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Skip to content Alan Reed Just another tech blog Scroll down to content Posts Posted on July 11, 2019 July 11, 2019 Edit and Export Multi-page PDFs with GIMP [2019] GIMP is a great tool for editing PDFs. It is quick and easy. Especially if you are already familiar with the photo editing software GIMP. GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program Unfortunately, editing and exporting multi-page PDFs if a convoluted process. I will walk you through the steps below Step 1. Import Multi-page PDF into GIMP Click File > Open . Select your PDF. Hold down [SHIFT] while you click each pages of your PDF. Then click Import . Step 2. Edit your PDF as an image Each page of your PDF will be converted into an image. You can turn the visibility of each layer on/off so you can see and edit each page. GIMP does not have an special support for editing a PDF. Just edit as an image. Step 3. Export Multi-page PDF First, export as a .mng file. The default export settings worked for me. Step 4. Convert .MNG to .PDF First, install imagemagick . sudo apt-get install imagemagick Second, run this command to convert: convert -reverse document.mng document.pdf Note: You may get an error when running this command convert-im6.q16: not authorized `document.pdf' @ error/constitute.c/WriteImage/1037. If you get this error, here’s how to fix it: sudo mv /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xmlout That command disables some security settings you might want. To set things back, run this command: sudo mv /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xmlout /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml Conclusion That step-by-step guide walks you though importing, editing, and exporting multi-page PDFs in GIMP. We also address a common error you might encounter. If there is anything we missed, please let me know. Have a great day! Posted on January 10, 2019 January 10, 2019 [Solved] WordPress Update Not Working I was having trouble updating plugins are the Wordress core. Symptoms: WordPress not updating to the latest version. The lastest version is 5.0.3. After the one-click update, WordPress would say “Welcome to WordPress 5.0.2” Updated Yoast from version 9.3 to 9.4. But Yoast is still trying to load all of the js assets from 9.3 which do not exist anymore. Clearing the Cache There are couple other blog posts detailing how to clear various caches including: Browser cache Cloudflare cache WP Cache plugin None of these worked. After some trial and error, I found the files were cached in the PHP opcache . In some versions of PHP, byte code is cached. To clear the byte code, simple add this line to the function.php file of one of your plugins: opcache_reset(); Reload the page once, then remove that line. You should be good to go. Posted on October 28, 2018 October 28, 2018 [Solved] Add Recaptcha to Registration Form on Laravel 5.7 w/ Spark 7.0 Laravel Spark is a great for setting up user management, subscriptions, and an API quickly. Without Spark, these steps would take weeks. With spark it takes only a few hours. But Spark does have some issues: mainly the documentation. For such and large system—particularly one that is paid ($99 per site)—there should be better documentation. Context Adding custom fields to the registration form is supposed to be easy. This customization is explicitly documented . However the steps do not work for added a Recaptcha to the registration form. Normally, you would not need a captcha on the registration form because users have to pay to sign up. However, our app has a free tier. Another solution to this problem is requiring email verification. But email verification has its own problems. Regardless, this is a problems others have had as well . What is the issue There are three problems with using Recaptcha on the registration page: Spark registration page does not support custom fields with dashes in the name. This is not documented. The Recaptcha custom field is called “g-recaptcha-response”. The Recaptcha field is created dynamically which does not work with the Vue powered form that ships with Spark. Spark registration calls the validator twice which causes Recaptcha validation to fail the second time. The solution Remove dashes from the field name. Call it “grecaptcharesponse” instead of “g-recaptcha-response”. Manually put the recaptcha verification token into the “grecatpcharesponse” field before submitting the form Only call the validator once Step by Step Create recaptcha validator php artisan make:rule Recaptcha Install Guzzle composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle Paste this into app/Rules/Recaptcha.php <?php namespace App\Rules; use Illuminate\Contracts\Validation\Rule; use GuzzleHttp\Client; class Recaptcha implements Rule { public function passes($attribute, $value) { // this hack prevents the validator from failing the second time it is called. if (isset($GLOBALS['G_RECAPTCHA_RESULT'])) { return $GLOBALS['G_RECAPTCHA_RESULT']; } $client = new Client(); $response = $client->post( 'https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/siteverify', ['form_params'=> [ 'secret' => env('RECAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY'), 'response' => $value ] ] ); $body = json_decode((string)$response->getBody()); $GLOBALS['G_RECAPTCHA_RESULT'] = $body->success; return $body->success; } public function message() { return 'Check the box "I\'m not a robot"'; } } Include the validator we just created at the top of your SparkServiceProvider. use App\Rules\Recaptcha; Add this to the booted method of your SparkServiceProvider: Spark::validateUsersWith(function () { return [ 'name' => 'required|max:255', 'grecaptcharesponse' => ['required', new Recaptcha], 'email' => 'required|email|max:255|unique:users', 'password' => 'required|confirmed|min:6', 'terms' => 'required|accepted', ]; }); Add this code to resources/js/app.js Spark.forms.register = { grecaptcharesponse: 'abc' }; Add this to resources/views/vendor/spark/auth/register-common-form.blade.php where you want the recaptcha form to appear <div class="form-group row"> @push('scripts-header') <script src='https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js'></script> @endpush <label class="col-md-4 col-form-label text-md-right">Are you human?</label> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="g-recaptcha" data-sitekey="{{env('RECAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY')}}"></div> <span class="invalid-feedback" style="display: block;"> @{{ registerForm.errors.get('grecaptcharesponse') }} </span> </div> </div> Add this just before the closing head tag in your layout file: @stack['scripts-header'] Update “sendRegistration” method in resources/js/spark/auth/register-stripe.js sendRegistration() { if ($('#g-recaptcha-response').val()) { this.registerForm.grecaptcharesponse = $('#g-recaptcha-response').val(); grecaptcha.reset(); } else { // put something here instead of an empty string so you get the // Recaptcha error message instead of the "required" error message. this.registerForm.grecaptcharesponse = "abc"; } Spark.post('/register', this.registerForm) .then(response => { window.location = response.redirect; }); } Conclusion That ended up being a little longer than I intended. Other gotchas you may encounter: Laravel has recently moved the location of the assets files so your file structure may be different You will need to publish the Spark vendor files in order to edit them You can see this in action at BitcoinAbuse.com . Posted on July 28, 2018 July 28, 2018 [Solved] Boot from USB on Dell XPS 13 9370 Ubuntu works very well on XPS laptops, but it is not so easy getting the laptop to boot from a USB. Step 1: Change POST Behavior from “Fastboot” to “Thorough” At boot, Press the F2 key (or alternately press the F12 key then select the option to enter the BIOS setup ). In POST Behavior , Select – Fastboot the select the Thorough option. Step 2: Put USB in the right USB Type-C port This is the main trick I have been unable to find documented anywhere else. The BIOS only recognizes bootable media in the rig...