Invisible Hand

Posted on January 20, 2012 by smurphy

I am quite fond of the Invisible Hand addon for Firefox. It’s one of the few addons I’ve kept installed through browser upgrades and machine migrations.

Install it and it lurks in the background until you view a web page listing a specific item for sale. When that happens, it pops a little one-line banner up at the top of the page letting you know whether you’re getting the best price available on the item or not. It uses pricing information from a selection of retail sites, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t do currency conversions, and it definitely doesn’t factor in any potential shipping charges, so you’ll need to ferret out that information for yourself.

If there’s a better price than the one quoted on the current web page, it will let you know what the best price available is and where to find it. If you’ve already found the best deal, it’ll let you know which retailers come close.

At the time of writing, the addon description says it uses data from 580 retailers across the US, UK and Germany. For those of us in Ireland, it’s always worth checking the local retail sites too as shipping can sometimes be extortionate to our fair isle, negating the usefulness of any product pricing bargains.

In the few years I’ve been using it, the addon has saved me a few bob here and there, and occassionally provided useful pointers to unfamiliar sites with good deals. Give it a go.

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Disappearing Text in PDFs – Part 2

Posted on January 13, 2012 by smurphy

Following on from a post I wrote a while back on text that was present in the source file, but mysteriously vanished on saving to PDF, here’s a similar incident I encountered with a different resolution.

In this case, again authoring in FrameMake, I was working on a number of reference manuals in the range of 500-800 pages long a piece. All was going well until it came time to publish one of the longer books as a PDF. On checking the generated file to make sure all looked well, I skimmed through quickly. First few pages, fine… next few pages, fine… next few pages, … hang on – what’s that big gap there about?… next few pages, now all the tables are blank!… skip quickly to the end… all that’s left is the header/footer rulings!

Starting over and saving the PDF again gave the same results – in fact, it looked like problems might just be happening earlier and earlier in the document each time.

First port of call was a few “turn it off and back on again”s. First the software, then the whole machine. After a reboot, the same problem kept recurring.

Next stop, fiddling with Acrobat settings, with an occasional reboot for good measure. Still no joy.

A bit of a Google, trying out a few random suggestions, and finally I hit on the solution that worked: delete the font cache (C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT (that’s .DAT – not .dll! Don’t mess with your .dlls or you’ll go blind!)), reboot, save the pdf immediately.

The font cache is regenerated when you reboot, so if the same problem arises again, lather, rinse and repeat.

In the case of the document I was working on, I had to delete the font cache and reboot between every save of the document or text started disappearing again. Depending on the length and complexity of the document you’re working on, your mileage may vary.

Posted in FrameMaker, Tech Writing | 1 Comment

Repak Recyclemore App

Posted on January 7, 2012 by smurphy

There’s no finer time than now, with Xmas behind us and a new year ahead, to have a bit of an auld clean out. And thanks to the fine people at Repak, it’s easier than ever to figure out what we can recycle and where, across the length and breadth of Ireland.

Searching for recycling facilities with the Recyclemore appThe new Recyclemore app, available for
iThings and Android, allows you to search for facilities by type, area and the material you want to rid yourself of (though the link to the search page is misleadingly labelled as a search “By Address” function on the home screen). Searching by material type is particularly handy for the stuff handled by a limited number of centres, such as that damnable white polystyrene. Once you’ve identified a facility that handles what you want to dispose of, you can view full details of that facility, including all the materials it accepts, their opening hours, contact details, and their location on a map (if you’re using GPS you’ll even get a route plan).

You can also go pot luck and just search for your nearest facility based on your current location. Again, you can view the facility details once selected, to see what you can recycle there and when.

And if you are without an iThing or an Android Thing, you can always pop across to the recyclemore website and get all this info and more the old-fashioned way.

Happy spring cleaning, y’all! :-)

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