Mind Mining Medium

Copy (cp) with progress bar

2013-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Many times you’d like to see the progress of a copy but sadly cp doesn’t have that feature.

Many posts online will show bash scripts that pipe cp into grep/awk/etc or use tools like pv. Alas, there is a much more simple way. Use rsync.

rsync -a --progress SOURCE_FOLDER DESTINATION_FOLDER

Throw the --stats flag for some stats after the transfer is done.

rsync -a --stats --progress SOURCE_FOLDER DESTINATION_FOLDER

Apache time sensitive conditions

2013-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

If you’d like to do time sensitive conditionals on Apache, the following will help you get started. This is useful if you’d like certain content to be displayed based on time.

<!--#config timefmt="%Y%m%d%H%M" -->
<!--#if expr="$DATE_LOCAL < 201303281140" -->
    <!--#include virtual="before.html"-->
<!--#elif expr="$DATE_LOCAL >= 201303281140 && $DATE_LOCAL <= 201303281205"-->
    <!--#include virtual="during.html"-->
<!--#else-->
    <!--#include virtual="after.html"-->
<!--#endif-->

What we do here is set the time format to %Y%m%d%H%M which is year, month, day, hour, minute. For example “201303281140” for March 28th, 2013 at 11:40am.

Then if the current server time is before set time, we display before.html; if the time is during our two times, we display during.html; else we display after.html.

Unroot and Reset the Sprint Galaxy Nexus - Mac

2012-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Warning: The following steps WILL format the device. Be sure to do a complete backup before preceeding.

Download the Android SDK.
Install the SDK as instructed.
Follow the instructions on this page from the Android SDK’s “Adding Platforms and Packages”
Check and install the “Android SDK Platform-Tools” only.
You should have a directory called android-sdk-mac_x86. Within that, there should be directory called Platform-Tools.
Go as instructed to the “Return To Stock (ODIN TARS & FASTBOOT IMGS)” page. Second post will have the FASTBOOT images. For stock Jelly Bean search for FH05. There is 6 files that need to download.
Place all the downloaded files inside android-sdk-mac_x86/platform-tools/ directory.
Shut down the device, then press and hold Volume Up, Volumn Down, and Power at the same time. This will enter to the bootloader.
Connect the device via USB to the computer.
Open terminal and go into the “platform-tools” directory.

Enter the following lines, one at a time.

./fastboot flash boot boot.img
./fastboot flash bootloader bootloader.img
./fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
./fastboot flash system system.img
./fastboot flash radio radio-cdma.img
./fastboot flash radio radio-lte.img
./fastboot -w

Enter the following to lock the device also.
```
./fastboot oem lock
```

Solving 'stdin: is not a tty' error

2011-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

The “stdin: is not a tty” warning kept on popping up when ssh-ing to a few servers. I’ve learned that the problem is because I had mesg n on top of my .bash_rc file. Quick fix is to wrap it around an if statement, like so:

if `tty -s`; then
   mesg n
fi

'Hello' spam clogging mailboxes

2010-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

A new influx of spam is making its way around the internet in the form of a very simple “Hello” email and an attachment. Mainly they consist the subject “Hello” and an attachment. The attachment is just an HTML file with some ‘encrypted’ code in there. The file itself doesn’t contain any viruses.

I decrypted the code and it produced:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://BADURL.HERE" />
<table width="100%" border="0"><tr bgcolor="#556688" align="center"><td><a href="http://www.pullsoft.com/htmlpower.htm"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#FFFFFF" size="-1">This Web Page was protected by HTMLPower,  Click here to Register</font></a></td></tr></table>

Things that I found funny about this:

Gmail engineers haven’t been able to stop this. This could be because it’s not widespread yet.
Whoever created this spam wasn’t smart enough to encrypt their own code. They used a tool provided by Pullsoft
They used a meta refresh rather than a Javascript window.location=http://BADURL.HERE;. They are already assuming the target has Javascript turned on to decrypt their “code”.

Object Type in Javascript

2009-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Someone noted the interesting line that I use to find the object type.

function getType(obj){
    if (obj === undefined) { return 'undefined'; }
    if (obj === null) { return 'null'; }
    return Object.prototype.toString.call(obj).split(' ').pop().split(']').shift().toLowerCase();
}

Object.prototype.getType = function(){
    return Object.prototype.toString.call(this).split(' ').pop().split(']').shift().toLowerCase();
};

I posted the QUnit test suite. I’ve tested it in IE6-8, Safari 4, and Firefox 3.5.6. It would be greatly appreciated if you post your results.

While the typical method of using typeof or instanceof may produce results, they have their faults.

Douglas Crockford writes about type detection and his methods work for most cases, but not all.

On a side note, the reason why the Object.prototype.getType doesn’t check for undefined or null is because neither of those have properties, that is, they are not an Object. That said, they cannot call any functions.

Pure JavaScript Flatten Array

2009-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Update: Paul Irish thought it would be grand to point out that my test case here isn’t the best. It’s good to note that the following functions work for all values in your array. I would suggest checking out the QUnit testing page to see other examples.

While working on my current project I needed a way to turn a heavily nested array and flatten it. There are some nice JavaScript libraries that have functions to do so, such as Underscore’s _.flatten and Prototype’s .flatten to name a few.

However, with reduce being implemented only in JavaScript 1.8 and not wanting to include a whole JavaScript library to do one task, I decided to write my own. You may want to take a look at the QUnit testing page.

Native Function

function flatten(array){
    var flat = [];
    for (var i = 0, l = array.length; i < l; i++){
        var type = Object.prototype.toString.call(array[i]).split(' ').pop().split(']').shift().toLowerCase();
        if (type) { flat = flat.concat(/^(array|collection|arguments|object)$/.test(type) ? flatten(array[i]) : array[i]); }
    }
    return flat;
}

Usage:

var given = [[1, [2, [3, [4, [5, [6, [7, [8, [9, [0]]]]]]]]]]];
var value = flatten(given);

// 'value' => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0]

Array Object Extend:

Array.prototype.flatten = function flatten(){
   var flat = [];
   for (var i = 0, l = this.length; i < l; i++){
       var type = Object.prototype.toString.call(this[i]).split(' ').pop().split(']').shift().toLowerCase();
       if (type) { flat = flat.concat(/^(array|collection|arguments|object)$/.test(type) ? flatten.call(this[i]) : this[i]); }
   }
   return flat;
};

Usage:

var given = [[1, [2, [3, [4, [5, [6, [7, [8, [9, [0]]]]]]]]]]];
var value = given.flatten();

// 'value' => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0]

lala extremely flawed

2009-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

A week ago I wrote about how I used web apps to feed into other web apps, more specifically I talked about lala and it’s “lala music mover”.

Recently a thought formed; while watching how lala’s music mover worked, I noticed that it wasn’t checking anything other than the ID3 tag. I ran a real quick experiment.

To test this out, I found a song that I didn’t already have. “Fireflies” by “Owl City” seemed a great fit. I made a clean iTunes library, created a sample mp3 and added it to iTunes. Then, I just edited the ID3 tag to match some basic information about the Fireflies track. Finally I made the lala mover rescan my library. Surprisingly when I checked lala, they had added it to my library.

What does this teach us? The lala mover does nothing but check for ID3 tags. But really, I just saved 10¢. It’s not possible to download the track from lala being that they think I already own the track.

Web Apps Feeding Web Apps

2009-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

I just realized that I’ve been feeding web apps with other web apps, and all for free.

I listen to last.fm via sweet.fm which downloads my loved tracks to my iTunes; those are then matched or uploaded to lala.com’s catalog with their lala music mover app, and finally the tracks are scrobbled back to last.fm.

The cycle of last.fm > sweet.fm > iTunes > lala > last.fm keeps my library growing. Moreover, I get one free listen to new tracks on lala.

So after a week of using this process, I’ve added over two thousand songs to lala that I can listen to anywhere, anytime.

