Batch Converting Pages Documents to Word Documents with Applescript

So if you read this blog you already know that I have pretty much come to the decision that my next computer will not be a Mac. I love my old MacPro 4,1 but it is getting long in the tooth, and I haven’t even been able to do the Firmware Upgrade to get it to 5,1, so the next OS Sierra will not work on my current MacPro as it will only work on a 5,1 (I haven’t tried putting in my old video card before the upgrade, which might help, but it looks like El Capitan makes it harder).

Unfortunately in 2007 I moved over to Pages to do my invoices, resumes and cover letter. Now you can individually export your documents to the modern word format docx, but I am talking hundreds and hundreds of files that I may want to access at some point, so I wanted a way to batch those files.

This requires applescript, and while I used to be OK at Applescript all those skills have since gone away.

A quick google search showed one page dedicated to scripting the iWorks suite, and it is iWorkAutomation. Specifically there is a script to Export to Word, but it is not a batch export, just a single use, and so not of use to me, except for stealing some of it’s commands.

So then I went back to the old faithful applescript forums MacSpripter, and did a search. And I found an awesome script from Yvan Keonig, which automates the process, allowing you to pick a folder with you pages documents and then chose a destination folder, and it batch converts to PDF files.

Luckily my limited Applescript skills and the fact that the script was so well written, let me use the Microsoft Word commands from iWork Automation and combine them to make a script to convert to Word documents.

Just copy this script and paste it into Script Editor and run the script. You can also save the script to your scripts folder.

set theSourceFolder to (choose folder with prompt “Select a folder whose files you wish to convert to word:”)
tell application “Finder”
set filesArray to every file of theSourceFolder whose name extension is “pages”
end tell
set theDestinationFolder to (choose folder with prompt “Select a folder where you want the converted files to be placed: “)
tell application “Pages” to activate
repeat with aFile in filesArray
tell application “Finder”
set fileAlias to aFile as alias
set fileName to name of fileAlias
set fileExtension to name extension of fileAlias
end tell
set theOriginalName to fileName
— remove extension
set prevTIDs to AppleScript’s text item delimiters
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to “.” & fileExtension as string
set fileName to first text item of fileName
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to prevTIDs
— prepare desktop folder path and name
set docPathAndName to (theDestinationFolder as text) & fileName & “.docx” # EDITED
tell application “Pages”
— open the file
set targetDocument to open fileAlias — EDITED : was aFile which is a Finder reference, not what Pages requires
repeat 10 times # I added a loop which may be useful if the original document is very long
try
export targetDocument to file docPathAndName as Microsoft Word
exit repeat
on error
tell me to delay 0.5
end try
end repeat
— close it
close targetDocument saving no
end tell
end repeat
tell application “Pages” to quit
display dialog “Done!”

Awesome, now I have batch updated all my pages documents to Word documents. Sure the formatting needs some updating, but at least they will all work on a PC!

Edelkrone SliderPlus, Target Module and Action Module

Edelkrone has released the SliderPlus system. This includes the impressive SliderPlus that can slide twice the distance of it’s size in 3 normal sizes and pro sizes that go from medium to xtra large for $399.99-$799.99.

More impressive is the $569.99 Action Module which records movement and replays it, allowing you to adjust the acceration and time of the move to recreate moves for vfx multiple passes.

And the Target Module for $569.99 where you set a distance and it will turn the camera so it keeps the subject in the same framing through the slide!

This means for $1500 you can literally get the ultimate product shot setup! And you can use it to dolly, and for so many other ways.

This is really mindblowingly impressive! I so want one!

DJI has released the Osmo+

DJI has released an updated version of it’s 3 axis stabilized camera, the DJI Osmo+. The new version includes a 22-77mm zoom lens, 3.5x optical and for 1080 video an additional 2x lossless digil zoom. It has a 50cm minimum focus distance, and support for motion timelapse! And it is $649.

The original Osmo for $569, includes a free spare battery, a $35 value, but the new camera should be worth the difference.

Damn I want one!

Davinci Resolve 12.5.1 Supports Quicktime ProRes on Windows, death knell for Quicktime

BlackMagicDesign’s Davinci Resolve 12.5.1 has been released and it includes Quicktime ProRES decoding on Windows! You can check out all the new features here.

With Apple having ended Quicktime support for Windows, and now Adobe and DaVinci adding Quicktime Pro Res playback on Windows, that basically means that you can use all the old ProRes files you have, but it is time to move on. And it is unfortunate as ProRES HQ had really become a great intermediate format and ProRES 444 is an awesome alpha format.

And it looks like it is time to move to AVID’s DNxHD format, since like ProRES it is pretty much visually lossless at higher bitrates.

Simple Background Music Player App for the Xbox One

Well a company called TroubleAcres has an app that can play music off a USB stick on your XBOX one. It is free and it works, but it is very simple. It only plays MP3, WMA and FLAC files on a FAT32 or NTFS USb drive within a folder called “Xbox Music Library” and it has a limitation of only 200 files and plays them in alphabetical order. It does read files in folders, but only to add to the alphabetical list.

It works and I can finally play my own music. Just have to keep it to 200, and put music on I want at the time.

I am on a Mac and use ALAC files, which are not supported, but luckily the $5 M3Unify app from the awesome Doug’s Scripts will convert to MP3 and put files in folders by artist and album. Of course for now those folders are useless, but hopefully it will work at some point. And ALAC support would be great too, since the One does support AAC in it’s Media Player app (which also supports a DLNA, and folders, but for some inexplicable reason doesn’t support Background Music making it next to useless).

Moving from Rapidweaver to a PC Web Site Creation Tool, any help would be appreciated! MacPro 4,1 EOL, so time to move to PC.

