Background
Adium X, an instant messaging client for OS X that connects to multiple services (e.g. Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo, Groupwise Messenger, etc), includes the ability to take photos using your iSight camera to use as your avatar image. To add a custom avatar choose Adium > Preferences > Personal > Chose Icon. The Image Picker will load up, and you can shoot your photo by pressing the camera button.

Solution

Browse to Macintosh HD > Your User Folder > Library > Images > iChat Recent Pictures. There you will find all of the photos you have taken using Adium X.

Over the years, John has done some amazing work at MIT, in the Media Lab, through MAEDASTUDIO, writing about simplicity, and has in the past year moved on to new endeavors: becoming the current president of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. I followed him from his old blog on simplicity, to his new one titled Our RISD, where he has been writing about getting into his new role and building community etc.

This week he posted an interesting video, done by the folks over at cool hunting, about simplicity and the glass house. I found it very interesting, and wanted to share it with you:

I wanted to keep a list of a few of my favorite free OS X applications on my blog — so that when I perform system maintenance or OS reinstalls in the near and distant future it will be easy for me to download and install software that I have come to use on a daily basis.

So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorite free OS X applications. Links to the developer’s Web site are included. A description of the application from the developer’s site is also provided as a general overview of what the application does.

• 7zX - “7zX is a file archiver with high compression ratio. Compression ratio results are very dependent upon the data used for the tests.Usually 7zX compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format, and 2-10% better than most of other zip compatible programs.7zX currently supports tar, zip, gzip, bzip2, UNIX compress, 7z, s7z and various kinds of segmented archives.”
• Adium - “A free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.”
• AntiRSI - “a program for Mac OS X that helps prevent RSI (repetitive strain injury) and other computer related stress. It does so by forcing you to take regular breaks, yet without getting in the way. It also detects natural breaks so it won’t force too many breaks on you.”
• Apimac Timer - “a complete and professional stopwatch, alarm clock, countdown and clock utility for Mac OS X. “
• Blender - “is a free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems”
• Carbon Copy Cloner - “Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it.”
• Celestia - “a free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions.”
• Changes Meter - “Do you need to check a web page or a local file frequently, looking for changes in them? You know it’s boring, error prone and a real waste of precious time.Several web sites offer RSS feeds, but they do not necessarily cover the type of information you are looking for and there aren’t many tools to check local files. Changes Meter does this exact job and it will notify you with a colorful, useful and unobtrusive pie chart icon on the menu bar.”
• Coconut Identity Card - “a small app that reads out where and when your Mac and your iPod were built by Apple.”
• Cyberduck - “an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser.”
• Disk Inventory X - “a disk usage utility that shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called treemaps.”
• DotMatrix - “easily make pop-art using your web or iSight camera”
• Electric Sheep - “Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver created by Scott Draves. It’s run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers “sleep”, the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”. The result is a collective “android dream”, an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.”
• FileSync - a free utility for copying files in multiple folders/locations to an external or network drive.
• GrandPerspective - “a small utility application for Mac OS X that graphically shows the disk usage within a file system.”
• GridWars - “an extremely fun shoot-em-up game developed by Marco Incitti “
• Halo Demo - “an online multiplayer demo of the first person shooter many consider to be the best. Hours of fun can be had by playing the demo and mastering the Blood Gulch map.”
• HandBrake - “an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter.”
• HexEdit - “a hexadecimal file editor for the Macintosh. The most widely used editor of its kind on the platform, HexEdit can handle file sizes of up to four gigabytes with ease, yet has memory requirements of less than a megabyte (with colour turned off). It can also compare files for similarities or differences.”
• Integrity - “an powerful utility for finding broken links on large Web sites.”
• Paparaazi! - “a small utility for Mac OS X that makes screenshots of webpages.”
• Plasma Pong - “a really impressive real-time fluid dynamics version of Pong created by Steve Taylor. Sadly, it is no longer available online.”
• Quicksilver - “A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.”
• Rember - “a front-end GUI to the ‘memtest’ command line memory testing program. This application will allow the user to select the number of test loops, as well as the amount of memory to test. There is a ‘Log’ tab that will allow the user to monitor memory testing. The user can toggle a ‘verbose’ switch to limit the amount of output.The user can choose to quit Finder and other applications.Defective memory can cause computers to malfunction, crash, and behave in a variety of ways which can sometimes baffle end users and computer technicians alike. Apple provides hardware test CDs with most of their products, and there are some third-party utilties for Mac OS X which perform memory testing. In my experience, these tools have not always been able to quickly and efficiently diagnose memory problems. Rember has been designed to simplify the testing, and diagnosis of these problems.This software is free, and is covered under the GNU GPL. Please read accompanying “COPYING” file for more info.”
• Permanent Eraser - “provides an even stronger level of security by implementing the Gutmann Method. This utility overwrites your data thirty-five times, scrambles the original file name, and truncates the file size to nothing before Permanent Eraser finally unlinks it from the system. Once your data has been erased, it can no longer be read through traditional means. “
• Pixer - “a little application that helps you to scale (or rotate, add pad and, crop) PNG, JPG, Tiff, PSD , BMP or PICT images in batch.”
• SiteSucker - “a Macintosh application that automatically downloads Web sites from the Internet. It does this by copying the site’s Web pages, images, backgrounds, movies, and other files to your local hard drive. Just enter a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), press return, and SiteSucker can download an entire Web site.”
• TextWrangler - “is a powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool”
• Think -a small application that lets you focus on one application at a time using an illumination panel and backdrop.
• ThinkingRock - “a platform independent Java application for Getting Things Done (GTD) - the action management methodology and best-selling book by David Allen.”
• Time Tracker - “Track the time you spend on projects with this simple and easy-to-use application. Divide your work into projects, and split each into individual tasks.”
• viJournal - “designed as an analogue of the good old-fashioned page-a-day bound diary - the kind you buy in a stationer’s. You write your entries under dated headers and save them collectively by month and year.”

