I recently became addicted to TED Videos. This inspired me to create a simple python script which helps one download TED Talks in bulk. Here is the main part of the script. Scroll down for download link and usage instructions.

#! /usr/bin/python
 
# Name: TED Video Downloader
# Version: 0.4
# Summary: A bulk TED Talks download tool
# License: BSD
# Author: Pranav Ashok
# Author-email: iam@pranavashok.com
# Author-homepage: http://pranavashok.com/blog
# Support: http://pranavashok.com/blog/2009/12/script-to-download-ted-videos-in-bulk/
# Support: Twitter (@pranavashok)
 
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
from urllib2 import urlopen
import re
import os
import sys
 
f = open(sys.argv[1], 'r')
for link in f:
	web = urlopen(link)
	soup = BeautifulSoup(web.read())
	wholeTag = soup.find(href=re.compile("/talks/download/video/.+"))
 
	name = os.path.basename(link)
	fileName, fileExt = os.path.splitext(name)
	outputFile = fileName+".mp4"
 
	# wholeTag['href'] gives the value of the href attribute
	downloadUrl = "http://www.ted.com"+wholeTag['href']
 
	w = open('downloader.sh', 'a')
	w.write('wget -c -O \"%s\" \"%s\"\n' % (outputFile, downloadUrl))
	w.close()
exit()

Dependencies
This script has used python library called BeautifulSoup for parsing HTML. If you are a developer, I’d recommend you to try BeautifulSoup. It’s got a nice documentation and it’s easy to use.
(Note: You don’t need to download this, I’ve included it along with my script)

Instructions
1. Download the TED Video Downloader
2. Extract the files to the directory where you want the videos to be downloaded.
3. Edit the toDownload.txt file and add the links of each TED Video in a new line (example links are already present).
4. Open a terminal and change to the directory where you extracted the files.
5. Execute ‘sh run-first.sh‘

$ sh run-first.sh

6. The python script will be executed automatically and download will start soon (depending on the length of your list)
7. If you want to stop the downloads, press Ctrl+C.
8. To resume a stopped/interrupted download, execute the following command in terminal – ‘sh downloader.sh‘

$ sh downloader.sh

9. Enjoy the videos!

Limitations
I haven’t implemented any sort of error handling. If the TED.com decides to change the format of their video page, this script might stop working. In that case, please drop a comment here and I’ll fix it as soon as possible.

Hope you liked this script. Suggestions on optimization of the script are welcome.

This is a compilation of some terminal commands I’ve found useful.

Before starting, I’d like to emphasize on a few things:
- You might want to understand the filesystem hierarchy in linux before you start.
- When you start terminal, your default working directory is /home/user-name
- If you want to get more info on any command, just type ‘command-name –help‘ without the quotes in terminal.
- In this post, when I say ‘type’ something in terminal, it means ‘execute it’ by typing it and pressing enter.
- Whenever you want to end a looping command, for example, ping in terminal – press Ctrl + C.

These are the list of commands explained in this post:

• cat – view contents of a file
• cd – change directory
• clear – clear the terminal windows
• cp – copy
• df – view free space in disks
• exit – exit terminal
• ls – list contents of current folder
• mkdir – create a new folder
• mv – move
• ping – ping a remote server
• rm – remove files/folders
• rmdir – remove empty folders
• sudo – access as another user
• tar – operations with compressed archives

cat – Used to display contents of a file

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ cat Desktop/Hello.ext
Hello, World!
This is a file with a random extension.
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $


Tip: Try executing the following command
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ cat --help

cd – Used to change the working directory

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ cd Desktop/
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/Desktop $ cd ..
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ cd /
pranav@pranav-desktop / $ cd ~
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $


Explanation of the above code: Change directory to Desktop (cd Desktop/) -> Go back one level (cd ..) -> Change directory to the root directory (cd /) -> Change directory to the home directory (cd ~)

clear – Used to clear the terminal screen

Basically, what it does is shift everything above the viewable area. Just scroll up to see the history.

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ clear

cp – Used to copy files/folders

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/Desktop $ cp [options] source destination
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/Desktop $ cp -dpR twython/ /home/pranav/twython
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/Desktop $


The option -dpR is used to create a replica of the twython folder (located in the /home/pranav/desktop) in /home/pranav.

Here is a small list of options for the cp command:

-a, –archive same as -dpR
-d, –no-dereference preserve links
-f, –force remove existing destinations, never prompt
-i, –interactive prompt before overwrite
-p, –preserve preserve file attributes if possible
-r copy recursively, non-directories as files
-R, –recursive copy directories recursively
-u, –update copy only when the SOURCE file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing
-v, –verbose explain what is being done

For the full list, run cp –help in terminal.

df – Used to check the free space on your disks

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 34677256 4375624 28540108 14% /
udev 383740 256 383484 1% /dev
none 383740 524 383216 1% /dev/shm
none 383740 292 383448 1% /var/run
none 383740 0 383740 0% /var/lock
none 383740 0 383740 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sda10 80883520 74598944 6284576 93% /media/9465-C776
/dev/sda5 47182872 44720900 2461972 95% /media/Local Disk
/dev/sda6 80895272 59800852 21094420 74% /media/22B86022B85FF2B1
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $

Tip: Use the -h switch to make it human readable.

exit – Used to exit the terminal

ls (with a lowercase L, not and uppercase i) – Used to list files/folders in the current directory

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ ls
bin Documents Music Projects Videos
Desktop hplip-3.9.10 Pictures twython works
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $


mkdir – Used to create new folders

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works $ ls
app.yaml index.py index.yaml
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works $ mkdir py-projects
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works $ ls
app.yaml index.py index.yaml py-projects
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works $


mv – Used to move files/folders

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ mv hplip-3.9.10/ works/py-projects/
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ ls works/py-projects/
hplip-3.9.10
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $


ping – Used to test a network connection

Usage: (To stop the pinging, press Ctrl + C)
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ ping google.com
PING google.com (209.85.231.104) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from maa03s01-in-f104.1e100.net (209.85.231.104): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=121 ms
64 bytes from maa03s01-in-f104.1e100.net (209.85.231.104): icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=121 ms
64 bytes from maa03s01-in-f104.1e100.net (209.85.231.104): icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=121 ms
^C64 bytes from maa03s01-in-f104.1e100.net (209.85.231.104): icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=121 ms
--- google.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 121.100/121.298/121.685/0.483 ms


rm – Used to remove/delete files

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works/py-projects/hplip-3.9.10 $ rm *.*
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works/py-projects/hplip-3.9.10 $

The above command removes all files with an extension from the working directory, hplip-3.9.10 in this case. Please note that it doesn’t delete files without an extension.

To delete everything inside a directory, the option -r can be used.
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works/py-projects/hplip-3.9.10 $ rm -r *
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works/py-projects/hplip-3.9.10 $

rmdir – Used to remove empty directories

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works/py-projects $ rmdir hplip-3.9.10/
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/works/py-projects $

sudo – Used to execute commands as other users

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ sudo su pranav
pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $

pranav@pranav-desktop ~ $ sudo su
[sudo] password for pranav:

pranav-desktop pranav#

Here, the user is changed to root.

Note: When no argument is given to the su command, the default argument, root, is used.

tar – Used to do operations like store, list or extract files in an archive.

Usage:
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/Desktop $ tar -xvzf wordpress-2.8.6.tar.gz
.
.
.
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/archives.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/search.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/screenshot.png
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/archive.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/comments-popup.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/footer.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/page.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/sidebar.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/style.css
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/functions.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/links.php
wordpress/wp-content/themes/default/rtl.css
wordpress/wp-cron.php
wordpress/wp-load.php
wordpress/wp-feed.php
wordpress/wp-mail.php
pranav@pranav-desktop ~/Desktop $

For more information on any of the commands or to get the full list of commands, visit bash commands. Alternatively, you can use –help

Have fun with terminal!

Edited on 17 Dec 2009
I came across this post (at lindesk.com) today. It contains some really cool tips! Check it out.

Here’s a video I created an hour ago. Basically, it guides you in creating a wordpress sandbox to test your themes/plugins and other features of wordpress.

You’ll need to download:
1. WAMPServer 2 from http://www.wampserver.com/dl.php) and;
2. Wordpress from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip)

I’m planning to create more tutorial videos. Please give your suggestions, if any.

I was chatting with a friend who had a huge music collection and I wanted to know what all he had. This provoked me to make a batch script which would do the job. I did some research online and found out some basics of batch scripts. This is the final thing which I ended up with.

@echo Directory listing will be created at c:\dirList.txt
@dir %1 /S > c:\dirList.txt
@echo Opening c:\dirList.txt in Notepad
@notepad c:\dirList.txt
@pause

I think it’s self explanatory. But still, I’ll go ahead and explain.

1. Prints “Directory listing will be created at c:\dirList.txt”

2. dir is a command which will print the list of directories and files. %1 is a variable which will contain the location from where you run this script. /s is a switch for showing all sub-directories. > c:\dirList.txt will save the output of the operation dir %1 /s to a text file called dirList.txt in C Drive.