So if you have been reading my posts you know that my MacPro is nearing the end of it’s life. The next version of OS X, macOS Sierra, officially does not support my MacPro 4,1. Now it does support the MacPro 5,1, and I can do a firmware flash and make my Mac think it is a 5,1, since the only different was a firmware upgrade and newer processors. So I will be able to Install Sierra, but the writing is on the wall and Sierra will likely be the last OS to support a 5,1 MacPro.

And it is not like I have a stock 4,1, it has an SSD, an NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4GB of RAM, and a ton of Hard drives, but the big issue is that Adobe Creative Cloud big updates tend to only work with the latest Mac Upgrade so my MacPro has maybe a year or at best 2 before it can no longer get OS upgrades, and will literally be a paperweight. Sure I can still run it for some things, but it won’t be getting security upgrades, and software will stop working on it.

Now for most software I can easily move it to a PC, or if not easily it can at least be done. I can resave all my Pages files to word docs, and things like that, but for Web Site Creation it is not so Easy.

I run Rapidweaver 6 for web site creation. I used to make my own web sites in HTM, and have run many many programs from Net Objects Fusion when it was Mac, to Dreamweaver, but I don’t want to code anymore, as basically when the web moved heavily to CSS I moved to WYSIWYG completely and gave up on coding for the most part.

So now I run RapidWeaver 6 (I know 7 is out, but do I really want to upgrade, when in the next few years I will be likely be moving to windows? Not really!) and do my 2 web sites, as well as my mom’s web site for her business.

Of course RapidWeaver is unfortunately Mac only. So the question becomes what to rebuild my web sites in that would work on a PC. The obvious choices are not so obvious.

I already run Adobe Creative Cloud, so Dreamweaver makes sense if I wanted to code HTML, but I don’t.

So I recently took a look at Adobe Muse, it’s WYSIWYG web creation tool, that was created not by the Dreamweaver team, but by the Indesign team. And MUSE looks fantastic and powerful, except for one major thing, BLOGS!

And it is blogs that hurt the whole equation! I have one local WordPress Blog, my Movie review blog, and 4 google blogger blogs. Now I know that not having a blog local means that it won’t show up in search for the site, though I get around this in RapidWeaver by user the Loghound SiteMap plug in, which scans all of your blog entries and gives them local entries in your siteindex.xml. And honestly if I had to I could move all those Blogger blogs to local WordPress blogs, to have all the entries show up as local pages, but even that doesn’t help with Adobe Muse.

With Adobe Muse, there are no blogs. Sure a few third party plug ins have been made to make local blogs, and you can show blog entries from RSS, but there is literally no way to show your whole blog. Not even a local WordPress blog! And it sounds like even if they do it will have to be blog posted on Adobe Business Catalyst and not on your own hosted web site.

If Adobe would let you use locally published WordPress Blogs I would be fine, and could move my Blogger blogs to their own WordPress blogs, and publish locally, but that doesn’t sound like it will happen.

And so the point of this point, to ask, does anyone have a solution for me. The best solution would be a cross platform WYSIWYG solution that lets me remake my sites on my mac before I move to PC, and lets me integrate my WordPress and Blogger blogs into the site easily. Now I could also go for a PC Only solution, and run it in either Bootcamp or Parallels ( I currently have both, so I can do that), but then I need a powerful WYSIWG web site editor that can incorporate outsite and local blogs, and is something like Rapidweaver.

Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Xbox One Background Music still can’t play your own music, WTF!

This is my second post on this subject, but I just can’t believe that Microsoft has released background music and not updated Media Player to work with it, so you basically can’t play your own music on the XBOX ONE. This was a release feature on the Xbox 360, WTF Microsoft!

The first app was a damn Podcast app! What is that? And now I guess that Groove Music, Microsoft’s paid music service will work in the background. And supposedly it will play music you have copied to your OneDrive, if you have enough space, but you seem to have to have a paid account for that to work (though I could be wrong on that). The thing is that the 360 worked off a DLNA server from your computer, so with the help of an app, I could stream all my music from my Mac to my XBOX and pick tracks and play them. I want to play my own music, not paid music, and not even Pandora (which is supposed to work soon). I want my own music!

And honestly the fact that Microsoft’s paid music service GROOVE will work soon makes me very wary! WTF! Let me play my own music! Hell if I have to I will rip CD’s to my One as I could with my 360! It is better than just streaming or paid music! Hell even if I have to put them on a USB stick and do it that way, it is at least my music, but again that would require Microsoft to update their Media Player app!

Picked up an LED worklight at Costco

  • Post category:Light
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I was at Costco today and saw a new LED Worklight on Sale for $29.95. It is a Snap-On LED Worklight 2000 Lumens that promises a 5000K color temperature. It has a nice little adjustable base, and I am planning on shooting the rest of my 4th Macy the Bear short, and realized I likely need more light so I am going to give it a try.

I figure at the worst I can use it to bounce off the ceiling.

I will report on how it works out as soon as I give it a try.

Xbox One Background Music released with only one app, and it isn’t Media Player

Microsoft released it’s summer 2016 update, and finally after 2 years they have released Background Music, which was released late on the original Xbox and a release feature on the Xbox 360. The problem is, they didn’t update their own apps! Seriously the only app that supports it is CAST, an app to listen to Podcasts! WTF!

Now they have announced support for the crappy Microsoft Groove, it’s paid app, and Pandora, but no word on Media Player and that is the rub! On the Xbox 360 you could stream music from a dlna server on your computer, and control it via the app or via a quick pop up. The Media plays music from DLNA servers or USB, though you can’t rip music to the hard drive like you could on the 360, but no the app does not support Background Music, and there is no world when it will.