SA Dealers News and opinions about topics in general

A little while back I came across a pdf file that I wanted to convert to text, in an automated fashion.

After a fair bit of searching I found pdftotext, which does exactly what I needed, I ran it on my home pc (Ubuntu) and it worked a treat, then migrated my files to a CentOS server and it no longer worked so nicely

In the end I figured out I needed to add the ‘-raw’ option on CentOS to get it to create a similar file to the one I used on Ubuntu.

Syntaxt I used is as follows;

pdftotext -enc Latin1 -raw {filename}

Say your filename is abc123.pdf, you will now have an additional file abc123.txt, brilliant!

I installed it on Ubuntu using apt-get, and on CentOS using yum, easy peasy.

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We’ve seen gasoline powered Solex, electric Solex, and now there’s the Butane gas powered Solex.

What’s next, a nuclear powered Solex?

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Imported News View Original Article

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A Fiat van in Italy, with a top speed of 97 MPH got a speeding ticket for 764 MPH!

The ticket was signed by two officers, so it looks like no one pays attention to the ticket and the possibility that it could be wrong.

Makes you wonder about speed radars when you get a ticket on your motorcycle…

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Imported News View Original Article

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Graph Shows Influence of Gasoline Price on Miles Driven in the U.S.

Image: Stanford, based on data from the EIA, FHA, and Brookings Institution, and NYT graph.

It Takes a Lot…
The graph above (you can see a bigger version here) shows average gasoline prices in the U.S. on the Y axis and the X axis shows average miles driven per capita each year. At first glance, you can clearly see two big spikes that represent the oil embargo and energy crisis in the 70s, and the recent increase in the second half of the 2000s.

… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Potted Plant Helmets Hit the Streets of Indonesia (Video)
Photo: Screen capture from video

When it comes to our increasingly crowded city streets, where trucks and cars and bikes clamor and jockey for a spot, it seems there’s hardly room anymore for a little green to soak up all that CO2. But, thanks to two artists in Indonesia, finding space for flora just got a bit easier with these literally living bike helmets that are sure to turn a few heads — turn them into potted plants, th… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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The Civic of the Skies: Honda’s First Jet 20% More Fuel Efficient Than Competition

Photo: Honda

Composite Materials Allow More Fuel-Efficient Shape
Honda is a company best known for… well, not jet planes! But that could be about to change; the company has unveiled a new light jet prototype that, thanks to advanced composite materials and other design tricks, uses 20% less fuel than the competition (which is great in an industry where single digit improvements are more than welcome). It’s also quieter and can fly faster than its rivals. Read on for more details and photos…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Kenyan Man Builds Himself an Airplane From Scratch
Screenshot from YouTube

If all goes according to plan, this week Gabriel Nderitu will join the ranks of aviation history by becoming the first Kenyan to achieve flight with a homemade airplane. The 42-year-old, like the Wright brothers before him, isn’t a professional engineer or a pilot — in fact, he works in IT. But after months of studying airplane design and almost a year of tinkering on his humble plane, Gabriel n… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Google Experiments With Robot Cars that Drive Themselves

Photo: Google

No, I Won’t Make a Knight Rider Joke
As time goes on, Google’s IT tentacles have been spreading outside of the digital realm and into the physical world. The latest example of this is Google’s unveiling of its car-driving artificial intelligence project. It is led by Sebastian Thrun, the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory the Google engineer who co-created the Street View mapping service in Google Maps. So far, Google’s self-driving test-cars (mostly modified Prius hybrids equipped with computers, cameras and sensors) have driven 140,000 miles with only 1 accident: … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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5 Things It’s OK to Hate About Your Car

Photo credit Nissan Primera Smash and Tag group via Facebook.

By the end of this year, the world is schedule to reach a milestone – a billion vehicles on the roads. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Bus Roots: Public Bus Doubles as Mobile Green Roof
Image: Marco Castro Cosio

Here’s some food for thought: what would you get if you combined the benefits of public transportation with that of a green roof? Well, you might end up with Bus Roots, a mobile, people-transporting green roof that could potentially add a lot more green space to New York City and beyond…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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