So you want to make PDF documents?

Just spent the last 3.5 hours working on my draft treatise which is due tomorrow. Had uber writer's block yesterday. Produced 300+ words over 4 hours. Tonight I managed to up it to just over 1000 words. Pretty happy with the progress. Will continue to work on it tomorrow.

So while I was taking a break, I decided to browse the Internet and came across an interesting article on how to make pdf documents without software.

There are two methods to create PDF files online. Each method is followed by a list of available free services, first choices being the best based on extensive testing and personal experience.

1. Convert: Upload the document from your computer and the PDF is sent to your email address within a couple of minutes.

• Express PDF (DOC, RTF, XLS, HTML files and URL - max. 20MB size)
• PDF Online (DOC, RTF, XLS, MHT, TXT, PPT, PPS, PUB, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WMF, EMF, GIF files - max. 2MB size)
• PDF Convert (65 file types supported, unlimited file size but max. 7 files per month. Also converts PDF to DOC or XLS)

2. Generate: Enter the address of the website and download the PDF instantly. No email address is required.

• PDF-o-Matic (URL, unlimited file size?)
• HTML To PDF (URL, unlimited file size?)
• HTML 2 PDF (URL, unlimited file size? Adds a watermark ad)

Productivity Tip: For the second method, you could save even more time by using the Add to Searchbar extension for Firefox and generating PDFs of the website you want to "print" directly from the search box.

You can read the original article here.

draft treatise

I've been working on my treatise (undergraduate thesis) over the past weeks. That's pretty much what's been keeping my busy. I've even kept a blog for it if you haven't noticed. Feel free to visit it.

My draft treatise is due this Friday. It's been a while since I wrote actual essays so I've lost my ability for writing up structured sentences, paragraphs and sections. That's if I even had those abilities to begin with.

So I'm suffering slightly from writer's block. Funny though you'd get that writing a treatise. Perhaps I should do more googling to get more ideas. Yea, that's what I think I'll do.

Clear acne...

...with baking soda? What the? Ok Hong Yi, maybe you're starting to convince me a little bit. However, I'm still not totally convinced. And no, I'm not going to rub a leg ham against my face to have smooth skin.

Zeroes - ordinary people...pointless abilities

I was taking a break from working on my thesis when I stumbled upon a short Heroes parody clip. Heroes is a famous tv series that involves ordinary people with supernatural abilities and how they use it for good and evil.

Pretty funny if you're an avid Heroes fan.

rain oh rain...

So I'm in a bit of a ranting mood. The weather's dark and gloomy. Rain drops trickle down as though the heaven's were crying. The gusty wind howls and the trees sway from side to side, greeting you feebly.

Took me 20-30 minutes to find a parking near Paddy's market. Some rude dude also snatched one of my potential parks. Walked in the rain wearing thongs, while dragging along one of those old china lady trolleys for groceries.

"One dollar! One dollar!", they shouted. "Best apples! One Dollar!", shrieked the old slightly plump lady. "One dollar, one dollar! One dollar!", the congregation sang.

Loaded up my trolley bag, I hurried back to my car...in the rain. My feet is wet, the windshield is fogged up. Home I go...in the rain.

Lucky I don't have mascara and black nail polish with me. But I can't complain.

There are many people out there who are much more unfortunate than me. Always remember to smell the roses.

font control

I was bored so I decided to write a font control using javascript. Try it here.



I've added the controls on the top of the page as well as in my javascript widget.

Enjoy :)

[edit date="09-08-07"]

Added new buttons I made.

[/edit]

redirecting in plesk

I thought I'd make an entry here about important stuff which I might need to know later on. Kinda like building a knowledge base. Perhaps other people can benefit from this as well.

So I was informed on how to redirect traffic to another website on Plesk today at work. Pretty handy 4 line configuration to the .htaccess file.

First of all, change your working directory by running
>> cd /var/www/vhosts/$domain/httpdocs

Note: $domain is the name of the domain from which you are redirecting from (e.g. /var/www/vhosts/mywebsite.com.au/httpdocs). If you're running from Plesk, just navigate to your httpdocs folder by going to the desired domain to redirect and clicking on File Manager.

Create a .htaccess file in that folder (if it doesn't already exist). Then enter the following lines to the file,

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} $domain [OR]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} www.$domain
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://$Redirect_To_Domain [R=301]

Note: $domain match the $domain above (e.g. mywebsite.com.au) and $Redirect_To_Domain should be the domain to which you are redirecting to (e.g. mynewwebsite.com.au).

Once you have saved the file, you have to configure its permissions. You can run,
>> chmod 755 .htaccess

or if you're in Plesk, just make sure the permissions are rwx r-x r-x (uncheck write access to Group and Others).

If your website accepts SSL connections, simply do the same for the folder httpsdocs.

bloc party.

Bloc party was playing at the Hordern Pavilion last Saturday. Brian, my sister and I went to it after having dinner at Ayam Goreng, a Indonesian/Malaysian restaurant in Kingsford.

I was pretty impressed with the food: ayam bakar, satay, kangkung. Even the sambal was genuinely hot! The satay and kangkung wasn't cheap though. $7 for each dish and I think there were only 5 satay sticks (yes, I'm comparing to Malaysia). The ayam bakar was $6.50, which was pretty reasonable in my opinion. Unfortunately I didn't take photos of the dishes as I was too lazy and incredibly hungry.

So we headed to Fox Studios after dinner. The support band was Midnight Juggernauts. Music was alright, but the singing was kinda weird. The keyboardist made attempts to dance while playing the keyboard, but it looked like he was humping it instead.

Bloc Party was absolutely great. Great lighting, sound and interaction with the crowd. The drummer took off his shirt and was pretty much playing shirtless throughout the show. He didn't really have a good body though, some fluff on his chest and had lanky arms. Oh well, he's the Bloc Party drummer after all so I guess he could pull it off.

Here are some photos: