Misc Gallimaufry

A quick tip. 

problem:

eBrary is a rather large provider of eBooks. One can often get free subscription through public or private library. However, the online reading experience is rather painful, and even downloading the ebooks into Adobe Digital Editions (ebooks with expiration date) is not idea. At the least one has to forego making digital annotations.

so... get pdf of course, but ebrary only  allows to export 60 pages of pdfs per day. thankfully, they use a simple cookie to track the usage, and that easy to circumvent in may ways - one of which follows

solution:

use INCOGNITO window. Chrome, Firefox... 

ctrl + shift + n in chrome. 

every 60 pages, restart the incognito window and download another 60 pages. In a few passes, even The Remembrance of Days Past would be all yours. 

then, combine the pdfs with psf Xchange Viewer (free) or Adobe Acrobat (paid). 

then, OCR the pages. of course! pdf Xchange viewer does it for free again, while Acrobat gives you more power user options. 

Problem:

So I was given a pdf table, which was mapping .pdf resources onto specific days (instructional media planning thing). The naming conventions were rather painful, so looking for all those files anytime I wanted to make sure they were in the right place got tiresome. 

So I figured I would embed links to those files so that they automatically open. Normally I would just embed links to internet location of the external files. 

However, for security reasons, I could not place the files online. Period. So I had to figure out how to embed relarive paths, otherwise the file would only be useful to me and only me and not to my colleagues with their various machines. 

case scenario: I have a document testsource.pdf and I want to embed in it a link to testtarget.pdf (and NOT C:\folder\testtarget.pdf

Note that  Mac, Linux, and PC have similar relative path conventions; though not absolute path conventions. That's good for us. *

Solution

Long story short, just use some sort of custom hyperlink and simply point to "testtarget.pdf"

BUT: beware that all the pdf programs I tried (pdf Xchange Viewer, Acrobat, Viewer, Foxit) will be showing the relative path as absolute when you hover over or click. Thus, I though the program was automatically converting to absolute paths, but in fact it's just a display gimmick. It's still relative behind the scenes. 

I just wish I realized this before I went on the quest starting with testing eight various ways of writing relative paths and ending with coding into the pdf an open file action with JavaScript and functions to build up the absolute path on fly (using app.open and doc.path)

True story :-)

*

Platform

Local Platform Path

Acrobat Device Independent Path

Windows

C:\MyFolder\MyFile.pdf

/C/MyFolder/MyFile.pdf

Macintosh

MyDisk:MyFolder:MyFile.pdf

/MyDisk/MyFolder/MyFile.pdf

UNIX

/user/me/MyFolder/MyFile.pdf

Car travel.

With today's smart routing tools, it is easy to see how many miles a potential route will be. When deciding whether or not to take a particular trip, such as to a store, I like to be aware how much I will have to spend on gas just for this one trip.

I propose you become aware of your car's (motorcycle's, boat's, plane's...) MPD. Miles per Dollar.  It will give you a more practical sense of gas cost than MPG.

The conversion is dead simple.

Miles per Dollar = Miles per Gallon / Price Per Gallon

A good general example is

MPD = 30mpg/ $4 ppg

Photoshop has a nice plugin for extracting multiple pictures from a scanned bed. It's under file>automate>crop and straighten photos. 

However, I wanted to apply this process to a whole folder of source files, and the repetitious saving of new files and opening of source files was cumbersome. 

Since crop and straighten is a plugin rather than a script, it cannot be used in the batch PS mode. So here is a script that runs the plugin as as a batch. 

save as jpeg

#target Photoshop

app.bringToFront;

var inFolder = Folder.selectDialog("Please select folder to process"); 

if(inFolder != null){

var fileList = inFolder.getFiles(/\.(jpg|tif|psd|)$/i);

var outfolder = new Folder(decodeURI(inFolder) + "/Edited");

if (outfolder.exists == false) outfolder.create();

for(var a = 0 ;a < fileList.length; a++){

if(fileList[a] instanceof File){

var doc= open(fileList[a]);

doc.flatten();

var docname = fileList[a].name.slice(0,-4);

