How to invert a PDF using ImageMagick
The problem:
I wanted to print the extremely-twisted and NSFW Cards Against Humanity deck (available as a free PDF). The last 5 pages have white text on a black background, which kills my toner and looks awful (e.g. uneven toner placement, smudging, etc). I wanted to print these as black-on-white instead, but couldn’t find a black-on-white version of the PDF. Furthermore, I couldn’t figure out how to do it at print time (my laser printer doesn’t seem to have an “invert” option).
Lessons from FAWM 2009
It’s March! Another FAWM is over. Here’s what I learned. Not that I’ll listen to myself later.
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You mean, like, a band with boys in it?
So, last Friday, I found myself in a FAWM boy-band (later named “SugarKrew” based on our song lyric), to represent against a FAWM girl-band (“The High-Fructose Corn Syrup Girls”). As for the boy/girl-band controversy, hat’s a story in and of itself, which I’ll let Deborah tell.
Anyway, between Friday night and Sunday night, we built this song, exercising numerous tubes of the Interweb in the process. It’s been a blur, but here’s a roundup of the tools we used and some of the events that tied into it:
My favorite “deal” sites
By request, here’s a list of my favorite “deal” sites.
Before You Dive In: Please keep in mind that these are only tools. You’ll still need to exercise some common sense. Some deals are scams. Some “sales” are at no discount. Some coupons expire early. Some coupons were photoshopped. Some items arrive differently than described. You may “go broke saving money.” Comparison shopping is key.
Okay, here are the sites that served me well.
Slickdeals Forums: This site helped me on so many deals, it deserves its own entry. Users post deals in an open forum, and the threads can be rated (the more thumbs, the better). They’ve got a Hot Deals section for specific deals, and a subforum for coupons too. I use Deal Alerts to automatically e-mail me new deals that match my interests (example: keywords of “amazon | wii | gamecube” and 3.5 thumbs or higher). You’re going to encounter whole new abbreviations, though (example: “$10 off + F/S at TRU (YMMV)”). When that happens, look’em up here first. In case you’re wondering how Slickdeals gets their money, I have a feeling it has to do with getting referral $$ when you buy stuff through their links.
Coupon sites: Retailmenot doles out online coupon codes; I got a great hotel rate this way, but a lot of the codes are stale. You may have to try a few of them before finding one that works. Slickdeals’ Coupon forums are a great source of online codes and printable coupons for retail stores. Dealcoupon used to be a favorite of mine, but I don’t use it so much anymore.
Deal Aggregation: Clipfire aggregates a number of deal sites. If you’re looking for something specific, try searching for it here. It might be on sale… and if it’s not, at least you know what price it might come down to again later. Just keep in mind that some of the sites they aggregate might post non-deals, to boost their referral revenues. So use common sense. Looking for DVDs? Start with DVDPriceSearch. It’s tons faster than searching Amazon/Best Buy/etc individually, plus they track some of the coupon codes for you too.
Video Games: Cheapassgamer can spot a video game deal like nobody’s business. Some deals are on their homepage, but the real meat is in their forums. You have to register to see those deals, but it’s non-intrusive and well worth it. If you’re looking to trade games, don’t mind sending them through the mail, and you’re interested in titles that are 1+ years old, Goozex is the best place to go.
Amazon: Amazon.com is great, but their prices fluctuate a lot. Probably even moreso now that they’ve eliminated their price protection policy. So I use tools like Apnoti to e-mail me when a certain item’s price drops. Or you can view how Amazon’s price for an item has changed over time. I use Frozenwarrior’s bookmark to check history on the fly.
Hope that helps!
Ninjam Drum Sessions
Lately, I’ve been practicing my keyboard-drumming skills using the Battery 3 VST in the public Ninjam studios.
The jams range from a few minutes to 20+ minutes. They’re great practice, and a lot more fun to play in than to listen to. But here are a few highlights from this week:
Salsa Excerpt
Plat (Drums), HoraciosAllen (Piano), Mono (Guitar), BBAndTheMC (Bass)
Jazz Excerpt
Plat (Drums), HoraciosAllen (Keys), Mono (Guitar), BBAndTheMC (Bass)
Rock Excerpt
Plat (Drums), Slyos (Rhythm Guitar), Zden (Guitar Solos), Not NT (Rhythm Guitar), Fin (Bass)
These excerpts are covered under the Creative Commons’ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Remains of the Crashed Plane (or: “What happened to R2?”)
If the title makes no sense to you, the rest probably won’t either.
Now, for the rest of you who might be looking for Rock 2: Crashed Plane stuff, here’s what’s left.
Q: Where can I play Rock 2?
A: Dillfrog.com no longer hosts the game, but other generous fellows seem to still host the game. If you’re feeling lucky, try Mindreader’s server (telnet host: rock2mimic.tzo.com, port: 4000)
Q: How can I get the Rock 2 source code?
