Cloudconvert and plumbers

I used cloudconvert a lot when I was working, usually to convert notes in markdown to pdf for circulation - I used to do this on my Chromebook at home while half watching the news, hence the use of web applications rather than using something like pandoc, but since I retired almost not at all - a few check lists for real estate agents when we were looking for our new house, and that's about it.

However we're about halfway through a major extension/renovation saga when we hit a snag - part of our major works involves putting an extra toilet and shower at the end of where the kitchen used to be. (The kitchen has moved to the new open plan living area).

As it's only really an extra for guests the whole toilet/shower area is only around a 3.5x1m space, which means a pretty small slimline basin. In case you're interested, the rest of the old kitchen becomes a laundry and storage area that you walk through to the new toilet.

Now the basin proved problematical, as the installation guide wasn't online and the plumber had a panic about the location of the tapwork for such a small basin (tolerances etc).

While the installation guide wasn't online, the CAD drawings were. Of course, I don't have AutoCAD at home, but Cloudconvert saved the day by allowing me to convert the drawings to a pdf, and the plumber, who knew the overall size of the unit to measure off the location of the bolts which solved the immediate problem, and giving me time to email the manufacturers to have them send me the 'proper' install guide, which indeed they did ...

Rotatepdf

we've all done it - fed a twenty page document through the scanner the wrong way and ended up with an upside down document on a fileshare.

Fixing the problem should be easy, but a number of pdf viewers out there (including Adobe's) don't let you save the rotated image, as you're supposed to use the edit addon. You could of course feed the document through the auto feeder the right way round this time, but when it's a bound document that's distinctly painful.

Very irritating.

Up to now, my solution has been to use either Preview on the Mac or gsview on linux.

But of course, one day, I found myself using windows and couldn't be bothered powering up a second machine just to deal with my stupidity.

That's when I happened across rotatepdf.eu, which basically does that for you. The site appears to be located in the Netherlands and looks reasonably legit. Certainly works well and works for me ...