This entry is in continuation to my earlier post “World of PDF”. You may to read this first, if you are new to creating PDF files.

Today in the Chennai .NET User Group, Prashanthan K pointed to an interesting link to iTextSharp. This is a  port of the iText open source Java library written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. iText# is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.

I am yet to try this out. But the sample is pretty impressive. An “Hello World” file in PDF is generated with the following 5 lines of code!!!.

Document document = new Document();
PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileStream("Chap0101.pdf", FileMode.Create));
document.Open();
document.Add(new Paragraph("Hello World"));
document.Close();

Happy PDFing in .NET

You are bored. You also interested in learning the history of America and got only 3 minutes and 18 seconds to do it. What is your best option?. Check out this funny film clip on the brief history of america from the maker of “Bowling for Columbine”.

Thanks to Harish for forwarding me this link.

எவ்வளவு முறை தினமணி, குமுதம் மற்றும் பலப்பல தமிழ் வலைத்தளங்களில் உள்ள பக்கங்களை Save செய்து பார்க்க முடியாமல் தவித்துள்ளிர்கள்?. இதற்கு காரணம், இன்றும் பல வலைத்தளங்கள் Unicodeற்கு வரவில்லை. They continue to use proprietory or 8-bit encoding.

இந்த பக்கங்கள், மற்றும் இவை தவிர தெரிந்த அல்லது தெரியாத எழுத்துருவாகவிருந்தாலும் அதனை
Unicodeற்கு மாற்றிப் படிக்க வசதி செய்யகூடிய, இரண்டு வழிகளை இங்கு பார்போம்.

ஒன்று, முத்து நெடுமாறன் அவர்களின் அற்புதமான முரசு அஞ்சல் மென்பொருள். இதை Download செய்து, Install செய்து உபயோகிக்க வேண்டும். இதில் உள்ள பலப்பல பயன்பாட்டை, மற்றொரு நாள் பார்ப்போம்.

இன்னொரு முறை உங்கள் browserயை மட்டும் பயன்படுத்தி செய்வது. இதற்கு சுரதா யாழ்வாணன் அவர்களின் Pongku Tamil Reader & Converter  வலைத்தளதில் உள்ள மேல் தட்டில் படிக்க முடியாதவற்றை உள்ளிட்டு கீழே உள்ள ஏதாவதொரு Encoding methodஐ சுட்டுவதன் மூலம் Unicodeற்கு மாற்றிப் படிக்க முடியும்.

Recently on my way back from New Delhi to Chennai by Air Sahara, not knowing what to do for the nearly 4 hours journey (Flight delayed for 15 mins & a scheduled stop over @Bangalore) I started reading the in-flight magazine. You know, this is the magazine that Airlines hide behind the AirSick Bags. Kidding, honestly I find the in-house magazines of Domestic Airlines (Jet and IA) much better than the International Airlines (they suck!) and most of the time, I take a copy home for further reading.  

Air Sahara calls their magazine, XPRESSIONS (all caps?). In the Feb '04 issue, there was an useful article “The Desktop Philanthropist“ by Payal Dhat. Payal points out to lots of sites on the Internet, which we can use to donate/help for worthy causes.

3 sites impressed me a lot, that I made sure to register with them as soon as I reached home.

The first is Hungersite, in this site for every click we do in a button, a new page opens up with sponsor advertisements. Each such click helps feed the hungry with the value of 1.1 cups of staple food. So far they seem to have given 47,919,670 cups of food to the hungry.

The second is Panda P@ssport.  It is your licence to campaign for the environment, no matter where you are in the world, all over the world. Recently,  Norway said no to oil drilling in Lofoten Islands because of the pressure from Passport holders, WWF along with other stake holders.

The last if  http://www.fightaidsathome.org. This is the first biomedical distributed computing project that uses your idle CPU time to do drug compounds computations against detailed models of evolving AIDS viruses —an accomplishment previously impossible without expensive supercomputers. It does this by installing on your Windows machine a Screensaver software that wakes up when your PC is idle, doing nothing other than painting beautiful Windows with no one to see it. It then downloads compounds over the Internet and then tries to solve them. Once done, it uploads the results and gets the new set.

All these are worthy causes right?. Now when my wife says, “What are you doing in front of PC for hours, are you saving the world?”. I can reply confidently “Yes, I am saving the world!”.