Category: technology & science - Page 28

Spriglet #12 – Merging PDFs in Windows

2008-02-12spriglets, technology & science

[pdfsam]

OK, so I have PDFs of several receipts that I need to fax into my health insurance company for flexible spending reimbursement. The Windows Fax “printer” doesn’t allow me to string together multiple files, so I’m in a pickle.

I don’t have Adobe Acrobat, so I start Googling with “(combine|merge) (pdf|pdfs) -mac -apple -purchase -demo -trial -shareware -acrobat”

I find pdfsam, download & install it, add my PDFs, set the output file, click Run and, bam, a merged PDF. Sweet.

I tried another option as well — pdftk. If you’d rather go the commandline route, this’ll work just as good.

Spriglet #11 – Restore off-screen programs in Windows

2008-02-04spriglets, technology & science

Have you ever had a program show in the taskbar as running, but not show anywhere on the screen? (I’ve only had it happen in a dual-screen environment, but I suppose it could happen with a single screen.)

Anyway. Alt-Space is your friend.

Hit Alt-space, choose Move and then use the arrow keys to move the window back to the visible screen.

Spriglet #10 – Hiding Taskbar Icons in Windows

2008-01-282008-01-28spriglets, technology & science

If you are like me and often have a lot of apps open in Windows, here’s an easy way to get more room in your taskbar. If you’re wondering why my taskbar is dark gray, I’m using the Zune theme for Windows XP.

®= right-click, © = click, © © = double-click

1. ® on an empty place on the taskbar, © Properties

2. © Customize next to the “Hide inactive icons” checkbox

3. Note the Behavior column

4. Next to each “Hide when inactive” entry change it to “Always Hide”

5. © OK twice and you’re done. Voila. Nice, huh?

What’s missing from Wii Sports

2008-01-072008-01-07sports, technology & science

Here are some things that I think can be improved in Wii Sports.

Stats! The message board is not a good place to view my personal best scores. I’d like to see a table of all Miis on the console and their best scores in each sport.
A way to turn off the strap warnings and things that slow the game down. I know they’re necessary, but once my Mii has acknowledged them, don’t show them again.
It would be cool if some functionality could be unlocked when you get to a certain skill level in all of the sports. I know bowling pros get a different color ball, but what about the other sports?
Tennis – when you’re not playing against the computer, there are some unhittable service returns. It’s not quite fair.
Baseball
- It’d be sweet to pick the players on our team from our pool of Miis.
- I know the minimalist nature of Wii Sports is what makes it cool, but some more action on the baseball players would be nice, especially fielding. For example, if you hit a line drive to first base, the fielder should step on the base.
- It’d also be cool to be able to position yourself in the batter’s box.
Golf – If there’s one of the sports that a movement that is counter-intuitive, it’s golf. Maybe it’s that I don’t like golf in general.

Spriglet #9: Conditionally hide columns in Excel using VB

2007-09-102016-07-13spriglets, technology & science

I have time tracking worksheet that I use at work. It looks something like this:

Task	Total Hours	Friday, 9/7/2007	Saturday, 9/8/2007	…
Status Report	5.25	1.5	0	…
Staff Meeting	12.5	1.5	0	…
…	…	…	…	…

Since I don’t work on Saturday or Sunday, I’d like to hide all columns that have a date that’s a Saturday or Sunday.

Here’s a little VB macro that will do the trick:

h/t Rowan