Tip: Recursively Open TextMate Project Folders

2009-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

Quick tip time! This time it’s about one of the best text editors for the mac, TextMate.

Did you know that you can recursively expand project folders in TextMate by holding down the option key (⌥) and clicking the folder to open.

Download all mp3 on a webpage

2009-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Update: Be sure to escape any urls are are using. Characters like (, ), and others need to be escaped. This can be done by putting a backslash before them. For example: $ $

Ever wanted to download all the audio files off a particular webpage? You could manually click and save each one or load up terminal and use this one-liner. Remember to only use this for sites that are allowing you do download their content free of charge; stealing is wrong!

curl -s SITEURL | grep -oie "\(http\|https\|ftp\|www\).*\.\(mp3\|wav\|m4a\|ogg\|mp4\)" | sort | uniq | awk '{print "curl -sOL "$1" &"}' | /bin/sh

A quick explanation of what is happening.

curl -s SITEURL

This is downloading the SITEURL (which you should replace with the url of the site/file you want to scrape) but not outputting it nor showing the download progress. This is because of the -s flag that is thrown.

grep -oie "\(http\|https\|ftp\|www\).*\.\(mp3\|wav\|m4a\|ogg\|mp4\)"

This is parsing/scraping the site/file that we just downloaded for urls that match our regular expression. What we are looking for is urls that start with http, https, ftp, or www and that end with mp3, wav, m4a, ogg, or mp4. You can add your own file extensions; just follow the pattern.

sort | uniq

Sorts, and only displays the unique urls. No need for duplicates!

awk '{print "curl -sOL "$1" &"}'

Displays the urls as an output of curl -sOL MP3URL &, which will actually download the file in the background. The -O flag will create a file and the -L flag will follow any url redirection.

/bin/sh

Finally, the whole process is ran through the bash (shell) command.

You shouldn’t see any output because everything is ran in the background. Just wait for the files to be created in the directory you are in.

Snow Leopard and Bash Colors

2009-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

One little problem people—including myself—have been running into is bash color codes. Many .bashrc files have the following (or similar):

export COLOR_NC='\e[0m' # No Color
export COLOR_WHITE='\e[1;37m'
export COLOR_BLACK='\e[0;30m'
export COLOR_BLUE='\e[0;34m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_BLUE='\e[1;34m'
export COLOR_GREEN='\e[0;32m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_GREEN='\e[1;32m'
export COLOR_CYAN='\e[0;36m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_CYAN='\e[1;36m'
export COLOR_RED='\e[0;31m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_RED='\e[1;31m'
export COLOR_PURPLE='\e[0;35m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_PURPLE='\e[1;35m'
export COLOR_BROWN='\e[0;33m'
export COLOR_YELLOW='\e[1;33m'
export COLOR_GRAY='\e[1;30m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_GRAY='\e[0;37m'

The solution is to use \033 as the escape code rather than \e.

# Setup some colors to use later in interactive shell or scripts
export COLOR_NC='\033[0m' # No Color
export COLOR_WHITE='\033[1;37m'
export COLOR_BLACK='\033[0;30m'
export COLOR_BLUE='\033[0;34m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_BLUE='\033[1;34m'
export COLOR_GREEN='\033[0;32m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_GREEN='\033[1;32m'
export COLOR_CYAN='\033[0;36m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_CYAN='\033[1;36m'
export COLOR_RED='\033[0;31m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_RED='\033[1;31m'
export COLOR_PURPLE='\033[0;35m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_PURPLE='\033[1;35m'
export COLOR_BROWN='\033[0;33m'
export COLOR_YELLOW='\033[1;33m'
export COLOR_GRAY='\033[1;30m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_GRAY='\033[0;37m'

MacPorts on Snow Leopard

2009-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

Update in 2010: I would highly suggest moving away from MacPorts/Fink and to use Homebrew by Max Howell.

Update: The nice people at MacPorts have update the package to v1.8.0. You can follow their instructions to upgrade to the latest stable version. I would suggest the MacPorts v1.8.0 for OS X 10.6 DMG file.

After installing Snow Leopard, you may want to install the MacPorts. Follow the following steps to get it up and running:

Download and install XCode from ADC.
Open up the Terminal
svn co http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/base/
cd base
./configure
make
sudo make install
sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate
sudo port upgrade --enforce-variants (Did not work for me)
sudo port upgrade outdated (Did not work for me)

Setting terminal tab titles

2009-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve always hated the fact that I would have 5-10 tabs open in Terminal, and they would all say bash.

After doing some quick research, I stumbled on decent solution on setting window and tab names in the Leopard Terminal.

You can add the following code block to either your .bash_profile or .bashrc.

function set_window_and_tab_title
{
    local title="$1"
    if [[ -z "$title" ]]; then
        title="root"
    fi

    local tmpdir=~/Library/Caches/${FUNCNAME}_temp
    local cmdfile="$tmpdir/$title"

    # Set window title
    echo -n -e "\e]0;${title}\a"

    # Set tab title
    if [[ -n ${CURRENT_TAB_TITLE_PID:+1} ]]; then
        kill $CURRENT_TAB_TITLE_PID
    fi
    mkdir -p $tmpdir
    ln /bin/sleep "$cmdfile"
    "$cmdfile" 10 &
    CURRENT_TAB_TITLE_PID=$(jobs -x echo %+)
    disown %+
    kill -STOP $CURRENT_TAB_TITLE_PID
    command rm -f "$cmdfile"
}

PROMPT_COMMAND='set_window_and_tab_title "${PWD##*/}"'

Restart bash and everything should be working, hunky-dory. One problem you’ll notice is that when you try to close a session, terminal will prompt you about running processes. This is a side-affect of forking the process. A quick fix is to set the "Prompt before closing" in Preferences > Settings > Shell to “Never”.

Better array search

2009-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

During the journey of finding a better linear array search function in javascript, I decided to write my own. I decided to take a different approach. Here’s the outcome.

Array.prototype.small_search = function(search) {
    if (this[0] === search){ return 0; }
    var s = '\x00';
    var a = this.join(s);
    var b = a.search(search)-1;
    return a.substring(0, b).split(s).length;
};

With an array of less than 150 elements, it is much faster than Dustin Diaz’s in_array function. While they aren’t the same, his can be adapted to return the index also.

The only downside with my function is that it becomes much slower after the array length is larger than 150 elements. So, if you have a small array, go ahead and use this, otherwise use Dustin’s.

Times

Array Length	small_search	in_array
5	0.020ms	0.098ms
10	0.024ms	0.084ms
50	0.042ms	0.095ms
100	0.069ms	0.106ms
150	0.087ms	0.111ms
300	0.203ms	0.137ms
500	0.418ms	0.132ms
1000	0.813ms	0.138ms
5000	3.530ms	0.312ms
10000	6.718ms	0.441ms

Test it out on your own and come back with results.

How To: Splitting large text files into smaller ones

2009-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Let’s say you have a huge text file with couple million lines. Now you want to split it up into 100, 200, or 300 line files. Bash makes it pretty easy with split.

In Bash:

split -l 500 file.txt

That splits up the file file.txt into 500 line chunks. What is produced are files such as xaa, xab, xac and so on.

Be sure to do man split for more options.

How To: Remove Duplicate Lines From A File

2009-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Sure you can load up a bulky editor and use its tools to do that, but why not do it in much faster in bash with awk.

In Bash:

awk '!x[$0]++' in.txt > out.txt

Wasn’t that easy?

How To: Find the size of a directory

2009-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Sometimes it’s very useful to know how much content is in a directory without opening a GUI interface.

In Bash:

du -cks * | sort -n | awk '\''BEGIN { split("KB,MB,GB,TB", Units, ","); } { u = 1;while ($1 >= 1024){$1 = $1 / 1024;u += 1;}$1 = sprintf("%.1f %s", $1, Units[u]);print $0;}'\'' | tail -11

I would suggest adding this to your bash aliases as ducks.

