15 months – And it is done

Finally: Not quite 65 million years in the making (Jurassic Park, hint, hint), but it took about 15 months to get my first book to the printer. A few days ago Udo – my co-author – and I approved the final version of the MySQL Admin Cookbook for publishing. From what I see the book has not been added consistently to the online book stores around the net, but I will most certainly put links on here, as soon as it is available.

I think, before I begin the next one, at least a few months of relaxing are in order….

OS X’s Preview fails to display PDF annotations

Today I went through a set of changes the proof reader had made to the book’s preface. I could see his annotations in the document and was seriously wondering what the heck he wanted to tell me. I even went so far as to reply that I thought his changes would make matters worse. Turned out to be quite embarrassing, because apparently Mac OS X’s Preview.app does not do a very good job of displaying annotations inside PDFs.

See this screenshot:

The bars on the left each signify a single annotation in the document. Unfortunately neither are they aligned vertically with where the change is (see the red one saying “Swap order” – this is related to the red squiggly line right below the “Preface” heading.

Hovering over these bars will highlight the corresponding marker on the right, but will not reveal the comment associated with it. From what I can tell there is no way to get the text to show up. Zooming in and out changes the layout somewhat and makes a subset of the text visible – as in the screenshot. But there is no way to see them all. This made me assume, that there simply was no comment for the respective changes.

Tonight I wanted to print out the document including the annotations and did not find a way to do so from Preview, either. So I opened the document in Adobe Reader – which I generally find too slow for everyday-use. You might imagine my surprise when I saw this:

This is the exact same file! All edits are highlighted much better and you can drag around the little comment hovers. Being able to read the comments made the changes suddenly become much more sensible, especially because some of them which I had previously considered strike-throughs were actually annotated with an alternative – better – phrasing.

Guess I will have to give Adobe some credit – and file a bug against OS X if I do not find any non-obvious way of getting at the information with Preview.app.

Finishing touches

The book is in its final stages. Right now I am putting the finishing touches to the illustrations and going through the editors’ most recent comments and suggestions. Takes a lot more time than expected, though…

HP ScanJet G2410 Mac OS X 10.6 driver (Snow Leopard) download

In my previous post I promised to post follow ups regarding the missing Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) compatible drivers for the HP ScanJet G2410. Today I got a response to my support case, including a download address which I would like to share. On the website you still cannot find the software directly.

• HP ScanJet G2410 Mac OS X 10.6 driver download page

I have not yet tried to install it, but will certainly do tonight when I get home. However anyone interested could go ahead already.

As an aside, I was not able to download the disk image using my Windows based Chrome browser - for some reason it told me the link was broken. With Firefox it works just fine and has just finished. The file name is slightly different from the one I was able to download earlier (see previous post), it now ends in ...Ph2.dmg instead of ...Ph1.dmg. We'll see tonight.

HP Mac Software Support - Ridiculous

When a few weeks ago my Canon LIDE70 scanner died, I went and looked for a Snow Leopard compatible replacement. I found the HP ScanJet G2410 which is labeled compatible with 10.6. Little did I expect what “compatible” means in HP’s terms.

So I went ahead and bought one at a local electronics store. Inside the box there was a leaflet informing me about the software on the CD only being suitable for Leopard (10.5) and that I would need to download the most recent version from HP’s homepage, which I did.

Downloading it took a long time, because apparently they are throttling the bandwidth to about 30kb/s – not so nice when you have to download 120MB for a driver. Once it was finished, I launched the installer and everything seemed to work just fine.

However I noticed that Apple’s Image Capture application did not recognize the scanner, even though their own tool “HP Scan” works flawlessly (not considering the 100% CPU load on both cores for about 30s before the first scan starts). The tool is not the fastest, but is has a reasonably tidy interface and comes with sensible presets and OCR.

When I noticed today that I could not scan a new document from my document management tool “YEP!”. So I went to the HP support site again to try and look for an updated driver. But instead I learned, that they silently removed the DMG file I had downloaded before! Their support site at hp.com tells me that software is “Available now” – apparently they did pay much attention to detail when pulling it.