CropStraighten();

doc.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES); 

var count = 1;

while(app.documents.length){

var saveFile = new File(decodeURI(outfolder) + "/" + docname +"#"+ zeroPad(count,3) + ".jpg");

SaveJPEG(saveFile, 10);

activeDocument.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES) ; 

count++;

  }

 }

 }

};

function CropStraighten() {

executeAction( stringIDToTypeID('CropPhotosAuto0001'), undefined, DialogModes.NO );

};

function SaveJPEG(saveFile, jpegQuality){

jpgSaveOptions = new JPEGSaveOptions();

jpgSaveOptions.embedColorProfile = true;

jpgSaveOptions.formatOptions = FormatOptions.STANDARDBASELINE;

jpgSaveOptions.matte = MatteType.NONE;

jpgSaveOptions.quality = jpegQuality; 

activeDocument.saveAs(saveFile, jpgSaveOptions, true,Extension.LOWERCASE);

}

function zeroPad(n, s) { 

n = n.toString(); 

while (n.length < s) n = '0' + n; 

return n; 

}; 

Good luck.

Short: disable highlight priority.

Longer:

I was surprised that my t2i could not get below 200 ISO in manual mode, but I lived with it until I was to shoot some night sky with very long exposures. 

Apparently, the Highlight Priority feature (D+) requires 200+ ISO...

Once disabled in custom settings,

100 ISO is available again.

This debate has been raging for a long time. I personally experimented with DNG in my photo workflow some six years ago, but turned away because the DNG interpretation was markedly different from the interpretation of the RAW files. In other words, the converted files looked different than originals. (I'm a canon shooter, CR2 is the raw.)

This issue can today easily be addressed by using different ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) presets to match the software raw interpretation to your expectations (or jpegs if you wish). One can even use the DNG Profile Editor to build custom profiles... 

But MOREOVER. I never knew that DNG has an embedded checksum of the original image; separated from the metadata. This makes it incredibly easy to validate the integrity of the images in batches even after making changes to the metadata (like embedding contact info, copyright, GPS location...) It's a dream come through for digital image filetry. 

You should review the importance of file validation in recommendations of the Digital Photo Best Flow site sponsored by the Library of Congress (the US one).

This single piece of information that slipped my attention makes the DNG vs RAW moot for me. Since Adobe has also filed DNG to be an international standard in 2007, the format is also well documented in should be supported in the future. Now I'm a believer. DNG go!

I wanted to use the uber-useful Duplicator plugin to make a development copy of my Wordpress online portfolio. 

Problem: I was getting a constant error regarding some file permissions, but it was unclear what folders and files were affected. 

This is the error log displayed in Chrome

and this is the SAME LOG displayed in Firefox

Hypothesis: After I adjusted the permissions, Chrome displays the logs correctly. Thus it seems that the insufficient permissions prevented Chrome from even displaying the paths. 

So I found that the DSP manager (fancy equalizer) in my Cyanogenmod 10.1.2 (mako) on my Nexus 4 has a bug. The 'speaker' settings do not scroll and thus offer only a limited set of features. Interestingly, the settings for 'bluetooth' and 'headset' scroll seamlessly. It's a bug. 

Originally I though it was a corrupted installation so I set up to flash the ROM. With a full Titanium and Nandroid backups I though I was ready to roll, but alas. After flashing the Cyanogenmod a few times I tried to restore the image through Clockwormod Recovery, and it did not work. I got a persistent error in restoring 

/data

for any of the seven nandroid backups I had up my sleeve. After a time, my phone also got tired of constant flashing and got stuck in Cyanogenmod boot loop. The problem is that now I need ADB to push some files to the phone with non-removable SD card, but I can't enable USB debugging without getting into the system. So, if something like this happens to you, here's what works. 

Get some custom recovery like Clockworkmod Recovery if you don't have one. You can get this on the phone through fastboot mode (on nexus 4 press volume down and power button.) No ADB needed. I used the wonderful Nexus 4 Toolkit for this. 

