Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with adjustment

How to fix my PDFs ?

GrooveStix — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:01:46 -0800

How to adjust brightness/contrast in PDF files? I have several PDF files which were created by scanning some material containing text, but some of them came up with unnecessarily dark backgrounds, that is, with borked contrast. If I print them, they will waste too much ink, and the printouts will be harder to read. I know that there's a program that allows the brightness/contrast to be adjusted, but I have forgotten its name, though I spent 3 hours downloading various programs with no luck. :(
So what I want to do ideally is to simply select the page numbers (that are over 100 pages, by the way) and do a batch adjustment of whatever is needed.

Do you know a program that could help?

Perfect Dog, Neurotic Dog Mom

tuff — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:57:16 -0800

How did you adjust to being a first-time dog owner? My husband and I adopted an adorable adult boston terrier/american bulldog mix from petfinder.com 3 weeks ago. The dog is sweet, obedient, funny, and gentle. He doesn't bark at all - ok, he's barked twice in the past 3 weeks, each just a single gruff "woof" and that's all. He likes other dogs, and likes people even more, and is good with children as well. He doesn't have any behavior issues that I can see so far (other than waking us up at 5 am because he wants to cuddle - we have to find the snooze button on this dog). We plan to sign him up for obedience training soon, but we are still looking for the right class. He was underweight and had a dull coat when we got him, but he's coming along well now (with a few setbacks of diarrhea which had me worried sick).

We live in an urban area, and we don't have a yard, so we make sure he is walked three times a day (average: about 1 hr in the morning, 1/2 hr mid-day, and then 30-45 min in the evening). The rest of the time, he's inside the apartment. On days when we are away for 9 hours (3 days a week), a dog walker comes in in the middle of the day to walk him for a half hour. The other 4 days, one or both of us is home for at least half of the day. He seems to just sleep during the day, and the dog walker has even said that sometimes he is not too into his mid-day walks and it seems like he has been disturbed from his sleep when she comes in. We play with him after walks, and feed him twice a day.

So, what is the problem? I have just had a lot of anxiety and stress from adjusting to the responsibility of having a dog. I'm in my early 30s, and before getting this dog I guess I had too easy of a life! I am very responsible and hard-working within my career, but I have not had to face taking care of another living being before. I have previous problems with anxiety, and have a lot of difficulty adjusting to change. I am also having a hard time taking things one day at a time - while walking my dog in the lovely summer weather, I am thinking "Oh, I'm going to hate walking him in the winter in the morning," even though I have always gone walking in the cold weather in the past before having a dog, though not every day. When he was sick with diarrhea in the middle of the night, I was thinking, "Will it always be like this? Will I never sleep through the night again?" I also worry about the dog all of the time even though he has shown no signs of separation anxiety or boredom. I am not sure how to deal with this problem. I know I can't return the doggie just because I am neurotic! I want to adjust to this responsibility, because I know if I can't take care of this sweet, easy dog then I won't be able to handle children, which previously I thought I would want in about a year or so, but now I am not so sure. If you have gone through something similar, and can give any advice on how to adjust, and a success story or two, I would really appreciate it.

Will a dog ruin my friendship with my cat?

muscat — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:50:11 -0800

My cats and I have a good thing going. Will introducing a puppy make them hate me forever? One of the cats is very aloof, although it seems like he's really very lonely and just pretends to be above it all. My wife and I have gone through a lot to reassure him that we really do love him and all that and he's gotten more snuggly. I don't want to send him into a permanent self imposed emotional exile.

How did your furry family members get over the addition of a new sibling?

please help the bespectacled leprechaun!

TonyRobots — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:55:16 -0800

Is it normal for eyeglasses to make one feel much, much shorter? I just got my first pair of eyeglasses at 34 years old. About a year ago I tried on a pair of my friend's glasses and had a "wow" moment -- everything looked much clearer, and more visually arresting. In the meantime I'd noticed some deterioration in my distance vision, so I decided to have an eye exam. So, yadda yadda yadda, now I have glasses. Fairly weak prescription (-.25, -.50 if I remember correctly.) They do in fact help me read things at long distances, and things mostly look sharper (at ~8+ feet), but I am definitely not having that "wow" feeling. Most importantly, though, they make me feel like I am about a foot shorter. Or more precisely, like the ground is about a foot closer to my eyes. It's like I'm wading in sidewalk up to my shins. Very, very disconcerting.

Is this normal? I just tried on my friend's glasses again and his don't have that effect. Very similar lens/frame shape. A few people have tried mine and reported the same sensation.

Do I just suck it up and try to "adjust?" Or does the lack of "wow" and this weird dwarfing effect (that has tripped me up a few times already) add up to some sort of shenanigans that I should get straightened out?

