For the Love of My Country

I had a PDF that I wanted to copy some text from, however found that copy and paste were not working. It was at this stage that I found out that the document was protected/secured to disable copy/pasting the text.

I found this free PDF to Word Doc Converter which did exactly what I wanted: HelloPDF. This didn't keep the formatting, but I didn't care. All I wanted was the raw text - to save me typing it out again myself.

It's a very very simple interface. Would recommend you uncheck the "uses text-box" option. This means you get the raw text - and not all separated into frustrating text-boxes in an attempt to retain the original layout.

I guess they secure PDFs if they don't want people copying and not crediting - however I reference everything I write, so there's nothing wrong with me getting around Adobe's copy protection.

Labels: pdf, text

ITunes doesn't let you play .ogg files. However here's the decoders you need to be able to play them.

If you want to have a shot at converting your .oggs to MP3, click here for SoX Wrap, which is free, and apparently should do the trick, though I haven't used it.

I can't stand ITunes - its library functionality is far too restricting, but until someone gets WinAmp running on Mac, I'll just have to stick with it I think.

Labels: audio, mac, music

Some of us find the new Google Image search layout annoying. And the "basic image search" option at the bottom of the new page will only revert back to the old format for that one visit. Here is the simplest and most reliable way to revert back to the good old Google Image Search. It makes use of a plugin, Redirector. The AShout blog shows you how. Their link to the Redirctor add-on doesn't work, so use mine.


A very good fix - and this Redirector add-on may come in handy further down the line...

Labels: firefox, google, image

Ok, this free little Java app rocks. You can convert a Microsoft Access (.wdb) file into a Microsoft Excel (.xls) file, really quickly. Worked a treat for me. Click this link and follow the instructions to run the Java web-based app straight from your computer. Perfect for if you don't have Access installed...

Labels: convert, micro$oft

Was able to access my Wordpress website, but couldn't get into the admin panel. The browser returned this PHP error:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/myaccount/public_html/...

Here's how I fixed it, looked at the offending file - wp-config.php, and saw that there were two empty lines beneath ?>. PHP apparently doesn't like empty space outside of its markup, so I deleted them, uploaded the file, and she's away and laughing.

Labels: php

Accidentally left the caps lock on and typed something, but can't be bothered to start again and retype it all? Simply follow these 3 easy steps to convert your text to exactly how you want it...

a handy, web-based app

Mediawiki is the PHP/MySQL engine that runs wikis such as Wikipedia. I am an admin on a wiki and needed to change user permissions such that registered users would have usual editing rights (talk, main, etc), but that anonymous users would only have permission to edit the talk (discussion) pages. This is so that - while everyone has the ability to contribute, only registered users may contribute to the articles themselves - we wished to set it up this way to avoid abuse of the wiki.

Anyway, was hacking round for ages in LocalSettings.php, trying to change $wgGroupPermissions. Finally figured out that I was attacking this from the wrong angle. The thing is, if you set $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = true;, you automatically overide other restrictions placed on anonymous users (* means all users, including anonymous users). However if you set $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;, all you end up doing is completely removing all rights held by anonymous users.

I found the answer to my problem at the Mediawiki Users Forum, and found it to be pretty darn straight forward after a little bit of playing round with it. Comment here or at the forum if you need further assistance.

Labels: mediawiki, php

Some kids managed to rotate the screen orientation on the little HP Mini laptop. Had seen it done before but had no idea what the key combination was. Try:

ctrl+shift+up

until you get the screen rotated to the way you want it. Apparently you can also change it through the control panel: Open Control Panel > Display > Settings tab > advanced, navigate through the tabs to find a rotate display option.

Labels: XP

Here's an excellent, highly-customizable, pretty simple and intuitive PHP script. It integrates reCaptcha very nicely, and has a whole host of additional fields such as password, attachment, and check-lists which can be included. highly recommended

Labels: php, webdev

These great colour tools from 2createawebsite.com

Labels: color, colour, html

Here's a little < 3mb program that will convert MOV files to AVI or MP4. It doesn't do an amazing job and you'll lose some quality, but if you desperately need to change your file format, this will do the trick for you.

Labels: convert, video

update - 13Dec09: Ignore the "percentage complete" shown in the taskbar - it seems to be broken, so when it displays aprox. 20% completed, the whole movie will in fact have been ripped...

You want to extract video from a DVD - I've always used this shoddy little program, DVD to AVI Converter which is shareware and only lets you rip 3 minutes at a time. However I've found another program which does a really good job, it's called DVDX. It's a free download with no strings attached. The GUI isn't all that flash, but essentially you don't need to worry too much about the input settings, take a look instead at the output settings. AVI with the XviD MPEG-4 Codec seems to be the best to rip to, as it gives a 640x360 resolution with good enough quality audio and video. The only real drawback is it takes ages - about an hour per DVD to back up. Still it results in a very compressed file, usually between 400mb - 800mb for a typical movie.

