To Be GNU/Hurd

new version of RPC::XML, yay

2008-09-26T15:45:00Z

It looks like a new version of the RPC::XML Perl module that supports the 'i8' type is out. This is what was holding me back from further developing smellatorrent, because rtorrent uses 'i8' if you are running it on certain machines.

It is rather frustrating that it took so long to get fixed. In my bug report I included a working patch, admitedly missing tests and docs, but it took a request from a "high profile" client for anything to happen. Oh well, I guess downloading movies just isn't important to some people!

Using Apple's X11 with a .Xresources file

2008-07-15T00:32:00Z

Because I am a horrible masochist I have been trying to use my second favorite window manager, xmonad, to handle the terminal windows on my new Mac. This was surprisingly easy after compiling GHC with MacPorts. I also had to compile xmonad, xmonad-contrib, and ghc-x11 by hand, but that was relatively painless.

The real pain came when I dug into Apple's deceptively simple X11.app. I foolishly assumed that clicking X11.app would start X, instead I found that it launched a vanilla xterm. After some digging I found out that Apple's X11 uses launchd to listen on a special socket for any requests from a X client. Apparently X11.app simply launches xterm, which in turn makes an X request, which in turn triggers launchd to start X. Simple enough, but because of the fact that X11 is started after xterm, none of the settings from .Xresources are in place when xterm launches. So not only am I required to launch xterm if I want to launch X, I am also forced to use xterm with the default settings.

use Hazel instead of folder actions

2008-07-15T00:11:00Z

After fighting with Apple's folder actions for hours last week, my friend Clint suggested I try out Hazel instead. Hazel is basically what folder actions should be. It lets you easily select a folder, define some conditions, and finally create an action. In a matter of minutes Hazel let me create two simple rules that move nzbs and torrents to my file server. Hazel even retries the action if it fails the first time (this is helpful if the network share is not mounted.)

Apple really should just buy them and get rid of the current folder action implimentation.

Folder actions in Leopard are a pain in the ass

2008-07-07T05:40:00Z

I recently got a Macbook, and ran into the need to save all .torrent files to a specific directory. Safari saves all files to a single directory by default, which made this impossible. To get around this I attempted to make a Folder Action for the Downloads folder. It all sounded quite simple. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't quite finished this part of the OS yet.

My first mistake was assuming that the Automator script would be passed the files that had changed, when in fact the script is passed only the Folder Action directory. After figuring this out I tried saving everything as an Application and then using that for the Folder Action. Nope! Apparently you have to save your Automator script as a "Folder Action plug-in", which actually creates 2 files:

~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/actionname.scpt
~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions/actionname.app

The generated Applescript (scpt) does not actually work and must be modified as described here.

Even after figuring all of this out I am still pretty unhappy with how it works. Every time a file is downloaded the script is run, which steals focus repeatedly until it is finished. I think I will have to go ahead and write a python or perl script to do such things. Hopefully there is something akin inotify or FAM that I can use.

Follow-up: I found a program called Hazel which handles all this much better.

WWW-Discogs initial release

2008-07-07T00:26:00Z

In an effort to improve my cover art tool, I have started development on a new perl module that talks to discogs.com. This lets me search the site, and get art related to artists, labels, and specific releases. The site is very comprehensive (e.g. multiple versions of albums based on release format), so I am going to have to add some methods to make searching easier.

Here is what I have so far: WWW-Discogs-0.02

automatic per-user multiple-site setup on apache2

2008-06-10T21:39:00Z


<Perl>
my $basepath = '/home/';
my $vhosts = '/sites/';
my $logs = '/logs/apache2/';

opendir my $users, $basepath;
my @users = readdir $users;

for my $user (@users) {
	next if $user =~ /^\./;
	next if ! -d $basepath . $user . $vhosts;

	opendir my $sites, $basepath . $user . $vhosts;
	my @sites = readdir $sites;
	close $sites;

	for my $site ( @sites ) {
		next if $site =~ /^\./;

		push @{ $VirtualHost{ '*' } }, {
			ServerName	=> $site,
			ServerAlias	=> "www.$site",
			DocumentRoot    => $basepath . $user . $vhosts . $site,
			ErrorLog    => $basepath . $user . $logs . "$site-error.log",
			CustomLog   => $basepath . $user . $logs . "$site-access.log combined",
		};
	}
}
</Perl>

I keep this in /etc/apache/sites-enabled/usersites. Users create sites by creating a directory of the format: /home/$username/sites/$domain/htdocs/. The only problem is that apache requires a restart each time one adds a new site.

hellasmella 0.11 fixes broken newzbin searching

2008-06-10T01:02:00Z

Newzbin recently switched to v3 for the default interface, thus breaking the screen scraping that was being done. Here is a new version that forces the v2 interface.

HellaSmella-0.11.tar.gz

hellasmella 0.10

2008-06-08T00:37:00Z

This release will hopefully fix some small bugs people where running in to. I have also added a speed plot to the status bar. Enjoy!

