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Do Know Evil - Tyler Mulligan's Tips and Tricks  
Released:  12/28/2007 3:32:58 PM
RSS Link:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/doknowevil
Last View:  11/17/2009 12:56:10 AM
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Description:


Tyler Mulligan's Tips and Tricks For Increasing Efficiency


Contents:

Using Nautilus Scripting Abilities to Integrate Right Click File Enqueues with mocp

Using moc player can prove to be both beneficial and challenging. I’ve found myself going back to exaile for a few hours on random days for the simplicity in file management via a GUI. Since I prefer to use a single media player and mocp is light weight and helpful in so many other ways to me… I knew I needed a solution. It dawned on me just today how simple that solution could be with nautilus scripts.

#!/bin/bash
# Enqueue with mocp
# by Tyler "-z-" Mulligan
#
# This is a nautilus script.  When placed in ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts
# and chmod +x you will have the ability to right click >> enqueue files
# or directories in mocp.
#
 
mocp -a "$@"

Some other tips… [ and ] silently skip back and forward respectively at a rate of 5sec per second held… this beats the left and arrows which work interactively at 1sec per sec.

? and h bring up the help, don’t forget this. Use this, learn the commands that work for you and happy listening.

Thanks to MrBougo again for helping me simplify the script further… I was originally using a for loop which is unnecessary as the quotes will help the variable expansion and mocp -a can accept multiple files/folders.




 Resources for Learning About jQuery Functions and a Note About Callbacks

Though it’s still using 1.2.6 (with current jQuery at 1.3.2), visualjquery.com has always been a favorite of mine for it’s simple and elegant layout. Some of the functions leave some documentation to be desired but after working with jQuery for a while, you begin to develop a taste for what is needed. Unfortunately, next to this issue and despite it’s strong layout, there is one other thing this application that takes this application down from strongest candidate. It cannot look into the future and as such, some functions are outright missing.

The jquery API is a somewhat familiar interface, featuring the latest version, the freshest functions and some decent documentation. Another in-depth (but outdated) resource is the old api-browser. Of course, there exists the Main Wiki Documentation, which also provides Alternative Resources. I think I’ll find myself using http://api.jquery.com/ most often despite it lacking the multi-panel style selection. It integrates it’s documentation with jsbin.com for testing / playing with code which is a nice touch.

Now a note about callbacks while we’re on the subject of jQuery. I find myself using them quite often, with ajax specifically. Understanding how to nest functions in jQuery allows you to do more things in terms of user or application response. When using ajax, you’ll often want to fade out content, do some processing, report the data back and have it fade back in nicely rather than a quick blink that can cause discomfort for a user. If you aren’t familiar with a callback, it’s a function that’s executed when the current function finishes.

Below I will break down this common scenario.

You have your HTML

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="my_ajax.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<style>
#ajax_loader {
  display:block;
  height:90px;
  width:90px;
  background:url('http://imgur.com/KW8ZD.gif') no-repeat 0 0;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
  <div id="ajax_loader"></div>
  <div id="ajax_content"></div>
  <a href="#" id="my_link">click me</a>
</body>
</html>

your php (or whatever language returning the data file) (my_page.php)

<? echo "hi, I was loaded with ajax!"; ?>

and your javascript (my_ajax.js) that glues them together

// $(function() is shorthand for $(document).ready(function () {
$(function() {
    $("#ajax_loader").hide();
    $("#my_link").click(function() {
        $("#ajax_loader").fadeIn();
        $("#ajax_content").fadeOut();
        $("#content").load("my_page.php",function() {
          $("#ajax_loader").fadeOut();
          $("#ajax_content").fadeIn();
        });
    });
});

Here we can clearly see how all functions are nested into one root, the document ready function. We go two more deep here, using the click event and then the load callback. Many functions allow for callbacks, search the documentation for the best way you think you should be nesting them. I hope this helps to clarify some of the basics in AJAX using jQuery, good luck.




 Reducing pageweight by compressing production css and js files

I’ve been a little obsessed with improving the speed of web pages via minified javascript and css files. YUI’s team not only agrees with this, they recommend gzipping your minified js and css files. For a while I’ve been calling YUI Compressor inside my push to production scripts to do the deed. However, with this new mention of gzipping, I think might be exploring other options such as the method mentioned on the page which originally linked me to that awesome YUI writeup; minifying and gzipping javascript and css on the fly using php.




