Annotating (Grading) PDF Assignments

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For a while now, I’ve been asking my students to submit their work as PDFs online using moodle (or email).  I always use open source tools to annotate and grade these documents.  There are several apps out there for this, I happen to use Xournal.  The problem was that my preferences in Xournal were never saved.  So I figured if I had the problem, maybe others do to.  Here’s how to fix it:

First find where the preferences are stored.  In Linux, these are found in a text file in my Home folder. I assume it will be similar in Windows.  I edited this text file to automatically start with good grading tools already selected: ie. Red text with a Serif font.

$ gedit ~/.xournal/config

Then Ctrl+F and find “startup_tool”  set this to “text”

Then Ctrl+F for “pen_color”and change this to “red”

Finally Ctrl+F for “default_font” and set this to “Serif”.

Save the file and you are done. Now every time you open Xournal, these settings will be loaded and you can just start commenting and grading without having to do any additional tool selections.

 

UPDATE: In Windows, Xournal configurations are hard to find.  You must first set it up so you can view hidden folders and files (Go to Start menu–> Control panel –> Appearances and Optimizations –> Folder Options –> Show hidden files and Folders.  Look for the radio buttons and select “Show hidden files, folders, or drives”.  While I’m in here I usually also uncheck “Hide extensions of known filetypes”  which lets me rename files including their filetype and see what types of files they are directly.

Once you do this, you can run Xournal and “Save Preferences” once as Ken mentioned in the comments below. Close Xournal first, then go to the path “C:Users\<username>\.xournal  (Notice the dot in “.xournal”!!!) Open the “Config” file in a text editor (like notepad or notepad++ or Sublime text editor)  Now you can make the changes above, and save.

A note of caution, edit a PDF with text, export it, then open it in another PDF reader to make sure it does not mess up.  Sometimes when editing the config file, the Font doesn’t work correctly and I end up with garbage text and random characters on my exported copy which isn’t useful for students.  If this happens to you, simply delete the config file and start over.

 

Adam-Atom

The World’s Smallest Game System

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My_tiny_atari1 In about 2006, Atari sold some key chain games that connected to your TV via RCA jacks.  I am a huge lover of retro games due to the hardware challenges of the time and what clever people were able to build.  For a while now, I’ve wanted to get a tiny CRT screen from an old video camera viewfinder and pair it with these super tiny games.  Finally, I decided to do it (check out the video below!!!).

I went on ebay and grabbed a VF-129 display module board.  This is the Black and white display from an old Sony Handicam.   I looked up the repair manual for that camcorder to see what info I could find out about the module.  They have everything described from adjusting the alignment of the screen to the full-on schematic and PCB art.

The B&W displays connect with 4 wires: Power (4.7 volts)  Ground, Composite video input (Y) and there’s a line to turn on an LED to show that the board is turned on.  I got mine for $20-ish on ebay, but you can find them other places likely cheaper.  The color viewfinder screens actually take composite video input (RGB inputs) from what I’ve read so those might be cool for other projects.

I opened up the battery pack and soldered half of a USE cable to the outputs.  I used a USB cable because it had 4 wires.  I am using 3 (power, ground and composite video) for the screen and one more for the audio.  The battery pack looks funny because I had previously added a vacuum-formed topper and added screws and a switch to make it look like a real Atari game console years ago.  It was on an old blahrg of mine somewhere, but I’ll never remember which one, even if I can it is likely down.  Here are a few pics of the build of that if you are interested.

I ripped a tiny speaker from a greeting card and attached it to the CRT with foam tape and wired it to share the ground of the PCB. I put it on the bottom because those tiny speakers are meant to vibrate some object to help the noise be louder.  In a greeting card, the paper works, but I like just sitting it on the table (especially those cheap $7 Ikea tables which are basically hollow paper mache’). Being on the bottom allows for full contact with the surface.  Not to mention, this is the best place I could find to put it such that the tiny magnet doesn’t interfere with the CRT image much.

Enough talk, Just watch the video.

Adam-Atom

Easily get Public Link for Dropbox Files in Linux

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I got tired of going to the dropbox website to find the public link for files I put in the Public folder.  On Windows you can simply right click–>get Public link, but I’m running LinuxMint with Dropbox version 2.0.22 which doesn’t support this (among many other things like Pausing a sync…)

Anyway I wrote a script that you can just drag your files onto and it’ll pop up a box showing you the public link.  In Linux, a script alone can’t do this, but a script and a .desktop file can call a script to do it.  Here’s what I got:

Save the following in a text file called “getPublicLink.sh” inside your Dropbox/Public folder.  Make sure it has permission to run (right-click the file–> properties –>permission and check the box to allow it to run)

#!/bin/bash
publicLink=$(dropbox puburl $1)
zenity --info --text $publicLink

Now create a new text file named “Get Public Dropbox Link”.  Paste the following there, be sure to change your username, mine says “adam” yours does not and this will make it not work. Save it in the Dropbox/Public folder and give it permission to execute as well. Here’s the file:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=/home/adam/Dropbox/Public/getPublicLink.sh
Name=My Application
Icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/status/aptdaemon-update-cache.png
#Required for double-click running and Drag-andDrop files into this icon.
#reference: http://linuxcritic.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/anatomy-of-a-desktop-file/
Name[en_US]=Get Public Dropbox Link

 

Now you can  simply drag files from your public folder on top of the “Get Public Dropbox Link” file and a window will pop up showing you the public link. from here, simply copy and paste that link to where ever you need.

Information_903

 

Adam-Atom

W.A.S.P. 2.0 Manual and Schematic Online

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WASP2-0_smallA while back, we released all the manuals for SheekGeek kits like the WASP Original and Black Widow Walker manuals to the public.  We have a newer version of the WASP called the WASP 2.0 and we are releasing the Manual and schematic for it.  We’d love to see what modifications you can make with the new WASP! Feel free to post in the comments.