So next I contact their “chat support” about the issue. This is a transcript:

[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:30 PM] -- Automatically generated message:
Your support request has been received and has been queued. We are working on your problem and will contact you within approximately five minutes during business hours, (Monday-Friday, between 8am and 5pm local time).

[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:31 PM] -- Automatically generated message:
For reference, your Case ID is 4609169909
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:31 PM] -- Automatically generated message:
A Support specialist, Jisha C has been assigned to your case.

[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:31 PM] -- Jisha C says:
Hello Daniel, thank you for contacting Hewlett-Packard and for your interest in our Instant Support Program! My name is Jisha and I see you have a query regarding your HP Product.

I'm going to take few moments to review the information you submitted and will message you in a couple of minutes.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:32 PM] -- Jisha C says:
I understand that you need the Snow Leopard compatible software for HP Scanjet G2410 Flatbed Scanner. Is that correct?
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:32 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
yes.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:33 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
On this page it says, it should be available: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c01863616
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:34 PM] -- Jisha C says:
Daniel, I am sorry to inform you that the Snow Leopard compatible software for the scanner is not yet released.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:35 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
it was released. i downloaded it once, but do not have it anymore.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:35 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
i need to install it again
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:35 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
the file was called HP_Installer_Scanjet_v2.4.0_Ph1
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:36 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
with a .dmg ending
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:36 PM] -- Jisha C says:
Its not available for download.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:36 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
yes, I can see that.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:38 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
so why does it say "Available now"? I bought this model of scanner just because the software was available for this operating system release. without it, it is just a brick taking up space.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:38 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
HP cannot be serious about this.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:39 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
First release it, then withdraw it, tell people on their own website to go ahead and download it, and now a support agent tells me it has not been released is not what I expect from a renowned company.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:40 PM] -- Jisha C says:
I suggest you to register the HP product to receive alert for any software or driver updates.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:40 PM] -- Jisha C says:
In order to subscribe your information for driver updates, please refer the web link provided below:

https://register.hp.com/americas/flowPage/registration/index.do?execution=e1s1&cc=US&lang=en
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:40 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
I already did. do you by any chance have an idea on how long this will take?
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:41 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
Who else could I contact for more information on this?
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:44 PM] -- Jisha C says:
I am sorry, we cannot provide any estimate date for the software release.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:56 PM] -- Jisha C says:
Are we still connected?
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:58 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
yes
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:59 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
we are.
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:59 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
so, do I have any chance of contacting someone "closer to the source" of the software?
[Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:59 PM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
right now I have a brand new HP scanner on my desk which is completely useless.
[Friday, January 15, 2010 12:00 AM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
HP advertises it as being compatible with 10.6, so I expect something more than just a recommendation to subscribe to a notification service to learn about when - sometime in the future - someone decides to publish an update.
[Friday, January 15, 2010 12:00 AM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
at least put the software back that was there before
[Friday, January 15, 2010 12:01 AM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
otherwise, please let me know how to contact someone at HP to arrange for them taking the scanner back and returning my money.
[Friday, January 15, 2010 12:02 AM] -- Jisha C says:
You can submit a complain or suggestion directly using the “Support Case Manager".

The "Support Case Manager - Professional Edition" is a HP website that provides a place to submit a complain or suggestion directly by the customer and this website also has an online tracking system to find the status of a particular case.

Submit & Manage a support case:

http://europe.itrc.hp.com/service/mcm/homepageRequest.do
[Friday, January 15, 2010 12:03 AM] -- Daniel Schneller says:
thank you. i will look into that.
[Friday, January 15, 2010 12:03 AM] -- Jisha C says:
You are welcome.
[Friday, January 15, 2010 12:05 AM] -- Jisha C says:
Daniel, since we have completed troubleshooting your issue I am going to close this support request at this time. If you should need assistance in the future please revisit our Instant Support Program.

Thank you again for contacting Hewlett-Packard and have a great day! 

So I indeed went to the “Support Case Manager – Professional Edition” site and filed an issue. Well, I had to do it twice, because they do not seem to like Safari there – I had to re-enter everything in Firefox after the page just died on me.