In short, the second line means this:
Run the directory listing command for the location %1 and store it’s output in c:\dirList.txt.

3. Prints “Opening c:\dirList.txt in Notepad”

4. Opens c:\dirList.txt in notepad.

5. Wait for the user to respond by pressing any key before terminating the program.

Now I’ll tell you how to make the whole thing work. Create a New Text Document on your desktop and rename it to Create DirList.bat. Right-click on it and press Edit. Copy the following code segment into it and save.

@echo Directory listing will be created at c:\dirList.txt
@dir %1 /S > c:\dirList.txt
@echo Opening c:\dirList.txt in Notepad
@notepad c:\dirList.txt
@pause

Now move it to C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\SendTo

Since you’d be giving this to your friends and some of them will have difficulty doing this, to make things simpler, I created another script to perform this move.

Create a New Text Document again and this time, call it install.bat.

Copy the following into it and save it.

@move "Create DirList.bat" "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\SendTo\Create DirList.bat"
@echo Move Complete
@pause

Remember that both install.bat and Create DirList.bat must be located in the same place.

Now, run install.bat to move Create DirList.bat to the SendTo folder. The reason why we do this is simple. Whenever we right-click on a folder and Send To -> Create DirList.bat, it will send the location of the folder we right-clicked as %1.

Therefore, if you right-click on a folder called Songs in F Drive, %1 will contain the location F:\Songs. Therefore, the main command executed will be this:

dir F:\Songs /s > c:\dirList.txt

Now whenever you want the listing of a directory, just Right-click -> Send To -> Create DirList.txt.

Simple isn’t it?

Please keep all the suggestions pouring in.

This was first posted in my old, dead blog Jazzed Up! on Mar 24, 2008 1:44 PM

This article tells your how to download videos, not only from YouTube, but also from other video sharing sites using Firefox. I’ll be considering only YouTube here. The procedure will be the same for any streaming media.

Note (07 Jul, 2009): Though this is a very cool trick, right now, I personally use Internet Download Manager with it’s integrated browser add-ons for downloading embedded stuff (including flash, videos and audio).

Note for linux users: See this comment by Binny V A

Step 1: Go to YouTube and play the video you want to download.

Step 2: After the video has loaded, open a new tab (Ctrl + T) or a new Firefox window and type

about:cache

in the address bar.

Copy the location of the Cache Directory. (It’s different for everyone)

Screenshot:

Step 3: Open the Run dialog box (Start -> Run), paste the path of the Cache Directory (Ctrl + V), and press enter. You’ll now see a list of files with weird names

Step 4: Sort the files according to their size. The biggest file is most probably your video. Usually, the size of a 4-5 minute long video is around 10 MB.

Step 5: After you locate the largest file, copy it to some folder on your computer and give it an extension – .flv

You can play this using any player which supports FLV format. A good player is the Media Player Classic which is available with the K-Lite Codec Pack. You can also try FLV Player.

If you want to convert the flv to an avi file, you can download Free Flv to Avi Converter.

This trick can be applied to any video sharing site. The only thing is that you have to give the correct extension (In youtube, it’s .flv) to the file.

Cheers!

This was first posted in my old, dead blog Jazzed Up! on Mar 13, 2008 9:15 AM

Won’t a background image look great for your Pen Drive? This is a brief tutorial on setting a background image for your USB Drive (Note that this is also applicable to folders). This is for Windows XP (it might work for Vista too, tell me if it does). Let’s begin.

1. If you want to use this trick for a folder (say, C:\Games), then first open command prompt (Run -> cmd). Then type

attrib +s C:\Games

and then do the following.

Create a desktop.ini file in your Pen Drive (folder) and copy the following into it.

[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]
IconArea_Image=bg.jpg
IconArea_Text=0×00000000

2. Put your background picture into your drive (folder) and modify IconArea_Image suitably.
For example, if the name of your image is, say, wallpaper.jpg, then you need to replace

IconArea_Image=bg.jpg

by

IconArea_Image=wallpaper.jpg

It’s not necessary that your image should be a JPEG. You can apply this for most of the popular image formats. For example, if you want a gradient.png as your background, then

Replace

IconArea_Image=bg.jpg

with this

IconArea_Image=gradient.png

You can also modify the Icon’s font color by giving the hex code corresponding to the color you want.

To give a white color to the icon text, replace

IconArea_Text=0x00000000

with

IconArea_Text=0x00FFFFFF

You can also use any other color by replacing the last 6 zeroes by the corresponding color codes (refer this for color codes).

3. Change the attributes of desktop.ini and the image to hidden. You can do this by selecting the files (desktop.ini and the image file), Right-click -> Properties, and under the Attributes section, enable Hidden. This is not necessary, but it’ll help you impress your friends more

Refresh your folder to see the result.

Here is my screenshot

UPDATE (3/15/08): Code shortened.
UPDATE (3/16/08): Tip for using this trick for other folders added.
UPDATE (3/20/08): Code shortened even more. Thanks to Mechwarrior5.

Cheers

This was first posted in my old, dead blog Jazzed Up! on Dec 31, 2007 6:05 PM

Note: This trick is not specifically for BSNL Broadband, It applies for anyone who uses a broadband connection which requires you to connect using your username and password.

Wanted to schedule your BSNL Broadband Night Unlimited Connection to dial up automatically to the internet when the “happy hours” start because you wanted to download a huge file/use uTorrent? Well, here is a simple method. Now you don’t have to wake up every morning at 2:00 AM to connect or again at 8:00 AM to disconnect your connection.

Well, lets begin assuming that you have already finished setting up your connection, port forwarding etc. (see this for more information if you haven’t). This trick is very short and simple.

Open notepad and type:

rasdial [connection name] [username] [password]

without the square brackets.

For example, If I have named my connection Dataone, my username is pranav and my password is iwonttellyoumypass, I’ll type

rasdial Dataone pranav iwonttellyoumypass

Got it? Now click on File -> Save As…

Type in Connect.bat as the file name, select the location.

Note: You need to select a place where you will keep it permanently, If you move this file later on, then it won’t connect automatically.

For making a batch file which disconnects, open notepad again, copy and paste the following:

rasdial /disconnect

Save this as Disconnect.bat in the same location as before(not necessary).

But we need to schedule the connection. So what we do is open the Scheduled Tasks program(Thought it was waste when you saw it somewhere in the start menu, did you? Well now that is coming to your rescue!!!)

Go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks

Double click Add Scheduled Task to open a wizard. Click Next > Then click Browse, go to the location where you saved the Connect.bat file, click on it and then press open. Now select Daily and click next. Set the start time to 2:05 AM(This is the time when the night unlimited time starts. Since there can be uncertainty about when It becomes 2:00 AM for BSNL, we set a safe 2:05 AM or 2:10 AM) and press Next. Enter your Windows XP account password, if any, or else leave blank.

For those who didn’t enter a password:
Press next, check Open advanced properties for this task when I click on Finish and press finish. In the advanced properties dialog box which pops up, check Run only if logged on option at the bottom of the box. Click apply and then ok.

For those who entered a password, click next and then click finish.

Now, your computer will automatically connect to the internet at 2:05 AM.

If you also want to schedule disconnecting, then repeat the above steps selecting Disconnect.bat and setting the start time to 7:55 AM.

Now you can keep your computer running and sleep peacefully. Sweet dreams!

This was first posted in my old, dead blog “Jazzed Up!” on Jan 28, 2008 11:17 AM

Wanted to learn java but never knew where to start? Well, if you have ever tried downloading the Java SE Development Kit (JDK), you might have found out that just installing it does not let you start programming right away! There are a few things to be taken care of. For people who came here looking for instructions after downloading the JDK, skip to the installation part.

Step 1: Downloading the Java Development Kit

For any programming language, you need to get some necessities in order to begin. For beginning programming in java, you’ll need the Java Development Kit. When I’m writing this, the latest version seems to be JDK 6 Update 4. So download it. If you are having problems downloading, I’ll outline the steps quickly.

Select platform: Windows, check I agree to the Java SE Development Kit 6 License Agreement (I doubt if anyone’s going to read this!?) and click Continue. Check the Windows Offline Installation and press Download Selected with Sun Download Manager. You’ll get a downlaod prompt for a .jnlp file. Either open it on the fly or download it and open it. Now the Sun Download Manager will open. Cool, isn’t it? Enter your download destination and then finish off with the settings. Your download of the JDK will now start. In case it doesn’t start, press the Start button.

Step 2: Installing the Java Development Kit

To install the JDK, browse to the location where you had downloaded the JDK(most probably a file called jdk-6u4-windows-i586-p.exe) and double click on the it. Go through the normal installation process and then reboot(only if the installer asks you to).

You have installed all the files necessary for compiling and running your first java program, but it will be a bit tedious now. You will have to provide the full path to the java compiler (C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_04\Bin) each time you compile a program. Do you want to do that? I don’t think so. So now, lets make the process easier by setting the PATH and the CLASSPATH. Don’t worry about what they are right now.

