Super-nifty perl script for cropping pdf files

I often need to include a PDF file in a LaTeX document. This works great if the PDF file has a reasonable bounding box, but most software exports PDFs as full-page.

I found a really great perl script that will crop a PDF by settings its bounding box to precisely enclose the PDF file's contents:

http://ctan.org/pkg/pdfcrop

I used it on a couple PDF tables produced by (gag) Microsoft Word 2007, and it worked great.

Fun with 7-segment LED displays

Here's a circuit with an atmega8 hooked up to a max7219 7-segment display driver chip, with six 7-segment LED displays:


The max7219 is the chip hidden in the rats nest of wires :-)

There's a ds1305 RTC chip on the breadboard, but it's not connected to anything yet.

Cheap USB AVR programmer

I have been using a serial-port AVR programmer (the Olimex one you can buy from Sparkfun) to do AVR development, but my laptop doesn't have a serial port.

There are a number of USB-based AVR programmers, and they're not particularly expensive (e.g., the Atmel AVR-ISP mkII is $34 from Digikey), but being the cheapskate that I am I was looking for something really inexpensive.

I'm happy to report that I've found one that works very well, and is only $10:

http://alldav.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=5&products_id=24

I'm using it with Sparkfun's AVR breakout board to bring the programming signals onto a breadboard using a single-row 6-pin cable from Digilent. Here's a picture of the whole setup:


The programmer is the small green board on the left. The breakout board is the even smaller red board connected to the programmer at a right angle.

In the host OS, the programmer appears as a serial port (/dev/ttyUSB0 on my Debian laptop). The programmer type for avrdude is "stk500v2".

As an additional bonus, the programmer supplies 5V to your circuit, using the host USB port as the power source. I don't think it will source a lot of current, but it's certainly fine for a few ICs and LEDs. The circuit on the breadboard in the picture has an atmega8 and an LED.