's hard drive is large enough to contain everything, I decided to take this opportunity to try putting a running web server along with a large, database-driven web application on a portable drive. I would reinstall the development environment on my netbook, but put the web server and application on the portable drive.

The main advantage of a portable drive is not development, but demonstrations in situations where the Internet is not available or either very slow or very expensive. I can just copy the portable drive to another portable drive (I need the first one for development) and use it myself or give it to the person going to the trade show. Since I won't be the only one doing demonstrations, the web server needs to be easy to start. Previously, I would ask to have the other person's laptop for a few days to get the pre-installed web server and application up-to-date. I had to be sure several installations on several laptops were at the same stage of development. Now I just delete everything and copy from the master installation.

Instead of migrating I could have downloaded the latest version of XAMPP and installed it on the portable drive. However, I wanted to be sure all the versions of the various components and all settings in all the configuration files were the same as on my development system in order to avoid unpleasant surprises.

XAMPP is small enough to put on a 4 or 8 GB USB flash drive with 2.5 to 3 GB for all its files, but my application with all its media files needs several times that, so I bought a 250 GB external USB hard drive for the purpose.

Here are the steps I took to migrate my XAMPP web server and applications from a Windows PC hard drive to a portable drive. It should also work with any other Winsows-Apache-MySQL-PHP system. My terminology is from Windows XP, but everything should work analogously for Windows Vista.

* Make sure the portable drive is large enough for the XAMPP directory and any web documents not included in XAMPP directory.

* Copy the XAMPP directory and any web documents not included in the XAMPP directory and any directories in the PHP include_path directive, for example, copy C:\xampp\*.* to E:\xampp\*.*

* If Apache or another web server like IIS is already running on the target system, you will need to disable it. For Apache, look for xampp_stop.exe, usually in C:\xampp, and run it. If Apache, MySQL or other modules are running as Windows services, it would probably be best to deactivate the services.

* Since the configuration files are (probably) full of drive letters, and portable drives are assigned drive letters dynamically, we need to remove the drive letters from the configuration files: Remove all occurrences of the source drive letter (usually C:) in the following configuration files:
o \xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf
o \xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-xampp.conf
o \xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-ssl.conf
o \xampp\apache\bin\php.ini
o \xampp\mysql\bin\my.cnf
o Any other configuration files you use. Look in the directories above.

* The lines in the configuration files will be changed, for example, from 'ServerRoot "C:/xampp/apache"' to 'ServerRoot "/xampp/apache"'.

* Caution: Be sure NOT to run \xampp\setup_xampp.bat. Otherwise the current drive letter of the application will be added to all the path names. This batch file is not meant for portable installations.

* Tip: If you don't see .cnf file endings in Microsoft Explorer, and the icon for "my", etc., looks like a small curved arrow, then Windows has associated the ending .cnf with NetMeeting, and you can't edit the file by double-clicking or right-clicking it. Run your favorite text editor (for example, Start > Run > Notepad) and open the file from within the editor or drag the file to the editor.

* Optionally export your favorites/bookmarks from the source machine, rename the file to index.html, and put it in the root directory of the portable drive. The links to your web applications should have the form http://localhost/(application/) and don't need to be changed, but if you have links to HTML files that were on the hard drive, they will no longer work. You can consider changing them to the most likely drive letter, perhaps E:.

* Tip: A common conflict is Skype or another application listening on the same port as Apache, usually port 80. End the offending application or change the port Apache listens to (the Listen directive in \xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf), or change the port the other application listens to. In Skype, for example, remove the checkmark next to "Tools > Options > Advanced > Connections > Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections", depending on your version of Skype.

* Optionally create a batch file named start.bat with the following contents, and put it in the root directory of the portable drive (this starts the XAMPP modules and then starts the bookmark file created above in the default browser):

cd \xampp\
start /min xampp_restart.exe
cd \
start index.html

* I created a second batch file called start2.bat with the following contents:

@echo off
cd \xampp\
start /min xampp_restart.exe
\PrcView\pv.exe -r1 -d1000 apache.exe > nul
\PrcView\pv.exe -r1 -d1000 mysqld.exe > nul
start http://localhost/workspace/heli/index.php

This batch file uses a free utility you can find at http://prcview.com to determine if Apache and MySQL are already running before starting a specific PHP application in the default browser (adapt to your situation). Be sure to include the PHP file in the last line (here "index.php") because otherwise some systems may display a missing parameter error.

* Run \xampp\xampp_restart.exe.

* If Windows Firewall asks whether it should continue blocking Apache HTTP Server or mysqld, reply with "No longer block". You only need to do this once per PC.

* If you get any errors about not finding files, see the step above about removing drive letters in configuration files.

* Test the installation with http://localhost in a browser.

