[00:20] snail: I saw a simple book digitisation device last year that was using relatively cheap digital cameras, much smaller than the bookdrive but a similar concept. [00:39] karora: there are a number of very, very cheap designs out there. five years ago when we bought ours it was considered very, very cheap too, but things have moved on. [00:40] Certainly seems like the right general approach to the job. [00:42] the main trick is that if you can about colour reproducibility you need eliminate secondary sources of light and let your bulbs warm up before you start [00:42] The enhancements in the 'pro' version would seem well worthwhile for a professional environment, but I'd find it hard to see why you would not do the basic job with DSLRs. [00:43] karora: most of the 'pro' versions use DSLRs too. they're just so cheap, reliable and interchangeable. === Milos|Laptop is now known as Milos [19:41] morning all [19:41] morning [19:44] sometimes i really wish nautilus didn't copy USB drives by first building an in-memory list of every file on the drive... [19:44] my copy is still going from last night [19:45] and taking up so much memory that my PC is almost unusable for anything but IRC [20:00] morning [20:31] morning [21:22] does someone know of a nice scriptable commandline tool for putting metadata into PDFs? [21:26] isn't there a really good pdf library for python? [21:26] it isn't exactly command line, but it is very scriptable [21:27] reportlab? [21:29] rmorning [21:33] snail: pdftk? [21:34] ojwb: thanks, looking into pdftk now [21:35] don't think i've used it to set metadata but I have for other stuff [21:36] says it can do it anyway [22:03] looks like perl's Image::ExifTool is the perfect storm for editing PDF (and other image formats) metadata [23:15] Anyone think I should sell these; http://www.fit-pc.com/web/ [23:17] hads: they look like they could be good, what sort of price though? [23:19] hads: I got one a few years ago, they're nice ... but I had nice problems getting the video card working with my old monitor [23:19] it was weird [23:19] but they are nice machines [23:23] They would be around $600 for the base model I think, so not super cheap. [23:23] chilts: Weird, what type of problems? [23:23] Got offered the NZ distribution but wondering whether it's worth commiting $10k to it. [23:24] that's quite a cost [23:26] it just took a while and someone else poking it to work ... I wasn't sure what they did in the end [23:26] I'm happy to send you it for evaluation, remembering that this is an older model [23:27] Thanks, I think they are going to send an eval model anyway [23:28] ajmitch: The $600 or the $10k [23:28] looks a neat box [23:28] hads: $10k :) [23:28] Yeah, that bit is :) [23:28] you'd need to sell a few to get that back [23:29] $600 doesn't seem too bad by NZ prices [23:29] Just from the minimum distributor order [23:29] to that's $10K of stock rather than buy the rights? [23:29] Yeah [23:29] ok, not so bad [23:29] $10K up front just to buy the distribution rights would be too steep [23:30] Indeed, I don't buy rights. [23:30] Yeah, just a gamble on how these type of things sell. [23:30] so it's a case of can you sell a few dozen in a reasonable time I guess [23:30] Yup [23:32] The thing that attracted me was that they come OS-less or with Linux Mint which is nice. [23:34] i'm not in the market for something like that (currently anyway), but if I was, it looks a good option [23:37] Thanks, it's helpful to get feedback [23:41] hmmm I could think of a number of uses for things like that .. although the budget disagrees [23:41] heh [23:42] more CPU and RAM than my existing home server [23:44] A big draw for me is the <10W power usage. [23:44] yeah, that & being fanless is what I like [23:45] I was looking at the pc engines kit as an option for an AP & router, something like this could probably do a similar job & have power to do other stuff [23:46] Yeah, the atom CPU has plenty of power for lots of things. [23:46] not really a gaming box though :) [23:47] Not enough power for plenty of things too :)