Andrew Sears asears

Converting a Word Document to Markdown in Two Moves

The Problem

A lot of important government documents are created and saved in Microsoft Word (*.docx). But Microsoft Word is a proprietary format, and it's not really useful for presenting documents on the web. So, I wanted to find a way to convert a .docx file into markdown.

The Solution

As it turns out, there are several open-source tools that allow for conversion between file types. Pandoc is one of them, and it's powerful. In fact, pandoc's website says "If you need to convert files from one markup format into another, pandoc is your swiss-army knife." But, although pandoc can convert from markdown into .docx, it doesn't work in the other direction.

People

`:bowtie:`	😄 `:smile:`	😆 `:laughing:`
😊 `:blush:`	😃 `:smiley:`	☺️ `:relaxed:`
😏 `:smirk:`	😍 `:heart_eyes:`	😘 `:kissing_heart:`
😚 `:kissing_closed_eyes:`	😳 `:flushed:`	😌 `:relieved:`
😆 `:satisfied:`	😁 `:grin:`	😉 `:wink:`
😜 `:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:`	😝 `:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:`	😀 `:grinning:`
😗 `:kissing:`	😙 `:kissing_smiling_eyes:`	😛 `:stuck_out_tongue:`

Better local require() paths for Node.js

Problem

When the directory structure of your Node.js application (not library!) has some depth, you end up with a lot of annoying relative paths in your require calls like:

const Article = require('../../../../app/models/article');

Those suck for maintenance and they're ugly.

Possible solutions

"Vendoring" is a vile anti-pattern

What is "vendoring"?

From a comment on StackOverflow:

Vendoring is the moving of all 3rd party items such as plugins, gems and even rails into the /vendor directory. This is one method for ensuring that all files are deployed to the production server the same as the dev environment.

The activity described above, on its own, is fine. It merely describes the deployment location for various resources in an application.

some tools for diagrams in software documentation

Diagrams For Documentation

Obvious Choices

ASCII

EMOJI CHEAT SHEET

Emoji emoticons listed on this page are supported on Campfire, GitHub, Basecamp, Redbooth, Trac, Flowdock, Sprint.ly, Kandan, Textbox.io, Kippt, Redmine, JabbR, Trello, Hall, plug.dj, Qiita, Zendesk, Ruby China, Grove, Idobata, NodeBB Forums, Slack, Streamup, OrganisedMinds, Hackpad, Cryptbin, Kato, Reportedly, Cheerful Ghost, IRCCloud, Dashcube, MyVideoGameList, Subrosa, Sococo, Quip, And Bang, Bonusly, Discourse, Ello, and Twemoji Awesome. However some of the emoji codes are not super easy to remember, so here is a little cheat sheet. ✈ Got flash enabled? Click the emoji code and it will be copied to your clipboard.

People

😄

	import javax.crypto.Cipher;

	class Test {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
	try {
	System.out.println("Hello World!");
	int maxKeyLen = Cipher.getMaxAllowedKeyLength("AES");
	System.out.println(maxKeyLen);
	} catch (Exception e){
	System.out.println("Sad world :(");

	# taken from http://www.piware.de/2011/01/creating-an-https-server-in-python/
	# generate server.xml with the following command:
	# openssl req -new -x509 -keyout server.pem -out server.pem -days 365 -nodes
	# run as follows:
	# python simple-https-server.py
	# then in your browser, visit:
	# https://localhost:4443

	import BaseHTTPServer, SimpleHTTPServer
	import ssl

	#requires -version 2
	<#
	.SYNOPSIS
	<Overview of script>

	.DESCRIPTION
	<Brief description of script>

	.PARAMETER <Parameter_Name>
	<Brief description of parameter input required. Repeat this attribute if required>

	# based off of http://mnaoumov.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/powershell-resolve-path-safe/
	function Resolve-FullPath{
	[cmdletbinding()]
	param
	(
	[Parameter(
	Mandatory=$true,
	Position=0,
	ValueFromPipeline=$true)]
	[string] $path