PDFs are quite helpful for distributing information and it's a fairly easy task to convert most documents/spreadsheets/presentations/images into the portable document format; you can find that software yourself. However, being able to extract individual pages, or combine multiple PDFs into a single document can be tricky. Adobe, I'm certain, would love for you to pay $500 for Acrobat Writer. However, if, like me, you're a little short on funds, I've got a somewhat cheaper solution in mind. Okay, much cheaper. Alright, it's free. I give you the PDF Toolkit. Excerot:

If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic staple-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents. Keep one in the top drawer of your desktop and use it to:

• Merge PDF Documents
  
• Split PDF Pages into a New Document
  
• Rotate PDF Pages or Documents
  
• Decrypt Input as Necessary (Password Required)
  
• Encrypt Output as Desired
  
• Fill PDF Forms with FDF Data or XFDF Data and/or Flatten Forms
  
• Apply a Background Watermark or a Foreground Stamp
  
• Report on PDF Metrics such as Metadata, Bookmarks, and Page Labels
  
• Update PDF Metadata
  
• Attach Files to PDF Pages or the PDF Document
  
• Unpack PDF Attachments
  
• Burst a PDF Document into Single Pages
  
• Uncompress and Re-Compress Page Streams
  
• Repair Corrupted PDF (Where Possible)
  

Pdftk allows you to manipulate PDF easily and freely. It does not require Acrobat, and it runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris.

Pretty cool, huh?

What's that? You don't like working with the sometimes cryptic, albeit well documented, command line instructions to perform the above tasks? Turns out that you're not alone. Someone built a GUI for the PDFTK; it's called the PDFTK Builder.

PDFTK Builder is a free graphical interface to the Windows version of PDFTK making it much easier to use.

Collate - allows you to rearrange (reorder, delete, & duplicate) pages in a single document and/or merge pages from multiple PDF documents. Multiple documents will be merged in the order they are listed in the 'Source Documents' window. If page ranges are not specified, PDFTK Builder will assume all pages for that document are to be included. Page ranges can be indicated by using a single page number, or a hyphen between start and end pages (reversed page orders are allowed). Multiple ranges are indicated by using commas or semi-colons between ranges.

For example: if you wished to insert pages from one document into the middle of another, then the primary document would need to be listed twice, once before (listing pages to appear before) and once after (listing pages to appear after) the document containing the pages to be inserted.

Split - allows you to separate each page of a PDF document into its own file.

Background or Stamp - 'Background' enables you to add a background to each page in a document or just the first page. The 'background' (eg a company logo, or a 'draft' watermark) must be another PDF document (the first page of that document if it has more than one page). 'Stamp' is very similar to 'background' except that the 'stamp' is placed on top of the source document.

Rotate - 'Rotate' enables you to rotate a range of pages in a document.

There's more, of course, but that should be enough to whet your appetite. Now go forth and compute.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 12:18 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I know that tons of people use Microsoft Project. I, too, have been forced to use that piece of crap scheduling software in the past. Since I'd rather gouge out my eyes than be forced to do it again, I've left others manage project deadlines for me.

Anyway. If you want to manage your projects via some ::gag:: nifty Gannt charts and PERT charts, but you don't want to fork over the money for Microsoft's version, let me point you in the direction of OpenProj, a robust open source version.

You might ask, if you hate Project so much, why did you bother to tell me about OpenProj? Well, I just wanted to share my pain with you. No need to thank me; that's what I'm here for.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here's a pretty good website that extols the virtues of Linux. The author does a pretty thorough analysis of Why Linux Is Better. Excerpt:

Does your digital life seem fragmented ?

If you already know what fragmentation is, and are already used to defragmenting your disk every month or so, here is the short version : Linux doesn't need defragmenting.

Now imagine your hard disk is a huge file cabinet, with millions of drawers (thanks to Roberto Di Cosmo for this comparison). Each drawer can only contain a fixed amount of data. Therefore, files that are larger than what such a drawer can contain need to be split up. Some files are so large that they need thousands of drawers. And of course, accessing these files is much easier when the drawers they occupy are close to one another in the file cabinet.

