The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

Frank from Web Talk (www.webtlk.com) was very kind to drop me an email about his review of The Download Munkey last week (yay!)

While I didn’t really have to write a recipriocal review of Web Talk in return, I did feel a need to recommend Web Talk since Frank and I share a similar love for sourcing and writing about interesting stuff on the web and a common belief in only writing about topics that we’re genuinely interested in as well as publishing only those articles that we write ourselves (which means no wholescale cut n’ paste from other sites ).

As the title implies, Web Talk focuses mainly on computers and the Internet. While I’m not a big fan of techie blogs primarily because I deal with enough technology and computers at work everyday, I do have a soft spot for collecting helpful tech tips and how-tos.

And that’s precisely where Web Talk shines as it hosts a large and rapidly-growing collection of concise and easy to understand articles on getting the most out of your computer, be it Windows XP or Vista, Firefox or even tricks for Youtube like searching for HD videos or converting YouTube videos for iPod or PSP.

For the readers who are neither Firefox users nor Youtube fanatics, here’s a trio of my personal favourites from Web Talk that you might also enjoy

• A feature on Animata for creating your own real-time animations
• Tools and tips on playing Flash games offline – for those times when you’re stuck with a laptop with no Internet and no entertainment
• A tutorial on getting your first WordPress-based blog online (!)

Readers who love computers and technology will be delighted to know that Web Talk is updated with original content daily (and usually multiple times per day )

Check out Web Talk.

I have been using the below-mentioned tools to handle the ISO files (CD images) made for the installation CDs for clients at work recently so hopefully they’ll prove to be useful to you as they were for me.

There are several advantages in duplicating CDs via an ISO image over repeatedly burning a collection of files and folders – burning is much faster and significantly less error prone since it eliminates the risk of human error in selecting the files to burn. Using ISOs to duplicate discs also makes it more convenient than copying from CD to CD (especially when you only have a single CD-RW drive).

As CDs burned via ISO images aren’t overwritable, ISO images are perfect for burning CDs to distribute the final versions of software to clients. Unfortunately, this also means that any space not occupied by the ISO image on a CD-R is lost permanently.

To create an ISO image, TrustFM has created a handly Folder2Iso application which will convert a specified folder into a single ISO image. Dump all the files you want to burn in that folder, select that folder in Folder2Iso and click Generate ISOM, it’s that easy!

To verify that your ISO image is created correctly, there’re 2 ways that I commonly use – burn to an actual CD or use virtual drive emulators like DaemonTools to load the ISO and test like a real CD so you can ensure that all necessary files are in the disk and that AutoRun functionality works (if the autorun.inf file is present). Besides, you can save CDs (and the Earth!) if users of your software can run ISOs directly instead of you having to burn CDs for them.

NOTE: Most copy protections on new legally-purchased boxed games will ensure that these games will refuse to start on any system with DaemonTools installed.

Now if you simply want to extract files from an ISO, use WinRAR or the freeware CDmage (above) instead.

Download Folder2Iso, DaemonTools or CDmage.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
NirSoft.net – My First Stop for Quality Utilities
Foxit Reader vs PDF-XChange Viewer vs Sumatra
Using Sandboxie For Testing New Software

I was fiddling with Kryloff Technologies’s GetText last week to export the first 100 issues of Computer Gaming World to TXT format to read on my mobile phone using TequilaCat Book Reader, when I realized that repeatedly typing and then cutting and pasting commands at the Command Prompt 100 times isn’t a good idea to spend a precious weekend. Admittedly, the plain TXT format isn’t the best way to enjoy these treasures but I’ve little time to read except on the way to work

Now writing a program to do this in C# .NET in which I write code at work would be a trivial task but it seems like overkill for such a simple task, so I decided to brush up on my rusty knowledge of DOS commands to automate or at least semi-automate this process.

Do read on if you’re interested to understand how the batch files work, otherwise simply scroll to the bottom of this post to download the premade batch files to convert either a single file or a folder of PDFs to text.

Now creating a batch file (a TXT file with a BAT extension) with the following command:

%~dp0gettext.exe %1 %1.txt

and dropping it into the GetText folder quickly allows me to drag and drop any PDF (or in fact any file convertible by GetText) onto the batch file and immediately convert it to a .TXT file in the same directory as the file to convert.

%~dp0 is substituted with the full path of the batch file without the filename of the batch file which essentially points to the full path of the GetText application.