It will let you make output into chunks of your size preference, i.e. under 700mb if you wanted to burn to 2 CDs, but nobody cares about this these days. I accidently used this setting, resulting in two AVI files for one movie. Found this great free program, VirtualDub (which probably does a whole heap more stuff) - is very intuitive and lets you join AVI files together. Absolutely free - and here's a good quick tutorial for joining AVI files with VirtualDub so you don't stuff up first time round.

Labels: dvd, video

How do you get a div, image, or text to sit at the bottom of the webpage, no matter what the size of your viewer's browser window or resolution? http://ryanfait.com/sticky-footer/ has the answer, and it involves a pretty straight-forward hack. Essentially what it does is, you put all your content inside one div, "wrapper" - apart from the content you want in your footer. The "wrapper" div is given a negative bottom margin of the exact height of your footer. And of course your footer sits underneath with that specified height. That's the trick. You can't use position:absolute or fixed, and you can't float:bottom. You need to just get a handle on this nifty little bit of code and then you'll be away and laughing.

Check out their code and then do it yourself, just modify your existing divs...

Labels: css, html

So you have a Flickr account (they're great aren't they). Now, how do you display the album on your website or blog? Pictobrowser is a darned simple tool that lets you enter in a few parameters and create your own slideshow of pictures from your account/set on Flickr.

Go for it!

Labels: flash, flickr, photo

This very rarely in happens in Windows XP, however if it does it may leave you very confused - as it did me until I found a solution, which I will now rephrase quickly here.

Your window has gone off-screen and you can't drag it back into the visible part of the screen. You've tried right-clicking the application in the taskbar, and then clicking and dragging, but it hasn't worked. You've tried changing your screen resolution and a whole number of other things - but to no avail, your window is lost for ever... no longer!

1) click (not right-click) the application where it sits down in the task-bar.
2) press alt + spacebar
3) press m
4) a. Use arrow-keys to direct the window back onto the screen...
     b. if that didn't work, try the click & drag method.

I hope this works for you :)

Labels: window

Well hey, look at that. Blogger lets you use HTML in your profile.

That's nice of them :)

Labels: blog, blogger, html

Feedjit allows you, and viewers of your website to view in real-time, who is visiting your website, and exactly how they found it (i.e. which link they followed).

Feedjit is awesome, I use it to learn what search terms people are using to find my sites, or where they have come from on the web and found the link to my site. You can tell it to ignore your IP address etc, it is free and absolutely marvelous.

However it may be annoying for you to have the large (minimum 160px X aprox 700px) widget on your blog/website, so how on earth do you hide it?

1. Ok, first grab your code: http://feedjit.com/joinjs/
2. Create the following Div: <div style="display:none;">HERE</div> put it just above the </body> tag - it doesn't really matter, as it will be hidden from view anyway.
3. Now just paste the Feedjit code on top of where it says HERE. (Feedjit code is generic - it's not generated specifically for your site, and you don't have to modify it at all)
   

Now, to link to the Feedjit Live page, just create the following link anywhere you like on your website:

<a href="http://live.feedjit.com/live/YOURWEBSITE.COM">LINK TEXT/PICTURE</a>

Since Feedjit is so great, and free, I recommend using their logo to give them credit.

Labels: feed, feedjit, stats

Right, so you have a dodgy looking .wdb file that you want to access, but you don't have Micro$oft Works. .wdb stands for Works Database, and can only be opened with Microsoft Works. But who has that software these days?

Check out this program called MS Works Wks and WDB Files Budget Converter 2.2. It will convert a .wdb file into .xls fairly quickly - despite the claims by the producer that it will run real slow because it's only for non-commercial use. It's a 500kb download.

It is annoying however, as they seem to corrupt some of the cells intentionally, to make you frustrated enough to buy the full version. I'm not sure though, it may only "corrupt" empty cells in the excel spreadsheet that it corrects by entering in the following strings,

• (((0-0)))
• Works to Excel converter. Contact RL Software at: info@rl-software.com or visit our website: www.rl-software.com This text and the '(((0-0)))' cells appear only in the trial version!

If you're desparate but don't care too much about the content then this free program will work fine. Otherwise, find a copy of MS Works or alternatively buy the full version for between 10 - 50 Euros depending on the version you go for. Ouch.

Labels: micro$oft

I'll update this post as I come across decent free sound effects on the web. For
here's a collection of excellent violin loops:

• http://efiddler.com/loops.htm
  

Labels: sound

Favicons are the little icons that sit to the right of the URL in the address bar, and also to the right of the Title up in the title bar in most browsers.

Here's a great web-tool for creating your own favicon - just lets you upload an image and it converts it to an .ico file. Of course you can use animated gifs and jpgs but it is more correct to use an .ico file.

If you haven't currently got one in your website/blog template, you need to add this code just above the </head> tag.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="images/favicon.ico">

You can name your favicon whatever you like, however it is usual just to give it the name favicon.