* Optionally create a batch file named stop.bat with the following contents, and put it in the root directory of the portable drive (to be executed before removing the portable drive from the computer):

cd \xampp\
start /min xampp_stop.exe

* Optionally create a text file called autorun.inf in the root directory with the following contents:

[autorun]
open=start2.bat
icon=\xampp\htdocs\application\favicon.ico
action=Name of Application

This will cause a menu item to be added at the top of the Autorun window that opens when you insert the drive into a PC. Adapt the three directives to your situation.

* Depending on the purpose at hand, you can change the "open" directive to start.bat or start2.bat.

* Whoever is doing the demonstration needs to know not to close the minimized Apache application. To end the application, he/she must run stop.bat. Not until then can the portable drive be removed. Don't forget to also click the little green arrow to remove the hardware safely as with all portable drives.

See the eHow version of this post here: How to Migrate a Web Server From a Hard Drive to a Portable Drive

Converting MS SQL and/or MS Access to MySQL

2009-08-22T20:13:00.006+02:00

For a current project I had to convert an MS SQL database to a MySQL database. I did not have access to the MS SQL server, but the previous database administrator provided me with a dump of the database creation statements and an MS Access file with the data.

Being unfamiliar with MS SQL, I assume he used BACKUP or BCP to create text files that contain the necessary MS SQL statements required to re-create the database structure (that is, scripts) then another tool such as MS DTS to export the data to MS Access.

The text files delivered were DB_Table_Creation.sql, DB_StoredProcedure_Creation.sql, and DB_Transaction_Creation.sql. Since the application will be rebuilt from scratch, I was only interested in DB_Table_Creation.sql.

The Access file delivered was xxx_tables_yyyymmtt.mdb.

To import the Access data I downloaded and installed the free MySQL GUI Tools, which include MySQL Migration Toolkit (as well as MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser, which I will have to check out later): http://dev.mysql.com/downloads//gui-tools/5.0.html

To run MySQL Migration Toolkit you will need access to a functioning MySQL server.

While running MySQL Migration Toolkit I got the following error message:

"The connection to the target database could not be established (error: 0).
ReverseEngineeringMysqlJdbc.getVersion :Unknown initial character set index '48' received from server. Initial client character set can be forced via the 'characterEncoding' property."

After finding this error message described here: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=25233
I realized that I had previously played with changing character sets and collations, so I followed the suggestion mentioned there and didn't have any further problems.

At the "Object Creation Options" step, I checked the option "Create Script File for Create Statements" to compare it with the table creation script from MS SQL. Note or change the path, so you can find it later (the default is "My Documents\Creates.sql").

The "Bulk Data Transfer" step may take a while depending on the amount of data, so don't assume the program has crashed. You can click "Advanced >>" for more information, but it appears to output an empty line for every row of data imported, so don't be alarmed.

When the transfer process was finished I compared the MS SQL script file provided by the previous database administrator with the one created by the Migration Toolkit to see if there were any huge discrepancies. The MS SQL file defined some fields with NOT NULL while the Migration Toolkit created them all with NULL; no big deal. The data types seem to have been converted correctly (at least with no data loss), considering their differences between MS SQL and MySQL. The VARCHAR fields with specific lengths were converted to LONGTEXT fields with no length given. This seems wasteful for VARCHAR fields defined with a length of 2 for example, but at least no data was lost. BIT fields were converted to SMALLINT(5): more waste but at least no loss. CHAR fields with a length of 10 were converted to VARCHAR(10). DECIMAL fields were also converted with their exact length. DATETIME fields became DATETIME fields. DEFAULT values were not defined in the target database; the new application must take this into account, or the fields must be altered after conversion. It appears IDENTITY(1,1) for example is meant to identify primary auto-increment keys. This definition is lost in the target database, as is all other key information (PRIMARY KEY, UNIQUE, etc.).

An alternate method of converting the database would have been to adapt the MS SQL script to MySQL as well as possible using copy/replace, and then run the script in MySQL. Then you would need to export the Access data into some sort of text file and load it into the new MySQL database with LOAD DATA INFILE. But that would require a much better understanding of the MS SQL CREATE TABLE syntax than I have and an installed version of MS Access, which I don't have.

See a more detailed version of this blog post on eHow:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5334020_convert-andor-ms-access-mysql.html

First Post

2009-08-18T08:44:00.006+02:00

OK, I know there are about umpteen other blogs out there called "Robb's Blog", but I couldn't think of anything cleverer. I'd be happy to hear any suggestions.

I plan to use this blog for reports of my evaluations of various (IT) products and whatever else comes to my mind.

At the moment I am evaluating online (also call hosted or web-based or in-the-cloud) invoicing/billing systems and online bug-tracking (also called issue-, problem-, defect- and ticket-tracking) systems.

Soon after I twittered the following:

"dellfalconer is evaluating online billing/invoicing systems."

I got tweets back from:

curdbee
onlineinvoicing from invooice
Nagendr4mzoho from Zoho
harvest
jjriv from Intervals

This indicates a dedication to customer interaction that I find refreshing, so I will try to include the ones I hadn't heard of in my evaluation and have another look at the ones I had heard of.