betweenGo

• How to Debug an InvalidVersionException from Updating an ATG Order. Eclipse debugging and JSP debug code. http://bit.ly/MUMIH #
• How to Debug an InvalidVersionException from Updating an Order in @ATG_ecommerce. Eclipse debugging and JSP debug code. http://bit.ly/MUMIH #
• ATGLogColorizer for Colorizing ATG Server Outputs and Logs. Color is wonderful. Red means errors, yellow means warnings. http://bit.ly/IQLBv #

• JavaScript Invalid Argument in Internet Explorer Only. You can't have spaces in windowName argument of window.open method. ://bit.ly/5JUZk #
• ATG Currency Converter Not Working With JSTL c:set. Debugging with Eclipse helped solve the problem. http://bit.ly/kMmSV #
• SugarSync promo ends 8/31. Sign up for free service and we each get 500 MB more. http://bit.ly/5Lu69 Why I like it lots http://bit.ly/17UwyP #

From the Mac Tricks and Tips blog I saw this interesting article, Extracting Text From PDF Files.

1. Open Automator, found in Applications > Utilities
2. In Automator drag out “Get Selected Finder Items”, then “Extract PDF Text”. I recommend changing the output option to Rich Text.
3. Save the file. Either as an application or a file.
4. Test. Drag a PDF file onto the Automator file and let it do its work, after a short time you will have a text file with the extracted text.

I was looking for a program that would merge Adobe PDF files.  At first I found this trial program, A-PDF Merger, which worked fine but left a small watermark on the first page.  Then I found this open source program, PDF Split and Merge, which did the trick but the UI is kind of slow, possibly because it is written in Java.  It looks like there are plenty of other free programs available too.

Often I find myself wondering what version of Adobe Flash or Shockwave I am running. Here are some useful pages for doing that.

• if you’ve installed Flash and/or Shockwave
• what version of Flash you are running
• install Flash
• install Shockwave

One day I might try to figure what is the difference between Flash and Shockwave, when I actually care.

In my .emacs I was loading the subversion plugin.

(require 'psvn)

Unfortunately on systems that don’t have the subversion plugin Emacs would barf on this line and stop loading the rest of the .emacs file.

Fortunately someone else had asked a similar question, alternative to (require …), on gnu.emacs.help.

Based on that thread I updated my .emacs with this code.

(condition-case nil
  (require 'psvn)
  (error (message "Subversion plugin unavailable, skipping load ...")))

This site, FreeConference, allows you to do free conference calling.  I just did a conference call with a client and it worked well.  I haven’t tried setting one up but free is free.

1. With a pencil and paper:
   1. Draw a large square
   2. Insrcribe a circle inside the large square
   3. Inscribe a small square inside the circle
   4. What is the ratio of the area of the large square to the area of the small square?

      Assume the width of the large square is d. The diameter of the circle inside the square is d and its radius is r = d/2.
      The small circle’s diagonal measures 2r. Therefore its area is 2r². The large square’s area is d² or 4r².
      Therefore the ratio of the areas is 2:1.

2. You wake up one morning to find an intact Boeing 747 in your front yard. You need to rent a crane to remove it. You need to determine the weight of the airplane in order to rent the correct crane. How do you figure out the weight of the airplane?

   I’d look it up on Google.
   But assuming I don’t have Google I’d guess like this:
   Plane can carry 500 passengers. Each passenger weighs 200 lbs plus about 100 lbs for a chair and 100 lbs for luggage and food. Let’s round up to 1000 lbs. That comes out to 500,000 lbs.
   Let’s assume the plane should be about 10 times heavier to carry such a load which is about the ratio between a car and a full passenger load.
   Therefore I will guess a Boeing 747 weighs between 5 and 10 million lbs.

3. On a traditional analog clock, how many degrees separate the hour and minute hands at 3:15?

   Minute hand is at 90 degrees, where 3 is located.
   The hour hand is at the 3 plus 25% of the way to 4. There is 360/12 degrees between each numeral.
   Therefore the difference between the hour and minute 360/12/4 which is 7.5 degrees.

This PC World article talk about how to optimize Wi-Fi for VoIP, Video and Gaming. I was only able to enable WMM support. Hopefully that will make a difference when using Skype though I really haven’t had any issues w/ Skype, the quality has been fantastic.

Every once in awhile I’d find after leaving my Thinkpad for awhile that I’d find the screen blank. No matter what I did I could not get it to come back.

I finally figured out a workaround. By pressing Fn + Spacebar I decreased the screen resolution and the screen was displayed again. I then pressed Fn + Spacebar again to get back to my original display and then had to move back windows to where they were and resize some.

After doing this too many times I finally did a Google search to find out what was wrong. Fortunately this turned out to be a common problem, both on Windows and Linux.

Using the Windows Device Manager I saw that the driver for my ThinkPad PM (Power Management) Device was version 1.33.0.0. According to this page the latest driver is 1.43.0.0.

I updated this driver using ThinkVantage’s System Update utility (under Start Menu > ThinkVantage). I actually had to run the Software Installer which, because it was out of date, uninstalled itself and updated the System Update. Then when I ran the System Update it pulled down the driver update as part of its recommended updates.

So far the update seems to be working.

12/03/2007 – Turns out the update did not fix this problem. I then ran System Update and updated all critical and recommended updates. I am not sure if this solved the problem but I did notice my display now sometimes flickers.