Now imagine you're the owner of this file cabinet, but you don't have time to take care of it, and you want to hire someone to take care of it for you. Two people come for the job, a woman and a man.

• The man has the following strategy : he just empties the drawers when a file is removed, splits up any new file into smaller pieces the size of a drawer, and randomly stuffs each piece into the first available empty drawer. When you mention that this makes it rather difficult to find all the pieces of a particular file, the response is that a dozen boys must be hired every weekend to put the chest back in order.
  
• The woman has a different technique : she keeps track, on a piece of paper, of contiguous empty drawers. When a new file arrives, she searches this list for a sufficiently long row of empty drawers, and this is where the file is placed. In this way, provided there is enough activity, the file cabinet is always tidy.

Without a doubt, you should hire the woman (you should have known it, women are much better organized ). Well, Windows uses the first method ; Linux uses the second one. The more you use Windows, the slower it is to access files ; the more you use Linux, the faster it is. The choice is up to you!
...
Are your tired of restarting your computer all the time?

Have you just upgraded one or two little things on your Windows system with "Windows update"? Please reboot. Have you just installed some new software? Please reboot. Does your system seem unstable? Try to reboot, everything will probably work better after that.

Windows always asks you to restart your computer, and that can be annoying (maybe you happen to have a long download going on, and you don't want to interrupt it just because you updated a few pieces of your system). But even if you click "Restart later", Windows still keeps bothering you every ten minutes to let you know that you really should restart the computer. And if you happen to be away from your computer and you didn't see the question, it will happily reboot automatically. Bye bye long download.

Linux basically doesn't need to restart. Whether you install new software (even very big programs) or perform routine upgrades for your system, you will not be asked to restart the computer. It is only necessary when a part from the heart of the system has been updated, and that only happens once every several weeks.
...
Jump into the next generation of desktops.

You have been impressed by the 3D and transparency possibilities first introduced in Windows Vista, and decided that these unique capabilities were worth a few hundred dollars? You even bought a new computer so that you could meet Vista's (very high) requirements? Fooled you: Linux can do better, for free, and with much less demanding hardware requirements.

He's pretty fair about the whole thing, going so far as to explain the reasons why you probably should stick with Windows. Check it out.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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snap2objects has compiled a list of the 45 best freeware design programs. Included are such stalwarts as GIMP, GIMPshop (for all your Photoshop enthusiasts) and Picasa, as well as a bunch that I've never heard of. Well worth checking out.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 12:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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But still a goody. I give you Icon Wars!

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've viewed with some interest the release of Google's Google Pack, still technically in Beta release. Some pretty good choices of ostensibly free software, albeit with some odd exceptions. Excerpt(s):

My only problem with Google's choices is Norton. While the download includes a 6 month subscription to updates, what happens after that? Seemed like a strange choice as Norton isn't free if updates cost after a point. Plus new Dell machines come with McAfee which also nags you to pay for updates, which makes me nutso. ClamWin, in my opinion, would've been a better choice (not as pretty, but truly free and open source.)
...
In what looks like a direct jab at Microsoft, Google includes Sun Microsystems' office productivity suite Star Office to their free bundle of PC software called Google Pack.

StarOffice includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, and database applications, along with a library of images and 3D effects. Normally available for $70, StarOffice is free with Google Pack.

Star Office is the basis for the free and open source OpenOffice.org application suite. Unlike OpenOffice.org, Star Office requires the Java runtime to use. So why would GOOG choose Star Office over Open Office for the Pack?

Beats us, but since launch (and even through an iteration ) a couple of their app choices left us shaking our heads, like Adobe Reader and RealPlayer. (With the exception of Firefox, they seem to be open source-o-phobic.)