Changelog

restart status refresh timer on queue resort
html updates and fixes
queue is not updated unless there are changes
don't use a cookie file for newzbin model
more html and url escaping in templates
add 'url' filter to Jemplate, fix 'uri' filter
fix progress bar in FF3 and probably other browsers
speed plot

HellaSmella-0.10.tar.gz

hellasmella 0.09

2008-02-27T06:43:00Z

I went ahead and put my lighttpd config in the ex/ directory. Hopefully that will help some people get this set up. I also updated the README with some more details. Here is a list of the latest changes:

nzb upload field
ie6&7 rendering fix
fix initial style for completed items
consolidate code
get status update with resort
restyling of search results
add "fetch info" option to search results
more descriptive time remaining field (Mark Glines)

I need to do a little more styling of the extended information that pops down, but I think it is time for a new release.

HellaSmella-0.09.tar.gz

hellasmella 0.08

2008-01-07T07:05:00Z

added javascript functions to pause/continue/clear so the search results are not lost with a page refresh
changed "clear (all)" down to just "clear" for simplicity
all queue controls return a status update if made as an ajax request, this lets us update the UI faster
removed [rar] password control, not used or testable since nothing posted to usenet is password protected
removed "uptime", pointless and not accurate
added category filter on newzbin search
added HTTP::Cookies to build depends
refined styling of queue and search

HellaSmella-0.08.tar.gz

hellasmella 0.07

2007-12-08T18:59:00Z

I took some time and created a Newzbin model for HellaSmella. This makes things a little less ugly, but they also let you configure your Newzbin login info in the hellasmella.yml config file.

HellaSmella-0.07.tar.gz

I was very close to switching to WWW::Newzbin for this release. Unfortunately, after some tinkering around I realized that the file searching provided by the Newzbinx FileFind API does not let you search "reports". In the world of Newzbin, reports are the collections of files that make up a single TV show, Movie, etc. Instead of searching reports, the FileFind API only lets you search for individual files (part001.rar, part002.rar). This is fairly useless for my purposes, so it looks like I'll have to stick with screen scraping.

Here's hoping they don't shut down v2 of the site!

This is progress?

2007-11-11T03:32:00Z

Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions

initial release of smellatorrent

2007-10-29T00:57:00Z

Here is the first release of my catalyst rtorrent front end. Right now it is more or less a recreation of the curses frontend in HTML. I don't plan to do too much more with it apart from bug fixes and add the ability to start new torrents (through upload or URL).

I don't see any point to a "detail" view for individual torrents. What other clients display in those views is largely information that user does not need, such as number of connected clients or graphs of completed parts.

SmellaTorrent-0.01.tar.gz

some rtorrent debs with xmlrpc support

2007-09-29T16:14:00Z

rtorrent-svn_20070928-1_amd64.deb
libtorrent10-svn_20070928-1_amd64.deb
libtorrent-svn-dev_20070928-1_amd64.deb

I can put source packages up if anyone wants them. It does require the libxmlrpc-c3 packages from Ubuntu Gutsy, though.

i got a new shirt from dinosaur comics!

2007-09-27T00:20:00Z

Failure is just Success rounded down

oops, hellasmella 0.06 fixes more stuff

2007-09-26T02:45:00Z

I accidentally removed some redirections that happen when you pause, continue, or remove a queue item. This new version fixes that, and in a way that works with non-root path installs.

HellaSmella-0.06.tar.gz

beginning work on a rtorrent frontend

2007-09-22T19:35:00Z

I recently discovered that rtorrent has a very powerful XMLRPC interface. Now that I am so used to having a nice web interface for usenet I figured I would take a stab at something similar for torrents.

Unfortunately, the rtorrent package in Debian is not built with XMLRPC support because libxmlrpc-c3 is painfully out of date. I managed to find newer versions of the library package in Unutu "gutsy", which works fine in Debian unstable. I then rebuilt the Debian package with this line added to the debian/rules file.

DEB_CONFIGURE_EXTRA_FLAGS := --with-xmlrpc-c

Once I got the new rtorrent built and installed everything went very smooth. Right now I have a page that lists the current torrents and some status info for each. It should be trivial to add some simple controls thanks to Catalyst::Model::XMLRPC.

And in case you are actually interested, here is a screenshot of my progress:

hellasmella 0.05 fixes stuff!

2007-09-22T19:19:00Z

I put together a new release of HellaSmella this morning that includes a number of changes. Some very important!

fixed fatal bug in "time remaining" calculation
html fix on status panel
behaves better in non-root directory setups
added C::P::Auth::Credentials::HTTP to build requirements
added "Recently Completed" list to queue

HellaSmella-0.05.tar.tz

hellasmella 0.04

2007-08-20T02:56:00Z

Here is a new version of HellaSmella. Changelog is below:

"time remaining" added
html rendering fixes
non-javascript browsers search properly
focus search box on load
show a "currently processing" section while hellanzb is processing something

HellaSmella-0.04.tar.gz

new netflix facebook application – because the others all look like shit

2007-08-19T19:46:00Z

I recently renewed my netflix account and was interested in what netflix facebook applications existed. It turns out that there are two up there now, but they are both hideously ugly. Each application displays a rather large cover image along with a full description for each movie in your queue. As you might imagine this takes up a lot of real estate on the page, and is more information than most people are interested in.

