Bash Script Podcatcher

Yeah, I know there’s bashpodder, but it doesn’t store podcasts like I want. I like to keep each of my podcasts in a separate directory without having new podcasts dumped into a “today’s” folder (although on a podcast by podcast basis this might not be bad), and it’s just not as flexible as I’d like it to be. So I decided to make my own.

Main Features:

• keeps podcasts in separate directories
• has each podcast keep track of its own downloaded files
• uses *.info file to store metadata about a podcast (will eventually be used for retagging)

Any feedback and suggestions are welcome. Name suggestions are also welcome.

– EDIT –

WordPress kept cutting out some of the code, so I put it on a pastebin. You can find the complete script here.

Watch Any Video in ASCII

I discovered this by accident when trying to find out how to get XINE to use an ISO file as a DVD. (xine dvd://full/path/to/iso/file.iso)

Aparently the xine-ui package with Slackware comes with a program to play video in ASCII text! (aaxine) The picture quality isn’t that great up close, but if you sit back the picture isn’t that bad. Ironically any text that is displayed in the movie becomes indestiguishable unless it’s really big, so good luck reading the warning label at the beginning. (haven’t tried to get subtitles working though)

XINE is supposed to have color support using the caca library (Color AsCii Art library) but every time I tried to use it XINE crashed.

Here’s a screenshot of aaxine playing “The Alliance” from NBC’s The Office (US).

Wired NIC Slowing You Down?

This has been one of my biggest Slackware annoyances but I finally found a solution.

I have a laptop with 2 NICs. (wifi/wired) I normally use the wireless NIC unless I’ve been too lazy to update /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf with the WEP key. This fact doesn’t stop Slackware from trying to get an address for the wired (eth0) NIC. This freezes the boot for at least 30 seconds, which is really annoying for a guy that likes to restart a lot.

To fix the problem add the DHCP_TIMOUT[0]="0" to /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf. eth0 should now not be loaded at boot. If you need to use eth0 later you will need to call dhcpcd manually to get an address.

–edit–

I may have been wrong about this one. Try just getting rid “yes” from the USE_DHCP[0]="yes" line.

Debuggers

I really need to learn how to use a debugger. I know it’s no substitute for really trouble shooting code, but sometimes it’s nice to know what’s going on while a program is running. I’ve also had my eye on bashdb, a debugger for bash scripts. Well, the only way to learn is by experience I guess.

Nifty Thunderbird Extention

Usually I’m not an extention kind of guy, but this one is really cool. It’s called Mail Redirect. It gives thunderbird the abillity to put email messages back on a mail server while keeping the origional headers intact. It may not sound very useful, but it really is. With this extention you can easily transfer messages from one email account to the other, or sync the messages in two mail accounts.

Very cool.

Looking into Printers

I’ve been printing a lot of code in color recently so I decided it might be time to start looking into buying a new printer. My current HP PSC 1510 works great, but the ink doesn’t seem to last very long for the $20-ish per cartridge. I was plan on getting a laser jet printer since they seem to do better with high quantity printing. I’m leaning towards getting the HP Color LaserJet 2600n($399) over the HP Color LaserJet 1600($299) because the cartriges look like they last twice as long for the same price. (I’m not really a HP fanboy, but I’ve been really impressed with my current printer and HP usually has decent Linux support.) The reviews on HP’s site were good (depending on how trustworthy they are ) but I still want to do a little bit more research before buying it.

There is a Linux driver which is a big plus, but it’s not installed with Slackware.

Searching for SlackBuilds Just Got Better

It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to work on SINP (SINP Is Not Portage), but I managed to finally get some time in today. The next release of SINP (alpha 2) will be completely different from its predecessor, especially how flags tell SINP what to do.

I started by cleaning up SINP’s search ability. You can now use 3 different methods for searching. (hopefully 4 when I’m done) You can crawl an FTP site (the current way) and search for SlackBuilds by name, you can search SlackBuilds.org using their sites search engine (which is way faster and allows searching using keywords), or you can search for SlackBuilds on the local machine using the find command. I haven’t figured out how to search http:// repos yet, but that will come when I find out how. I have a little bit more code clean up before the new searching makes into the final script, but it shouldn’t take too much longer.

First Encounter with DRM

I’m not really a music fanatic, so until now DRM was something that I didn’t have to deal with. A couple of months ago I emailed the publishers of some of the books I own to try to get an electronic copy. (hopefully for free) Today I finally got back a definate yes/no response from one of the publishers. As it turns out they DO have ebooks, but you have to pay for them. (which I half expected) I figured I’d at least take a look at the cost and see what kind of restrictions were put in place if there was any DRM attached.

The DRM restrictions were as follows:

• Must be downloaded within 14 days of purchase
• May not move the file to a different computer
• May not lend, sell or give the e-book to another user
• May not copy the e-book file
• May copy/paste anything up to a page of text, 10 pages total, every 7 days
• May not copy/paste diagrams, figures, or artwork
• May annotate text in e-book

The main reason I wanted the ebook was for portabillity. I wanted to be able to take my whole library on the road where a may or may not have my computer with me along with internet access. One computer, no copying, and Adobe has to be installed, that means no backing up, no burning them onto a CD or putting them on a flash drive, and no alternative way of reading them. Those restrictions defeat my whole reason for wanting the ebooks to begin with. Needless to say I was depressed.

I also decided to check out Safari. One of the most annoying thing about it was the interface. I really hate web interfaces, especial for reading. Downloading PDF chapters are a nice feature, but do those have DRM too? Plus, I’d prefer to have the book in one peice. (that is how they are typically sold) I’ve looked at some books without signing up, or “trying it now,” so this is not a proper review. Still, I don’t want to pay monthly for books I’ve already bought. I don’t care about having online access to millions of others. If I like a book I’ll buy it.

Oh well, there’s always out of print ebooks and free ebooks online.

Spring Cleaning

It’s really more of a coincidence than anything, but I’ve started my spring cleaning. I started out by finally getting rid of those horrible, horrible duplicates on my backups, and getting a proper backup system in place using Subversion and rsync to an external HD. Then I moved to the large stack of papers I’d stuffed in a drawer to keep out of sight. It was full of notes I’d made to myself going back 3 years, websites I never visited again, program ideas, and some really nice UI designs that I made. Some of the program ideas were for stuff I’d lost interest in making (like Spanish flash cards ) so I threw them out. I might post the UI designs though.

I also found my profile from the last time I used Thunderbird. At the time I didn’t know that the mail had to be compacted to perminantly delete messages (so I think I still have every message I ever sent to me), so I think I’ll reset all the mail and dig up any account activation emails.

Resetting the mail was pretty easy. Just run a simple sed ’s/0008/0001′ on the mail file and all the mail is undeleted. The sed script should replace the X-Mozilla-Status flag in each message (0008 is deleted, 0001 is marked as read)  – more mozilla headers