So now I am waiting for their response. This is what I put into the ticket contents:

I recently bought a ScanJet G2410 - I picked this particular model, because HP advertises it as being supported on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

In the box I found a note that I needed to download the drivers, because the CD was out of date. I did so and installed it on my Mac. It worked - even though not to my full satisfaction. When I needed to reinstall my machine, I wanted to download the software from HP's support website again, as per the instructions on [link as above]

There it says the software is “Available now”. However when I proceed to the downloads page, I am only offered drivers for OS9 and OS X up to version 10.5 (Leopard) which the note in the box says *not to install*. The 10.6 compatible drivers seem to have been removed without any traces.

This leaves me with a brand new scanner that is completely worthless now, because I cannot use it for my business. I contacted HP's chat support already, but was only told that they could not estimate a release date (rerelease would be a better term...) for the driver.

I would like to hear about HP's general policy in this case. After all, I effectively have a $100 brick on my desk - this is not what I expect from a company like Hewlett Packard. For me this leaves two options: Either you can provide me with the necessary drivers, or I have to ask you to take your product back, refunding my money.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Daniel Schneller

I will post updates as I (hopefully) progress.

Blog Statistics 2009

Others have done it, so why shouldn’t I do it, too? Well, usually that’s not my line of thought, but when today I read David Linsin's blog post about his stats I thought I might follow along.

Overall stats

The overall visits to my blog – and countless others with no doubt – display the workday/weekend jagged line one would expect. The summer months seem to be a little lower on average, but that’s ok, people deserve their vacations. Blue line is 2009, green line is 2008 for comparison.

Overall traffic increase in the 40% range with slightly more time per page – nice. The bounce rate is constantly high, but since almost all posts are about some particular narrow-focused topic, this is expected. Usually when looking for the solution to a problem bugging me, I do not have the time to browse around for other, unrelated stuff on the sites I come to, either.

Top Contents

The top 8 content pages in 2009 were:

1. MySQL: Add primary key to table with duplicates (5666 page views)
2. Migrate VM from VirtualBox to VMware Fusion (4185 page views)
3. XP SP3: STOP 0x0000007E (0xC000001D) (solved) (4126 page views)
4. SAXParseException: -1:-1: Premature End Of File - Misleading error (3534 page views)
5. How to charge the iPod Touch's battery on Linux (3245 page views)
6. ERROR 1033 (HY000) on InnoDB configuration error (2431 page views)
7. Conditional INSERT with MySQL (2385 page views)
8. Something to know about Toshiba external USB HDD (2311 page views)

I would never have guessed that these Toshiba drives are still around bugging people with their strange password protection voodoo. But there is a constant stream of comments on this post to this day.

The post about migrating VMs from VirtualBox to VMware had a spike in traffic right around the time VMware Fusion 3 was released – pretty sure that’s when a lot of people gave it another shot. The XP SP3 blue screen post was very strong around the time I posted it and has been gradually decreasing in popularity – probably a sign that SP3 is getting more and more prevalent.

The following PNG gives some more details and a 2008 comparison – which of course has to be taken with a grain of salt for posts written later in 2008 or at the beginning of 2009.

Platforms

As for browsers and operating systems, Windows and Linux lost compared to 2008 while Macintosh gained 10%. Firefox lost about 3%, IE about 7%. Both Safari and Chrome took their shares:

Traffic Sources

Finally some data on traffic sources. Apparently the amount of traffic from other sites and direct traffic is slowly increasing, which I find flattering, especially because in 2009 I had little time for blogging and did not provide too much new contents.

On Font Rendering

If you have ever wondered (as I have years ago) why the text rendering on Linux usually looks inferior to both Mac OS X and Windows text, no matter how much you try and tweak the settings, there is a great and very in-depth article at http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.html. It is quite long, but it contains excellent background information, theoretical and practical discussions of the concepts behind text rendering in general, what Windows and Mac OS do right/wrong and how to improve the situation in general.

This is a must read for anyone remotely interested in font rendering.