http://pdfundo.net/convert/ – this might be worth keeping in mind if you ever have to unPDF a document.
One of the girls at work just used it and it worked.
Now to find a PDF to convert.
Category: Consciousness
Putting the fun into PDFundo
IT Crowd
I’m in Sydney at the moment at a conference for users of our work’s Content Management System. It’s not what I expected it to be. I was thinking there’d be lots of young nerdy guys drooling over code and wearing pocket protectors. I was wrong. It’s actually mostly pretty old people – and a fairly even gender split. Sometime during the last two years I became our office’s official geek – I don’t know how it happened. But a lot of the stuff the people at this conference are getting excited about is beyond me. I sat at a dinner table with the guy who is pretty much everyone’s hero for some work he did with AJAX (the coding/script thing that pretty much powers Facebook) and the Content Management Platform – he presented earlier today. People kept coming up to him wanting to buy his work. He told me he’ll probably put it up for free, silly him. Dave Hughes MC’d the conference dinner. He was very funny. He apparently gets paid over $10k to do that sort of gig. Clearly I’m in the wrong career.
One of my favourite things about this conference has been the number of terrible tech glitches in presentations. Powerpoint appears to be the bane of even the technologically elite – although most of the presenters have been using Macs – and it’s beautiful presentation software. I decided the other day that I’d like a Mac. Especially one of the new ones with the funky touchpad. If my choice of luxury materialism comes down to a toss up between a Mac, a coffee grinder, an XBox 360 or a new TV – I’ll be in a real bind. At the moment I am probably leaning towards this option . Robyn remains unconvinced. It’s still cheaper than a piano though.
On Tuesday night I lugged Sheila (my tank of a coffee machine) to a lady’s Wine and Cheese night event that our church held. I made quite a few coffees using some El Salvadorian beans I roasted on Monday. I’ve been meaning to write a little bit about coffee on this blog – and probably will later. Right now there’s a bit of a fight going on on the street outside my hotel – I haven’t adjusted to daylight savings time very well so it still feels quite early to me but most people appear to be asleep.
I’m staying in a hotel called “The Dive Hotel” in Coogee. It’s very nice. A fairly large room in what appears to be a converted terrace house right on the beach in what I think is Sydney’s nicest suburb. Breakfast is a communal affair – and the in room brochure/manual thing warns guests (particularly children) not to pat the hotel’s aging dog – one of those little furry balls that only just passes as a dog – because in its old age it no longer tolerates children. Pretty funny stuff which adds to the homely appeal of the place.
Who would take a hurricane cal…
Who would take a hurricane called Norbert seriously?
The lego brick road
A while back I made a nostalgic post about the CDTV – the first CD based gaming console I ever played. Those nostalgic console stories will probably continue – I haven’t mentioned the Amiga CD32 or the 8-bit goodness of the NES yet – but today’s trip down memory lane will focus on the original 8 bit entertainment. Lego.
“if all the Lego bricks ever produced were to be divided equally among a world population of six billion, each person would have 62 Lego bricks.” –An interesting fact from the wikipedia article
I probably spent more time playing with Lego than any other toy or game in my childhood. Lego was is awesome. A little while back, after I started earning a wage I thought about buying some new lego to play with – but the little men – apparently called minifigs (like the little pirate below) had been replaced by these cretinous things that almost had opposable thumbs.
I was distressed.
Anyway, Lego is probably responsible for today’s architects and engineers – lego architects and engineers broke new ground recently, by creating the world’s tallest lego tower.
“At 96.73 feet (29.485 meters) this Lego tower built in the Rathaus Platz in Vienna has broken the world record for the tallest Lego construction in the world. It took nearly 460,000 bricks and it was built over four days. The views from the top are quite stunning” – from Gizmodo
That’s some impressive legoing.
Equally impressive is this Flickr collection dedicated to BrickCon’s Zombiefest.
And for those of you who don’t have a lego arsenal capable of taking on the zombie hoards – there’s always this collection from BrickArms to get you by.
Fully sick
Is there anything worse than being at work sick?
Yes, there is, being at work sick on a deadline for your most important project of the year.
At least I have Ben, James and Paul’s emails to keep me company. Today we’re talking about the falling Aussie dollar and how it has ruined Paul’s Christmas because importing his presents is now prohibitively expensive. Good times.
Yesterday we talked about Ben’s inability to write analogies. Paul and James mostly talk about computer games. Which only mildly interests me because they’re not talking about the Nintendo 64 – which is the only console I’m currently playing. Just to keep you in the loop – I only have three 00 Agent levels to go. 1337 – is that how you write “leet” – I’m sure James will correct me.
Yes, there is, being at work sick on a deadline for your most important project of the year.
At least I have Ben, James and Paul’s emails to keep me company. Today we’re talking about the falling Aussie dollar and how it has ruined Paul’s Christmas because importing his presents is now prohibitively expensive. Good times.
Yesterday we talked about Ben’s inability to write analogies. Paul and James mostly talk about computer games. Which only mildly interests me because they’re not talking about the Nintendo 64 – which is the only console I’m currently playing. Just to keep you in the loop – I only have three 00 Agent levels to go. 1337 – is that how you write “leet” – I’m sure James will correct me.
Wondering what business ideas …
Wondering what business ideas Hilton came up with? Anything exciting? Like opening a cafe…
My friend Ben.
My friend Ben hates puns, analogies, arguments by example, hypotheticals or in fact anything he can’t taste, touch or hold – and he doesn’t like most of those things. He’s a very rational person. But I’ve decided he pretty much hates everything I stand for… oh, and the point of this whole post is to direct your attention to his answers to my questions on the bail out that I have posted in the comments – and to alert him to the fact that I’ve done that. He’ll probably hate this post.
Coffee Dominion in Townsville …
Coffee Dominion in Townsville just gave me a new pump for my coffee machine. It’s second hand – but new for me. They are tops.
I’m heading off to a pirate th…
I’m heading off to a pirate themed team retreat tomorrow – and contemplating a software pirate costume… what would that look like?
I just bought a new camera for…
I just bought a new camera for work – it will arrive next week. I used http://myperfect.com.au/ to choose what type to get. It was useful.
Vanilla coke is "teh awes…
Vanilla coke is "teh awesomeness" I prefer its sickly sweetness to that of its older brother.
http://www.microsoft.com/proph…
http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/articles/tools.aspx = cool. I’m sure there are open source alternatives, but Microsoft has delivered.
I’m about to give Microsoft’s …
I’m about to give Microsoft’s new photo meta data editing software a whirl – pretty keen to figure out an image library catalogue for work
I’m back at work after a long …
I’m back at work after a long weekend at Mission Beach. Mission Beach is nice. You should go there.
A day of microblogging continues
I’m using three new free applications that I think are worth sharing:
Rocketdock – creates a mac like doc for windows and is useful for uncluttering your desktop.
Launchy – is similarly useful – just open it and type the first few letters of any program you’d like to launch.
ProPhotoTool (requires Windows Validation) – newly launched Microsoft image metadata editor – useful if you have to manage an image library – like I do.