[Rx] How to Convert PDF to ePUB

epub02Converting a PDF to ePUB format isn’t difficult, but getting quality results seems to be nigh on impossible.

DevelopRx assembled a team of crack engineers (actually just me) to tackle this issue and solve it using readily available open source software (a.k.a. FREE!).

The process described in this article is primarily for text-based PDFs with common headers and footers otherwise known as “books.”

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It’s Alive! Site Back from the Dead.

Bride-of-FrankensteinIt’s been a long haul, amigos. Part of no posting was pure laziness, then came the pandemic toilet paper hoarding, a new computer, and finally an install of Windows 10.

Anyway, I do have some catching up to do. I noticed that my site now is insecure. I always suspected it had a confidence issue. Hahaha! Seriously, I don’t collect any data… so it shouldn’t matter all that much. But, I will get to it. Eventually.

Now let’s get ready to have some fun!

[Rx] Foxfire Security Add-ons

ff001Life was simpler before we knew supposedly non-evil companies collected our every little click on the Internet and sold the data to the highest bidder.

Surfing the net, you can get tons of opinions but seldom a definitive answer on how to best protect yourself. It’s always an answer like, “it depends.” I’m not a security expert but this is what I use…

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What is SASS CSS Preprocessor and Do You REALLY Need It?

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Back in the day, there was HTML. It was just text and so easy. To make the text pretty, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were born to separate content from presentation. This wasn’t enough…

SASS is one of the scripting languages for CSS (like LESS, STYLUS, CSS-Crush, Myth, etc.). So, instead of searching and replacing colors or any other CCS attribute through ever expanding stylesheets, SASS compiles the stylesheet using variables and other coding to dump out a .css file.

The advantage to using SASS is that you can reuse CSS and flavor it for all sorts of projects. You can break your CSS code into logical sections. The danger of any sort of machine generated code is that you might get some bloat.

Oh–and did I mention that you have to install and learn another language and work with the command line? After my debugging adventures with grunt and a missing comma, I’m not too keen on learning another syntax.

But, do you really need SASS or any other preprocessor? CSS actually has variables. Of course, they don’t call them that. They’re called “CSS Custom Properties.” 

The problem was that custom properties weren’t supported in all browsers. They are now supported by recent versions of all modern browsers, even MS-Edge.

There are still other coding functions that SASS and the other CSS preprocessors can do that plain CSS can’t.

So… the answer to whether or not you need SASS is a definite MAYBE. Just watch those commas.

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Dreaded WLW Split Post Bug

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I still use Windows Live Writer 2012 for posting. There is a weird occasional software bug that deletes all the content after inserting a split post that inserts the html tag:

<!--more-->

Most of the everything works as advertised. Maybe it’s something to do with changing a font or something after you set the tag. The result is poof–gone forever. It’s more than a bit irritating if you’ve already finished your post.

If you want to be safe, either wait until the whole post is complete and add the tag or just wait and do it within WordPress (safest option).

But Wait There Might A Chance to Recover. If you’re lucky there could be a html file of the lost post hidden away in a temp folder which I believe is created for the preview tab.

I found mine at:

C:\TEMP\WindowsLiveWriter1286139640

This might be stored in a different temp folder for your particular post. Best bet is to search for the folder: “WindowsLiveWriter1286139640”. Inside this folder, there should be subfolders. I found my missing content in the most recent folder.

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The easiest way to get everything back is to open the index.htm and from the browser copy the webpage with select all and then paste into a new WLW post. After all the content is back, reformat and make it look pretty again. Still a pain, but much better than rewriting from memory.

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Your Emails are NOT Safe

planetsThe planets aligned and I lost three years of emails. I had backups and, as a last resort, surely my host did too, right? Nope.

It’s too late for my emails. Maybe it’s not too late for yours. Here’s what happened and how you can keep your emails safe.

It started simple enough. I had some domains on 1 & 1 Internet, a web hosting company base out of Germany, and wanted to move a block of domains to another registrar. I’d been with 1&1 a long time and never thought much about support. Most of what I do isn’t exactly life or death. Continue reading »