Yabfog

I wrote this script some time ago. It's been working flawlessly for me, so I thought I'd share it here. It could use some progress messages, I suppose.


#!/bin/bash
DIR= # Put the file system path to your WordPress installation here. E.g., /var/www/html/blog
TMPDIR=$HOME/tmp
WPDIR=$TMPDIR/wordpress
cd $TMPDIR
rm -rf latest.zip ./wordpress # Clean up from the last run
wget -nd http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
unzip latest.zip
mv $DIR/wp-config.php $DIR/.config # Stash your configuration someplace safe
rm $DIR/*.{txt,html,php} # Delete the old install
rm -rf $DIR/{wp-admin,wp-includes} # Delete more. Don't delete plugins or themes.
cp -aR $WPDIR/* $DIR/
mv $DIR/.config $DIR/wp-config.php # Restore the configuration
# You may not need the last two lines. I like to give my web server the ability to write files.
chown -R .www-data $DIR/*.php $DIR/wp-admin $DIR/wp-includes
chmod -R g+w $DIR/*.php $DIR/wp-includes


In case I need to remember that I did this...

By default, the Mac Terminal assigns the "Clear Scrollback" command to Command-K. This is annoying, because I often use Nano, which uses Control-K to cut a line of text, and I frequently press Command-K instead of Control-K by accident. This clears my screen while I'm in the middle of editing a file. Very annoying.

The solution is to assign a new (harder to hit by accident) command to the "Clear Scrollback" command, so that when I inevitably mistype Command-K, nothing happens.

I decided to install Dave Winer's River2 to supplement my usual feed reading. Now that I can access it via its smart use of Dropbox, it should be good for feeds that I don't feel like I need to see every headline.

One of the things I love about River2 is that it's an app that runs in the OPML Editor, which means that it is endlessly hackable and (apropos to this post) you can fix your own bugs.

So here's a bug report. And fix. (Actually, it could be a workaround for a bug in another application, as I explain below).

1. What I was doing: From the Tools > River2 > Pages menu, I selected a page to view (any one, it's the same bug no matter which page).
2. What I expected to happen: I expected the selected page to open in my default web browser, Pale Moon (a Windows-optimized build of Firefox)
3. What actually happened: Nothing. Not even an error dialog.

I immediately suspected that the problem was the communication between the OPML Editor and the Pale Moon browser. After all, there was a major bug for the longest time in Firefox's DDE implementation that required a workaround.

Bottom line: the OPML Editor's DDE implementation expects that the DDE service name is the same as the name of the executable with the filename suffix removed. So, for Excel, the service name is "excel," and for Firefox it's "firefox." But the service name is determined by the application, and the Pale Moon developers decided that its service name would be "Pale Moon," not "palemoon." A simple patch to system.verbs.builtins.webBrowser.openURL resolves the problem.

if string.lower (id) contains "palemoon" { // 2/11/11; 12:09:06 AM by DJM
	ddeName = "Pale Moon";
	return (webBrowser.callBrowser (ddeName, "WWW_OpenURL", s+",,0,0,,,,"))}

The function webBrowser.callBrowser expects ddeName to be the name of the executable, from which it attempts to remove the ".exe" suffix. Luckily, if the function is passed any string without an ".exe" suffix, it just accepts the passed string as the DDE service name.

Here's the full context:

That ",,0,0,,,," nonsense is part of the DDE message that Pale Moon expects:

A post over on Boing Boing ("The last mystery of the blues: were Robert Johnson's recordings sped up?") drove me right to my sound editor to see how Robert Johnson's performances may have sounded different from his recordings. Here's the result:

Robert Johnson Speed Demo

The audio is a 30 second clip of "Sweet Home Chicago" played once at normal speed (i.e., the recorded speed) and then a second time about 20% slower (2 semitones lower). (Note: I didn't labor over the crossfade between the clips.)

Pretty interesting, if you ask me.

I've been extremely annoyed with and concerned about Optimal's usage pattern that I've observed in the server logs. I had shut it down for a while to see if anyone noticed. No one did -- except me. I wanted to see this OPML of all the BBC's news feeds, so I turned Optimal back on. But I will be blacklisting spammers and malware purveyors from now on.

Failed Fifutec SW1245 battery from Coleman Model 5312 lantern.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

I recently found that I had a lot of empty folders in my MP3 folder after a wayward ripping session. So I whipped up this quick DOS one-liner to remove all empty folders.

From a command prompt, just change to the folder containing all the empty folders and enter the following:

FOR /f "tokens=*" %G IN ('dir /ad /b /s') DO rd /q "%G"

The command "rd /q" will be executed on every folder, but "rd" only deletes empty folders -- "rd" does not delete non-empty folders.

