- Joined
- Feb 17, 2006
- Messages
- 18,182
- Car(s)
- '12 MX-5 PRHT, '02 Freelander, '90 Disco 1 Bobtail
Due to the person who developed a system at work leaving with nobody to support it, I've had to find a way to link an item in the database with its name. This while having no access to the database or any actual data on the web app due to the way it's build.
My solution is to run a looping Powershell script that goes from 1 too 400 trying every ID in the URL in edge, taking a screenshot of the section of the screen that would include the name, then saving the screenshot with the ID number and closing the browser. I kind of hate it but it's working.
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I was looking for a magazine app for the iPad (which I'm loving by the way) and remembered that I had magazines on Zinio about 5 years ago. Surprisingly the service still exists. I want to get digital copies of my Land Rover magazine, especially the old issues. In the past I would cut the spine off the old mags, scan them all in (I got an old document feeder HP ScanJet for free from work) and then recycle them. For £3 I can buy the old issue as a digital version. The digital version looks pretty good on the iPad and the price is worth it to not go through the hassle of cutting and scanning.
Anyway, me being me I don't trust the service to stay active. I'm really reluctant to buy things on any 'streaming' services that may disappear, I'm even reluctant to buy movies on Amazon Prime Video. Therefore I wanted a way to get a hard copy of the magazines. Zinio doesn't export to PDF and the only old hack I found for downloading doesn't work with the latest desktop app so I dumbed it down until I had a solution.
With the reader open in full screen on my UHD display, the DPI is approximately the same as the scanned copies I had. Therefore the simple solution is to go through the magazine in the app, taking a screenshot of each double-page as a high quality PNG. Copy the resulting images into a left and a right folder and run different Photoshop cropping actions on each, add L and R as suffixes to the file names and combine them all as a PDF with the front and back covers. I'm quite proud of my dumb ideas sometimes.
I did the first one manually but I have several micro Arduinos around that I have used as keyboard emulators in the past, I'll knock up some code that just triggers a screenshot and presses right alternately every 5 seconds, then link that code to a toggle switch.
My solution is to run a looping Powershell script that goes from 1 too 400 trying every ID in the URL in edge, taking a screenshot of the section of the screen that would include the name, then saving the screenshot with the ID number and closing the browser. I kind of hate it but it's working.
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I was looking for a magazine app for the iPad (which I'm loving by the way) and remembered that I had magazines on Zinio about 5 years ago. Surprisingly the service still exists. I want to get digital copies of my Land Rover magazine, especially the old issues. In the past I would cut the spine off the old mags, scan them all in (I got an old document feeder HP ScanJet for free from work) and then recycle them. For £3 I can buy the old issue as a digital version. The digital version looks pretty good on the iPad and the price is worth it to not go through the hassle of cutting and scanning.
Anyway, me being me I don't trust the service to stay active. I'm really reluctant to buy things on any 'streaming' services that may disappear, I'm even reluctant to buy movies on Amazon Prime Video. Therefore I wanted a way to get a hard copy of the magazines. Zinio doesn't export to PDF and the only old hack I found for downloading doesn't work with the latest desktop app so I dumbed it down until I had a solution.
With the reader open in full screen on my UHD display, the DPI is approximately the same as the scanned copies I had. Therefore the simple solution is to go through the magazine in the app, taking a screenshot of each double-page as a high quality PNG. Copy the resulting images into a left and a right folder and run different Photoshop cropping actions on each, add L and R as suffixes to the file names and combine them all as a PDF with the front and back covers. I'm quite proud of my dumb ideas sometimes.
I did the first one manually but I have several micro Arduinos around that I have used as keyboard emulators in the past, I'll knock up some code that just triggers a screenshot and presses right alternately every 5 seconds, then link that code to a toggle switch.