Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

intro to scripting in linux tutorial

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

I’m all about speeding things up. Letting the computer do what I don’t want to have to do.
I think that little things can add up.
In linux, the command line is king. You can add commands to your system by creating scripts.

A script in this case is just a text file that has code, and gets treated as a program- just as find and ls and cd are available to you, you can create as many new commands as you want.

You can use various languages to code a script to do something.
One of the most powerful aspects of living with linux is that you can add these scripts and customize the system to your liking. In fact, various people can on the same system without conflict! But that is another matter…
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The Answer To All Your Email Problems

Friday, June 20th, 2008

THE ANSWER TO ALL YOUR EMAIL PROBLEMS

Gmail is da bomb.

I have a lot of experience with email- not just as a unixy h4×0r- but as an actual user.
I have a 13 year old hotmail account. That should say something. And no; I do not use it.

I’ve used yahoo mail, mail through websites- squirrelmail, the outlooks, netscape mail client, command line sendmail, qmail.. etc.

And I have stopped using all of those in favor of Gmail. Gmail is the answer to all email.
Yes. No? Well as far as academia and development- of course not. But as far as a user is concerned- and by the way
I am a user! I don’t develop email- I use email. I could write my own client with perl - sure.. But… Really.

Yes, Gmail. Why??

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Perl Interface To WordPress XMLRPC Calls

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

I tried out the WordPress module by Sebastian Enger to post to wordpress blogs.

The module is missing a lot of things- it won’t pass tests, and it’s lacking in options- all it does is post. I am writing a set of tools/packages for interacting with a wordpress blog.

I have isolated all relevant the xmlrpc calls for the wordpress application in this module, WordPress::XMLRPC. This module can be used standalone. WordPress::XMLRPC lets you post, download, query, etc etc. I think people familiar with WordPress will be very happy to have a perl interface to the xmlrpc calls (I am!).

WordPress::XMLRPC

ViewSonic VA903b

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

I code for a living. I need a lot of text on two screens at all times.
I need the best monitor possible so that my eyes will not burn out and I won’t be able to keep working.
If the company I work for did not buy me the hardware I need, I would go out and buy it myself.

I am a recent convert to lcd screens.

There are a couple of peculiarities about the ViewSonic VA903b that I have learned and want to share.
I have two of these, and for a little while I wanted to chuck them out with the bath water.

Two things that could be happening with the VA903b to give you a moire effect, a blurry image:

1) If you see ghosting of light letters on a dark background: check the cable on the back of the monitor, make sure it is plugged in properly.
Wiggle it a bit, and the ghosting dissappears. If the cable is too tight from being far from the computer, your image is bad.

2) Check the horizontal size of your screen. I noticed that the auto adjust does not automatically adjust the horizontonal size of the screen.
I also noticed that there is a sweet spot just under the total number of cells on the screen. This setting is *more* important then the “fine tune”
option on the “manual adjust” menu.

Having figured those two things out, I love my monitors way past my old CRTs. I don’t know that I could ever use a CRT again.

Marie Antoinette

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

So, I saw Marie Antoinette.

Turns out this movie is directed by Sofia Coppola.

I loved Lost in Translation.
The good thing about that movie, is that what is on the verge of happening throughout the whole thing never does happen. And you’re left with this beautiful sweet taste of a sin half way committed.

In the movie Marie Antoinette, you know what’s going to happen.
The main characters of the movie are all going to be killed.
The whole movie plays like a children’s show, very flowery.
So you think- this is good. Can’t wait to see where this ends up very witty- this must be showing the situation from their standpoint.. You’re just.. la dee da.. and look at the pretty flowers, and the sunlight and then - oh no, we’re dead! The End. Movie over.. aha! What a great movie.. but no. Sorry Sofia Coppola. You suck here.
You can’t use the same formula and get away with it, not here.
This screenplay had a chance to actually be witty, to leave some kind of an aftertaste in your eyeballs, nut nooOOOoooo… I’m Sofia Coppola, I’m going to make a joke without a punchline and you’re all going to laugh anyway.

Well, I ain’t laughing.

