Printing Large Posters Using Home Printer

I am writing an instructional post, explaining how to create a large poster using a lot of A4 (standard white bond) paper, a normal home printer (I used a Canon MP 287), and Adobe Acrobat (standard edition). I was tasked to draw animals for our church's nativity play and I came out with a few vector illustrations.

Once the animals were approved, I needed to convert these digital images into large drawings for the Christmas play. I searched online, hoping to find some tutorials on how to make these big illustrations.

I did find a few useful sites that can help my work, but the perfect site (for me) was blockposters.com. The site offers a three step approach to creating wall-sized posters from any size image. Obviously, the three steps are -- (1) uploading the image, (2) slicing the image, and (3) downloading the image.

The site can only slice any image file with 1MB file size or lower. I wish they could increase the file size up to 5MB or more, but we have to do with what is available to us.

So I uploaded one of my vector sheep images into the site and this is how it sliced up the image:

 

You must select how many pages wide you like your poster to come out. I decided to make my poster four pages wide (portrait sized). You will be able to see how your image looks like once you made the selection.

Once the image has been sliced up, you can download a pdf version of the image. You can open the pdf image using Adobe Reader and print it out with any home printer.

Another way of printing large images is with Adobe Acrobat Professional, using the Tile Large Page feature. Make sure you convert your large image into a pdf file and open the file in Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Once the pdf image is open, click File > Print. The Print window appears, showing different printing options and settings. On the Page Handling section, select "Tile large pages" from the Page Scaling option. The preview image on the right will show how your image would be printed. Click OK to print your image.

Android Tablet for the Kids (A Coby Kyros 1042 Review)

I managed to convince Jen to buy a new Android tablet for the kids, something affordable that can function as an educational/learning tool. She was reluctant at first, but I showed her a few educational android apps and had the kids play them on my phone. Watching the kids' delightful reactions made the decision much easier.

I've been looking at the Coby Kyros MID 1042 tablet for some time now.  It is a 10.1 Inch Capacitive Multi-Touch 16:9 Widescreen tablet, powered by Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Here are the reasons why I bought this tablet over the other Android tablet brands:

1.  Price/Affordability - The Coby Kyros 1042 tablet fits my budget. I bought my unit at the price of 7.3k pesos.
2.  Size - I prefer bigger tablets so the kids won't have a hard time looking at the images.
3.  Choice of Android Applications - There are tons of applications out in the market. I did encounter some problems installing Google Play, but I found a good work-around solution for that.
4.  Capacitive/Multi-touch feature - This is a must-have feature for me. I don't like the resistive feature of the cheaper Apad tablets and the kids still lack the needed "finger strength" to navigate through the screen.
5.  Reliable Brand Name - Coby has been around for some time now. I think they make good products and the seller assured me that my tablet came with a one-year service warranty.

My unit came with a charger, earphones, a user manual, and a carry pouch for the tablet. The first time I held the unit, I noticed how heavy it was (1.5 lbs compared to other tablets). The screen resolution is okay for me, not at par with the Apple IPad, but good enough for its price. The built-in sound speaker is at the back and the quality is not that good. You won't be able to hear much from the device when the TV and electric fans are turned on. It also has a front-facing 0.3MP camera which I think is mainly used as a web-cam. You'd be better off taking pictures with a digital camera than with this tablet. I am satisfied with the tablet's  WiFi network performance and I still haven't tested the HDMI port.

Now the biggest issue I encountered with the tablet was the fact that it lacked Google Play. Coby Kryos tablets come with its own GetJar app which downloads applications for the tablet. Unfortunately, GetJar has a poor selection of Android applications. I read somewhere that most Android tablet manufacturers pay Google in order for them to have Google Play (and probably other Google applications) work with their tablets. But since Coby opted not to pay a premium for Google, their tablets don't have the usual Google apps.

Most Coby tablet users must go through the process of rooting their tablets to install Google Play. Since the Coby 1042 is still a relatively new product, I was unable find a reliable online source that could properly instruct me on how to root my tablet and install the Google Play application. I did get several alternative solutions, which enabled me to install the Android apps I wanted (even without Google Play):

1.  Manually search for the APK file online and install it on the tablet -- I've been doing this before with my old Palm T3 and Palm Lifedrive units. Sites like www.4shared.com and www.freewarelovers.com/android offer a wide choice of apps which users can download and install in their Android tablets. It might not be as glamorous as having Google Play search and install apps for you, but the results are the same.

2. Install the Amazon App Store -- Amazon has its own version of Google Play, which is the Amazon App Store. You need to have an Amazon account for this application to work. I did install the App Store on my Coby tablet and got it running. Unfortunately I was unable to download apps because of regional service issues.

3. Install the 1Mobile Market App -- Here is another alternative to Google Play and Amazon AppStore. 1Moble Market offers a wide selection of Android applications. I think this application is better than Google Play and Amazon App Store because you don't need to have a Google or Amazon account to download apps. I installed the 1Mobile Market App on my tablet and successfully installed all the toddler educational apps I needed for my kids.


Overall, I am happy with my new Coby Kyros 1042 tablet. It is something that my family loves. The kids enjoyed the educational games and Jen couldn't stay away from the word puzzle app I installed. I still want to install other applications on the unit, as soon as I get some alone time with it.

The Wonders of Working with GMail

I really like the new feature of Gmail, which allows me to work with Documents and Spreadsheets. Now I can bring those important documents to whatever desktop unit I am using, and I don't even need a flashdrive or a diskette to carry my word or excel files.

I hope Yahoo mail will also incorporate such features into their email service. It really saves a lot of time and effort at work. At least I continue writing important documents wherever I am, without the hassle of bringing disks and drives along with me.

It's a miracle!

My dial up internet at home is faster than the DSL connection at the office. It takes me around 10 to 15 minutes to log on to my yahoo mail and g-mail. And to think I work at an IT company (which goes to show well equipped my office is when it comes to dealing with slow bandwidth). This is the main reason why I haven't been posting for a while. Hopefully normal internet connection will be restored before the month ends.