This is a post I wrote for our work blog. The original post can be found here: http://etcpanel.princeton.edu/blog/blog/2011/12/14/how-to-ocr-a-pdf-that-is-larger-than-45-inches/

Adobe Acrobat has a size limit on PDFs you can OCR. If you try to OCR a file that has dimensions larger than 45 inches, you will receive an error. We recently did a work around using Acrobat and Photoshop. This work around is fine if you have 10 pages, but for larger documents, this work around may be time consuming. Here are the steps:

1. Open the PDF in Acrobat.
2. Save as an EPS file (Encapsulated Post Script)
3. Open the EPS file in Photoshop, when prompted, change the largest dimension to 45 inches.
4. Save the file as a TIFF file in Photoshop.
5. Open the TIFF file in Acrobat (you can drag and drop the file into Acrobat).
6. When prompted, say you would like the TIFF image OCRed by Acrobat.
7. You will have a PDF that is OCRed in Acrobat. Save your new PDF.

I gave a talk that reviewed 8 apps for the iPad2 that allowed you to record audio and upload it to a WebDAV space and then post automatically into Blackboard. Here is the slideshow for that talk. The two apps I liked in the end (but are not free) were Dicatmus and AudioMemos 2. They both do, however, have a free version so you can see the layout of how the apps work and record. Check out all the apps reviewed in my slideshow below. Also a video of the talk will be posted here: http://etcpanel.princeton.edu/blog/blog/2011/10/07/the-productive-scholar-lecture-capture-on-the-fly-lecture-capture-apps-angel-brady/

A website called Flick and Share (http://flickandshare.com/), allows for you to download all your photos in a Set and share the link with others.

1. You will need to have this website connect to your Flickr account (the same way other 3rd party apps for Flickr do-if you do not trust other parties accessing your account, then I would suggest to download each photo manually to save a backup).
2. Then you choose the set you want to share/download.
3.  Click on the share button.
4.  Click on the “Get Your Sharing Link” button. You can copy that link to an email to share with others, or if you want to download all your photos to back them up, click on the Open It button.
5. You can click on the Download the set button and use a Java Applet to download the images, or you can click on the Get List of Photos link. I did this and used the Firefox plugin DownThemAll! and asved them into a local folder on my computer.

 

After you are done, make sure you revoke the permissions for Flick and Share to access your Flickr account. Click on You –> Your Apps–> Apps You’re Using. This is a good site to use if you want to backup all your Flickr photos. I hope this helps!

 

I recently had to match a master list with another list to see what terms matched in both lists in Excel and keep them in order. Another thing I wanted to do was to make sure if there wasn’t a match in my second list with the master list of words, that a space was inserted in the column (representing no match). Here are the steps I took to make my list in Excel (I am working in Excel 2010).

1. Copy and paste your master list (the list with all the terms you are checking) into Column A.
2. Copy and paste the list of words you want to see a match for against the Master list into Column B.
3. To put the two list into alphabetical order, you can select the two columns and go to Sort–> A-Z.
4. We will use column C as the column to match our column B data and put spaces for none matches with Column A (Master list)
5. Select the first cell in Column C and type the following formula in the formula textbox: =IF(ISNA(MATCH(A1,B:B,0)),”",A1)
6. Copy that formula all the way down the column (stopping at the last master list word).
7. Now Column C will be a sorted matched list to Column A with spaces if there isn’t a word match.

I hope this helps!

I recently discovered StreamTransport, this Window’s only tool can download Hulu videos, YouTube videos, and FLV files from websites. When all other Firefox add-ons have failed, this tool can detect video and help you download it to your computer. When using this tool, please be aware of copyright laws and if you are going to use the video, please contact the owner and go through the proper channels before using StreamTransport to download and save the video. Here’s how to get started.

1. Download and install StreamTransport.

2.  Open StreamTransport

3. Enter the url that contains the video in the address bar of StreamTransport.

4. Click Start.

5. The webpage will appear under the url in StreamTransport.

6. Play the video. When you do, the url for the video appears under the webpage. Click on the url so it is highlighted.

7. Click the download button.

8. The video will download in a separate window.

9. When it is finished, use the Locate button to find the final video downloaded on your computer.

I hope this helps!

I was recently working in a print cascading style sheet for a website for work. We made all the design changes in the print CSS we wanted. We tested the Print Preview function out in Firefox 3.6 and noticed that it only displayed the first page in the Print Preview. In the other browsers (IE and Safari), the multiple pages showed up in the print preview.

How did we get around it? I looked at all the Cascading Style Sheets the webpage was using and copied any (and ALL) divs that had a float element in it into the print CSS (you can use the find function (control + F or command + F) in your browsers  and search for float).  I then set all the float elements to none (replacing the right or left float). This worked out, but I had a lot of floats in different style sheets. If float doesn’t fix it, you may have to change the overflow, position, width, or height elements in your print CSS.

I also used this post as a reference by Jaffer Haider: http://jafferhaider.wordpress.com/2007/12/29/fix-for-the-firefoxcss-one-page-printing-bug/

I hope this helps!

