ntldr: the site

Merging PDFs

Unknown — Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It's that time of year again: time for insurance policies to renew! I'm weird and like to keep all my mailings/communications...err...ever...yes, I'm a packrat. But, I like to have everything filed away in the appropriate place too. So computers come and save the day and allow for electronic versions of everything to be preserved and nicely stashed away.

Insurance packets tend to be kind of...thick & voluminous. Fortunately, my current carrier provides everything electronically. Unfortunately, it has a tendency to do this by having what seems like every page being a separate document file. So I desire to combine those documents to recreate a mailed packet.

The document files are all PDF's. There's a great old utility called Ghostscript</a> available to manipulate PDF's. So, download & install it. Then, on Windows, run:

&</span> 'C:\Program Files\gs\gs10.06.0\bin\gswin64c.exe'</span> -</span>dBATCH </span>-</span>dNOPAUSE </span>-</span>q </span>'-sDEVICE=pdfwrite' '-sOutputFile=output.pdf' '.\1.pdf' '.\2.pdf' '.\3.pdf' '.\07055752-0cb5-4f5d-9d5a-73407c082148-802883995.pdf' '.\a75ad885-7212-4dec-8c9b-0cddd8560420-802884000.pdf' '.\6 4491c9dc-e2e2-4a2b-9087-839715bf30e5-802884006.pdf' '.\7 5a2f8497-c68e-4481-8497-74e2452949bf-802884011.pdf' '.\8 fece05b8-80ff-4af5-86e6-c6c8ad631645-802884016.pdf' '.\9 dbcb1788-f2b4-4e5e-9688-3e4b7ff22a2a-802884020.pdf' '.\10 5c3fc995-2014-4211-85db-df0f928cda47-802884023.pdf'</span></span></code></pre>
to produce an output.pdf</code> file combining the files in the order they're listed on the command line.</p>
(file names are examples only; remember to replace with the actual file names to merge; documenting this as a reminder to myself where I put</em> Ghostscript & what the merge arguments are)</p>

Website Builds Unknown — Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 CI/CD...bleh. Note to self about what commands to run to bulid this site on Windows: $buildroot = New-Guid git clone git@codeberg.org:stultsj/ntldr-site.git $buildroot cd $buildroot zola build Compress-Archive -Path .\public\* -DestinationPath "..\$buildroot.zip" -CompressionLevel Optimal</code></pre>New Site Unknown — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ntldr has returned! Sort of. There is this spiffy new site. Everything before this site though...err...well, I have backups somewhere. Maybe at some point I'll bring that stuff back, but don't hold your breath or anything. Anyway, info about the new platform! "Source code" is hosted in Git on Codeberg</a> in a private repository. Actually serving the site is done with statichost</a>. The static site generator in use is Zola</a>, although I'm a bit ambivalent about the possible usage of LLM's by the project. Theming is with Tanuki</a>...with a hatchet taken to it to hack out all the bits I don't think I need (but which will probably turn out to be kinda important). DNS is still provided by Gandi. Not linking to them because I'm not very happy with the changes since being acquired; still staying because I have another 4 years left until my domains need renewal. So, why a new platform? Kind of wanted to have an outlet for my thoughts. Mostly though it was because Azure was retiring a service I used to host the bland placeholder page I had parked here for years. The suggested "migration plan" involved moving to a different service with a minimum cost of 45$/month (+ usage fees) just to host the text "ntldr will return one day". Or around 2$/character. Or approximately 1 year of tuition for my daughter when she gets to college in 17 years. Which just irritated me. First Post? Unknown — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Every blog needs a first post. So here is one so that there is some content to render/preview when fiddling with Zola!