Output looks something like so:

~ > ducks

0 KB p
0 KB Music
1 MB Sites
0 MB Downloads
3 MB Dropbox
5 MB Movies
5 GB Library
3 GB Desktop
7 GB Documents
5 GB Pictures
5 GB total

~ > _

Update: My good friend Clayton suggested a much simpler way. The only problem is that the output is not sorted.

du -hd1

The output is the whole directory. I truncated the output to show the last 11.

~ > du -hd 1 | tail -11

6.3G    ./Desktop
12G     ./Documents
212M    ./Downloads
433M    ./Dropbox
3.6G    ./Library
8.0K    ./Movies
72K     ./Music
17G     ./Pictures
0B      ./Public
24M     ./Sites
40G     .

~ >_

Update #2: Some systems do not accept the -d flag. This can be replaced with the --max-depth flag, like so:

du -h —max-depth 1

Keyboard Shortcut to Help Search Box

2009-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

If you haven’t figured out how Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) help search box allows you to search menu items, check out Chris Pirillo demoing the feature.

The problem for me is that I’m a keyboard person. Over 90% of my day, I barely touch the mouse. Now, to get to the help search bar with your keyboard, just press:

⌘ (Command) + ⇧ (Shift) + ? (Question Mark)

Find & Replace in Linux/Mac

2009-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

This is a quick one liner to find and replace strings in *nix. You can use this in your Mac terminal or Unix prompt.

In Bash:

find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/FIND/REPLACE/g' {} \;

Example:

find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/signin/login/g' {} \;

Command, Option, & Shift Symbols in Unicode

2009-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Update: Ratty in the comment noted that ⎋ is actually the ESC key button not the power button.

Update 2012: Added more symbols.

Unicode does define some other characters which are sort of Mac-specific.

Character	Entity Code	Entity Name	Description
⌘	`&#x2318`	`&#8984`	Command Key symbol
⌥	`&#x2325`	`&#8997`	Option Key symbol
⇧	`&#x21E7`	`&#8679`	Shift Key symbol
⎋	`&#x238B`	`&#9099`	ESC Key symbol
⇪	`&#x21ea`	`&#8682`	Capslock symbol
⏎	`&#x23ce`	`&#9166`	Return symbol
⌫	`&#x232b`	`&#9003`	Delete / Backspace symbol

Note: The Power Button and Shift Key are not Mac-specific. The power button is described as “broken circle with northwest arrow”, or an escape character from ISO 9995-7. The shift key is described as an “outline up-arrow”.

Even though these are defined in standard Unicode, there is no guarantee that they will exist in the font of the receiving browser, but they’re at least globally defined, so they’re fair game.

See how many Kernel Panics your Mac has had

2009-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

In bash:

ls -1 /Library/Logs/PanicReporter/ | wc -l

ls -1 /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ | wc -l

I’ve had 5.

Firefox & Input Field Width

2009-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

Hate the 2 pixel difference you get when you apply a width on your input fields in Firefox?

Try this in CSS:

input, textarea, select { -moz-box-sizing: border-box; }

Scroll to bottom of page.

2009-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

In javascript:

window.scroll(0, window.document.height);

How To FULLY Disable Spotlight in Leopard

2009-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

Warning: This is changing system settings that may or may not be attached to other tools. After an extensive search on the internet, one of these tools affected by the following steps is TimeMachine / TimeCapsule. If you are using them, I would not follow these steps. Rule of thumb: if you think it will mess up your system and you don’t want to worry about that, don’t do it.

Quick way

Disable:

sudo launchctl unload -w "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist"
sudo launchctl unload -w "/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist"

re-enable:

sudo launchctl load -w "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist"
sudo launchctl load -w "/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist"

Explanation

Stop and disable the background server:

Kill the Daemon:

sudo launchctl unload -w "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist"

Re-enable the Daemon:

sudo launchctl load -w "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist"

Stop and disable the spotlight application itself:

Kill the Agent:

sudo launchctl unload -w "/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist"

Re-enable the Agent:

sudo launchctl load -w "/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist"

You may get an error on the last command; just ignore it.

What it does

We stop the process from running and tell the system to fully disable it.

sudo launchctl unload -w "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist"

Now we need to stop the agent for the user and everyone else.

sudo launchctl unload -w "/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist"

The re-enable Spotlight back again:

If you need to re-enable the process, you can run the following line.

sudo launchctl load -w "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist"

The following line re-enable the Spotlight agent.

sudo launchctl load -w "/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist"

The reason you get the error is that you are effectively executing the command as root, but the root user hasn’t any running instance of Spotlight. On the other hand, only the root user is able to disable the automatic start of Spotlight. Thus the need for the sudo command.

Done!

There’s no need to reboot your computer after following these steps.

Automatically Block Facebook Applications Updated!

2009-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

Two years later, I decided to take a look at my old, old, OLD Greasemonkey script to see if it was still working. This is after two minor updates on Facebook and one major update that changed the whole design and structure.

Surprisingly, the script works exactly like it should. I made one minor update, but after many tests, it works for me.

If you have any suggestions, comments, or concerns, be sure to comment below. If you find any situations where it doesn’t work, please leave a comment and I will check it out.

To use this script, you need Greasemonkey add-on. Once you have it, just go here and click install: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/12393.

Here’s the code:

// Auto-Block Facebook Apps
//
// Version 1.2
//
// Date Written: 2007-09-18
// Last Modified: 2009-01-22 02:18 PM (14:18)
//
// (c) Copyright 2007 Ali Karbassi.
// Released under the GPL license
// http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// This is a Greasemonkey user script.
//
// To install, you need Greasemonkey: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
// Then restart Firefox and revisit this script.
// Under Tools, there will be a new menu item to "Install User Script".
// Accept the default configuration and install.
//
// To uninstall, go to Tools/Manage User Scripts,
// select "Auto-Block Facebook Apps", and click Uninstall.
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// WHAT IT DOES:
// After the facebook profile page is loaded, it finds all the
// applications that your friends have invited you to and blocks them.
// Do not worry though, you can go to
// http://facebook.com/privacy.php?view=platform&tab=all and unblock
// them
//
// NOTE: This does not alter, delete, edit, add, or anything else to
//       your facebook profile. Just remove or disable this script and
//       everything will be displayed the same as it used to
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// ==UserScript==
// @name        Auto-Block Facebook Apps 1.2
// @author      Ali Karbassi
// @namespace   http://www.karbassi.com
// @description This script will block app invites sent to you by friends.
//              After the facebook profile page is loaded, it finds all the
//              applications that your friends have invited you to and blocks
//              them. Do not worry though, you can go
//              http://facebook.com/privacy.php?view=platform&tab=all and
//              unblock them.
// @include     http://*facebook.tld/home.php*
// @include     http://*facebook.tld/reqs.php*
// ==/UserScript==
// Find Subdomain
var subDomain = getSubDomain();

// Get links on the front page/request page
var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
var appReqExp = /reqs\.php#confirm_(\d*)_(.*)/;

for (var i = 0; i < anchors.length; i++) {
  if (appReqExp.exec(anchors[i].href)) {
    prep(RegExp.$1, anchors[i]);
  }
}

// Remove any notifications about apps.
removeNotifications();

// Functions
// PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING.
// YOU MIGHT BREAK IT.
// Prepares everything. When things are correct, it calls BlockApp.
function prep(appID, appNode) {
  var postformMatch = /name="post_form_id" value="(\w+)"/;
  var post_form_id = 0;

  GM_xmlhttpRequest({
    method: 'GET',
    url: 'http://www.facebook.com/apps/block.php?id=' + appID
         + '&action=block',
    headers: {
      'User-Agent': window.navigator.userAgent,
      'Accept': 'text/html',
    },
    onload: function(responseDetails) {
      var searchString = 'This will not prevent you from seeing';
      if( (responseDetails.status == 200)
          && (responseDetails.responseText.indexOf(searchString) != -1) ) {

