Over the hill.. and in flight!

A brilliant Reader's Digest read...

More than three hours after her heart stopped, Gilbert recalled watching the video probe of Bågenholm's heart.

"It was standing completely still. No movement. I just saw some little shivering. No fibrillation. And suddenly it contracted. Pssh," Gilbert said, squeezing his fists to mimic a beating heart. "And there was a pause and pssh. A second contraction." Gilbert tears up at the memory.

Medical miracle story @CNN

Editing PDFs on linux

There are three primary packages that help edit PDFs on linux:

Pdftk - tool for manipulating PDF documents.
PDFedit - a good PDF editor, similar to Acrobat (full version on Windows) for manipulating PDF documents
PDFjam - is a collection of PDF document handling utilities

To cut pages 1, 3, 5, and 10 to 20 from a document input.pdf and save them into a new file result.pdf:

sudo apt-get install pdftk

pdftk input.pdf 1 3 5 10-20 output result.pdf

The no-good way:

pdfnup input.pdf --nup 1x1 --pages 1,3,5,10-20 --outfile result.pdf

clod~tune

Fortune gave me the stiff upper lip this morning:

Your reasoning is excellent -- it's only your basic assumptions that are wrong.

Moving Thunderbird from Windows to Linux

I found it easy to move my Thunderbird email accounts (data + filters) from Windows to Ubuntu linux. Here is a record log.

1. Transfer the 'profile folder' for your current Thunderbird installation (check this mozilla page for the exact location) to another safe partition or external disk.

2. I had two IMAP accounts and a large Local Folder, and these showed up in two grandchild folders: 'ImapMail' and 'Mail' respectively, under 'Profiles'.

On linux, once Thunderbird is installed, "~/.mozilla-thunderbird/" had a similar hierarchy. I created the two IMAP accounts, and copied the two folders (ImapMail and Mail) with their *.msf files to linux. That got the data (w/ filters etc.) transfered!

Note that I couldn't use the prefs.js directly to transfer account settings. But probably as some others have commented, it is also easy to edit and move over.

Thats all! Happy mailing!

Installing Acrobat Reader on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) AMD 64bit

I finally decided to install acroread on my Ubuntu machine (since I had to read edits done using it!). Here is a record log.

1. Check your OS version by lsb_release -a, uname -a, gcc -v,...

2. Get the Acrobat Reader version for your OS from:
http://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/

I use Ubuntu 9.04 on AMD 64-bit. But, since Adobe doesn't have a 64bit installer, I downloaded the Linux - x86 (.deb): AdbeRdr9.1.2-1_i386linux_enu.deb

3. Force install the 32bit package by:
sudo dpkg -i --force-all AdbeRdr9.1.2-1_i386linux_enu.deb

Done. acroread should now be ready.

Finally, a shout-out: don't do it! Go Open! Use evince, or xpdf, or ghostview to read PDFs. Try PDFedit or Kword to edit them.

linux and the lawsuits

A low blow... to all things open: "Imagine building a billion-dollar business without having to offer any of the usual guarantees or indemnity. No wonder IBM likes Linux."

IBM Refuses To Indemnify Linux Users

Red Hat's Mad Matt Vs. Humongous SCO Lawsuit

Perhaps its a good opportunity for Windows 7 to step up.

Cupola

The International Space Station will get a new picture window early next year. Called the "Cupola," the new observation platform will be a control point for the space station’s robotic arm. It will also serve as the ultimate chill-out room.

reads

Property values won't turn around until 2012 and won't return to their 2007 peaks until at least 2017. The reason is that commercial property tends to follow unemployment and the Federal Reserve said it expects unemployment numbers to turn around in three years.

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