Software


Changing PDF Metadata on Ubuntu

January 4th, 2010

I got a Sony E-Reader as a Christmas present from my parents this year. I absolutely love it! It will definitely change how I read books. I no longer have to lug around several books everywhere I go. The best part is that I can put all my journal articles in it. I no longer have to print off hundreds of pages of journal articles. However, there is one thing that I have found really annoying. It is practically impossible to find programs that change the pdf’s metadata. It took me awhile to find one that actually worked.

I ended up finding a Linux Program called PDFTK. I wanted to go over some basic commands (mainly so that I can find them easily).

Installing PDFTK:

sudo apt-get install pdftk

Edit Existing Meta-Data:

pdftk book.pdf dump_data output report.txt

You can then edit the data in report.txt which we can later upload back to the pdf. The text file will contain key value pairs like:

InfoKey: Title
InfoValue: Coders At Work
InfoKey: Author
InfoValue: Peter Seivel
InfoKey: Subject
InfoValue: Programming

After you edit this file, you can update the new meta-data to the pdf.

Update PDF Meta-Data:

pdftk book.pdf update_info report.txt output bookcopy.pdf

UI FlowChart for Developers

February 4th, 2009

We were talking about UI design at work today. I think UI Design can be summed up by the following flowchart.

Finally! A good Text Editor for Windows.

October 6th, 2007

About a couple months ago, I switched text editors from Textpad to E – TextEditor. Despite E – TextEditor’s lame name, I was shocked to find out how superior it was to my previous editor. Although E has some stability issues, I still think that it is one of the best text editors for Windows. However, considering that E was released only 3 months ago, I think it is remarkably stable. Also, because of E’s rapid development and its large community, I would expect that these issues will be quickly resolved. If you are looking for a new text editor for Windows, I would strongly encourage you to try the 30-day trial.

Pacman on Widgetbox

July 23rd, 2007

I just had my first experience with a company called Widgetbox. I am always surprised at what you can find on the internet. However, I feel like an idiot when my “non-technical” friends seem more knowledgeable than me. This usually entices me to throw a half-dozen programming/computer acronyms into a sentence to retain my dignity :D .

Widgetbox allows you to make small widgets for a bunch of enviroments including: Blogger, Typepad, Myspace, Facebook, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Google, etc. Remind me again? Why am I making Facebook applications? This seems to do everything that Facebook Apps can do and more. If I have some spare time, I might play around with it. Anyways, while I was checking out Widgetbox, I came across a pacman widget.

Bloglines – Who is Linking to my posts?

July 20th, 2007

I just learned something cool from Joel on Software. All the “serious” bloggers might think I’m crazy for not already knowing this. There is a site called Bloglines which finds all links to your blog or blog entry. You can take a look at all the people who are linking to me.. Wow, only one person! You can tell that I don’t have many subscribers to my blog. Don’t worry, it doesn’t phase me in the least bit. It just means less people see my grammar mistakes. However, if you decide to link to me, I won’t mind :P .