Robin's Blog

Archive for the ‘Computer Help’ Category

How to batch export PDFs to other filetypes in Adobe Acrobat

When dealing with some of the alterations to a journal article today I had the need to batch convert some PDF files to EPS (Encapsulated PostScript). After quite a bit of Googling I came to the conclusion that the only way to do this was to write some Javascript using the Adobe Acrobat API – […]

Why I hate my Toshiba laptop

I think that screenshot is enough really, but just to give a few more pieces of information: In the screenshot above you can see twenty-one separate pieces of software whose name starts with TOSHIBA. These are 21 different pieces of software which were supplied, by Toshiba, as part of the original build of the machine. […]

An ode to PDFs (and PDFs as a first class filetype)

Ahhh PDFs…., or more formally, Portable Document Format files. I remember the days when I thought that PDFs were only for instruction manuals downloaded from the internet, or electronic copies of things that you don’t want people to be able to alter. Not so – I have recently discovered the joys of PDFs, particularly through […]

How to: Consolidate your internet presence

Recently I took a while to try and simplify and consolidate my online presence. I thought it was an appropriate time to do this, as I had just bought a domain name (rtwilson.com), where I was hosting my academic website (www.rtwilson.com/academic) and my blog (which is what you’re reading now!). I thought it’d be useful […]

Git + DTerm = Great Source Control in OS X

Git is my favourite version control system (see Why is Git better than X for some good comparisons with other tools, and my GitHub repositories to see what I’ve been doing with it lately). I now use it for all of my programming projects, and many of my writing projects (as I’m now using LaTeX […]

How to: Fix sudden VPN problem in Vista

Well, I’ve finally solved a problem that I’ve been struggling with for days. On Friday my VPN connection to the University of Southampton was working fine, and then on Saturday it wouldn’t work. At that point, I assumed it was a problem at the university and waited until this morning to contact their IT support […]