The full interview had some fun moments too where Oswalt describes himself as a nerd and how he had to contain himself when presented the opportunity to work with Pixar — the complete interview with Bird and Oswalt can be heard at NPR.org.

From YouTube, Patton Oswalt’s “Black Angus” skit:

Of course, the best way to edit a PDF is to work with the original document that was used to create the PDF document (e.g. a MS Word formatted newsletter, a PageMaker layout for a publication, Publisher documents etc), and in turn create a new PDF document.

But what do you do if you can’t find the original any more?

Commercial solution

It appears that the preferred solution for converting directly to a Word Document is Abbyy PDF transformer (PC only) which retails for about $100. It looks like they have a free trial which might be utilized to use to convert a PDF document for which the source is no longer available.

For you OSX users out there, try Recosoft’s PDF2Office Professional v4.0 ($129), which can convert a PDF to a Word, PowerPoint, AppleWorks, RTF, and HTML. PDF2Office also includes a handy batch conversion tool.

Open source solution

Free PDF to Word Doc Converter (PC only) by HelloPDF.com Inc. is a free conversion tool that enables you to convert most PDF documents to an editable format. The Web site for the product indicates that the utility can:

• Convert PDF to Word and preserve the original layout of your PDF in an editable Word Document.
• Extract text labels, graphics, shapes from PDF file into Word Doc file.
• Convert all the pages, or partial pages of PDF file to Word file.
• Support Adobe PDF 1.0 - 1.6 formats.
• Can automatically open the output Doc file when the conversion is done.
• Several PDF to Word conversion options are available for a better result.
• Convert in a high speed.
• Easy to use software.

If you want to see some examples of impressive “impossible” photography, then look no further than Holger Pooten, a photographer who works in the UK and Germany for companies like Nike, Adidas, Vogue, and Intel. I would love to learn more about the techniques he uses to capture images like the one pictured above of an exploding/blown-apart fax, print, phone machine. The Nike runner photo series is also impressive — as subjects were caught while in mid-air so that they appear to be floating. I also really like the surreal lighting he uses. Please note that a few of the samples in Holger’s portfolio may be considered not safe for work.

The only other photographer who’s work might be classified as ‘impossible’ is that of Li Wei (sample photo below), a thirty-something professional artist living in Beijing. I am just amazed at the creativity demonstrated by Li. His photographs of people hurling each other, landing head first in water, hanging dangerously outside a building, and more are just breathtaking.

I would love to learn more about the inspiration, influences, and techniques of both of these photographers.

Marthastewart.com has easy to follow illustrated instructions and videos on how to create your own chalkboard wall calendar. Simple purchase some chalkboard paint from your local Lowes or Home Depot, mask off a section with tape, and mix different amounts of white in to get a nicely designed checker pattern. Once everything is dry, you can write with fun colored chalk, and plan out your entire month.

Another fun alternative to this project would be to include a layer of magnetic paint behind the chalk so that you can stick magnets to the wall.

The interface for the software is very simple and intuitive. The isometric view is reminiscent of Google Sketchup. Pop-Up Card Designer includes both a basic mode where you ’sketch’ your card, and a mirror mode that duplicates your modifications on the other half of the page. From there you can print, or cut and paste your creation into your favorite word processing or graphics tool. Then after a little cutting and folding, your unique pop-up card creation is ready to go.

The examples on the developer’s Web site demonstrate pop-up cards created on white paper. However, one could do some really creative things with colored construction paper, water color paper and paint, or even plain paper and markers.

The one down side is that Pop-Up Card Designer is only available for Windows — though you could easily run it on your Mac with Parallels.

Pop-Up Card Designer can be yours for a mere $18. If you want a fun stocking stuffer for your avid card maker, then look no further than Pop-Up Card Designer.

Though, I do enjoy a good illustration Web site now and again. From Waxy.org (written by Andy Baio) comes a wonderful link to The Superest: a contest by two talented illustrators. The rules: artist one draws a super hero, artist two draws a super hero who’s powers negate that of hero number one…and on it goes. The results are laugh out loud funny. If you don’t get at least even a little chuckle — you might want to check to see if you still have a pulse.