Useful Little Things

Today, I ran across a website called PDF Join.  It allows you to upload multiple PDF files, which it will join together and download back to your browser.

I tried it with a bunch of exam notes I had saved as PDF files and it seems to have worked well.  Painless and simple.

I’m not certain I would upload proprietary or personal information to such a site, but for anything else it would be just the thing.

Strangely, the author of the site seems to have cloned the site as PDF Merge also.  I guess they’re covering all the major Google search terms.

Here’s the steps I went through to set up Visual Studio for assembly programming under Windows 7 64-bit.  Unfortunately, it only builds 32-bit executables.

1. Install Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.
2. Download Irvine samples (“Example programs and link libraries (designed for Visual Studio 2008)”) and install in C:\Irvine.
3. Copy Irvine lib and include files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\ (*.lib files go in lib folder and *.inc files go in the include folder).
4. Open an Irvine sample project.
5. Compile.

To create a new project, simply use the Save As option from one of the existing Irvine solutions/projects.  It is much easier than trying to create a project from scratch.

My mother-in-law, Ruth, passed away this week.  My brother’s wife, Carla, was generous enough to sing at Ruth’s funeral.  She was amazing.  I heard angels.

Great blog post that explains the basics of collision detection for two lines in 2D space.

http://www.johanvanmol.org/content/view/39/37/1/2/

Update: Used this information to add collision detection to my second assignment in COMP 6400 – Fundamentals of Computer Graphics.  Let’s hear it for extra credit!

A while back I set up rules in Gmail to apply the label Bill to any email notifying me I have a bill due.  I try to do most everything paperless, so I don’t usually get a bill in the regular mail.  The Bill label helped reminder me not to archive it and forget to pay.

I prefer not to pay something the moment it comes in, since it might not be due for another two or three weeks.  In fact, I prefer to maximize the interest my money can earn and paying a bill way early goes against that.  Recently, however, I’ve found myself repeatedly logging into my online accounts to see when something is due.  I may prefer to keep my money as long as possible, but I also prefer not to pay late fees.

This morning, I hit upon a way to “store” the due date of a bill right in Gmail using labels.  I simply create a new label with the month and day the bill is due and assign it to the email.  Google makes this really simple and it requires only a few clicks.  If you’ve never done this before, I’ve given you instructions just below this screenshot.

To create a label in Gmail:
1) Open the email message in Gmail.
2) Click the Labels button to open the Labels drop-down list.
3) Click Create New at the bottom of the list.
4) Enter the due date for the bill (i.e. – Mar 31) and click Ok.

Needed an OpenGL development environment for my Computer Graphics class. These are my notes on how to prepare a clean install of Windows XP for doing OpenGL development using Microsoft Visual Studio Express C++ Edition.

1. Installed Visual Studio Express 2008 C++ Edition.
2. Verified that video driver had installed opengl32.dll in %WinDir%\System.
3. Downloaded GLUT zip file (dll, lib and header files) from http://www.xmission.com/~nate/glut.html.
4. Copied glut32.dll to %WinDir%\System.
5. Copied glut32.lib to $(MSDevDir)\..\..\VC98\lib (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\lib).
6. Copied glut.h to $(MSDevDir)\..\..\VC98\include\GL.
7. Downloaded glext.h, glxext.h, and wglext.h from http://www.opengl.org/registry.
8. Copied glext.h, glxext.h, and wglext.h into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include\GL\.
9. Created new Visual C++ Win32 Console Application (unchecked Precompiled headers).
a. Delete all the generated files.
10. Added HelloOpenGL sample .c file and compile.

#include <windows.h>

#include <GL/gl.h>

#include <GL/glext.h>

#include <GL/glut.h>

#include <stdio.h>

#include <windows.h>#include <GL/gl.h>#include <GL/glext.h>#include <GL/glut.h>

#include <stdio.h>

void drawPolygons() {

glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES);

glColor3f(1.0, 0.0, 0.0);

glVertex2f(1.0, 0.0);

glVertex2f(1.0, 1.0);

glVertex2f(0.0, 1.0);

glEnd();

}

void display(void) {

glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);

drawPolygons();

glFlush();

}

void init() {

glClearColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0);

glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);

glLoadIdentity();

gluOrtho2D(-5.0, 5.0, -5.0, 5.0);

}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {

glutInit(&argc, argv);

glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_SINGLE | GLUT_RGB);

glutInitWindowSize(500, 500);

glutInitWindowPosition(0, 0);

glutCreateWindow("simple");

glutDisplayFunc(display);

init();

glutMainLoop();

return 0;

}

Over the Christmas holiday, I put together a free, web-based application called the Red Dot Calendar.  The idea behind the website is simple… send a reminder to girls or guys just prior to the start of a woman’s period.  This helps remind women that they may need to go shopping and helps remind guys that they may need to go camping (just kidding… sort of).

The actual coding took a bit more time than I anticipated.  As usual, almost daily I “discovered” new features the site would need.

The service is free and I will not be placing any ads on the site, unlike every other service I saw out there.  The reminders are short and to the point, again without ads.  In the future, I may include a short, text-only ad at the end of the email reminder.  Or I may not.  Time will tell.

The thing I like most about the site is its simplicity.  I deliberately designed a site with minimal use of graphics to save on bandwidth.  This results in lower costs for me which makes it easier to keep it free to the users.

Regardless of how “profitable” this site may or may not be, I plan to keep it running for a long time.  My wife is it’s first subscriber (I’m the second) and it’s currently running off the excess bandwidth of my server anyway, so it’s costing me virtually nothing.

Check out the site and if you have any suggestions on how to improve the service, leave a comment below.

When I graduate in three years, I’ll let you know if this is accurate or not…

As part of the class I’m taking on software process, I was required to write a short paper on a course-related topic.  The topic I chose was Joel Spolsky’s Evidence-Based Scheduling (EBS) technique.

I approached the topic with a critical eye toward its aspects, strengths, and weaknesses.  Hopefully, this could serve as an unbiased reference for someone interested in the topic of task scheduling, EBS, and Monte Carlo style simulations.  Keep in mind that this paper was not written to be submitted to a journal publication and, therefore, is more of an expert opinion on the subject, rather than a definitive piece of research.

The paper is available online and as a PDF.

Note: The online version has a few formatting problems, for which I blame Microsoft Word, since I let it do the conversion.  The PDF version is the truest rendering of the work.

Even though I gave up on Windows 7 for my laptop, I haven’t give up on it all together.  I just purchased and downloaded a fresh copy of Windows 7 from Digital River.  Thanks to my status as a student, it only cost $30.  I plan to install it tonight on the PC in my media room and finally get rid on that hideous monstrosity called Vista.