Back in June, I found a way to use ffmegX on a Mac to burn in subtitles. I have discovered 2 more ways to burn in subtitles (1 way Mac and 1 way in Windows). These are the few things that are important no matter what method you use:

1. You must use or convert to an AVI file

2. The subtitle file (.srt) must be named the same exact name as the video file (AVI)

3. The video file and the subtitle (.srt) file should reside in the same folder.

I will link to the first method I discovered in June: http://angelb.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/how-to-burn-subtitles-into-a-video-file/

The second method I used requires a Mac that has Toast Titanium. You will then have to download a free program called Perian: http://www.perian.org/ (make sure you have the latest version of both programs.

I just recently downloaded and installed writer2xhtml (http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/writer2xhtml) for my OpenOffice Writer. This extension installs in the same manner as a Firefox or Chrome extension for your browser (and there’s no need to restart OpenOffice after the install). I was converting Word document files into html and I was looking for a cleaner way to save HTML (from both OpenOffice and Word). This extension leaves minor HTML cleanup for the user (which you can use Dreamweaver or Kompozer). You can also customize the extension (like CSS behavior- you can find how to customize in the manual posted here: http://writer2latex.sourceforge.net/index15.html )

To find the extension, go to File–> Export–> you will now see XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHML 1.1 + MathML 2.0 (.xhtml), and XHTML 1.1 + MathML 2.0 (xsl, xml) as exporting options. Choose the appropriate setting for the file you want to save (first two work if you just want html).

I hope this helps!

Part 1: Creating Tables in Word with just Tabbed Data:

I just worked on a project where we had to convert Word documents that had a table of contents created by just using tabs into HTML tables for a webpage. The one problem with just converting the document into HTML is that you have extra HTML markup from MS Office. Also none of the data was in a table. Here I will break down how I saved the tabbed TOC data into a table in Word, how I cleaned up most of the HTML mark up (hint: I didn’t save the document as an HTML file in Word). Note: I am working in Office 2003, but these functions should be the same in the new Office 2007.

1. Highlight all the data in the documents (Control+A or Apple+A)

2. Go to Table–> Convert–> Table to Text

3. Now since I only wanted two columns, in the popup box, I actually  entered 1 in the text box that says Number of columns. If I entered 2, I sometimes got an extra column. Play around with this number because it might be effected by the way the document was created.

4. Under AutoFit Behavior, I used the defaults. Under Separate Text At: I chose the Tab radio button (since that how the TOC was laid out and created).

5. You will now have created a table around the data.  Save the file. (You can also clean up some of the data (like merging cells) while you are still in the document file format).

Part 2:  Saving as HTML File

1. Download OpenOffice (free open source suite)

2. File—>Save as HTML.

You will notice that there some extra HTML markup added by Open Office, but not as much if you saved it out of Microsoft Word.

Part 3: Further Clean Up of HTML

I used Dreamweaver and took out the font tags and extra Meta Data. You can do this with a text editor like TextEdit or Notepad (but you can use the find and replace features in Dreamweaver). Another HTML Editor called Kompozer (free and open source), has a Search and Replace feature where you can find and replace the font tag. I didn’t really need to do that much clean up though in Dreamweaver.

I hope this help!

Back in August, I used both Google Sketch Up (Pro edition) and Blender 3D to create a 3D environment. The issue with modeling my environment in just Blender 3D was that I needed exact measurements for my environment. Blender 3D does not have (so far in the latest version) the ability to dial in measurements when creating 3D models. Others have ran into this issue too, but it is a great 3D modeling and animation tool other than that draw back. So how did I manage to create the basic 3D environment with Google Sketch Up and then bring it into Blender 3D (finish textures and lighting)? Here’s a few things I had to do:

1. In Blender 3D, make sure your python is the correct version for the version of Blender you are running. There is a difference in releases and yes, there is a difference in 32bit vs. 64 bit. I ended up using 32 bit and using a slightly older version of python. How do you know if Python is  installed correctly? If the Blender window at start up says “Checking for installed Python…. got it!”, you’re in business.

2. To export your model out of Google SketchUp Pro  and into Blender, you need to save the file as an .OBJ. Some colors and textures might import into Blender and Blender can import that file format. Also, you will need the Pro version of Google SketchUp. You can also use the Pro version on an evaluation basis if you are not sure if want to purchase the program yet.

3. If you are bringing a model from Blender into SketchUp, make sure your model is grouped together as one model. If not, you may just be bringing over a piece of your model into SketchUp and not the whole model. With some of my models, I did a mesh join in Blender if the material was going to be simple and the same on all faces of the model (like a textured wall).

4. To bring models back and forth (from Blender into SketchUp and Sketchup in Blender) I always used the .OBJ file type. I did not have any issues when using a .OBJ.

These two programs can create powerful results with very little money (with Blender being free and SketchUp Pro being $495). If you’re not sure about spending the money on SketchUp Pro, try out the Trail version for SketchUp Pro with Blender to see if you want to make the investment. These tools are great together if you want to animate (Blender) a to scale 3D model (created in SketchUp Pro or edit model for measurements in SketchUp Pro). I hope this helps!