        // Show that we are working on it.
        appNode.removeAttribute('href');
        appNode.innerHTML = 'Reading confirmation page...';

        postformMatch.exec(responseDetails.responseText);

        // Calls function to block the app
        BlockApp(RegExp.$1, appID, appNode);
      }
    }
  });
}

function BlockApp(post_form_id, appID, appNode) {
  GM_xmlhttpRequest({
    method: 'POST',
    url: 'http://' + subDomain + 'facebook.com/apps/block.php?id=' + appID
         + '&action=block',
    headers: {
      'User-Agent': window.navigator.userAgent,
      'Accept': 'text/xml',
      'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
    },
    data: 'post_form_id=' + post_form_id + '&save=1',
    onload: function(responseDetails) {
      if (responseDetails.status == 200) {
        appNode.innerHTML = 'App Blocked!'
        appNode.href = 'http://facebook.com/reqs.php';
      }
    },
    onerror: function(responseDetails) {
      appNode.removeAttribute('href');
      appNode.innerHTML = 'App Block failed!';
    }
  });
}

function removeNotifications() {
  var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');
  for (var i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) {
    if (inputs[i].value == 'Ignore') {
      for (var j = 0; j < inputs[i].attributes.length; j++) {
        if ( (inputs[i].attributes[j].nodeName == 'onclick') &&
        (inputs[i].attributes[j].nodeValue.indexOf('click_add_platform_app') != -1) ) {
          var js = (inputs[i].attributes[j].nodeValue).split(' ');
          js.shift();
          js = js.join(' ');
          location.href = 'javascript:' + js;
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

function getSubDomain() {
  var subDomainRegExp = /http:\/\/(.*\.)facebook\.com/;
  var subDomain = '';
  if (subDomainRegExp.exec(document.location) != 0) {
    subDomain = RegExp.$1;
  }
  return subDomain;
}

Twitter style text counter in jQuery

2008-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

I. Love. jQuery. I can’t say how much I love jQuery because some people might get jealous because jQuery might out-rank them in the scale of 0 to jAWESOME!

Enough drooling and leg humping. In a recent project, we needed a counter to display the number of characters the user had left in a text area. Nothing to hard or interesting. This sort of thing has been out there for years. The problem is, all the scripts I’ve found would automatically truncate the text. That is, if the user has 100 characters and they enter 105 characters, the 101 to 105th characters are gone. This is very annoying!

Rather than control the user and annoy them, we wanted to take the method Twitter does; Warn the user, don’t allow them to submit until the warning is fixed. That is, if the text counter is negative, they cannot submit, but once it’s 0 or greater, it’s fair game.

To add to the fun, we needed visual cues, i.e. colours! After some search and no luck, I sat down and wrote this little beauty. It’s version 1 so be nice.

You can always grab a from the jQuery Plugin Repository.

/*
 * twitterCounter
 *
 * Displays a counter with the remaining text.
 *
 * Example:
 *  $('#description').twitterCounter(
 *  {
 *     limit: 140,
 *     counter: '#textcounter',
 *
 *     okSize: 140,
 *     okStyle: '.ok',
 *
 *     watchSize: 20,
 *     watchStyle: '.watch',
 *
 *     warningSize: 10,
 *     warningStyle: '.warning',
 *
 *     errorSize: 0,
 *     errorStyle: '.error',
 *  });
 *
 * $Version: 2008-10-24
 * Copyright (c) 2008 Ali Karbassi
 * ali.karbassi@gmail.com
 */
jQuery.fn.twitterCounter = function(options) {
   var curSize = $(this).val().length;
   var charsLeft = options['limit'] - curSize;
   var types = ['ok', 'watch', 'warning', 'error'];
   var x = {};
   $.each(types,
   function() {
      var el = this.toString();
      x[el] = {
         'Max': options[el + 'Size'],
         'Style': options[el + 'Style'].substring(0, 1) == '.' || options[el + 'Style'].substring(0, 1) == '#' ? options[el + 'Style'].substring(1, options[el + 'Style'].length) : options[el + 'Style'],
         'Type': options[el + 'Style'].substring(0, 1) == '.' ? 'class': 'id'
      }
   });
   for (var i = 0; i < types.length; i++) {
      var el = types[i].toString(); // Last Element check
      if (i + 1 < types.length) {
         var nextEl = types[i + 1].toString();
         if (charsLeft > x[nextEl]['Max'] && charsLeft < x[el]['Max'] + 1) {
            clean();
         }
      } else {
         if (charsLeft < x[el]['Max']) {
            clean();
         }
      }
   }
   $(options['counter']).text(charsLeft); // Add an event so the counter updates when the user types.
   $(this).one('keyup',
   function() {
      $(this).twitterCounter(options);
   });
   function clean() {
      if (x[el]['Type'] == 'class') {
         $.each(types,
         function() {
            var temp = this.toString();
            if ($(options['counter']).hasClass(temp)) {
               $(options['counter']).removeClass(temp);
            }
         });
         $(options['counter']).addClass(x[el]['Style']);
      } else {
         $(options['counter']).id(x[el]['Style']);
      }
   }
};

Uninstall Inquisitor and/or Glims

2008-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Recently I’ve giving Glims a try. Even though it tries to combine what Inquisitor and Saft both do into one single free application, I was very disappointed in the ease of use and look.

Before trying Glims, I had to uninstall (remove) Inquisitor that was already running on my version of Webkit and Safari. To do this, I opened up terminal and typed the following commands (with my password that is):

sudo rm -rf "/Library/InputManagers/Inquisitor/"
sudo rm -rf "/Library/Receipts/inquisitor*"
sudo rm -rf "~/Library/Application Support/Inquisitor/"

After couple hours of use, I wanted to switch back to Inquisitor, which meant that I had to remove Glims. To do that action, I pulled up terminal, yet again, and typed the follow:

sudo rm -rf "/Library/InputManagers/Glims/"
sudo rm -rf "~/Library/Application Support/Glims/"

That should take care of everything, leaving my computer nice and clean.

Primes in Ruby

2008-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

While working on some homework for a mathematics course, I ran into a problem; I needed a list of primes. I could manually produce a list of 10, maybe 20 primes but what’s the fun in that. Having my trusty MacBook near me, I loaded up TextMate and started to write a simple Ruby program to produce primes.

After a few minutes, the code turned into something much bigger than I expected. Researching to see if my formulas were correct, I continued on to create a separate file for this class. The outcome produced this:

class Primes
  attr_reader :primes

  def initialize(len = nil)
    return nil if len.nil?

    state = Numeric.new
    @primes = [2, 3]

    i = 4
    count = 0
    while count < len.abs - 2
      (2..(Math.sqrt(i).ceil)).each do
         |x|
         state = true
         if (i.divmod(x)[1] == 0)
            state = false
            break
         end
      end

      if state
        @primes << i
        count +=1
      end
      i += 1
    end

    return @primes
  end
end

To run, we do:

p = Primes.new(10)
puts p.primes

# Output
# ------
# 2
# 3
# 5
# 7
# 11
# 13
# 17
# 19
# 23
# 29

I know this isn’t perfect, but it was a fun 20 minute side project. If you want to improve on it, just head over to my gist.

Quickly, and efficiently, mass rename files in bash

2008-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Quick tip for everyone who is using Mac OS X, Unix, or anything with bash. If you want to mass rename a bunch of files, there isn’t a simple way of doing it. Either you would have to do it manually (mv ryan.txt steve.txt) or you could use this simple line of code.

ls "ryan.*" | awk '{print("mv "$1" "$1)}' | sed 's/ryan/steve/2' | /bin/sh

Let me explain it quickly. Let’s say you have a whole folder of files named "ryan.*" (such as ryan.txt, ryan.gif, ryan.php, ryan.asp, etc.) and you want to rename them to steve.*.