Nor is your father, Francis Ford Coppola. I know it. I know he’s shaking his head and thinking *tsk* *tsk* - and you’re like.. “Why daddy! Why! It *is* a good movie! It’s a fucking masterpiece! It’s a great movie, daddy!!! buahahhhahahahaah!”
And daddy don’t say nuthin’ does he?! Maybe he nods and says ‘yes honey, you made a movie.’
But, I wanna be like daddy!!!

Sorry, it takes more then a dick and balls to make Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia.

Ps. Gotta tell ya though, incredibly good score. The Strokes.. Joy Division. Almost made the movie good. Try it without the video next time, should be cheaper to make.

medium marie antoinette movie

wordpress location widget

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

=== Location Widget ===
Contributors: leocharre
Tags: widget, location, google map
Requires at least: 2.2
Tested up to: 2.3.2
VERSION: $Revision: 1.1.1.1 $

Lets you insert widgets representing a location, an address. Includes a link to google maps,
generated from the address data.

== Description ==

This lets you insert an address widget, if enough data is available, then a link to google
maps is made visible.

Usage is similar to the text widget.

== Installation ==

To install the plugin follow these steps :

1. Download the location.zip file to your local machine.
1. Unzip the file.
1. Upload the “location-widget” folder to your “/wp-content/plugins/” directory.
1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

== Screenshots ==

1. Select how many location widgets you want.

2. Enter whatever data you want, a title, address lines 1 through 3, city, state, zip, etc.

3. At the bottom right we see the location widgets as visitors see them. A link to google maps
is generated, provided we have enough data to suggest an address.

Download location-widget1.zip

how to profile cgi

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Here’s an example of a cgi script running so that it is profiled..

script.cgi :

#!/usr/bin/perl -d
use Devel::DProf;

# do whatever .....

Afterwards, a tmon.out file resides alongside your script.cgi

# dprofpp -I ./tmon.out

Why the heck would you want to profile a cgi??
As I say over and over again to myself and to anyone that may happen to stand around me, I think a cgi is not a program. I think any web application is not supposed to be an application at all.

I think that a web application should be an INTERFACE to a an application.
A cgi may do things like manage authentication, take user input, and give feedback. That’s all. It should NOT do crazy things like perform OCR, make calculations, generate thumbnails, etc etc.
That kind of code should be developed and tested via the command line on a terminal emulator.

After that works, you can make your interface, or WUI, as I like to call them. Web User Interface.

Now, although your web interface may not do much but take input and spit feedback- what is going on behind the scenes may be very complicated.
Sometimes your application runs great, and you get users telling you “hey, it’s slow..”.
You have to perform all the things they do with their variables etc.. to see what’s going on.

Replicating a cgi environment with authentication, encryption, and god knows what else.. is a pain - in fact.. I’ve tried a couple of times and it sucked all my energy out. Screw that.

So this is the next best thing- profile a cgi run!!!
It’s wonderful- if you have a slow cgi app, this is really useful.

conversion

Friday, January 11th, 2008

I converted this image using stencilize, installed WordPress-Post, resolved cpan dependencies, and uploaded via the cli..

medium 6213040-mdmedium 6213040-md OUT

Nightmares about women

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

‘nightmares about women’
‘morning is when i wake up’
‘in the city we are less’

three fifty one in the fucking morning

i hate php
it’s so convenient, that’s added to the list

it’s… creepy
like a retarded child with a gun

i am supposed to go to sleep now
turn the leaf on another day

Wordpress image gallery like thingie

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

I’m supposed to seek out a method of properly adding content to something like wordpress.
Thing is.. what comes to mind is the command line.
GUis are for end users.

Wordpress is retarded.
You have to register every entry into the database or it won’t show.
For files too, like images.

That’s retarded.

Wordpress is retarded.

I’m tempted to code a perl module just to fuck with it..
Turns out some goofball coded this already.. WordPress
But after looking over the code.. it’s junk.
I think the fuckwad made it just so he could say “look, see? I can code perl!’
Fuckwad.

update

aha.. I see
Actually, if the files were not recorded in the database, things like news feeds would not include the images.
Hm.

Fuckin a.