Step 3: Setting the PATH and CLASSPATH

1. Right click on the My Computer icon and click on Properties.

2. Open the Advanced tab and click on Environment Variables(wow! this is something new isn’t it?)

3. Click the New button for System Variables. Type the Variable name as

JAVA_HOME

and the Variable value as

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_04

Please note that you need to type the location of your installation directory. It may vary on where you installed the JDK. So make sure you are typing the correct path.

Click OK to finish the process.

4. Now scroll down in System Variables itself to find PATH. Select it and click the edit button. Warning! Do not delete the existing value

Add this to the beginning of Variable value

.;%JAVA_HOME%\bin;

5. Click the New button again

Enter the Variable name as
CLASSPATH

And the Variable value
.;%JAVA_HOME%\lib\tools.jar

and finally click the OK button.

6. Apply the effect (Press OK for the Environment Variables windows, APPLY and the OK for the Advanced tab)

Finally, exit all windows (close all command prompt windows, if any) for the change to take place.

I just found a much better way to set the path. Here is what you have to do:

1. Open the Run dialog box by pressing Win + R or by clicking on Run from the start menu.

2. Type notepad C:\autoexec.bat and press enter.

3. Most probably, a blank notepad file would open. Type the following

set path = C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_04\bin

and then save it.

4. Reboot your computer to start off writing your first program

Step 4: Testing a Program

If you are new to java, you can test the your first java program by following the instructions given here

In any case, here is a sample program if you’re to lazy to click on the link above

1
2
3
4
5

class HelloApp {
public static void main(String Args[]) {
System.out.println(”Hello World!”);
}
}

I hope this tutorial could help you. If you like this, then be sure to Stumble it.

Cheers

This was posted on my old dead blog, Jazzed Up! on Oct 10, 2007 6:06 AM

Does your torrent downloads work properly? Is your µTorrent client downloading stuff at its maximum speed? Have people told you to “forward ports” and you never understand what they mean? Then this is the right article for you! In this post, I’ll explain how to remove the or the signs in the status bar of µTorrent and get the sign.

This guide is mainly for BSNL Broadband (formerly Dataone) users with the UTStarcom UT3000R2U router. The instructions given in this guide may/may not work for other routers. So think before you experiment.

When I entered the world of BSNL Broadband (around 2 months ago on plan 500, 2mbit), I was quite satisfied with the connection speeds. But within a day, I spotted that my µTorrent download speeds were lower than the speeds I used to get on my previous 256k connection. I was sad. Immediately, I began searching for a solution. I came across many discussion posts where people suggested PortForward.com.

I tried it out, but I never even found the page described in the screenshot. It took quite many days, but finally, I came across 2 methods to fix the problem for those on the UTStarcom routers. So in this post, I’ll explain step by step, both the methods and help you fix the “port not forwarded” problem in µTorrent.

Method I:

1. Point your browser to http://192.168.1.1 (Note: Preferably use another browser, not the one that you are reading this post from)

2. Enter the both User Name and Password as admin and press OK.
You will see something similar to this:

3. Click on Advanced Options in the sidebar and select NAT under it.

4. You will see a field called DMZ Host IP Address:

5. Open Start Menu -> Run. Type cmd and press enter.

6. Type ipconfig /all. You will get something similar to this:

7. Search for your connection in this list and note down its IP Address. In my case, it was 192.168.1.2. Most probably, you will also get the same.

8. Enter this IP Address into the DMZ Host IP Address: field and press Save/Apply.

9. Click on Advanced Setup (Sidebar) and press Save/Reboot. Wait for a minute and connect again.

10. Open µTorrent and try downloading something. If it didn’t work, redo your steps. If still it doesn’t work (very low chances), try Method II.

Method II:

This is a fast and easy method.

1. Repeat first two steps from Method I

2. Click on Advanced Options in the sidebar and press the edit button for your connection. Most probably the first one in the table.

3. Click next for the ATM PVC Configuration.

4. Set the Connection Type to Bridging, leave Encapsulation Mode as LLC/SNAP-BRIDGING and press next.

5. Check Enable Bridge Service: (If unchecked) and press next.

6. Click on Save. Press Save/Reboot. Wait for a minute and connect again.

Congarts! Now their is nothing to prevent µTorrent from getting poor connections!

Hope this guide helped and please give some feedback.

Cheers!

I’m really really happy now. Basically because I discovered the feed of my old, dead blog (jazzedup.info) in Google Reader. And I’m able to see every post fully, since the time I began that blog. In the coming few days, I’ll be re-posting those articles which were great hits in Jazzed Up!. For easy reference, the posts will be categorized to “Jazzed Up!“.

Have fun!