Couldn't find a script to update my Jabber/XMPP vCard photo (a/k/a avatar), so I wrote one. It requires xmpppy (a/k/a python-xmpp). It should work with gTalk, but I have not tested it.

Credit to pastebin for some code snippets.

Hope this saves someone some time and effort.

#!/usr/bin/python
'''vcard.py - Update your XMPP vcard photo with the image you provide

Usage: vcard.py image_file jid password
'''

from xmpp import JID, Client, Iq, Presence, NS_VERSION, NS_VCARD
import sys
import os
import time
from base64 import encode, decode
from hashlib import sha1

try:
    file=os.path.expanduser(sys.argv[1])
    jid=sys.argv[2]
    password=sys.argv[3]
    resource='vcard'
except:
    print >>sys.stderr, __doc__
    sys.exit(2)

NS_VCARD_UPDATE = 'vcard-temp:x:update'
NS_NICK = 'http://jabber.org/protocol/nick'

def hash_img(img):
    return sha1(img).hexdigest()

def base64_img(img):
    return img.encode('base64')

def get_img(file):
    try:
        os.stat(file)[6]
        fh = open(file, 'rb')
        img = fh.read()
        return img
    except Exception, e:
        print >>sys.stderr, e
        sys.exit(2)

def get_mime_type(file):
    try:
        ext = file[-4:]
        if ext == '.png':
            mime_type = 'image/png'
        elif ext == '.gif':
            mime_type = 'image/gif'
        elif ext == '.jpg' or ext == '.jpeg':
            mime_type = 'image/jpeg'
        else:
            raise ValueError, "Wrong mime-type detected. Check file suffix."
    except ValueError, e:
        print >>sys.stderr, e
        sys.exit(2)
    return mime_type

def send_vcard(conn, base64_img, mime_type, nick):
    iq_vcard = Iq(typ='set')
    vcard = iq_vcard.addChild(name='vCard', namespace=NS_VCARD)
    vcard.addChild(name='NICKNAME', payload=[nick])
    photo = vcard.addChild(name='PHOTO')
    photo.setTagData(tag='TYPE', val=mime_type)
    photo.setTagData(tag='BINVAL', val=base64_img)
    conn.send(iq_vcard)

def send_presence(conn, status, hash1, nick):
    presence = Presence(status = status, show = 'xa', priority = '-1')
    presence.setTag(name='x',namespace=NS_VCARD_UPDATE).setTag(name='photo',namespace=NS_VCARD_UPDATE).setData(hash1)
    presence.setTag(name='nick',namespace=NS_NICK).setData(nick)
    conn.send(presence)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    img = get_img(file)
    j=JID(jid)
    cl=Client(j.getDomain(),debug=[])
    conn=cl.connect()
    if not conn:
        raise Exception, 'failed to start connection'
    auth=cl.auth(j.getNode(),password,resource,sasl=1)
    if not auth:
        raise Exception, 'could not authenticate'
    send_vcard(cl, base64_img(img), get_mime_type(file), j.getNode())
    send_presence(cl, 'Updated vCard Image', hash_img(img), j.getNode())
    time.sleep(1)
    cl.disconnect()

On Friday, Dave Winer released a terrific thought-piece-of-a-podcast on how journalists need to learn about bootstraps. In his most recent podcast with NYU's Jay Rosen, he and Jay discussed the topic, as well, but I want to focus on bootstrapping, the metaphor.

Dave offered the well-worn phrase "haul yourself up by your bootstraps" as the mental image we should have when we use the bootstrapping metaphor. Imagine that you're wearing your boots, you grab your bootstraps and pull on them. Well, the best outcome I can imagine is that you'd fail to accomplish anything. If you could accomplish anything, I think all you'd do is pull your feet out from under yourself. But the phrase is supposed to connote (I think) strength by self-determination and self-motivation. That's why MBA-types say they're going to "bootstrap" their start-ups when what they really mean is that their start-ups will be self-funded at the outset.

But I recall learning that before bootstraps became merely decorative, they actually served a useful purpose: namely, to strap your boots to the top of heavy items so you could carry them. Maybe it's apocryphal, but here's MY mental image of bootstrapping: a person on a horse, laden with a pack on its rump, and a heavy wooden storage box strapped to each of the rider's boots.

And that more closely matches what bootstrapping means to me: taking advantage of what's already up-and-running and using that existing momentum to get something else moving.

Mailto links give error dialog in browser when email address is missing .