John H. Mutchek V

When scanning a stack of multi-page documents to PDF, I find it easier to scan each page individually, then combine them in a post-processing step. Here’s a simple Monad script that merges multiple PDFs into a single multi-page document.
(more…)

Here’s a simple screensaver I wrote a couple of weeks ago. Tested on Windows XP SP2, the saver gradually dims your desktop. From descriptions I have read, it is probably similar to a MacOS X screensaver that’s pretty popular. The target tint (transparency) and the time (in seconds) it takes to get there are configurable. Unless you choose 0% target tint, the end result is the ability to see activity on your desktop without deactivating the screensaver.

This obviously doesn’t do a great job protecting a CRT from burn-in, but it’s a nice way to crank the brightness on an LCD down while you are away from your computer.
(more…)

This is strange but… it would seem that Norton Internet Security can interfere with the configuration web page(s) on the Linksys WRT54G . And when I say interfere, I mean “render inoperable”.

I discovered this while walking through a wireless setup with my brother-in-law over the phone. He’s a saavy user, so I knew that something was awry when he told me that parts of the web page (specifically in the wireless settings areas) were just not rendering. That’s right. “Parts.” After a bit of head-scratching we disabled Norton Internet Security and the router config screens displaying perfectly.

Not sure if this was a fluke, but it was unlike any problem I’ve encountered previously.

One of my (many) resolutions for 2006 is to adopt the new Microsoft Shell (MSH) into my daily routine. For me, the first steps down that road are language fundamentals (thank you Andy Oakley) and teaching myself to identify tasks that would be better done from the shell. I’ll post bits of scripts as I start using them day to day.

This first script downloads RSS enclosures to a local directory for future consumption. I don’t have a portable MP3 player, so I burn podcasts to a CD-RW and listen to them on my commute. As such, I don’t have a need for a podcast aggregator with many bells or whistles. Instead, I have a scheduled task on my Media Center PC that runs this script each night.

(more…)

After years of hand-crafted web pages and custom templating systems, I’m adopting a basic blog format for this space. This site has been generated by a semi-custom templating/publishing engine that just became too cumbersome to maintain. Of course, when I wrote the engine, blogging had not yet come into its own… and publishing & content management systems were too expensive and burdensome for a personal web site. But today, a growing selection of blogging engines have changed all of that.

So, as of today, “This site powered by WordPress.”