Boot into recovery (if you have no clue see the Cyanogenmod Install Guide for instance). This actually gets the phone into ADB, even though it is a recovery ADB and not a standard Android ADB. Not relevant for this task.

Get adb.exe somewhere. Download the whole Android SDK from Google OR get something like Nexus4Root kit, which is much much trimmed. 

Start command line (shift click in folder with ADB...) and you have ADB a access to the phone.

In my case I had to delete a bunch of files and folders to clear space from the SD space

adb shell rm -r /sdcard/0/somefolder

and I also deleted some old present Nandroid backups

adb shell rm -r /data/media/clockworkmod/backup/somefolder

then push the files you want, like cyanogenmod.zip

adb push cyanogenmod.zip /sdcard/0/somefolder

and Bob's your uncle. Boot into recovery, flash stock or Cyanogenmod and go home. 

ALSO

I do think that my major issue was the lack of space. It seems that when there is not enough free space after the installation, Cyanogenmod gets stuck in loop! (Not surprisingly). 

intro: Years ago I ended up not using flickr because it had some weird restrictions on display streams of free account. Basically, one had to buy the pro to pass 200 pictures... (simplified).

Flickr has been since then thoroughly transformed, and since the community is nice and vibrant, I am again experimenting with the platform. Not as a system to share photos with friends, but rather as a publicly faced gallery. 

meal: I've been experimenting with adding advanced CreativeCommons ITPC and EXIF tags to the photos I upload (tags are a mess in itself; see EXIF vs. ITPC vs. XMP).

Using Harvey's ExifTool as well as Jeffrey Friedl's extremely convenient Exif Viewer,

I found all the 'size' options automatically generated by flickr to be almost completely devoted of metadata.

Definitely no camera or authorship information. At least the 'original size' remains unchaged.

Today's news portals are more distracting than I can taken. They got so good at serving me all the juicy articles that I could be interested in that I cant' even finish what I'm reading sometimes! (Plus the ads; if you are not a saint and are using an ad blocker).

ust replace www.sth... with m.sth...

My video editing workflow currently comprise

s of Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and Adobe Prelude SC6 (for previewing the footage). 

I recently recorded some short interviews for my Laser Letterpress project with my Google Nexus 4 phone. Two disctinct problems arose:

The files would play in Prelude, but commenting would be grayed out, making the whole Prelude thing moot.

The audio would be fall out of sync in Prelude and Premiere in a semi-random fashion. Making it a major pain. 

I'll describe the problems and interim solutions later if you're interested...

For now, let's look at the best SOLUTION I found. 

Rewrap the files as .mov using ffmpeg

- there is no loss in quality since there is no conversion. The files are essentially the same; just called differently. It also does not take basically any time! And it solves both problems. 

- depending on platform the specific actions will vary. You can use many 3rd party GUIs or write a command line or write batch scrip (PC) or bash script (Linux). This does the trick on PC:

Get ffmpeg jack-of-all-trades media manipulation library. Mac, PC, Linux, whatever.

put files to be rewrapped and ffmpeg.exe in one folder

make a batch file (a text file with .bat extension) with this content

for %%a in (*.mp4) do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "%%a-rewrapped.mov

pause

That's it! Customize script according to your needs. 

And be swell. 

sources that helped me arrive at this script:

http://duncandavidson.com/blog/2010/11/ffmpeg-rewrap/

There is no ethos. 

Every now and then I am solving a problem (often of a technical nature) that I am certain other people are having somewhere in the world. 

Those are the times when I wonder whether I should start a blog to give back to the online community. Share pains and solutions. 

Then I find myself too lazy and too infrequent a blogger to worry about it. 

In the future I may still start a weblog or something along those lines but for now... this is going to be a place for those random random pieces of information... and all other things. 

be swell, 

Leonardo meets Instagram.

Isn't that what we all wonder... how would artists such as Leonardo, Raphael, Rubens, or Van Gogh navigate the cyberspace and social networking scene...

All you curious teenagers and adults come to Gutman Library in Cambridge on 3/14/2013.

We'll have various fun cognitive-science-brain-connected activities to celebrate the 2013 Brain Awareness Week!