The first part displays a list of files that match the wildcard of ryan.* then it is piped to the second part (awk '{print("mv "$1" "$1)}'). This part prints a list of commands such as mv ryan.txt ryan.txt.

Well, that’s close but you want to move ryan.txt to steve.txt, not itself. This is where the third part comes in. What sed does in this situation is replace any instance of ryan with steve. The last part runs the whole thing as a list of shell commands.

CSS Font List

2008-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

While designing a simple website for a friend, I noticed that I knew nothing about the different font families I could use. While I have tons of fonts on my computer, I can’t use those on the web.

I did a quick Google search and found a small list and here it is for you.

‘American Typewriter’, ‘Courier New’, Courier, Monaco, mono
‘Arial Rounded MT Bold’, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
Baskerville, Georgia, Garamond, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif
‘Book Antiqua’, Georgia, Garamond, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif
‘Bookman Old Style’, Georgia, Garamond, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif
‘Brush Script MT’, ‘Comic Sans’, sans-serif
Chalkboard, ‘Comic Sans’, sans-serif
Didot, Georgia, Garamond, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif
Futura, Impact, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
‘Gill Sans’, ‘Lucida Grande’, ‘Lucida Sans Unicode’, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
‘Helvetica Neue’, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
‘Hoefler Text’, Garamond, Georgia, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif
‘Lucida Grande’, ‘Lucida Sans Unicode’, Lucida, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
‘Marker Felt’, ‘Comic Sans’ sans-serif
Myriad, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
Optima, ‘Lucida Grande’, ‘Lucida Sans Unicode’, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
Palatino, ‘Book Antiqua’, Georgia, Garamond, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif
Cochin, Georgia, Garamond, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif
‘Goudy Old Style’, garamond, ‘book antiqua’, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif sequence

Safari 3.1.1 and Saft 10.0.7

2008-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

I have always used Webkit ever since switching to Safari as my general browser. Being that I’m always getting the newest build, I know what’s coming when Safari decides to upgrade.

Since Apple updated Safari from 3.1 to 3.1.1, Saft, a wonderful “addon/plugin/what-have-you”, breaks. I know Hao Li at haoli.dnsalias.com will be updating it pretty soon, but I have found a quick fix until that is done.

Quit Safari.
Navigate to Applications/Saft.app.
Control click to show package contents.
Open bundle and go to Contents, then Resources, Saft.bundle, and Contents. You’re full path should be Applications/Saft.app/Contents/Resources/Saft.bundle/Contents.
Double click or open Info.plist in your favorite text editor.
Change SaftSupportedSafariBuild to 5525.18. This is to match the current Safari version/build. It will then look like this:
```
    <key>SaftSupportedSafariBuild</key>
    <array>
    <string>5525.18</string>
    </array>
```
Save and relaunch Safari.

How To Run Adium Aim Yahoo Msn Icq And Gtalk

2008-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

Being that not all locations allow all ports to be accessed through their gateway to the internet, sometimes you will run into problems in connecting to your IM programs such as iChat or, even better, Adium. The following steps should work for Pidgin.

Now, we know that all internet access points (WiFi spots, hotels, etc) will allow Port 80. This is because it is the port most web servers output websites. You can see what other ports are used for on Wikipedia’s List of TCP and UDP port numbers page.

So, we’re going to switch our Adium to connect through 80 and 443 (secure HTTP, or HTTPS as most refer to it as).

AIM

Let’s start with the most common messenger, AIM . Set the port to 443 and the server should be the default for your application. At the time of this it is login.oscar.aol.com.

YIM

For Yahoo, set the port to 80 and login server to scs.msg.yahoo.com.

MSN

For MSN , set the port to 80 and the login server to messenger.hotmail.com. Also check the “Connect via HTTP” box. This allows access through port 80.

Google Talk

For Google Talk, or I’d imagine any Jabber network, set the Transport Layer Security. Also be sure to check “Force old-style SSL” and “Require SSL/TLS”. If you check “Do strict certificate checks”, you will get a message box every time you try to load up Adium to accept a certificate. I have left this on, but I do know for a fact if you uncheck this, that message will not bother you again.

ICQ

Lastly, if you are still using ICQ, you can set your port to 443 and login server to login.oscar.aol.com. I wouldn’t suggest using ICQ anymore because it’s a pretty ~bad~ old service. Check out the criticisms on wikipedia.

Now, if you restart your Adium (or whatever client you are using), you should have connection to the IM protocols.

Draw backs

Some of the drawbacks to this method is that your data is being sent over an unsecured port, and therefore can be subject to any sniffers. If you are paranoid about your chats, I’d suggest using an online version such as Meebo which does go through HTTPS.

Safari 3.1 and Pith Helmet

2008-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Recently Apple updated their browser Safari to version 3.1. It does boast new features that us web developers love, but it also crashes some hacks we also love. Note that I’m not calling them “plug-ins”. Read the reasoning behind this.

Now, one of my favorite Safari hacks has been Pith Helmet and with the new update, it is considered “broken.”

Here’s how to fix it:

Quit Safari.
Navigate to /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/PithHelmet.bundle.
Control click to show package contents.
Open bundle and go to Contents.
Double click or open info.plist in your favorite text editor.
Change MaxBundleVersion to 5525.13. This is to match the current Safari version/build.
```
<key>MaxBundleVersion</key>
<string>5525.13</string>
```
Save and relaunch Safari.

Facebook News Feed Filter

2008-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

While stumbling around on Facebook, it seems like they accidentally released (or to me for a second) a new front page. The front page we usually see is the News Feed. The new page is the same News Feed, but filtered.

I took the liberty to take some pictures.

What do you think?

Must Have Free Mac Apps

2008-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

A few friends of mine have recently switched over to Mac(Macintosh). I have been using my Macbook for some time now and have grown accustom to some applications. This will be a two part article. The following will be free applications.

This is the first tool I load on any Mac I use. What Quicksilver does is allow you to launch any application without actually looking inside the Finder/Application folder. Still confused? Check out many resources that explain all the ways to use Quicksilver.

If you use any sort of IM such as AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Google Talk, or others, then Adium is perfect for you. It combines them all without any adds or an ugly design.

WILL. PLAY. ANYTHING. Well, just about everything. VLC does play more than Quicktime and the interface does integrate well into Mac OS X.

A must have. Growl displays little notifications on your screen for a few seconds. Great for anything and everything. A lot of programs use this.

Mac OS X has a wonderful power management system. To conserve power it first dims your display before going to screensaver. As useful as that is, sometimes you can’t have your screen dim or go to screensaver. One example is when you are giving a presentation or watching/reading something. Caffeine sits on your menu bar. To turn it on, click it. To turn it off, click it again. It’s that simple.

Currently the best browser out there. Even though Safari is bundled with Mac OS X, I have grown to love Firefox a lot more. There is so much to say about Firefox. I would suggest reading “Feature by feature: Firefox vs. Safari” or doing your own research.

Flickr Uploadr is the best thing for uploading to Flickr. Enough said.

While Quicktime handles most types of videos, one problem is runs into is Windows Media files (mpg, mpeg, etc). Flip4Mac fixes this problem.

Chicken of the VNC is a VNC client for Mac OS X. A VNC client allows you to connect, display, and use a remote computer. The different between this and Microsoft’s Remote Desktop is the speed and usability. Although both are free, I prefer this over Microsoft’s product.

If you use Last.fm, then iScrobbler is a perfect tool for your iTunes collection. It beats out Last.fm’s own app. It does everything you need without taking up much space or resources.

As an avid webcomic reader I read around 10 different comics almost daily. This produces the problem of loading all those websites. iStrip takes care of all that in a very simple, yet intuitive interface. I just hope it was opensource, but alas it is not. It does have 100s of webcomics already.