Good times.

Labels: webdev

Get Firefox.
Remember, friends don't let friends use internet explorer.

Add this badge to your blog sidebar...

Labels: micro$oft, webdev

Have you ever tried to run two javascripts on one page, but found that they conflict, and either only one works, or neither of them work? I had this problem with two blog sidebar widgets which I made. One widget counts the number of abortions performed worldwide since the page was opened. The other counter counts up the number of women affected by abortion sinice the page was opened. As you would imagine, the two scripts were virtually identical - this caused them to lock up.

I had a shot at renaming various elements within the javascript, but to no avail.

For a while I used a horrible hack - put the javascript for the abortion affects women counter into an iframe, and put that script in another piece of javascript. It worked, but it was ghastly, and frustrating.

Eventually, after skim-reading this useful page, I found that you basically need to make sure everything has a different name, and then you'll be sweet.

Compare the two scripts if you like, for reference.
script one
script two

Joy!

Labels: javascript

Stumbled upon this excellent, functional and free form generator.
http://phpfmg.sourceforge.net/

Here's what I did with it.

It's a really straight-forward process to make your form. They include a small one-line credit at the bottom.

5/5 stars for this little stunner!

keywords: php form upload picture, upload attachment, upload file, php form submit picuture, submit file, submit attachment, form generator, free

Labels: form, php, upload

We reinstalled Windows on Dad's Laptop (Toshiba Satellite A100, very nice machine) - but this time round, we couldn't find the drivers for his printer - an Epson Stylus CX3700, the kind that has a scanner and a printer built in, so it is also nominally a "copier" as well - that's why Epson calls it a "3 in 1".



Anyway, searched the Epson website, the web, Driverguide, and tried to get Windows to find the driver. No joy. Amazingly, a couple of days ago someone uploaded the correct driver onto Driverguide. It works. Here's a link to the file on Driverguide - bear in mind that you have to sign up, and put up with a whole bunch of annoying advertising.

Alternatively, click here to download the driver which I uploaded onto a "free file hosting" website called SaveFile.com.

I don't recommend you use SaveFile.com - it has a terrible interface, and is pathetically slow - but seeing as I had already uploaded the file - and it seems to work fine, there's the link for you above.

Labels: driver, printer

www.timeanddate.com lets you build a nice, customisable date & time applet which runs inside an iframe (argh!) on your website. I've used mine for ages - and though it occasionally fails to load, I've found it extremely good.  Click here to build your applet.  Click here for an example (top right).

This is blinking text

source: <blink>This is blinking text</blink>

simple eh. but dumb.

[Update: 13 March 09] So much for the Google Reader blog roll! I don't know what went wrong, but all the links disappeared out of the list. I played round with the settings at the Google Reader end, but to no avail. Instead I've just gone for a list that I will update manually. I think they will be higher-quality (more search engine friendly) links this way anyway.

If you're running Wordpress or Blogger mk2, this isn't an issue for you, because you've already got a built-in blogroll system that is darn good...

As many of you will know, Blogrolling.com was hacked - and was subsequently down for a long time. Half a year or something. Anyway, they're finally back up and running, so this evening I went through, revising and updating my blog roll - have been waiting to get onto this for ages. What they've done though, is they've made it so that if you don't pay for the service, when someone clicks on a blog in your list, it takes them to a blogrolling.com page with an advert at the top, and the blog you're visiting sitting in an iframe below. It's relatively inconspicous but still highly annoying. As a free service I loved it - but with the adverts and the new slow but flashy back-end interface, it's not worth bothering with.

Instead I've gone for a Google Reader blog roll which is incredibly simple. Just choose the blogs in Google Reader that you want to be in your blog roll, and add them to their own folder. Set the folder to "public", and then click the option that appears, "add a blog roll to your site". It's incredibly simple, and of course will update whenever you update your new "blogroll" folder from the Google Reader end.

Ok, it's got that Google look, but there's no ads and it's straight-forward and integrated with your blog reader, so what are you complaining about?

Apparently you can do this with Bloglines as well - if you're a bloglines user.

Labels: blog

...can be viewed at this website.
There's some amazing examples such as the JavaScript/CSS clock, 3D dots and Galaxies.
They also have a 3D tag cloud which might be fairly simply implemented into a blog... who knows.

Labels: css, javascript

What could be better at this time of year, than to add a touch of Christmas to your blog with snow-flakes gently drifting to the bottom of your screen (and sitting there and piling up if you wish - only be warned that turning this feature on takes a lot of system resources).

Head over to Scott Schiller's website for a nice simple explanation on how to add the snow.

Here's a demo, at my blog.

Right, this is a handy little piece of JS.

It writes text on the screen as if written by a type-writer, character by character.  Of course, you can change the speed, and the formatting of the text.  Wonderful.

Check out what I did with it, it's really simple to get going.

Labels: javascript