Combine Scanned PDFs in Reverse Order

I was faced a lot of times with the following problem: I canned some  documents with my one sided scanner, put the backside into the feeder of the scanner (thus scanned the backsides in reverse order), and then [hugh]… I spent hours to  cut-copy-paste the PDF together again. Finally I found a really good solution:

1. download the free version of pdftk from https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/
2. safe the front pages PDF document as frontpages.pdf
3. safe the reversed order backpages of the PDF as backpages_in_reverse_order.pdf
4. open a comand line promt (cmd.exe)

5. pdftk A=frontpages.pdf B=backpages_in_reverse_order.pdf shuffle A Bend-1 output allpages_in_correc_order.pdf

6. vouala – all the pdf pages are correctly sorted and reversed

You can also do other things with this tool, as e.g. sorting pages that have been scanned in the wrong order (e.g. from last page to the first page):
type:

pdftk last_to_front.pdf cat end-1 output front_to_last.pdf

Regular Expressions That I always Need…

Updated Continuously…

^.* <(.*)>

extract email addresses from firstname lastname <firstname.lastname@email.com to firstname.lastname@email.com

JabRef + DocEar4Word = Great Tools for Managing References!

For many times, I am getting asked from my students, what the best referencing software is. Don’t want to contemplate about the disadvantages of many of the commercial versions, but instead want to promote a great open-source solution. I am these tools since over 10 years, after having had many trials with other software, and it simply worked without any glitches. This solution is also great, as the file format for storing reference is in ASCII (BibTex format), thus can also be edited with any editor across all operating systems.

The Two Essential Open Source Tools

The things you need to get it working:

• JabRef  (http://www.jabref.org/): the free and open source bibliography reference manager
• Docear4Word (http://www.docear.org/): the Free & Open Source Academic Literature Suite (the word plugin is directly downloadable from http://www.docear.org/software/add-ons/docear4word/overview/);

Typically I store the produced file in the cloud, which is coming very handy when working across different machines.

Additional Citation Styles

For the more advanced users, and if you would like to use a citation style that is not directly integrated into DocEar4Word, you can simply download some styles from:

• Citation Style Language (CSL) (https://citationstyles.org/)

Problem: JabRef does not show URLs or Docear4Word does not show URLs

One problem that I always had, was that the URL field did not show when inserting references into word. There is a simple solution for that:

• download the citation style from the website above that displays URLs, as for some they have URL versions (e.g. IEEE-URL);
• or follow the following little guide:

1. download the citation file with the suffix .csl from the CSL website, or find the citation file folder on your computer and open the relevant .csl file with any text editor (typically the files are in the folder C:\ProgramData\Docear4Word\Styles)
2. the entry within the CSL files, which makes URLs appear is: <text variable=”URL”/>
3. the entry above needs to be added to every citation type (e.g. article-journal, thesis, etc.) at the end of the relevant type entry. Don’t forget the last <else> clause in the file, as this is for entry types that are not covered by the citation types in the file, as e.g. misc entries in the BibTeX file:
   …
   <else-if type=”thesis”>
      <group prefix=”. ” delimiter=”, “>
         …
   <text variable=”genre”
   text-case=”capitalize first”/>
         <text variable=”publisher”/>
   …
        <text variable=”URL”/>
      </group>
   …
   

Conclusions – Simply Enjoy these Tools…

I am sure you will enjoy this lovely tools after some time – typically they are very reliable, and if not – you always have a text file where you can find all your references if things don’t work out.

 

PHP List Configuration Tips

Run the PHP List Bounce Processing Automatically Once a Day

• add a cron job with the parameters 0 0 * * *, which runs the command once a day, which should be more than sufficient for bounce processing
• obtain the PHP List Secret from your PHPLists installation, which is a character string to execute PHPList commands via the web-interface
• add the following command to the cron job:
• lynx -dump ‘http:/www………/phplist/admin?page=processbounces&secret=[INSERT PHP LIST SECRET]’ >/dev/null

Execute the PHP List Queue Management without Leaving the Browser Windows Opened

• add a cron job with the parameters * * * * *, which runs the command every minute – however, you might want to run it less often, but I never had a problem with that frequency
• obtain the PHP List Secret from your PHPLists installation, which is a character string to execute PHPList commands via the web-interface
• add the following command to the cron job:
• lynx – dump ‘http://www………/phplist/admin?page=processqueue&secret=[INSERT PHP LIST SECRET]’ >/dev/null