Converting Adobe PDF Files to Text or HTML

Chances are that you come across a lot of PDF files everyday, at work, school or home. PDF (which stands for Portable Document Format by the way) files are great as they often preserve the formatting of the text even if you don't happen to have a font installed. They also preserve the layout and images in the document. Also, it's free to create PDF files from several applications like OpenOffice, Microsoft Office and you can usually even print web pages to a PDF file.

However, one big problem with a PDF file is that you need a PDF reader to view it. Although Macs, and GNU/Linux based PCs come with individual readers, and Adobe's reader is a free download for windows users, other platforms sometimes don't have readily available or free readers.


For instance, BlackBerrys, iPhones and many other portable devices don't have a full fledged PDF reader built in. So, ironically, the PDF file isn't so portable after all, since you're out of luck when it comes to a mobile device.

However, sometimes there are files where the content is more important than the layout, and the content is mostly text (like ebooks or project instructions or a letter). In such cases it is often more desirable to just have a text file or a html file instead.

Luckily, Adobe provides some really easy ways to convert the PDF documents.

Option 1: Email To convert a PDF to text, simply email the document to pdf2txt@adobe.com! After converting the document, the service will email you back with the text file attached. Similarly, you can also email a PDF to pdf2html@adobe.com and you'll receive a html file attached in the returned email instead.

Option 2: Online Link to the document Alternatively, if the document happens to be online, you can visit Adobe's online conversion tools page, and convert the documents from there.
This way, if it's something simple like a file full of text, you wont need a PDF viewer to view the information in it. Plus, if you happen to need raw data (for a program that you may be writing, say) from a PDF file, this in a great way to convert the file!

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New Blogger Feature: Stats

If there is one thing I like about the new blogger interface (check it out yourself if you happen to have a blogger account with a blog at drafts.blogger.com) it is most likely the site stats feature.


By leveraging the power of Google Analytics, and automatically tracking your blog (without you having to do any work by adding a code to your blog or something) I think blogger has created a tool that many people will find useful.

As you can see from the screenshots below, the tool by default shows several statistics that most people would care about in a much more relevant way. For instance, instead of showing the page that gets the most hits, it shows a post that gets the most hits, and even displays the number of comments for that post. It provides an overview, a breakdown of visitors by posts, a snapshot of traffic sources, and reader statistics like browsers, countries and operating systems.

The graphs provided by the tool seem to be rather relevant to most bloggers. At least, for those bloggers that care to find out who their readers are by seeing details such as geographic locations, times with the most activity and so on.

Although Blogger Stats may provide far less statistics about your blog than a full fledged tracking service, it seems like a nice way to give casual bloggers a chance to know who's reading their blog.

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Taking notes on a BlackBerry While Calling Someone

So, you're on the phone with your friend, and your friend says "so, I'm like, so, like, hungry right now, want to meet me for lunch at this cool new place?". And then you say, "Sure, just let me know where it is". And then your friend starts telling you: "Okay, so walk 5 blocks south from King and Younge, and turn right and go down the dark alley but..."

What happens when you don't have a pen and paper handy to write down the instructions?

No worries, if you have a blackberry, you shouldn't have a problem taking notes, even while you're talking on the phone with your friend (some conditions apply since you will have to type out the notes somehow).

Here's what you do: If you're not on a headset, tell your friend to wait because you'll have to push some buttons first before you can take notes.

First, hit the blackberry home button, causing a menu to pop up. Then, click on the Notes option.

Now in the blank space start typing the notes. You might have to put your friend on speaker as you type the information, but at least this way, you won't forget it.

Once the call is done, it should save the note along with the call details, which can be accessed form the same place as your email messages. Consequently you can easily find the note just by looking at your call list, so you should have no trouble figuring out which note was for which call.

That's it. Happy note-taking!

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Staying Logged in for Two Google Accounts via Chrome

While Google Chrome may already be at version 5 (as of writing this article, version 6 seems to be in the works), I still think that it is going to be a while before I adopt it as my primary browser. I find that several add-ons such as Firebug and the like are not at par with their Firefox counter parts.

Nevertheless, one feature that I like in Chrome is the incognito mode feature. Where it essentially allows you to create a new "private browsing" window, instead of hiding your present session (like it does in Firefox) where your history and such features are not tracked.

However, apart from giving you the ability to do "certain" tasks discreetly, incognito mode is also great for another thing: logging into two Google Accounts at once, through one browser (although you'll have two windows open).

So essentially, what you need to do is log into one of your accounts through a normal Chrome window. Then open an incognito window, like so on a Mac:

And log into another Google account. Surprisingly, Incognito Mode isn't truly incognito in that it still maintains session cookies so that Google can still identify who you are once you log into a Google service like Gmail or Docs.

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Booting to a console window on a Mac

So recently I had the need to boot a mac into console mode only since it was being used as a webserver. If you too want to do the same and boot your mac into text-only mode, then read on.

A quick google search will reveal that there are sereval ways to do this. However, since I always prefer the easiest ways, I'll only post the quick and dirty way here.

First off open a terminal window or log into your computer through ssh (if you don't know what that is, I suggest that you keep graphical mode on your computer for now and think about using a text-only mode later on).

Then get root access to the computer via
$ sudo su

After this, you'll have to open up
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
in your favourite editor
And change the default login to the following:

 <key>RetriesUntilHint</key>
        <integer>3</integer>
        <key>SHOWFULLNAME</key>
        <false/>
        <key>autoLoginUser</key>
        <string>>console</string>
        <key>lastUser</key>
        <string>loggedIn</string>
        <key>lastUserName</key>
        <string>rishi</string>
        <key>noPasswordKey</key>
        <false/>


Notice the >console

Then simply save the file and reboot.

After the login manager starts, it'll boot you right into the console window.

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How to run Linux applications on Windows

While most people worry about how one can run Windows applications on GNU/Linux, I sometimes worry about the other way. How can I run Linux applications on Windows? After all if you're like most people, chances are that you use Windows way more than you use Linux (or any other operating system for that matter). So how can you run Linux distributions such as Ubuntu/Kubuntu, OpenSuse or Fedora alongside Windows, without actually having to boot into them.
It is actually very easy to do so with the advent of the virtual machine. It is essentially a software solution that emulates hardware, and allows you to run a second operating system on top of your present operating system. This is great for running Linux based operating systems if you want to test out a new linux distro or run a Linux app once in a while.

My virtual machine of choice to run Linux on Windows is Sun's (now Oracle's) VirtualBox. While there are other proprietary solutions such as VMware Player or Microsoft's very own Virtual PC that allow you to run Linux and unix based operating systems, it seems right to use an open source solution for an open source operating system. As well I just find that VirtualBox likes to play nice with any virtual operating system you'd like to run on it. Virtual PC has been buggy in the past with older versions of Ubuntu and such.

To run VirtualBox, first download it from the VirtualBox site. You'll also want to download the ISO file for your GNU/Linux distribution of choice if you haven't done so already. Then follow the instructions on the VirtualBox site to install a new operating system, and you're done!

It's as easy as that! And you don't even have to worry about partitioning, and accidentally screwing up your Linux distro. Plus, you can access the files created on Linux right from Windows.

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You Invest a Lot of Time Online

So, I was publishing some drafts of my blog posts that were just "hanging around" for a really long time, and after publishing one particular post, I came across a rather curious ad.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the ad is for Google Chrome.

However, I think this ad would have been more accurate and true to life:

Don't you agree?

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