A: It’s pretty ugly; I never wrote it expecting it to be released. But it’s released on SourceForge as “RockServ 2″. Instructions are on the RockServ Wiki
Q: How can I get the Rock 1 source code?
A: It is not released yet, and may not be ever. It’s that bad. But if it were released, it’d be on SourceForge’s RockServ wiki as well.
Not finding what you wanted? Leave a message in the comments and I’ll update the FAQ.
Words That Survive Snonversion
You might be familiar with the art of “snonverting” words. For the uninitiated, the rules are very simple:
- If the word begins with a “sn” sound (e.g. “snore”), convert it to a hard “k” sound (e.g. “core”).
- Conversely, if the word begins with a hard “k” sound, convert it to a “sn” sound.
- If neither of these conditions apply, leave the word alone.
I know this sounds strange, but you’ll never appreciate snonversion until you’ve snooked up snoffee in the snitchen.
Anyway, I got “snurious” which words would survive the snonversion (existing before and afterward). So I coded up a fairly snomprehensive list! It’s pretty safe to say this is a Dillfrog exclusive! 
Thanks Snelly. Snatch you later, y’all.
Another Stupid Patent: Emerson SmartSet (R)
[Editor's note: this was originally posted to the Dillfrog Forums by Plat a few years back; re-posted here by request]
Wow, unless I’m missing something, this seems like a pretty lame “invention” to come out of “Emerson Research”.
I recently bought a SmartSet clock radio, thinking it would use the radio waves to calibrate the clock (so if the power went out and the battery went out, the clock would automatically set itself properly). The clock set itself just dandily after plugging it in, but then I became curious about how to force it to re-calibrate the time.
I couldn’t find anything in the manual on how to do this (if the battery dies, the manual instructs you to manually set the clock’s time)! So I googled around without much luck, then I visited their (“Under Construction”) Web site at www.emersonradio.com with no leads.
So I figured, since they were bragging about the SmartSet (R) technology (“…Someday all clocks and clock radios may be this smart. But today the technology is only available from Emerson Research.”), I could look up the patent number (6,567,344) to see exactly what it was about.
Reverse Engineering Cranberry Trail Mix
While you were worrying about being able to decompile Java bytecode or .NET IL, I’ve been trying to figure out the recipe to Walgreen’s delicious Cranberry Trail Mix.
But it’s mostly pseudo-science; we used a small sample. Tawny and I opened three single-serving bags from the same 7-pack, and separated the ingredients.
Then I measured the weight of each on my USB scale (meant for estimating postage costs).
Here’s what we found, sorted by weight. I’ve placed the Nutrition Facts ingredient-list rank in parentheses where it varies from our findings:
- (#1) 28g peanuts (unsalted)
- (#5) 21g black raisins
- (#3) 21g golden raisins
- (#2) 18g dried cranberries (lightly sweetened; not as puny as Craisins)
- (#6) 14g pepitas (a.k.a., pumpkin seeds)
- (#4) 10g sunflower kernels
- (#8) 9g almonds (unsalted)
- (#7) 8g cashews (unsalted)
As you can see, there’s a bit of disparity between the ingredient list and what we actually counted. I’m sure some of the error can be chalked up to misclassifying cranberries vs. black raisins, or even rounding error on the scale. But I think it’s “close enough” for my use.
Legacy.dillfrog.com to disappear
The legacy is coming to a close. Dilly (the legacy.dillfrog.com server) is dying, his Internet service will be in flux, and it’s probably time for a fresh start. (Or a stale end).
Sometime mid-May, the stuff hosted on legacy.dillfrog.com will be temporarily or permanently unavailable. So if there’s any content you want to download/archive/etc, please slurp it within the next month.
Sites unaffected: all non-legacy.dillfrog.com stuff. Includes Sourceforge sites (e.g. salp wars, rockserv, frogjam projects), noise.dillfrog.com, blog.dillfrog.com, wurdles.com, funputer.com, etc.
Stuff that will probably live on (though with a multi-month blackout period): encoding tools, guitar chorder, rhymer, songfight explorer, hop to it, album tracker.
Stuff that probably won’t live on: everything else. Includes account system (your login ID, profiles, pictures, etc), forums, tetrinet server, rock 1/2/3, rejoinder, frogjam server, hang, and most of the other experiments.
If there’s something you really don’t want me to kill off, or if you’re looking for source code, please respond in the comments of this post. (But please be specific). I already have a pretty good idea which pages get the most traffic. If you’re a reader of this blog, you probably aren’t using those pages.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
UPDATE June 2 2008: Want to be notified when the Rhymer tool is available again? Then I reckon you join the FrogMuse Announcement mailing list. The snarky-quiet mailing list with a stuffy name.