gmail-command

It turns out text messages from my phone to an email address are free. Google calendar can send sms notifications for calendar events. So now I'm working on a command interface that scrapes gmail messages and does... things. I'd send a text message from my phone, say "Tuesday, 3:00p, Meeting", and it would automagically add the calendar entry.

I know you're listening. Comment on it!

The 'correct' way to write in brainfuck

If you haven't heard about it, Brainfuck is one of those esoteric programming languages. When one is learning a language, it's customary that the first program they write simply outputs "Hello World". They then usually go on to do more complex things. Not so for Brainfuck, in which simple output is an exercise in reading an ASCII table and learning how to multiply with loops and pointers. This usually leads to long strings of things like ++++++[->+++++<]>, which are a pain in the ass to type out.

A wild python script appears.

  1. import sys
  2.  
  3. text = str(sys.argv[1])
  4. for letter in text:
  5.         ascii = ord(letter)
  6.         print "[-]>[-]<","+"*10,"[->","+"*(ascii/10),"<]>","+"*(ascii%10),"."

Something About Firefox

Soon, very soon, the Firefox devs will ship Firefox with a UI that doesn't require tweaking to not look like complete ass. I have great hope for them. Until then, there's always tweaking ~/.mozilla/firefox/[profile]/chrome/userChrome.css:

  1. toolbar{
  2.         height: 32px;
  3.         margin-top: 0px;
  4.         overflow: hidden;
  5. }

I have to use this little tweak on my desktop to keep the Stumbleupon buttons from taking up 48-64 pixels, depending on whether it's Thursday and the SU crew have 'fixed' anything recently. Thankfully, the Mozilla team have a pretty decent documentation of userChrome.css.

Screenshot Scripts

I've been using these for as long as I can remember.

For snapshots of a specific window:

  1. #!/bin/bash
  2.  
  3. picdir='/home/tron/pictures/snapshots'
  4. i=$(ls -1 ${picdir} | grep -o '[0-9]*' | sort -n | tail -n 1)
  5. xwd | convert - ${picdir}/snapshot$(($i+1)).png
  6. convert -thumbnail 100x100 ${picdir}/snapshot$(($i+1)).png \
  7.         ${picdir}/thumbs/snapshot$(($i+1)).thumb.png

For snapshots of the whole screen (everything that X is currently drawing):

  1. #!/bin/bash
  2.  
  3. picdir='/home/tron/pictures/snapshots'
  4. i=$(ls -1 ${picdir} | grep -o '[0-9]*' | sort -n | tail -n 1)
  5. xwd -root | convert - ${picdir}/snapshot$(($i+1)).png
  6. convert -thumbnail 100x100 ${picdir}/snapshot$(($i+1)).png \
  7.         ${picdir}/thumbs/snapshot$(($i+1)).thumb.png

I have them bound to Ctrl+PrtScn and PrtScn, respectively. If you want to also automagically upload the file to a server and put its url into the clipboard (the middle click buffer), stick this at the end of the file:

  1. ftp -n -i <<END
  2. open ftp.example.org
  3. user username password
  4. cd blah/blah/blah
  5. put ${picdir}/snapshot$(($i+1)).png snapshot$(($i+1)).png
  6. close
  7. bye
  8. END
  9. xsel -c
  10. echo "http://example.org/blah/blah/blah$(($i+1)).png" | xsel -b

Should I be doing this?

This could actually be done in one line, but that line would be much longer than my screen is wide.

  1. adjacent = [i for i in self.points if abs(point.x-i.x) < 0.1 and abs(point.y-i.y) < 0.1]
  2. close_vert = [i for i in adjacent if abs(point.z-i.z) < self.thresh]

It just feels like I'm cheating.

I have quantum postfix

Does that mean it's running and not taking up any cycles?

  1. tron@compy:~$ sudo postfix start
  2. postfix/postfix-script: fatal: the Postfix mail system is already running
  3. tron@compy:~$ sudo postfix stop
  4. postfix/postfix-script: fatal: the Postfix mail system is not running

Make me a sandwich

xkcd has forced my hand. A quick search revealed that this is apparently the best way to check for superuser privileges. Go figure.

  1. sandwich.:
  2.         @[ -w /etc/shadow ] && echo "Okay" || echo "What? Make it yourself."
  3. a:
  4.         @:
  5. me:
  6.         @: