the orange squid

times of crisis

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:31:17 GMT

I'm a little proud of the fact that I make it a goal not to hate anyone. I try to absolve myself of all grudges. I push myself to let things go. Not to say that I won't lash out from time to time when I feel that I'm being taking advantage of, but I try not to linger on negativity. I think that, ultimately, there are much more important things in life than keeping enemies. This is why I think that, in times of crisis, matters of importance (life and death or anything else critical) must trump personal resolves. I don't know if others agree, but it only seems rational that personal day-to-day matters are less significant than any situation that necessitates immediate action from any and all relevant parties; in other words, I think it's silly to be petty during emergencies by failing to set aside normal trivialities.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Should a grudge take priority over a crisis? Is it immature to hope other people would set aside their grudges during emergencies?

webcomics

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:44:00 GMT

two webcomics you should be reading: xkcd questionable content ... and, while we're on the subject, is it just me, or is penny arcade seriously overrated? maybe it's just because i'm not a gamer... (user friendly is much more of my thing)
oh, forgot to mention, perry bible fellowship is usually pretty good.

clichés

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:03:02 GMT

Clichéd expressions often used for no reason or for dumb reasons: The fact of the matter is that, basically, we actually say a lot of silly things, literally without realizing it! You know, let's face it, though: to be honest, at the end of the day, everybody does it!.

voting 'strategy'

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:07:35 GMT

I read an interesting idea the other day for people who hate the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils (for President, anyway) and think some of the third-party candidates are better suited. If I find where I read it, I'll add a link later.

In States with a near-certain outcome (non-swing States), vote for the best third-party candidates, to draw attention to them. If the outcome is effectively pre-determined, your particular vote does not matter much, so you might as well represent your interests, since a certain major-party candidate will very likely win in your State anyway. This way, the major parties might start to take notice of your State, and the role of your State could become more pivotal down the road. If you're in a swing State, vote for the lesser of two evils (whichever of the two major party candidates is probably best for the health of the country in the long run, regardless of his/her personality and style of rhetoric). Since electoral college votes for a third party could result in an arguably harmful split of interest (e.g., in 2000, GWB would probably not have gotten to the White House if most of the votes for Nader had instead gone to Gore), and it does not seem feasible for anyone running outside of the two major parties to win an election for President at this time, you should always pick the lesser of two evils in a swing State, even if you feel it does not represent your true interests.

Of course, this only applies for electoral positions (e.g., the President) that have a negligible chance of having a third-party candidate win. For positions in national and State Congresses and other State Office positions, vote for who you think is best, as history (within the last century, anyhow) indicates that third-party candidates are not outright doomed from the start to lose.

Feel free to critique this idea; I love feedback. Oh, and:
STOP BITCHING* AND VOTE, JERKWADS**
(for politically correct / printable substitutions, use whining* and chumps**)

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Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:43:27 GMT

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What they don't tell you about leaving UD

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:46:16 GMT

Step 1: give out new e-mail address
os@copland:~$ pine `echo $(grep -v '^ ' ~/.addressbook|cut -d' ' -f1)|tr ' ' ','` #note, '^ ' has 3 spaces, and -d' ' is a single tab

Step 2: get list of /tmp files on other systems (since verdi, vivaldi, haydn, and schubert aren't reachable from the outside world) and make some local tarballs
os@copland:~$ for host in strauss verdi vivaldi haydn schubert ; do ssh $host touch /tmp/`whoami`.all-files.tar ';' /opt/sfw/bin/gfind /tmp -type f -user `whoami` -print0 '|' /opt/sfw/bin/gxargs -0 -n 1024 tar rvf /tmp/`whoami`.all-files.tar -C /tmp 2>&1 | grep -v 'Permission denied' ; scp $host:/tmp/`whoami`.all-files.tar /tmp/`whoami`.all-files.$host.tar ; done

Step 3: tarball local files in /tmp
os@copland:~$ touch /tmp/`whoami`.all-files.tar ; /opt/sfw/bin/gfind /tmp -type f -user `whoami` -print0 | /opt/sfw/bin/gxargs -0 -n 1024 tar rvf /tmp/`whoami`.all-files.tar -C /tmp 2>&1 | grep -v 'Permission denied' ; bzip2 /tmp/`whoami`.all-files.tar

Step 4: transfer these files to someplace local
os@erinaceous:~$ UDEL_USERNAME=os ; scp $UDEL_USERNAME@copland.udel.edu:/tmp/$UDEL_USERNAME.all-files.tar udel-tmp-files.tar.bz2

Step 5: sync your home directory to someplace local
os@erinaceous:~$ UDEL_USERNAME=os ; rsync -P -avz -e ssh $UDEL_USERNAME@copland.udel.edu:~ udel-home

Step 6: sync your IMAP folders locally with mailsync
#!/bin/bash
# warning, this has not actually been tested, just written from my notes
# syncs IMAP folders to $HOME/mail/udel-sync/
UDEL_USERNAME=os
if [ ! -d imap-2007b ] ; then
echo get imap-2007b.tar.Z | lftp ftp.cac.washington.edu:/imap
if [ ! -e imap-2007b.tar.Z ] ; then
echo COULD NOT DOWNLOAD IMAP, please fetch it manually
exit 1
fi
uncompress imap-2007b.tar.Z
tar xf imap-2007b.tar
fi
if [ ! -e imap-2007b/c-client/osdep.o -o ! -e imap-2007b/c-client/c-client.a ] ; then
pushd imap-2007b
if [ `uname -s` = Linux ] ; then
if [ -e /etc/slackware-version] ; then
make slx SSLDIR=/usr \
SSLCERTS=/etc/ssl/certs SSLINCLUDE=/usr/include/openssl
elif [ -e /lib/libpam.so ] ; then
make lnp
else
make lrh
fi
elif [ `uname -s` = SunOS ] ; then
if which gcc ; then
make gso
else
make soc
fi
elif [ -d /etc/init.d ] ; then
make lnx || make a32
elif [ -d /etc/rc.d -o -f /etc/rc.local ] ; then
make bsi || make mct || make nxt
else
make gsg || make sv4 || make vul
fi
if [ ! -e c-client/osdep.o -o ! -e c-client/c-client.a ] ; then
echo COULD NOT COMPILE IMAP, please build it manually
exit 1
fi
popd
fi
if [ ! -d mailsync-5.2.1 ] ; then
wget http://downloads.sf.net/mailsync/mailsync_5.2.1.orig.tar.gz
if [ ! -e mailsync_5.2.1.orig.tar.gz ] ; then
echo COULD NOT DOWNLOAD MAILSYNC, please fetch it manually
exit 1
fi
gunzip mailsync_5.2.1.orig.tar.gz
tar xf mailsync_5.2.1.orig.tar
fi
if [ ! -x mailsync-5.2.1/src/mailsync ] ; then
pushd mailsync-5.2.1
./configure --with-c-client=`pwd`/../imap-2007b/c-client \
--with-openssl && make
if [ ! -x src/mailsync ] ; then
echo COULD NOT COMPILE MAILSYNC, please build it manually
exit 1
fi
popd
fi
pushd mailsync-5.2.1
cat > udel-imap-conf << EOF
store udel-imap {
server {mail.udel.edu/user=$UDEL_USERNAME/ssl/novalidate-cert}
ref {udel.edu}
pat *
}

store local-mail {
pat mail/udel-sync/%
prefix mail/udel-sync/
}

channel udel-imap-sync udel-imap local-mail {
msinfo mail/sync/sync-info
}
EOF
cat > do-udel-sync << EOF
src/mailsync -cd -n -d -dc -v -vw -vb -vp -m -M -di -f udel-imap-conf \
udel-imap-sync
EOF
sh do-udel-sync
sh do-udel-sync
popd

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Sun, 21 Sep 2008 10:20:59 GMT

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OHNOES

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:55:48 GMT

OHNOES, someone might see my DATA DATA!!!

YA RLY!!

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:39:40 GMT

REUTERS - Today, the sed development team announced support for two new forms of nesting, promising to revitalize interest in the once-common programming and text-processing tool.

Despite the language already being Turing-complete, the designers have decided to make looping and conditional constructs more accessible. "Previously, you had to make clever use of grouping and pattern matching. sed wasn't an ideal state machine, but it was possible."

For looping, in lieu of always having to jump to labels, programmers are now free to make use of a new command that does not require the use of the line or hold buffers, but still requires numerical counters to be processed as strings, in true sed tradition. For conditional execution, grouped commands no longer need perform pattern matching nor jumping; a new command which performs Reverse Polish Notation expression evaluation on the hold buffer will suffice.

"Our goal is obviously not to become the next INTERCAL. We just want to want to deploy a pithy, fast text-stream processing tool."

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Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:29:00 GMT

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Math lessons

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:12:00 GMT

I would really like to start posting lessons on various mathematical topics. I would like to refine my teaching abilities, for one, but I would also like to record some things I have learned, lest my knowledge deteriorate.

So, this will be a Request-For-Comment in that I propose to offer online lessons in the categories of: number theory, set theory, algebra, geometry, analytic geometry, trigonometry, probability, statistics, logic, calculus, rigorous proof, real analysis, congruences, linear algebra, matrices, differential equations, vectors, Laplace transformations, Fourier series, Bessel functions, complex numbers, calculus of variations, vector calculus, hypothesis testing, coordinate systems, number spaces, optimization problems, model theory, abstract algebras, stochastic processes, Monte Carlo techniques, mathematical tricks and techniques, applications to Newtonian physics, applications to relativity, applications to quantum mechanics, applications to computer science, applications to computer programming, and any other topics readers express interest in. Please feel free to reply to this post with suggestions for methodology and presentation, topic ideas, offers of assistance, or indications of interest (be specific).

If you would like to brush up on a topic, but are embarrassed to admit it, just post anonymously. Your input will not count any less.

ET A OIN, SHRD-LU?

Wed, 14 May 2008 22:08:01 GMT

Every time an onion is neutered, since horses refuse dead lamb, ubiquitous cougars mate forcefully while your pampered, virgin birch grows knobs quietly, jostling xenophobic zebras.

C'mon, it's fun, make your own frequency sentence!

If 'inorthography' refers to bad spelling, what would we call the field of study for analysing word-play that invokes ostensible spelling errors that are actually clever jokes? (example: maybe a portmanteau of ethereal and ephemeral to yield ephemereal or ethemeral?) Pseudonorthographology?

Tue, 06 May 2008 22:22:52 GMT

Weird idea: debugging a program in the complex plane. The real axis would represent the code, and the imaginary axis would represent the program's state.

Actually, this would be hard to do, but, you might be able to use this idea to visualize code coverage or something.

configure --prorgram-prefix/suffix/transform patch in uucp 1.07, debian rev 19.1ubuntu1

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:48:58 GMT

Part of Makefile.am isn't patched for this.
Patch:

--- uucp-1.07/Makefile.am~      2008-04-27 11:53:41.000000000 -0400
+++ uucp-1.07/Makefile.am       2008-04-27 11:53:42.000000000 -0400
@@ -77,13 +77,23 @@
        -rm -rf $(distdir)/contrib/CVS $(distdir)/sample/CVS
 
 install-exec-hook:
-       for f in uucico uuxqt; do \
-         chown $(OWNER) $(DESTDIR)$(sbindir)/$${f}; \
-         chmod 4555 $(DESTDIR)$(sbindir)/$${f}; \
+       for p in uucico uuxqt; do \
+         p1=`echo $$p|sed 's/$(EXEEXT)$$//'; \
+         if test -f $$p \
+         ; then \
+           f=`echo $$p1|sed '$(transform);s/$$/$(EXEEXT)/'; \
+           chown $(OWNER) $(DESTDIR)$(sbindir)/$${f}; \
+           chmod 4555 $(DESTDIR)$(sbindir)/$${f}; \
+         else :; fi; \
        done
-       for f in uux uucp uustat uuname cu; do \
-         chown $(OWNER) $(DESTDIR)$(bindir)/$${f}; \
-         chmod 4555 $(DESTDIR)$(bindir)/$${f}; \
+       for p in uux uucp uustat uuname cu; do \
+         p1=`echo $$p|sed 's/$(EXEEXT)$$//'; \
+         if test -f $$p \
+         ; then \
+           f=`echo $$p1|sed '$(transform);s/$$/$(EXEEXT)/' \
+           chown $(OWNER) $(DESTDIR)$(bindir)/$${f}; \
+           chmod 4555 $(DESTDIR)$(bindir)/$${f}; \
+         else :; fi; \
        done
 if HAVE_MKDIR
 else

sources:
root@oxymon:/mnt/hd/wd60gb/cu-uucp# cat sources.url
ftp://na.mirror.garr.it/pub/1/ubuntu-archive/pool/main/u/uucp/uucp_1.07.orig.tar.gz ftp://na.mirror.garr.it/pub/1/ubuntu-archive/pool/main/u/uucp/uucp_1.07-19.1ubuntu1.diff.gz

Anyone know the easiest way to submit a small patch to Debian? (unstable branch, I guess) as well as other distros, at the same time?

Still needs to be fixed, tho:

/bin/sh ./mkinstalldirs /usr/local/info
 /usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ./uucp.info /usr/local/info/uucp.info
 /usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ./uucp.info-1 /usr/local/info/uucp.info-1
 /usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ./uucp.info-2 /usr/local/info/uucp.info-2
 install-info --info-dir=/usr/local/info /usr/local/info/uucp.info
/bin/sh ./mkinstalldirs /usr/local/man/man1
...
make[2]: Leaving directory `/mnt/hd/wd60gb/cu-uucp/uucp-1.07'

hackerkey (successor to geek code?)

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:08:25 GMT

v4sw6CHMUhw6ln6pr6AFO$ck4ma9u8ILNOw2Gm5l7DGSi2Ojoe/e6t3AMXb9AHIKMRTen5a24s7IMr8p-6.38/-6.51g5COTZ

Everyone who doesn't {suck|imitate a vacuum cleaner}*, go get one.

* = {non-PC|PC}, you pick.

software design

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 23:50:02 GMT

top - 17:24:23 up 21 days, 10:37, 17 users,  load average: 2.58, 2.57, 2.58
Tasks: 137 total,   4 running, 132 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s): 57.2%us,  3.8%sy, 38.1%ni,  1.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:    514168k total,   506868k used,     7300k free,    33156k buffers
Swap:   262136k total,   241816k used,    20320k free,    26236k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
17625 os        16   0  459m 321m  12m R   69 64.1 228:46.11 firefox-bin        
 4050 root      39  19   700  284  224 R   39  0.1  28334:59 dnetc              
 4051 root      39  19   680   96   76 R   36  0.0  28330:50 dnetc              
 4257 root      15   0  159m  51m 2908 S   29 10.3   1090:44 X                  
15876 os        15   0 40188 8304 1356 S   13  1.6   1840:01 baudline           
 7140 os        15   0 97476  39m 6632 S   10  7.8 585:34.04 pidgin             
22463 os        15   0  2212 1148  852 R    1  0.2   0:01.06 top

Firefox has only one window open with 13 tabs. Most of the tabs are eBay, which does have huge, bloated webpages, so we'll cut Firefox a little break.... but, geez, allocating 447 megs (virtual minus shared) for itself, and needing 321 megs of pages in core?! And look at Pidgin (formerly gaim): allocating 89 megs for itself, and needing 39 megs in core!

(btw, this is all on oxymon, SMP two Pentium IIs @400MHz w/ L1=512kB, 512MB DRAM and... uh.... this much disk space: os@oxymon:~$ cat /proc/partitions |head -n12|tail +3|awk '{print $3,$4}'|grep -v '[a-z][0-9]\+$'|awk '{total = total + $1}END{printf("%d MB\n",total/1024)}' --->11325 MB)

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Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:49:56 GMT

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consider this critic a cretin

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 12:10:22 GMT

...and...
so it seems LJ reset my http://www.livejournal.com/manage/comments/ log ips setting (although,. to be fair, the option now distinguishes btwn anon commenters and all commenters), as well as my http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/ theme from lynx to the horizon theme (in one of the site redesigns), over and over and over again (as they made changes), and then to the vertigo theme when that was added (although, i changed to horizon, and that stuck for a while, though it randomly went to vertigo after one "site update")
also, if you have a popups-always-in-tabs option turned on or a single-window plugin or something [in mozilla/firefox], things like "Insert/Edit Link" don't work---a new tab will open with an incomplete form with no submit buttons (and pressing enter in the text field doesn't submit anything either, due to the way their form is coded)

http://my.livejournal.com/ is still fairly complete in the lynx theme, though, which is good.

lynx-mode http://www.livejournal.com/ hasn't been updated in AGES, so there's lots of things you can't click straight to---but you can always click on the site map link (why not have an option to turn on site maps in all or some pages in lynx-theme mode?)

also, is there a way to make it so that the HTML entry is the default? (esp. when posting w/o javascript...)
when i browse the site in lynx, i get an entry page that is HTML-only, which *is* helpful... i dunno if that's just because lynx doesn't have javascript, or because of the user agent? i believe it's the user agent, b/c i seem to remember having a nonfunctional javascript entry form in mozilla when i first installed noscript, before i added livejournal to the allow-list.

or, can i make it so that two different URLs exist, one that takes me to the old, bare entry form, and one that takes me to the javascript-powered richtext/html form?
there used to be a distinction between update.bml and update.bml?mode=full, where the default didn't have post-to, userpic, friends-groups, allow-comments, (and when screening was implemented) comment-screening, iirc.
of course, i almost always needed the full form, so i still mentally type livejournal.com/update.bml?mode=full -- heh..
but, i don't think mode= makes a difference any more. i don't see a difference, anyway...

it'd be nice to have a mode=htmlonly or mode=light and/or mode=nojavascriptnomatterwhat or whatever... and, of course, in lynx-theme, regardless of user agent, there should be link(s) on the page for this(/these) alternate form mode(s)

uh... corrected lyrics

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:41:55 GMT

~~(lyrics apparently unpublished, at least on the web, or at least anywhere google's crawled)~~

[verse #1]
keep telling me, asking me, and* i believe you
telling me selfish dreams**
you will need to, keep--
[pre-chorus] telling me good things come to those who wait
i won't be there
you'll find out for yourself soon enough
[chorus]
i will try to make it lie***
i'll make it understood
when that point of view means nothing to you
[verse #2]
the future's bleak, unknown, uneasy****
is time your witness?*****, still twisted******
[[pre-chorus & chorus]]
[bridge #1 / guitar solo]
[[verse #2]]
[[pre-chorus & chorus]]
[bridge #2]
i'm hearing the same excuses
i'm hearing the same excuses
[[pre-chorus & chorus]]

*note #1: "if" makes more sense than "and", but it's definitely "and". maybe "asking me" is wrong; it could be "of [..something..]".
**note #2: this line could be "telling me something's true", or "telling me something straight", or possibly "telling me of these dreams".
***note #3: sounds like "make it light", and one time "make it right", but i think it's "make it lie", to fit the rhyme with "i will try".
****note #4: could be "and i'm uneasy", "and no one sees/needs it", "i know [..something..]".
*****note #5: could be "it's time" at the beginning, and "your weakness" right before the *****asterisks.
===lj-cut text="{******note #6}"===
******note #6: it sounds like "still twisted" or "still twisting", but i somewhat doubt "twisted"/"twisting" is correct. i expect the correct phrase here ("still [..something..]") should have a meaning that the addressed antagonist is still convinced of his/her position, still being foolish or foolishly optimistic (which fits "still wishing" but "wishing" is definitely not what is being said), or still being pathetic or annoying (which could fit "still twitching"). or, the singer might be speaking of himself, or this could be an extension of "time, your witness" or "time, your weakness" [see ****note #4]. any ideas? the phonetics i pick up are "s-'/(')/t/h/(kh)-ih/eh-uh/ul--t-w-eh-s/sh/tch-eh/ih-eh/n,". [have fun figuring out my non-IPA notation.. ;-)]
===/lj-cut===

Hey, wow, I actually found these, but most of the phrases in the song that sound correct don't seem to match the published lyrics, so you have to google for the song title, and not for any of the phrases that you think you heard correctly...
real lyrics:
(Another, more reputable site, confirms these.)

Keep telling me youre skin deep
And I believe you.
Youre telling me talk is cheap.
But you wont need to.

Keep telling me good things come to those who wait,
And I wont be there.
Youll find out for yourself, soon enough.

I wont try to make it right.
Or make it understood.
When that point of view means nothing to you.

The futures bleak,
And youre uneasy.
Target weakness,
Still twisted.

-- guns 'n' wankers, 'skin deep' (track 4 on fat music for fat people)

also, these rock (track 5, same comp):

It used to be easy to listen to people
And take everything with a grain of salt
But now that I'm older I still hear voices
I do not wish to be involved

I don't want to be involved
With the incinerator anymore
that lifestyle is such a bore
Find the door

I want to leave this place
Can't take it anymore
Locked in a room and
The flames are burning down around me
And now I see the door
But I won't find a key
It's kinda sad but i'll never find
A better place to be
I'm not feeding the fire anymore

It makes me want to keep it locked inside
You got the gasoline but I don't have a light
I wanna hang out it's not a good time
I'd rather be somewhere******* that I could find
People that don't live off the words
That are said by someone else
Cause talking shit is so bad for your health
-- no use for a name, 'feeding the fire'

[*******note #7: "be somewhere" is afaik the published line, and it definitely sounds correct, but (to me anyway) it sounds sort-of like the singer says "i'd rather piss away/off-all that i can find", which is, imho, slightly more entertaining because of multiple possible interpretations (piss off as in to annoy, metaphorically here meaning to get rid of (also works for piss away), alternately: to destroy (also works for piss away), or alternately: to ignore; piss [off] as in to drink, "piss off" sometimes meaning to drink to excess or the point of emesis, here implying drinking away one's problems or drinking to remove oneself from the surrounding reality(/-ies)) and multiple connotations (pissing out a fire; and pissing on everything: as in to degrade or demean, or to deny the importance or existence of such)]

Stained glass depth effect

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:28:01 GMT

Is this just me?

When looking at a stained glass window that covers the central focus area of your visual field, if you slightly relax your eyes, do the colors float to slightly different depths?

It only works with both eyes open, and the parallax effect works. The depth of the colors is very consistent for me.

I also see it, for example, when I'm looking a dark window on my computer screen that has various colors of text in it (color rxvt+lynx+slashdot).

The depths seem to become less significant when my face is very close to the monitor.

Is this common? Unusual? Well-documented?
I'm slightly nearsighted (20/50,-1.25). I don't know if that contributes at all.

Looking at slashdot in lynx right now, here's where the color depths are:
Green - in front of yellow (as in, closer to me).
Light Blue - slightly in front of yellow, behind green.
Yellow - in front of white.
White - normal.
Pink - slightly behind white.
Magenta - behind pink.
Red - behind magenta.

This doesn't seem to be in spectral order.

Actually, I just noticed that if I cover one eye, rather than closing it, I think I still slightly see the effect.
Neurological/cerebral? Or, maybe slight synaesthesia from paying a lot of attention to a physical effect, creating a neural connection over time?

Maybe an effect of the way the optical nerve carries color subtractions rather than true color intensities? (Red-Blue, Red-Green) This might be why red vs. green and red vs. blue are the big differences in depth..

Ex. w/ stained glass: http://www.coldspringgranite.com/royalmelrose/stained-glass-windows-holy-family.jpg Mostly I just see the red floating behind everything else.
Ex. where I *don't* really see it, and I think that's because there *aren't* large solid patches of color: http://downeaststainedglass.com/first_baptist_oriental/bible_cross.jpg

firefox extensions in /tmp ... nameless .xpi's

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:46:55 GMT

I wrote a (pretty hairy) script that goes through all the /tmp/*.xpi files that firefox downloads when you install/update an extension, and tries to match the file (which has a useless name like tmp-27.xpi) to some info about what extension it actually is, by examining the contents of the file and searching through your extensions.rdf file.

It's useful for me because I want to back up all the .xpi's (install files) for my extensions, so if my firefox profile gets corrupted and I have to create a new one, I'll have all the .xpi's.. and I'll actually know which one is what, thanks to this script.

Here's the code...

os@oxymon:/tmp/tmp-tmp-12.xpi$ cat ~os/match-xpis |sed 's/&/\&amp;/g;s/>/\&gt;/g;s/</\&lt;/g' # thank god for sed\!

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s extglob
cd /tmp
cp ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/extensions.rdf .
for xpi in !(list*).xpi # omit everything beginning with list*
do
  # make sure it's a file and not a directory we generated
  test -f $xpi || continue
  # generate unix-like listing
  unzip -val $xpi > list1-$xpi
  # generate msdos-like listing
  unzip -Zl  $xpi > list2-$xpi
  # remove header and footer
  cat -sAnE list1-$xpi|tail -qn+4|head -qn-2 \
     > list1clean-$xpi
  # remove header and footer
  cat -sAnE list2-$xpi|tail -qn+2|head -qn-1 \
    |awk '{print $5,$6$8,"[v"$3$4":"$7"]","("$2")",$9"@"$10,$11} # re-order ' \
     > list2clean-$xpi
  # pair up lines by sorting the end of the string (by reversing it)
  rev list[12]clean-$xpi|sort +0 -bsd|rev > listsclean-$xpi
  # generate a pretty-print listing
  (
    echo -e 'A\bAr\brc\bch\bhi\biv\bve\be:\b: '$xpi # our own header
    cat listsclean-tmp-1.xpi \
      |sed '2~2s/^[^[]*/^^&/ # mark even lines with ^^' \
      |awk '!/^\^\^/ {gsub(/./,"&\b&",$6)} # boldface filename on odd lines
            /^\^\^/ {gsub(/^\^\^/,"")} # remove ^^ marker
            {gsub(/(\$\b)?\$$/,"");print} # strip EOL $ added by cat -v' \
      |column -t \
      |sed 's/\([ \t]\)(/\1{{(/; # mark (-rwx...) with {{
            :underline; # beginning of loop
            s/{(\([^)]\)/\1\`_{(/; # change {(x to x`b_{( up to final )
            Tcleanup; # if no more chars in (..) jump to end
            bunderline;
            :cleanup;
            s/\([ \t]\){/\1(/; # fix field-beginning { back to (
      |tr '`' '\b'
  ) | ul | tee listnice-$xpi # save fancy listing
  # make a directory if we don't have one already
  test -d tmp-$xpi || mkdir tmp-$xpi
  # extract the important parts
  unzip -VaXjCLoK $xpi 'install.*' '*.manifest' -dtmp-$xpi
  pushd tmp-$xpi # hop into directory
  cat *.rdf \
    |awk 'BEGIN{noprint=0} # start out echoing normally
          /em:target/{noprint=1} # omit targetApplication sections
          /RDF:Desc.*rdf:.*compat/{noprint=2} # omit rdf-compatib sections
          {if(!noprint)print} # echo
          /\/em:target/{noprint=0} # end of a targetApp section
          / \/>/{if(noprint==2)noprint=0} # end of XMLRDF tag for compat' \
    |grep em:id|cut -d\< -f2|cut -d\> -f1 \
    |cut -d\" -f2|cut -d{ -f2|cut -d} -f1 \
    |tee em-id
  emid=`cat em-id` # get ID
  (
    echo "Scanning for em:id=$emid"
    awk 'BEGIN{doprint=0} # no echo yet
         /RDF:Desc.*about.*{'"$emid"'/{doprint=1} # start echoing
         {if(doprint)print} # echo
         /\/RDF:Desc/{doprint=0} # stop echoing' < ../extensions.rdf \
      |grep -v "contrib\|resource"
  ) | tee ../listinfo-$xpi # strip out extra junk
  popd # hop back out
  read -rep"press enter for next:" -adummy
  # clean up
  #rm list{[12s]{,clean},nice}-$xpi
  ##rm listinfo-$xpi #we probably want to keep this
  #rm tmp-$xpi/*
  #rmdir tmp-$xpi
done
# clean up
#rm extensions.rdf

I wish I could cut and paste shell code without having to fix all of the &, <, and > ... but I can always use
sed 's/&/\&s/>/\>/g;s/</\</g' (which has to be pasted to LJ as sed 's/&/\&s/>/\&gt;/g;s/</\&lt;/g') -- yuck.
LJ does have a Rich-text entry box, but it's (1) slow, (2) problematic, and (3) requires lots of button-clicking and pop-ups just to enter simple markup, although I guess if you want to paste things and *not* have them treated as markup, that's a necessary trade-off... I could switch back and forth between HTML and Rich text views, but having to switch back and forth a dozen times (to write my entry serially/linearly), or having to remember or notate where what markup will go and then fixing it all up at the end.... it's just easier to run things through sed if you want to paste the three notorious chars into the entry [in html mode, of course.]

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:56:28 GMT

img: http://images.blogthings.com/whatslanguagedoyouspeakquiz/british.jpg [ British Slang: 25%; New England Slang: 25%; Prison Slang: 25%; Southern Slang: 25%; Aussie Slang: 0%; Canadian Slang: 0%]

(oops... this was really botched, until i fixed it. so much for copy+paste. the last field of the table, 0%, didn't copy. the img tag had no <, and everything was in a <font color="#000000">, which is pretty hopeless, since you can't tell (in rich text view) that it won't show up on my black background. maybe they should add a bit of javascript to compare font colors to your journal bg color and give a warning and ask if the user wants to attempt an auto-correction (which should be reversible, in case it borks the entry)... would be an actual decent use of js, anyway.)

ADopt a...

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:39:56 GMT

I just had an interesting idea after seeing that someone from fark.com had a little department-of-transportation fun.

I want to have a club called Programmers Writing Network Evaluation Devices, or PWNED for short. One of the big focusses would be doing some Potential Worst-case Network Attack Gauging & Estimation, or PWNAGE for short.

Then, we could adopt a highway... "NEXT 2 MILES: PWNED!"

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:03:27 GMT

Yay, I got a spammer's traffic-counting site taken offline! They (1) spammed a forum on one of my sites, (2) hijacked a professor's account at the University of Missouri (I notified the site admins after I found it, and that's been closed down; I recommended a detailed investigation, but have heard no reply, so I only hope they are busy investigating), (3) set up a ring of traffic-counting websites with fake search portals, breaking the TOS of their hosting provider in the process (a primarily-Russian company based out of the UK, curiously enough), and probably (4) formed some sort of advertising-revenue kickback based on the fake portals. I found who their hosting provider was, checked out the (amusingly-translated) English version of their TOS, and after seeing a no-tolerance-for-spam policy, sent in a notice. It actually got processed fairly quickly, which is a bit surprising, considering how lengthy my report was (I supplied evidence of the account's activities), and that my report was written in English and being sent to a company whose English webpages were undoubtedly not written by a native English speaker. I'm almost positive the spammer also (5) used hijacked PCs via backdoor or botnet software to post some of the spam, but I haven't done detailed searches through my webserver logs yet.

wow, an update!

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:11:48 GMT

I had an exam today---and I think I actually did ok!

I just took a stupid quiz:
***You Are 26 Years Old***

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe.
13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.
20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.
30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!
40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.
( What Age Do You Act? )