 Installing Firefox 3.5.2 (Shiretoko) on Ubuntu using the default repos and customizing the icon to be more recognizable

When Firefox 3.5 came out, I along with many others, was eager to try it. For a while I ran it out of the archive directly but this caused minor issues as it’s a messy solution. At some point I noticed firefox-3.5 in the repository:

tyler@quadjutsu:~$ apt-cache search firefox |grep 3.5
abrowser-3.1 - dummy upgrade package for firefox-3.1 -> firefox-3.5
abrowser-3.1-branding - dummy upgrade package for firefox-3.1 -> firefox-3.5
firefox-3.1 - dummy upgrade package for firefox-3.1 -> firefox-3.5
firefox-3.1-branding - dummy upgrade package for firefox-3.1 -> firefox-3.5
firefox-3.1-dbg - dummy upgrade package for firefox-3.1 -> firefox-3.5
firefox-3.1-dev - dummy upgrade package for firefox-3.1 -> firefox-3.5
firefox-3.1-gnome-support - dummy upgrade package for firefox-3.1 -> firefox-3.5
firefox-3.5 - safe and easy web browser from Mozilla
firefox-3.5-branding - Package that ships the firefox branding
firefox-3.5-dbg - firefox-3.5 debug symbols
firefox-3.5-dev - Development files for Mozilla Firefox
firefox-3.5-gnome-support - Support for Gnome in Mozilla Firefox

and proceeded to install it with the following command:

tyler@quadjutsu:~$ sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5

It runs along-side Firefox 3.0 without a hitch. I often use the two in tandem while testing web applications.

Something that bothered me about this was the default icon isn’t as recongnizable to me as I’d like it to be.

screenshot-about-shiretoko

As such I looked into a way to replace it.

First, I found a replacement icon I liked

hp-firefox-128x128

from the following website (where other nice replacements exist).

Then I went to find the logical location of the files to replace. First I updated my ‘locate’ database file because this software is new, so it’s not yet known. This is done automatically daily on a cron but you can update it any time you’d like as follows:

tyler@quadjutsu:~$ sudo updatedb

Then I probed for icons I might think would be responsible.

tyler@quadjutsu:~$ locate firefox |grep lib |grep icon |grep 3.5
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/icons
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/chrome/icons
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/chrome/icons/default
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/chrome/icons/default/default16.png
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/chrome/icons/default/default32.png
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/chrome/icons/default/default48.png
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/icons/document.png
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/icons/mozicon128.png
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/icons/mozicon16.xpm
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/icons/mozicon50.xpm

The first set in the ‘/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/chrome/icons/’ folder will replace the icons used by the application itself (i.e. the icon in the top of your window). The latter, ‘/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/icons/’ will replace the ones used by shortcut icons.

Here are all the files for the icons I resized if you’d like to use them.

firefox-3.5_replacement_chrome_icons.zip
firefox-3.5_replacement_shortcut_icons.zip

bash pro-style:

cd Desktop/ && mkdir firefox_replacement_icons && cd firefox_replacement_icons
wget http://www.doknowevil.net/files/firefox-3.5_replacement_chrome_icons.zip && wget http://www.doknowevil.net/files/firefox-3.5_replacement_shortcut_icons.zip
for file in *.zip; do unzip $file; done
sudo cp chrome/* /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/chrome/icons/default/
sudo cp shorcuts/* /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.2/icons/



 Finding the difference in time between the first and last file in a folder using bash

I was working on running some statistics on log files and it required me to figure out the difference to increase the accuracy. I came up with the following bash script:

#!/bin/bash
# get the dates
start_date=$(date --utc --date "$(ls -Rt --full-time | tail -n1 | awk '{ print $6 }')" +%s)
end_date=$(date --utc --date "$(ls -Rt --full-time | head -n2 | tail -n1 | awk '{ print $6 }')" +%s)
 
# find the difference
difference=$((end_date-start_date))
 
# echo results
echo $end_date - $start_date = $difference seconds
echo $((difference/86400)) days

Which I originally wrote as a one liner:

start_date=$(date --utc --date "$(ls -Rt --full-time | tail -n1 | awk '{ print $6 }')" +%s); end_date=$(date --utc --date "$(ls -Rt --full-time | head -n2 | tail -n1 | awk '{ print $6 }')" +%s); difference=$((end_date-start_date)); echo $end_date - $start_date = $difference seconds; echo $((difference/86400)) days;

I got a little carried away and created this beast, which still isn’t as accurate as I need it to be but it did give me some information:

map_1=nordiccastle;map_2=dance;start_date=$(date --utc --date "$(ls -Rt --full-time | tail -n1 | awk '{ print $6 }')" +%s); end_date=$(date --utc --date "$(ls -Rt --full-time | head -n2 | tail -n1 | awk '{ print $6 }')" +%s); difference=$((end_date-start_date)); echo $... Read Moreend_date - $start_date = $difference seconds; echo logs for $((difference/86400)) days; map_1_ended=$(find -name *00*.log | xargs egrep -A 4 "endmatch|timelimit -1" |grep $map_1 |wc -l); map_1_played=$(find -name *00*.log | xargs 




				

				
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