Obviously Google is trying to grab some of the desktop market from Microsoft which, I think, is a good thing. Competition is likely to make all vendors more responsive to the needs of its customers. However, I'm a bit puzzled as to some of the applications that Google chose. I'd have added Ad-Ware and Clamwin (or maybe AVG Free edition), as well as Open Office. And Real Player? Really? I think that VLC is the superior choice here. Regardless, it's a pretty decent software bundle, so check it out if you're so inclined.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 06:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If you've got a dual boot Windows/Linux system, there have probably been times when you wished that you could retrieve/copy/open your Linux created files while working in Windows. Instead, you had to shut down and reboot into Linux, save the data to a FAT32 device and then reboot back into Windows. Well, you no longer have to do the OS hokey pokey, at least in this instance. I give you Ext2 Installable File System for Windows. Excerpt:

It installs a pure kernel mode file system driver Ext2fs.sys, which actually extends the Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 operating system to include the Ext2 file system. Since it is executed on the same software layer at the Windows NT operating system core like all of the native file system drivers of Windows (for instance NTFS, FASTFAT, or CDFS for Joliet/ISO CD-ROMs), all applications can access directly to Ext2 volumes. Ext2 volumes get drive letters (for instance G . Files, and directories of an Ext2 volume appear in file dialogs of all applications. There is no need to copy files from or to Ext2 volumes in order to work with them.
...
Detailed list of features of the file system driver Extfs.sys:

• Supports Windows NT4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003 (x86 processors only).
  
• All operations you would expect: Reading and writing files, listing directories, creating, renaming, moving and deleting files or directories, querying and modifying the volume's label.
  
• Files larger than 4 GBytes. (Please read the FAQ section, too.)
  
• Paging files are supported. (A paging file is a file "pagefile.sys", which Windows swaps virtual memory to.) Users may create paging files at NT's control panel at Ext2 volumes.
  
• Specific functions of the I/O subsystem of NT: Byte range locks, notification of changes of directories, oplocks (which are required by the NT LAN manager for sharing files via SMB).
  

Posted by: Physics Geek at 12:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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To Windows, that is. InformationWeek has an interesting point-counterpoint, in which two writers separately extol the virtues of Linux and and Mac versus Microsoft. Pretty good level of detail from both authors.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In my previous incarnation as a programmer, I used pivot tables in Excel quite extensively. They're quite useful in my current career as an engineer. In fact, there were times when summarizing data tables in any other way would have proved exceptionally difficult, if not downright impossible, which is why I've been loathe to give up using Excel. And now I can do the same things using Open Office's Calc. Excerpt:

Creating a DataPilot

To begin creating an datapilot, highlight the range of cells you want to base it upon, then select Data -> DataPilot -> Start to open the DataPilot dialog window. Alternatively, choose the same menu item, then select a data source that you have already registered with OpenOffice.org using File -> New -> Database and a range of cells from it.

The DataPilot window gives you a diagram of the DataPilot that you are creating, and a list of columns from the data source. To create the general layout for the DataPilot, all you have to do is drag the columns to one of the blank spaces on the diagram. If you drag a column name to the Column fields or Row fields space, then it becomes the first cell in a row or column, just as you might expect from the name (in the first DataPilot above, Quantity was selected as the column, and no row was chosen). Similarly, if you drag a column name to the Data fields, it becomes the data in the DataPilot (in the first example above, the Price). The only potentially puzzling choice is the Page Fields, which is actually just the custom filter for changing the contents of the DataPilot on the fly (in the first example, the Country). If you make a mistake, you can drag the column back to the list of column building blocks on the right.

Once you have done the basic setup, you can also choose what function to use in the DataPilot. In the examples above, I simply used the default Sum function, which for many purposes is all that you need. However, you can also use another ten basic functions: Count, Average, Max, Min, Product, Count (Numbers Only), StDev (Sample), StDevP (Population), Var (Sample) and Var (Population). If necessary, you can find details about what these functions do in OpenOffice.org's online help.

Again, I can't stress enough how useful this tool can be to anyone who wades through piles of data. I plan on asking management if I can teach a short class on pivot tables here at work, as people simply blink and stare at me when I mention them. Okay, more than they usually blink and stare at me.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:15 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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