To remedy this problem I decided to make a smaller netflix application that only shows the covers of your queue, highlighting the movies that are currently being viewed. I got a basic version working, but I have to say that the facebook api is one of the most over-engineered pieces of shit I have ever worked with. It really shouldn't be that complicated to get a tiny piece of dynamic HTML to display on a profile. Instead they decided to reinvent javascript, SQL, and HTML.

hellasmella version zero point zero three

2007-07-08T01:11:00Z

This is mostly a bug fix release. The majority of the changes are just html rendering fixes and a few javascript changes. One thing to note is that previous releases wouldn't work without a patch to Catalyst::Model::XMLRPC. This is no longer the case with the latest version of C::M::XMLRPC. Joy.

HellaSmella-0.03.tar.gz

here is hellasmella 0.02~

2007-06-25T00:32:00Z

This version adds some sw8 stuff:

draggable queue
set rar passwords
server info in top right corner
switched to JSON to update entire page with one request
document title updated with download percent

HellaSmella-0.02

Here is the initial release of HellaSmella.

2007-06-19T23:52:00Z

Features

Inline newzbin search and queueing
Queue controls such as pause, clear, and cancel.

TODO

Move items up/down in the queue
Single prototype.js PeriodicalUpdater for page, rather than one for each widget
Move Net::Newzbin to standalone module
Move Net::Newzbin config to hellasmella.yml

HellaSmella 0.01

hellasmella: a hellanzb web interface

2007-06-19T03:29:00Z

So I spent some time this weekend working on a web interface for hellanzb. I was amazed at how fast it went using Catalyst with the Catalyst::Model::XMLRPC module. I got a working version finished within an hour, and spent the remaining time working on HTML/CSS stuff. Here is a screenshot with code to follow soon.

This guy is funny

2007-04-25T14:57:00Z

Swearing in sci-fi shows

2006-08-25T07:26:00Z

Battlestar Gallactica - Frack
Farscape - Frill,Hezmanna
Red Dwarf - Smeg

... more to come!

Farscape

2006-07-23T02:49:00Z

Remember seeing those horrible looking Sci-Fi commercials for Farscape a few years ago? I used to sit there and think "What kind of loser would every watch that god-awful show?" I recently downloaded the first few episodes off of usenet and it is actually pretty good.

I found the initial setup on this show to be really interesting. It is about a scientist/pilot named John Crichton who is testing a theory for space travel. In the middle of his test flight Crichton is sucked into a worm hole, and spit out on the other side of the universe. I found myself much more drawn to this setup for a show much more than just being dropped in with a bunch of characters from 2000 years in the future. Having a character from the 20th century on the show allows you to believe more because he is just as stunned by what is happening as you are.

Despite the great setup, I have to say, the episodes and characters seem to be very formulaic. It is almost as if they took characters from classic RPG games and stuck them in a show. There is a priest, warrior, and theif, all who fit the stereotypes perfectly. Despite this I still have hope that the show will pick up, and more of a continuing plot will appear.

Babylon 5

2006-01-26T00:39:00Z

So I am slowly discovering that Babylon 5 isn't the heaping pile of shit that it first appeared to be. For the first few episodes all I could see what the horribly tacky set, and rehashed sci-fi characters. Now that I am a good 13 episodes in I am starting to see a show with an excellent continuing plot, and some great costume design. I'm not sure that I'll be able to handle five seasons of the show, but it is definitly worth a watch.

Irssi and gnome-terminal

2006-01-23T23:52:00Z

I finally figured out a way to get link-highlighting to work consistantly with irssi inside gnome-terminal. The problem was that if the url ended on the far left character of the terminal, gnome-terminal would think that they link continued down to the next line. This caused gnome-terminal to append the timestamp onto a url every once in a while. To fix this I simply added a space at the beginning of the timestamp format (and after, just to be symetrical).

/set timestamp_format  %H:%M
/save

Horray!

The Island

2005-07-29T15:10:00Z

Holy crap what a shitty movie. I officially hate Michael Bay

The Trial

2005-07-21T16:00:00Z

I finished watching The Trial last night. I was really fucking tired, but it was good enough to keep me awake. It reminded me a lot of Brazil. In fact, it seems like a few scenes from Brazil are taken directly from The Trial. I'm really starting to dig Orson Welles' films.

I've updated Planet NMP3s so that it properly handles Atom feeds from blogger.com now. The site is no longer indexed by google as well.

New lyric annotation wiki thing

2005-07-13T05:39:00Z

Someone on a music forum I read wanted to make an MF Doom lyric discussion site, which gave me some motivation to get back into doing some web projects. I decided to see what I could come up with.

After fiddling around with javascript to work on both IE and FF I am nearly happy with this kwiki module I came up with. The kwiki module lets you add notes to a block of text. Then when people hover over the block a popup will appear with your note in it. I hope the guy who originally asked for it finds it useful, but if not I did manage to hone my javascript skills a bit.

Test, Test

2005-06-23T20:41:00Z

Hey I got pyblosxom setup. Prepare to be wowed by my english skills (starting with my next post).