Mozy currently offers 2GB of free storage. I would suggest anyone to check them out. It automatically backs-up your important documents and application settings. It does a nightly backup and it can be configured to your hearts content.

While Flip4Mac fixes Windows Media for Quicktime, Parian fixes most others.

smcFanControl is an amazing app that allows you to control your Mac’s fan. This is a must have for any user of Macbook or Macbook Pro.

The Unarchiver is so much better than the industry “standard” StuffIt Expander. I’ve learned that StuffIt Expander is EXTREMELY bloated and can be completely replaced with this or some others tools.

As a regular IRC user, I have tested out many apps for just that. Not many have come close to mIRC on Windows, but Colloquy has come the closest.

I am lucky to own a very nice digital camera but it does not have GPS. Geotagging is a must for avid photographers, however Geotagger solves that problem. All it requires is Google Earth (which is a free application) and your photographs. Easy as that.

BitTorrent has taken over the world as the best way to share media files. While many believe it is only used for illegal uses, it is actually being used by many reliable sources, such as NASA. Transmission is by far the best tool for just that.

I wouldn’t suggest Trimmit for everyone, but for a select few, this is a must have. Trimmit removes ‘pointless’ languages and other things from programs. I would think twice before using this on all your applications while it may cause problems. The developer says it is completely safe. I haven’t ran into any problems myself, but take that with a grain of salt.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score - Binary Joke

2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Update: It seems that 001100010010011110100001101101110011.com doesn’t exist anymore. Also, ilovebender.com has been bought out by doubletwist.com

In Futurama: Bender’s Big Score, Bender reads off a series of 0’s and 1’s to travel through time. Now I won’t go much into the movie, but the writers are known for their geek humor. You should really go buy the movie. It’s pretty cheap at Amazon.

Now, if you take the whole thing by itself, it’s not a 16-bit code, but 32-bit. I believe IBM made a few super computers that handle 32-bit binary. With that said, we can’t just pump it into a binary-to-ASCII converter. Watching the movies I noticed that the binary code he reads is symmetrical. If you take the first half of each line you will notice that the binary is translated to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Wow, that simple.

If you type the actual string out into google, you will notice that the producers have actually registered the domain 001100010010011110100001101101110011.com and displayed just one image. How nice of them. Unlike the site ilovebender.com, there is no other information on the page.

They have set up a nice auto-responder to anything that goes to bender@ilovebender.com. It reads:

Dear New Friend,

Thank you for writing to me, Bender. It really means a lot to me. Not many humans contact me because I am so rude and impatient. You’re starting to get on my nerves now. Quit buggin’ me, meatbag!

P.S. - Buy my DVD.

Love,

Bender

I’m glad to see writers, producers, directors, and whoever involved taking the extra measure to make the experience more enjoyable. Now go by the DVD.

Game that makes you think: Passage

2008-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

![Passage Screenshot][1]

It’s been a long while since I’ve sat down and played a video game, especially on my macbook. Today I ran into a simple, yet very thought-provoking game, Passage. Albeit, the game can be played on Windows, Linux, and Mac. As you can see in the screenshot above, it’s a 8-bit type game with simple controls. I highly suggest you play the game once, then read the Creator’s Statement. An excerpt is below:

It presents an entire life, from young adulthood through old age and death, in the span of five minutes. Of course, it’s a game, not a painting or a film, so the choices that you make as the player are crucial. There’s no ‘right’ way to play Passage, just as there’s no right way to interpret it.

How to change bash prompt

2008-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

Some people have asked me how I changed my bash/terminal prompt from the default prompt to what I have. It’s actually a very simple process.

![Change Terminal Prompt

Step 1]

First, load up Terminal and open up your ~/.bash_profile file. (FYI, be sure to read the difference between .bash_profile and .bashrc.)

![Change Terminal Prompt

Step 2]

Then type the following:

export PS1="\w>: "
export PS2=" > "

There are a lot of possible things you can enter. Here are some of them that work well:

Command	Description	Example
\a	ASCII bell character	–
\d	the current date	Sun Feb 08
\H	hostname	Ginger.local
\h	shortened hostname	Ginger
\u	your username	dave
\w	current working directory	/Applications/Network
\W	basename of the current working directory	Network
\T	current time (12-hour HH:MM:SS format)	01:16:49
\t	current time (HH:MM:SS format)	13:16:49
\@	current time (12-hour AM/PM format)	1:16 PM
\n	new line	–
\	print a backslash	\

Table via MacDevCenter.com.

CheckUp - How to uninstall

2008-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

I love installing, previewing, reviewing, alpha-, beta-, gamma- testing applications. This includes applications that might not work, might cause problems for me later on, or just plain suck. I have run into many of these programs/applications before. The last problem I want to deal with is not being able to fully remove it.

The latest of these problems has been CheckUp by app4mac. As of this article, it’s in Preview 2. The reason why it’s called that is because many programmers are moving away from “beta” in the public eye being that every web 2.0 website out there uses that word. This is basically Beta version #2.

That being said, I will not talk about the application itself. I am will show you how to fully remove the application from Mac.

![Terminal

Remove Checkup]

First load up Terminal (in Finder go to Utlities > Terminal.app). In terminal type:

sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.app4mac.CheckUpAgent.plist

It will ask for your root password and once you type it in, it will remove the Launch Daemon.

Next, remove the Application itself by physically removing it from your Application Folder and put it in your Trash.

RSS Links Updated

2007-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

I have updated my RSS Feed locations. Please update your reader to http://feeds.feedburner.com/karbassi/tech.

The RSS for the comments are located at http://feeds.feedburner.com/karbassi/tech/comments.

Leopard: Turn off Bonjour (mDNSResponder)

2007-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Update: [jaqkar ]noted in the comments that this does not work in Snow Leopard and because of good reason. As stated in the Apple Support Document Mac OS X v10.6: Disabling mDNSResponder will disable DNS, “Mac OS X v10.6 uses the mDNSResponder process for unicast DNS (Domain Name System) functions, as well as Bonjour functions. Disabling the mDNSResponder process will also disable unicast DNS resolution, and without unicast DNS resolution, Mac OS X v10.6 cannot resolve hostnames such as www.apple.com.” On Apple’s Support site, there are instructions to disable Bonjour if need be.

I recently upgrades to Leopard and the operating system has been great. After installing my core set of programs, I noticed that mDNSResponder was going nuts. Being that I am on an university network, there are hundreds on the current sub-network. By default, Leopard has a “feature” that lists all the local computers (windows or mac) that it finds. This is called Bonjour You may know about this via iChat, or other programs. Sure, that’s nice, but does it take up lots processes. Again, this would be nice upon request, but the task is done repeatedly. The load on your system just gets out of hand.

After some research, I found that there is a Launch Daemon for this. Here’s how you turn it off, but don’t worry, you can turn it back on anytime, without restarts or anything.

Load up Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app) and type the following.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

To turn it back on, just do the opposite:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Solution to The Spanner's "A bit of fun" challenge

2007-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

A while back, The Spanner’s very own Gareth Heyes posted a decent challenge. As I stated in a previous posting I took on the challenge. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would, but it was still challenging. I’ve waited a while before posting the actual code I used; that way people can figure it out themselves without any spoilers. That being said, it’s about time I posted how I did it. Remember, my code might, and probably is, different than what you may have used.

