The latest articles on DEV Community by Craig George (@craig_george_4cd7d46650e4). https://dev.to/craig_george_4cd7d46650e4 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4189720%2Fb40f0799-2d29-4506-8e3f-f342e80d5c41.jpg https://dev.to/craig_george_4cd7d46650e4 en Craig George Sat, 17 Oct 2026 02:28:21 +0000 https://dev.to/craig_george_4cd7d46650e4/why-a-1-tb-drive-shows-up-as-931-gb-and-other-unit-traps-2knh https://dev.to/craig_george_4cd7d46650e4/why-a-1-tb-drive-shows-up-as-931-gb-and-other-unit-traps-2knh <p>You buy a 1 TB hard drive, plug it in, and your computer says 931 GB. It's not faulty and you haven't been cheated. It's one of several everyday unit traps that catch people out. Here are the most common ones and how to avoid them.</p> <h2> Decimal versus binary storage </h2> <p>Drive makers count in decimal: 1 TB is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Many operating systems count in binary, where 1 "GB" really means 1 gibibyte, or 1,073,741,824 bytes. Divide the drive's bytes by the binary figure and you get about 931. Same drive, two ways of counting.</p> <p>The fix is simply to know which one you're looking at. The binary units have their own names (KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB), and when you see those, you know the larger divisor is in use.</p> <h2> US and imperial units share names but not sizes </h2> <p>A US gallon is about 3.785 litres. An imperial gallon is about 4.546 litres. That's a difference of roughly 20 per cent, under the same name. The same goes for pints and fluid ounces. If a recipe or fuel figure comes from the UK and you're reading it in the US (or the other way round), check which gallon or pint it means.</p> <h2> There are three kinds of ton </h2> <p>A short ton (US) is 2,000 lb. A long ton (UK) is 2,240 lb. A metric tonne is 1,000 kg, or about 2,205 lb. In freight and shipping, mixing these up costs real money.</p> <h2> Area factors are squared </h2> <p>If 1 metre is about 3.28 feet, then 1 square metre is about 3.28 × 3.28, or roughly 10.76 square feet, not 3.28. People convert length correctly and then forget to square it for area. This is where floor-plan and flooring estimates go wrong.</p> <h2> Temperature needs an offset, not just a multiplier </h2> <p>Most conversions are a single multiplication. Celsius to Fahrenheit isn't: you multiply by 9/5 and then add 32. That's why 0 °C is 32 °F, not 0 °F. Celsius and Fahrenheit meet at exactly one point, −40, where both scales read the same.</p> <h2> "Knots per hour" is wrong </h2> <p>A knot is already a speed: one nautical mile per hour, or exactly 1.852 km/h. Saying "knots per hour" describes acceleration, not speed.</p> <h2> See the scale, not just the answer </h2> <p>Most online converters give you one number and stop. That's fine for a single conversion, but it hides how the two units relate, which is exactly where these traps live.</p> <p><a href="https://calculateconversion.online/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Calculate Conversion</a> is a site I built to take a different approach. Each converter shows both scales side by side, so when you convert 1 inch to 2.54 cm you can also read off 0.5, 1.5 and 2 inches at a glance. It lists the exact conversion factor it uses, covers length, weight, temperature, volume, area, speed, pressure, energy, time and data storage, and runs entirely in your browser.</p> <h2> The short version </h2> <ul> <li>Storage: decimal (GB) versus binary (GiB) explains the "missing" space.</li> <li>Gallons, pints and fluid ounces differ between US and imperial.</li> <li>Short ton, long ton and metric tonne are three different weights.</li> <li>Square the factor for area.</li> <li>Temperature needs an offset as well as a multiplier.</li> </ul> <p>Once you know where the traps are, unit conversions stop being a source of surprises.</p> beginners learning productivity Craig George Sat, 17 Oct 2026 02:25:58 +0000 https://dev.to/craig_george_4cd7d46650e4/how-to-get-a-table-out-of-a-pdf-without-uploading-the-file-204m https://dev.to/craig_george_4cd7d46650e4/how-to-get-a-table-out-of-a-pdf-without-uploading-the-file-204m <p>Bank statements, invoices and supplier price lists often arrive as PDFs. When you need the numbers in a spreadsheet, the usual advice is to upload the file to an online converter. For anything containing account numbers, client names or pricing, that's a real privacy cost. Here's how to do it without sending the file anywhere.</p> <h2> Why copy-paste rarely works </h2> <p>A PDF doesn't store a table as rows and columns. It stores each piece of text at an exact position on the page. When you copy and paste into Excel, those positions are lost, so columns merge, descriptions split across rows, and numbers land in the wrong cells.</p> <p>To get a usable grid, a tool has to rebuild the table from those positions: group characters that share a baseline into rows, then find the vertical gaps of white space that separate one column from the next.</p> <h2> First check: is your PDF text-based? </h2> <p>Try selecting a single word in the PDF with your cursor. If you can highlight individual words, the PDF contains real text and can be converted directly. If the whole page highlights as one image, it's a scan. Scans need OCR (optical character recognition) first to turn the image into text, and you should check OCR output carefully: it often confuses 0 and O, 1 and I, and drops decimal points or minus signs.</p> <h2> Converting in the browser </h2> <p><a href="https://pdftogrid.online/" rel="noopener noreferrer">PDFtoGrid</a> is a free tool I built that does the table reconstruction in your browser. The PDF is read by JavaScript on the page itself, so the file isn't sent to a conversion server. That matters when the document is a payroll run or a client's statement.</p> <p>The process is:</p> <ol> <li> <strong>Load the PDF.</strong> Drop it onto the page or choose the file.</li> <li> <strong>Pick the pages.</strong> Use a page range (for example 2-9, or 1,4,11) to skip cover and terms pages.</li> <li> <strong>Check the preview.</strong> The extracted table appears as an editable grid. Click any cell to fix a value.</li> <li> <strong>Adjust column spacing.</strong> If two columns have merged, lower the spacing value. If one column has split in two, raise it.</li> <li> <strong>Combine pages if needed.</strong> For a statement that runs over several pages, you can combine them into one table and skip repeated headers and footers.</li> <li> <strong>Download.</strong> Export as XLSX or CSV, or copy to the clipboard.</li> </ol> <p>There's no signup, page limit or watermark.</p> <h2> Always sanity-check the totals </h2> <p>Whatever tool you use, check the result before you rely on it. The simplest test is to add up a column and compare it with the total printed on the original. For an invoice, check that each line's quantity times its price equals the line total. A two-minute check catches the occasional misread before it ends up in your accounts.</p> <h2> The short version </h2> <ul> <li>Copy-paste breaks tables because PDFs store positions, not cells.</li> <li>Check that the PDF is text-based; scans need OCR first.</li> <li>An in-browser converter keeps sensitive files on your own device.</li> <li>Adjust column spacing until each column lines up.</li> <li>Always check totals against the original.</li> </ul> pdf privacy productivity javascript