%1 refers to the file being dropped onto the batch file. For some systems, I found that I needed to enclose %1 with double quotes to cater for paths with spaces in them whereas other systems handle long file names without needing double quotes.

Now automatically converting a single file isn’t too shabby but it’s still not good enough. Dragging and dropping 10 files is OK but not 100 So I Googled for some resources and found Rick Lively’s Command Reference, a handy guide for all DOS/Command Prompt commands together with notes and examples.

Now armed with a FOR loop from this reference, I created another batch file to process all the files in a folder.

for %%f in (%1\*.pdf) do %~dp0gettext.exe %%f %%f.txt

A short explanation of what’s going on here.

%1 is your folder which you dropped into the batch file.

The FOR statement then takes all files in this folder with a PDF extension and passes each applicable file to GetText as the variable %%f sequentially.

Not bad for a single line of text. Sometimes, a knowledge of some common DOS commands can handle certain tasks faster than writing code

Check out Kryloff Technologies’ GetText utility, Rick Lively’s downloadable Command Reference or my premade batch files. Create shortcuts to these two batch files and you can use them in most situations to convert your text files by dragging and dropping files or folders over the batch files respectively.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Read Books on Your Mobile Phone with TequilaCat BookReader
Text Mining Tools – Extracting text from CHMs
Wikibooks, WikiType & PDF Wikis

Now The Download Munkey isn’t always all about fun and games, and here’s a good example why While almost everyone has used Wikipedia before, but I’m pretty sure not everyone knows about Wikibooks.

Now, Wikibooks, as you can guess from the title is another community project initiated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Quoted from the Wikibooks site:

Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks began on July 10, 2003, since then Wikibooks has grown to include over 29,979 pages in a multitude of textbooks created by volunteers like you!

Been learning a bit of German from the PDF version of the German language Wikibook after following the links from Rich Hoeg’s eContent site – if you’re the type who’s always on the lookout for new repositories of knowledge on the Net, I’m very sure you’ll find plenty of useful resources over at eContent

To browse through Wikibooks, there is a staggeringly long list of all currently available Wikibooks in various stages of completeness but you’ll probably be better off starting with the list of featured Wikibooks (essentially Wikibooks with substantial content) with the list of Wikibooks with PDF versions.

© Dash-of-Pepper

Dont fret if you encounter any Wikibook that isn’t available as a downloadable PDF. A eContent commenter StormBringer introduced the very useful WikiType which works like a charm in formatting any Wikimedia or Wikibook article into a downloadable PDF.

Check out Wikibooks and WikiType.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Recommended Mythology E-Texts from Padraic Colum & Others
Foxit Reader vs PDF-XChange Viewer vs Sumatra
Read Books on Your Mobile Phone with TequilaCat BookReader

Found this nice screensaver featuring 10 AK-type semi-automatic rifles and light machineguns from Arsenal, Inc. Some of my favourites below:

© Arsenal, Inc

Screensavers aren’t really useful for me since I don’t use them on my desktop and it seems a waste not to be able to use these photos in the screensaver as wallpapers. I fiddled with the screensaver a bit to see if I could somehow extract these photos from the screensaver as standalone images and below is a short summary of my findings. It’s slightly on the technical side, so do feel free to skip it and head for the download link at the bottom if you don’t want to bother with it

Running the screensaver installer under Sandboxie (an short intro here) reveals that four files are extracted into the windows\system32 folder in your sandbox.

Since photos are usually saved as JPG files, I resolved to search for the JPEG header or more specificially the Start of Image (SOI) marker (two bytes – 0xFFD8 – more about the JPEG header) in the SPF file with my trusty HxD hex editor. Each occurrence is followed by JFIF bytes which further confirms that the images are stored in this file as JPEGs and without any compression (ZIP, RAR, etc)

While I could write a parser which could spit out the JPEG images from the SPF images, I’m a bit too lazy for that at the moment and decided to use Marco Pontello’s excellent BitmapRip which extracts images in JPEG, PNG or GIF format from any binary file. Simply drag and drop the SPF file over BitmapRip and you’re all done!

Download the Arsenal Inc AK Screensaver and BitmapRip.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Zacca 1/6 Guns Collection & World Weapon Collection
Oleg Volk’s High Resolution Firearms Photos
Modern AKs
H&K MP5 Vexel Art by John Norris