What's so special about the hot sand?

Caviar — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:48:10 -0800

What's so special about the hot sand that opticians use? Do I need this to make adjustments to my glasses frames? Okay, so I bought some cheap frames from Zenni. I like them a lot, and the fit is pretty good, but not exact. Every time I've had glasses adjusted at the opticians, they've always dipped them in the hot sand pit first. Do I need that? Can I just bend them (they're regular metal frames, not titanium)? Should I not try to do this myself?

Help! My printed PDF pages are so small that they’re ruining my vision!

numinous — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:48:28 -0800

Using Preview for PDFs, what can I do to maximize the size of the text as they appear on printouts? The Details: My PDF browser of choice is Preview (4.0, the most recent version), which I use on my MacBook. I do have Adobe, but I would like to find a solution using Preview if at all possible.

The Motivation: In an effort to save paper and money, I am trying to print some PDF documents in the following way: two pages per side, on both sides of the paper (the “both sides” issue was easy enough to figure out). Essentially, I want to maximize my use of the amount of space available per page.

The Dilemma: I am having difficulty, however, printing two pages side-by-side in a way that is actually readable without me having to strain my eyes.

What I am going for is this: look! totally legible! (Please disregard the grey line down the middle. This is simply to illustrate how much of the page I would like the text to cover.)

...but what I inevitably get is this: what the hell? hand me that magnifying glass, would ya? (That's a bit too much margin, even for me!)

Things I Have Tried which Have Not Solved My Problem^TM:
• Cropping the pages (to reduce margin size) in Preview
• Increasing the default zoom to 125% in Preferences
• Using “Borderless” Printing (this just causes the text to spill off the page)
• Scaling the pages “to fit the page” in the printing command window
• Searching all available “help” documents pertaining to Preview (to no avail)

Are there any hidden tips that I am missing? Is there nothing I can do? If this is the case, is there a better software out there that is Mac OSX compatible, and that will allow me to print two PDF pages side-by-side in a size that is actually useful?

Help me, hivemind! I will be forever indebted to you, as my immediate research and future academic endeavors depend on it.

Note: I’m aware that there are a great many wonderful electronic PDF readers out there, many of which I lust after (I have seen this post), but I am not currently in the financial position to buy one, nor would one solve my problem as I need to have these materials portable and in my hands ASAP!

How accurate is my motorcycle speedometer?

ijoshua — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:30:31 -0800

How accurate is my motorcycle speedometer? And could it be less accurate at higher speeds? On surface streets, I feel that I am riding with the flow traffic and the speedometer reading seems somewhat correct. On the open road, though, I am always one of the slowest vehicles, almost always in the slow lane. Yet the speedometer reading is close if not equal to the reading I would have in my truck on the same roads.

How would I go about checking and adjusting the speedometer? The bike is a 2007 Yamaha Virago.

Captain's chair, not dentist's chair.

ceribus peribus — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:33:46 -0800

How do I adjust this office chair? No, not an ergonomics question - I need a control manual. My office was reorganized recently and someone stuck me with their unwanted chair. It's just like all of the others, but it's been adjusted poorly and noone here knows how to put it back.

The seat is tilted backwards, so that your knees are elevated, and the backrest has also leaned back to maintain the 90 degree angle between back and seat. It would be a nice seat for the front row at the cinema, but it's a real pain to ~~sit in~~ perch on at a desk.

I've eliminated most of the controls except a round one under the front right side. It shows the numbers 1,2,3,4 in a circle, with a thickening line running from 1 (thin end) to 4. I've tried turning it both ways, pulling it out, pushing it in, and trying combinations of push/pull while turning. It's got about a quarter turn of play but doesn't do anything. Does anyone know how to drive this thing?

Washing Machines

yellowcandy — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:15:41 -0800

WasherHackerFilter: When we moved into this place, we found that the previous tenant had installed an AEG Oko_Lavamat 74620 washer in the apartment. While we really love having a washer, it is a prime example of a vicious species of washer: one that washes a full load with about a tablespoon of water, over the course of 2 hours of wash-time. I'm in favor of the idea in theory, but after living for 4+ years with British washers that destroyed most of my clothing and didn't ever really clean them properly, I've done some tweaking with this one.

It turns out that it will wash a normal load in 38 minutes very well if an extra 7.5 gallons of water are added to it. This works fine, but I'm tired of running back and forth to the bathroom to fill the jug 3 times. Hoses also don't really like our faucets-- go figure.

So what I want to do is see if I can reprogram the machine to add the extra water in. I have no idea if AEG machines are hackable through the front panel, but I'm hoping that someone here has tried something similar and can share the results. Any thoughts?