Note: I use console.debug, which is from Firebug for Firefox.

var input = '38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 55 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 50 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 50 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 50 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 55 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 55 59';


String.prototype.ncr2c = function( )
{
  return this.replace( /&#x([\da-f]{2,4});/gi, function( $0, $1 ) { return String.fromCharCode( "0x" + $1 ) } )
}

String.prototype.octToAscii = function()
{
  var temp = '', result = '', input = this + '%';

  for(i = 0; i = 0; j++, k--)
      {
        if( (temp.match("\\n")) && (notMatchedYet) )
        {
          k--;
          notMatchedYet = false;
        }
        partial = temp.charAt(j) * Math.pow(8, k);
        running += partial;
      }
      result += String.fromCharCode(running);
      temp = '';
    }
  }
  return result.replace(/%40%/g, "%40<br />%")
}

// Split up string into array
var parts = input.split(' ');

// New parts
var step1 = Array();

// convert number into character code value
for( var i=0; i < parts.length; i++)
{
  step1[i] = String.fromCharCode(parseInt(parts[i]));
}

// Join all the values together
step1 = step1.join('');
console.debug("step1: %o", step1);

// Split again at the ';' point
var step2 = step1.split(';');

// Pointless empty element at the end.
step2.pop();

// We still need the ';' at the end of each element
for( var i=0; i < step2.length; i++)
{
  step2[i] += ';';
  step2[i] = step2[i].ncr2c();
}

// Join all the values together, again.
step2 = step2.join('');
console.debug("step2: %o", step2);

// Split again by '%' point
var step3 = step2.split('%5C');

// Pointless element in the beginning
step3.shift();

console.debug("step3: %o", step3);

var step4 = Array();

// convert number into character code value
for( var x=0; x < step3.length; x++)
{
  step4[x] = step3[x].octToAscii();
}

// Our Answer
console.debug("step4: %o", step4.join(''));

Hope this helps someone out there.

Replace Picasa with Flickr

2007-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Okay, maybe the title is a little misleading, but that’s what I wanted to do. I love Google for mostly everything, but one thing Yahoo did right was to snatch up Flickr. Flickr has so much more to offer that Picasa doesn’t. One side note though; Flickr doesn’t have a desktop photo organizer, but that’s no real loss for me.

Nevertheless, I love how Google has started to add their “gbar” (Google Bar) to the top of all their applications. Even though they aren’t consistent, it’s nice to see, and use. After a while, I noticed myself clicking on Photo when I wanted to go to Flickr, not Picasa. Well, rather than fix my own stupid mistake and not click the link, I decided to fix the link and make it point to Flickr instead. Sorry Google, but I just enjoy Flickr more.

Here’s how I did it.

To use this script, you need Greasemonkey add-on. Once you have it, just go here and click install: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13244.

// Google Photo Link with Flickr
//
// Version 1.0
//
// Date Written: 2007-10-23
// Last Modified: 2007-10-23 7:56 PM (19:56)
//
// (c) Copyright 2007 Ali Karbassi.
// Released under the GPL license
// http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// This is a Greasemonkey user script.
//
// To install, you need Greasemonkey: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
// Then restart Firefox and revisit this script.
// Under Tools, there will be a new menu item to "Install User Script".
// Accept the default configuration and install.
//
// To uninstall, go to Tools/Manage User Scripts,
// select "Google Photo Link with Flickr", and click Uninstall.
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// WHAT IT DOES:
// After the facebook profile page is loaded, it finds all the
// applications that your friends have invited you to and blocks them.
// Do not worry though, you can go to
// http://facebook.com/privacy.php?view=platform&tab=all and unblock
// them
//
// NOTE: This does not alter, delete, edit, add, or anything else to
//       your facebook profile. Just remove or disable this script and
//       everything will be displayed the same as it used to
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// ==UserScript==

// @name        Google Photo Link with Flickr 1.0
// @author      Ali Karbassi
// @namespace   http://www.karbassi.com
// @description Replaces the link on the Google Bar that says Photo from going to Picasa to Flickr.
// @include     http://*.google.com*
// @include     http://google.com*

// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    var bar = document.getElementById('gbar').getElementsByTagName('a');
    if (bar) {
        for (var i = 0; i < bar.length; i++) {
            if (bar[i].textContent == 'Photos') {
                // Replace the link from Picasa to Flickr; Sorry Google :(
                bar[i].href = 'http://www.flickr.com';

                // Replace the text from Photo to Flickr
                bar[i].textContent = 'Flickr';

                // We found it, so there is no reason to continue.
                break;
            }
        };
    }

}());

Unmount all mounted Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) volumes

2007-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

I travel from location to location, jumping from one wireless access point to another. While I love my mac, but I’ve always hated that it stalls whenever I reconnect to a wireless network because I didn’t unmount my AFPs before disconnecting. The operating system would give me the spinner of death for a few minutes before it stopped.

I set out to fix this problem. More after the break.

First, I wrote a script that will unmount all AFP mounts.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Unmount all Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) volumes that are currently
# mounted
#
# Version 1.0
#
# Date Written: 2007-10-11
# Last Modified: 2007-10-11 02:03 PM (14:03)
#
# (c) Copyright 2007 Ali Karbassi.
# Released under the GPL license
# http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

if [ `df | grep 'afp' | wc -l | sed 's| ||g'` != '0' ]
then
  umount $(df | grep 'afp' | sed 's|.* /|/|')
fi

Save the above to any location. I have a folder in my user directory called Scripts, so this file is located at ~/Scripts/unmountAllAFP.sh. Be sure to chmod +x this file. You can do this like so:

chmod +x unmountAllAFP.sh

Then you will need to install SleepWatcher (current version as of now is 2.0.4).

After this is installed, load up terminal and follow along.

cd ~
touch .sleep
chmod 0700 .sleep
mate .sleep

Note that I use TextMate. You can replace mate with nano.

Once you have the .sleep file open, add the absolute location of the script you want to run when your mac goes to sleep. For this example, we want our unmounting script to run. You should have the following in the file.

~/Scripts/unmountAllAFP.sh

That’s it. This will run every-time your mac goes to sleep.

Javascript: Octal to ASCII

2007-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Gareth Heyes posted a fun little challenge and I couldn’t help but attack it. It took me longer than I thought. Not to be a spoiler, but at some point you have to convert octals to ASCII values. Now, I have done decimal to ASCII, binary to ASCII, and even hex to ASCII, but never octal to ASCII. Searching around, I found everyone seemed to use PHP, ASP, or some sort of “higher” level programming.

I found some really old code on some google cache, which I lost the url to, and it seemed to work. By working, I mean, the idea was right, the code wasn’t. After fooling around with it for a bit, I got something like the following.

String.prototype.octToAscii = function()
{
  var temp = '', result = '', input = this + '%';
  for(i = 0; i = 0; j++, k--)
      {
        if( (temp.match("\\n")) && (notMatchedYet) )
        {
          k--;
          notMatchedYet = false;
        }
        partial = temp.charAt(j) * Math.pow(8, k);
        running += partial;
      }
      result += String.fromCharCode(running);
      temp = '';
    }
  }
  return result.replace(/%40%/g, "%40<br />%")
};

Gareth posted his answer as follows, but I cleaned up the styling a little to be more readable.

c = '38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 55 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 50 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 50 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 50 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 55 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 48 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 51 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 51 54 59 38 35 120 50 53 59 38 35 120 51 53 59 38 35 120 52 51 59 38 35 120 51 49 59 38 35 120 51 52 59 38 35 120 51 55 59';

c = c.split(' ');
d = '';

for(i = 0; i < c.length; i++)
    d += String.fromCharCode(c[i]);

c = d.replace(/&#x/g,'');
c = c.split(';');
d = '';

for(i = 0; i < c.length; i++)
    d += String.fromCharCode(parseInt(c[i],16));

c = unescape(d).split('\\');
d='';

for(i = 1; i < c.length; i++)
    d += String.fromCharCode(parseInt(c[i],8));

alert(d);

2018 update: Just for fun.

function octToAscii(str) {

  // Base 10
  str = str
    .split(' ')
    .map(function(c) { return String.fromCharCode(parseInt(c, 10)); })
    .join('');

  // Base 16
  str = str.replace(/&#x/g, '')
    .split(';')
    .map(function(c) { return String.fromCharCode(parseInt(c, 16)); })
    .join('');

  // Base 8
  str = unescape(str)
    .split('\\')
    .map(function(c) { return String.fromCharCode(parseInt(c, 8)); })
    .join('');

  return str;
};

console.log( octToAscii(c) );

Programming Child Names or "What not to name your children"

2007-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

Am I being too much of a geek to even consider this? I always thought it would be super cute (and nerdy) to name your child after something you love. Okay, maybe not for all loves, but it works for some loves. People name their children after their parents, grandparents, celebrities, and even pets; so why not name a child after programming languages. Maybe it’s too much of a commitment to name your child after a programming language, but maybe a pet.

