Here is free PDF Creation software for Windows. I used it last night to make about 50 PDF files and it worked great!
Adobe wants about $250 for their creator software.
Of course OpenOffice saves files as PDFs natively, but I was working from Excel documents.
This is a pretty cool project – you paint electrical traces on your fridge and then solder magnets to LEDs. You can then arrange them into patterns on the traces.
Kind of like a high-tech lite-brite on the fridge!
It looks really cool…
Apparently our fabulous President doesn’t know the difference between Afganistan and Iraq…
From this morning’s press conference:
Q I’d like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? . . . .
THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise — in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist — is that — I didn’t want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect —
Q Everything —
THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.
Q — everything I’ve heard —
THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it’s just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We — when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I’m never going to forget it. And I’m never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.
Part of that meant to make sure that we didn’t allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that’s why I went into Iraq — hold on for a second —
Q They didn’t do anything to you, or to our country.
THE PRESIDENT: Look — excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That’s where al Qaeda trained —
Q I’m talking about Iraq —
THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. That’s where — Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That’s where they trained. That’s where they plotted. That’s where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.
And in there too is this comment: You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life.
Hmmm… Secure because of oceans? How does that work? And killers could destroy innocent life? Who would have thunk that?
Sheesh people. Wake up! The President is a moron!
Ultimate Geek! I got a link to the MediaWiki page about running a Wiki on a USB drive under Windows.
It’s really easy and cool.
They have you install a package called Uniform Server which consists of:
You just unzip the package and run a batch file to start it up.
That’s pretty slick – An entire WAMP server in a ~6MB package. You can install it on any Windows box and run it in production.
Then you just install the MediaWiki package, tweak the settings and away you go.
It’s not the fastest running off a USB stick, but you can plug it into any Windows box, run the start script and you are up a running.
I’m having too much fun with OpenOffice Draw creating new templates to use in my DIY Planner.
I made two more this weekend – A Meal Planner template and an Expenses template.
The Meal Planner template is for planning a week’s work of dinners. It has space for the main dish, what cookbook it’s from and what page it’s on. It also has space for a vegetable and dessert.
The Expenses template is just a simple form to record business expenses so I don’t forget to turn them in for reimbursment.
You can see all my templates here. It’s just a bare directory listing at this point.
The MP3Elf is a pretty cool device. It’s an open sourced design for a networked MP3 player. It uses a TINI Java based microcontroller that is in a SIMM package (looks like a memory stick.)
You can download the plans and circuit board layouts for free, or buy kits or fully assembled units.
The price isn’t bad, you can get a kit with everything (including a 4×20 LCD screen) for $140. You still need to supply the TINI processor board, which is about $80 and might be hard to get.
So it ends up a little pricey at around $220 and you still have to assemble it.
A wired Squeezebox is $240 and it’s in a slick package. There is also the Roku Soundbridge, which is also in a neat package and starts around $150.
Looks like a cool project though.
Found a link on the DIY Planner site to David Seah’s Printable CEO pages. These are not 100% applicable to me, but they are pretty cool.
Unfortunately they are all 8.5 x 11 pages, but I might take the Destruct-o-matic Progress Tracker page and roll it into 5.5 x 8.5 size. The Destruct-o-matic is a video game-like version of a progress tracking form. It makes it fun to use and thus you are more likely to use it.
He also has a neat idea he calls the “Pickle Jar“. You write your ideas down on a small piece of paper and stick them in a jar. This gets them out of your head, so you can focus on what you are supposed to be doing. You can go back and visit the jar later.
A man and his wife were investigated by Homeland Security because they paid off the ~$6500 balance on their credit card.
And this makes them terrorists by what stretch of the imagination?
