Paperless Nirvana

Paperless Nirvana!

On a single night recently, I read an article that explains how to set up the swish-e XML document indexer, Kevin Cupp's review of the ready-made raid box drobo, and a linux.com article about turning a networked computer into a pdf making machine. You can see where my mind was headed.

I've decided it would be an awesome thing to have a "paperless" office. Now I'm not going to throw out my printer, or anything silly like that. Having a digital filing cabinet instead of a paper filing cabinet just appears to be advantageous. So what all do I plan to do? Well first there is the issue of what I actually need out of this project.

Storage

I plan to store everything on Raid 1, 5, or maybe even 6. I plan to use these drives ONLY for document storage. No music, no movies. I hope to have a seperate set up for Raid 1 with MythTV for my music and movies. More on the DVR project later...

Physical Input

I need a way to get physical bills, letters, etc into digital storage. The solution is obviously a scanner of some kind. I might need two scanners though, one flatbed for things that cannot be spooled, and another one for the letter/A4 sized papers. Any suggestions on either scanner I should be looking for would be great.

Physical Output

Getting things out of digital storage into the physical world is just as important. I have a printer, problem solved. I imagine I would have this printer shared on the network so any computer can print from the same printer.

Digital Input

Setting up CUPS-PDF seems like the obvious choice. I could hit print on any page I want and just choose the CUPS-PDF printer. Then I could have a process that runs every 5 minutes to look at recently created documents and indexes them, and does any cleaning I deem necessary.

Digital Output

And finally what I would consider the most important part of this little project, getting digital output of the documents I have stored. I would need remote and local access to my documents, and have some way to easily search them.

My ideal interface for this would be a nice web interface that I could log into, and access/search/download any of my files stored on the machine. Then I could use the same interface for these documents no matter the machine or the location. I'd probably also have ssh/nfs access set up as well, but that is a simple and no-fun set up.

I still don't have a good idea of the best document indexing service to set up.

Final Thoughts

The more I think about this, the more I can see myself setting up a quick django/merb/thin interface for the server, and having it be accessible from anywhere. Most likely it'd end up being django so I could just use the admin interface for a quick solution. Ideally I'd also be able to upload files from any computer to the document server as well.

This is going to be a fun project, and I'll keep you updated! Email me if you have any suggestions for indexing services, names for the project, or possibly projects that all ready do most things describe.

Wealth And Success

I am of a very small percent of the world, probably less than one percent, that live a wealthy and privileged lifestyle. I consider myself extremely lucky, and I try as hard as I can to not take it for granted. Obviously I do take my wealth for granted some, because I have a blog, extra clothes, extra food, extra toys, extra rooms, and basically extra wealth.

This lifestyle can be sickening when I truly evaluate it. Though truly evaluating something you live in is difficult. Either way, my recognition of my exceeding wealth is an important step for me. I have to use my conscience as a mechanism to keep me grounded. Living the good life is enjoyable, but achieving the sublime is a goal worth suffering for.

So to define my personal wealth, I must throw out my check book. I have to erase the societal definition of what I have.

I don't think I know I how to do that.

Yet even so, look out world. I'm coming for you. My personal wealth and my personal success as top priorities.

Anywise Props

I sent the following email to Anywise after my account at xmpp.us kept disconnecting.

Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 01:44:10 -0400
From: "Jeff Mickey" j@codemac.net
To: info@anywise.eu
Subject: xmpp.us: Short Write()

Several times a day for the past couple days, my xmpp.us jabber account has been disconnected and wont be able to reconnect for a good while with the error "jabber - Logged out: Short write() to server". I know you guys just recently merged the xmpp.us server over, but I was curious what was going on.

Thanks for the great service,

jeff

. : [ + carpe diem totus tuus + ] : .

And this is the response I get.

Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 08:00:20 +0200
To: "Jeff Mickey" j@codemac.net
Subject: Re: xmpp.us: Short Write()

Hi Jeff,

After the migration we see more crashes than ever. This is very annoying of course. We now know what the cause of the crashes is. One of the developers of ejabberd helped us to find. Now, we are working to fix this. You may see some disconnects for a couple of days but I hope this is fixed over the weekend.

Jeroen

If you know your timezones, you'll notice that this message was sent 16 minutes and 10 seconds after my mail was sent. I honestly don't even care about the crashes anymore. I want to stick with a jabber server service that replies so quickly with a couple key things:

• They admit there is a problem, I'm not crazy.
• They know what the problem is.
• They mentioned the jabber server software they are using.
• They gave me an estimated time frame for when it will be fixed.

Now I know that I'll wait until next week sometime before I complain about this again. Thank you Anywise!