#27 - OCR, or image to text

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR can convert printed symbols from scans or photos to digital text, so that you can save it as a .docx file, or just paste into Google Translate. But with Asian languages it's a bit different: due to thousands of characters there's a really big chance of a mistake.

Eventually, there's no way to get rid of mistakes, but there's a way to reduce them.

You'll need:

• gImageReader (Click on the green box)
• Tesseract (Select "Windows Installer" and "Japanese language data" for 3.02)

Part 0

Before we start, I want you to know that you can use this method for many languages (You can find the list by clicking on "Tesseract" link), not only for Japanese. Good alternative is Adobe FineReader, but it doesn't support asian languages.

Part 1

1. Install both programs
2. Launch gImageReader from your "Start" menu
3. Enter the directory address where you have installed Tesseract (It's usually either C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR or C:\Program Files (x86)\Tesseract-OCR)
4. And now, in "Directory, containing Tesseract languages" box enter the same address, but add \tessdata at the end.

Part 2

A test

1. Click "Open" and select a file
2. Now change the language from English to Japanese/日本語 and select ja_JP
3. Hit the "Recognize all button" or just select the area you need and click "Recognize selection"

Example

It seems to have detected all the selected character correctly, except this one:

And it is ok. Just select the character (but, firstly, zoom in the image) manually. I actually have never seen software that can work with Furigana.

Then click on "Save as" and that's it.

Have a good day :)

#16 - Audible to MP3 and free audiobooks

If you have never used Audible, but you love audiobooks, then you must used at least one. Why? It has a library of more than 150 000 titles in audio, most of which you will not be able to find at torrents or file-sharing services. Thus, sometimes it is really worth to buy and to download, but not just to download.

The only problem is the extension and the type of Audible files (.aa) which is supported only by Audible Manager and iTunes. 

But, lol, everything is solvable.

So, a little how-to:

Part #1

• Download and install VirtualCD without active Internet connection (turn the Internet off before the install process starts)
• Download and install Audible Manager and iTunes.
• Purchase a book-you-want (by the way, Audible offers one free book and a 30-day trial subscription for free). For example, click here to start a free trial with "All you need is Kill" by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Recommended ^^
• Before the purchase note that you should have active Amazon.com account and an active Debit/Card linked with it.

Part #2

• After the purchase go to "Purchases" and download the chapter of the book (They should automatically open in Audible Manager). Now wait till all downloads finish.
• Now go to the Audible directory you used before downloading your book and copy all the .aa files to the music folder connected with iTunes
• Open iTunes - wait a couple of seconds - Choose My Library/Books/Audiobooks and here they are.

Part #3

• Start "VirtualCD v10" and click "Manage Images in the new window".
• In the opened window right click on "Virtual Burner" - "Create a blank virtual medium" - "CD-R(W)" - "CD-RW".
• Now return to iTunes and create a new playlist that contains all the chapters of the audiobook. Then go to Music/Playlists - Choose your newly created playlist - click on the gear icon (you can found in the bottom left corner of iTunes window) - Burn Playlist to Disk - Choose the drive with virtual CD-RW in it that you created before.
• 1 CD will not be enough and therefore just create a new CD-RW in the same drive each time iTunes asks you to insert a blank CD.

Part #4

• When iTunes is done, insert double-click on the first CD iTunes burned. 
• Now return to iTunes and select the CD-disk from "My Library" option list.
• "Import to iTunes" and wait till iTunes converts the CD tracks to .mp3 files.
• Repeat the action with each CD left.

That's all.

わたしわあなったお助けてうれしい。

#3 - Directory Listing in Windows

Just remembered about little script I wrote last year. It is based on Print Directory by Microsoft but with few features like auto-saving the report to your Desktop and giving it name "Listing_%random_number_here%".

You can download it here: docs.google.com - it is a ZIP archive with three files.

• Copy "Printdit.bat" to C:\Windows
• Double-click on "Registry_install.reg" - Approve that you want to add new data to the registry. 
• Now if you Right-Click on any folder and choose "Print Directory Listing" the Listing.txt file will be created on your Desktop.
• If you wish to uninstall the script then simply double-click on "Registry_un_install.reg".

And that's all. You can see an example of Listing output in my previous post