help.ME

For the hapless technical chap^*.

Have you ever found yourself with a technical conundrum that could easily be solved with a quick shell script? Or come across an incredibly annoying issue you're sure could solve with a single command? I sure have, and if you're reading this -- on Github -- and your answer is "no," then there are one of three possible things going on:

1. You stumbled upon this page via strange circumstances and a poorly-worded Google query.
2. You're sleep deprived, thus affecting your memory.
3. You're lying.

Such simply-solved, outrageously time-consuming issues are a dime a dozen in the world of software engineering, applications administration, systems engineering, and the wider realm of computational sciences. And while a plethora of other sites and services exist to help users figure things out (think Stack Overflow), I've decided to document and retain all such issues unique to me upon which I stumble, and store them all here -- along with their solutions.

^{* Currently only focusing on the Linux-based hapless chap.}

Relevant Information

The issues here are all generally encountered through my profession, with some accounted for by personal interest and general nerdy endevors. Thus it's important to note the attributes of my profession, which make the total sum of the problems and solutions posted unique to me. The more attributes with which you identify, the more likely you are to encounter these same things.

Note: For the most part, I have no root access on my local Linux machine at work. One of the major frustrations I have is solving problems without the ability to install anything, so hopefully this repository helps anyone else in a similar position.

Attributes of my Profession

• Software Developer
  • Scala, Java
  • Eclipse, IntelliJ IDE
• Data Analysis
  • R / RStudio
  • Knime
  • Graph analysis solutions
• Customer Interaction
  • Internal collaboration for preparation
  • Graphic design (on occasion)
• Linux OS - Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
  • No root access
  • Bash / shell scripting via standard Ubuntu terminal
  • tmux, htop, etc...

Scratch Pad

Here's where I dump my stuff real quick as I'm working, to return and flesh out later on.

PDF to Image, and Back Again

$ cd /home/user/path/to/file
$ gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=jpeg -sOutputFile=file.jpg file.pdf