Here’s a short list of programming languages that could be names also. Bare with me.

Perl, Ruby: "Pearl" and "Ruby"; Both could be said to be named after jewels.
C, C++: Alright, you shouldn't name your child just one letter, but you can name him or her which starts with the character C. Examples: Chris, Chad, Christy, Caroline, etc. Now, if you could make your child name their child with a C
PHP/ASP/JSP: You have to have a last name that starts with P. So, let's say you're last name is Perkins. You can name your children, Phillip Hurburt Perkins, Allison Susan Perkins, or Jenny Sandra Perkins.

On the other hand, you could always name a new programming language after your child. That would be incredibly sweet also. You decide: too geeky or reasonable?

Javascript: ucfirst

2007-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

In PHP there is ucfirst whose purpose is to uppercase the first letter of the string. While working in Javascript I ran into a problem where I wanted to do this. I searched high and low and couldn’t find a native function that would do this. So, I ended up writing my own.

String.prototype.ucfirst = function () {

    // Split the string into words if string contains multiple words.
    var x = this.split(/\s+/g);

    for (var i = 0; i < x.length; i++) {

        // Splits the word into two parts. One part being the first letter,
        // second being the rest of the word.
        var parts = x[i].match(/(\w)(\w*)/);

        // Put it back together but uppercase the first letter and
        // lowercase the rest of the word.
        x[i] = parts[1].toUpperCase() + parts[2].toLowerCase();
    }

    // Rejoin the string and return.
    return x.join(' ');
};

A quick example on how to use it:

var s = "hello my name is ali karbassi.";

//hello my name is ali karbassi.
document.write( s );

//HELLO MY NAME IS ALI KARBASSI.
document.write( s.toUpperCase() );

//hello my name is ali karbassi.
document.write( s.toLowerCase() );

//Hello My Name Is Ali Karbassi
document.write( s.ucfirst() );

Update: Adam noted another way to do this.

str = str.toLowerCase().replace(/\b([a-z])/gi,function(c){return c.toUpperCase()});

Automatically Block Facebook Applications

2007-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

While working on the next version of my Facebook Profile Cleaner, I noticed something that I was doing. Every time I would log into Facebook, I would have 3-5 new application invites. Personally, I don’t care too much about them (if you didn’t know already). I set out to see if I could come up with a way to automatically block them upon sign on/request.

That task seemed pretty easy, but it didn’t turn out to be. First of all, Facebook hides their “Block Application” button on you. The first place you see it is on the application’s page itself. Second, on the user’s request page. it only shows an add and ignore. If you click ignore, it ignores that specific request, not any future ones. This gets real annoying when a ton of your friends decide to add (and send you requests) of the same application. And third, I was worried that maybe I would want to remove a block later. However Facebook was kind enough to provide a page to “remove” blocked applications. By going to http://facebook.com/privacy.php?view=platform&tab=all, the second half of the page will list applications you have blocked. Notice they are listed by the order they were blocked; most recently blocked will be on the bottom.

That being said, I set out to actually block each application invite I get. After a few hours here and there, I finally got it fully working. The code should be clean enough for anyone interested enough to walk though. But note that if you just want the application and don’t care for the actual code, then just install it and be on your merry way :).

If you have any suggestions, comments, or concerns, be sure to comment below.

To use this script, you need Greasemonkey add-on. Once you have it, just go here and click install: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/12393.

Here’s the code:

// Auto-Block Facebook Apps
//
// Version 1.0
//
// Date Written: 2007-09-18
// Last Modified: 2007-09-19 12:51 PM (12:51)
//
// (c) Copyright 2007 Ali Karbassi.
// Released under the GPL license
// http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// This is a Greasemonkey user script.
//
// To install, you need Greasemonkey: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
// Then restart Firefox and revisit this script.
// Under Tools, there will be a new menu item to "Install User Script".
// Accept the default configuration and install.
//
// To uninstall, go to Tools/Manage User Scripts,
// select "Auto-Block Facebook Apps", and click Uninstall.
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// WHAT IT DOES:
// After the facebook profile page is loaded, it finds all the
// applications that your friends have invited you to and blocks them.
// Do not worry though, you can go to
// http://facebook.com/privacy.php?view=platform&tab=all and unblock
// them
//
// NOTE: This does not alter, delete, edit, add, or anything else to
//       your facebook profile. Just remove or disable this script and
//       everything will be displayed the same as it used to
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// ==UserScript==

// @name        Auto-Block Facebook Apps 1.0
// @author      Ali Karbassi
// @namespace   http://www.karbassi.com
// @description This script will block app invites sent to you by friends. After the facebook profile page is loaded, it finds all the applications that your friends have invited you to and blocks them. Do not worry though, you can go to http://facebook.com/privacy.php?view=platform&tab=all and unblock them.
// @include     http://facebook.com/home.php*
// @include     http://*.facebook.com/home.php*
// @include     http://facebook.com/reqs.php*
// @include     http://*.facebook.com/reqs.php*
// ==/UserScript==



// Find Subdomain
var subDomain = getSubDomain();

// Get links on the front page/request page
var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
var appReqExp = /reqs\.php#confirm_(\d*)_(.*)/;

for( var i = 0; i < anchors.length; i++ )
{
  if( appReqExp.exec( anchors[i].href ) )
  {
    prep(RegExp.$1, anchors[i]);
  }
}

// Remove any notifications about apps.
removeNotifications();


// Functions
// PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING. YOU MIGHT BREAK IT.

// Prepares everything. When things are correct, it calls BlockApp.
function prep(appID, appNode)
{
  var postformMatch = /name="post_form_id" value="(\w+)"/;
  var post_form_id = 0;

  GM_xmlhttpRequest(
    {
      method: 'GET',
      url: 'http://www.facebook.com/apps/block.php?id=' + appID + '&action=block',
      headers:
      {
        'User-Agent': window.navigator.userAgent,
        'Accept': 'text/html',
      },
      onload: function(responseDetails)
      {
        if( (responseDetails.status == 200) && (responseDetails.responseText.indexOf('This will not prevent you from seeing') != -1) )
        {
          // Show that we are working on it.
          appNode.removeAttribute('href');
          appNode.innerHTML = 'Reading confirmation page...';

          postformMatch.exec( responseDetails.responseText );

          // Calls function to block the app
          BlockApp(RegExp.$1, appID, appNode);
        }
      }
    }
  );
}

function BlockApp(post_form_id, appID, appNode)
{
  GM_xmlhttpRequest(
    {
      method: 'POST',
      url: 'http://' + subDomain + 'facebook.com/apps/block.php?id=' + appID + '&action=block',
      headers:
      {
        'User-Agent': window.navigator.userAgent,
        'Accept': 'text/xml',
        'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
      },
      data:'post_form_id=' + post_form_id + '&save=1',
      onload: function (responseDetails)
      {
        if( (responseDetails.status == 200) && (responseDetails.responseText.indexOf('You have blocked this application') != -1) )
        {
          appNode.innerHTML = 'App Blocked!'
          appNode.href = 'http://facebook.com/reqs.php';
        }
      },
      onerror: function (responseDetails)
      {
        appNode.removeAttribute('href');
        appNode.innerHTML = 'App Block failed!';
      }
    }
  );
}

function removeNotifications()
{
  var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');
  for (var i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++)
  {
    if( inputs[i].value == 'Ignore' )
    {
      for( var j = 0; j < inputs[i].attributes.length; j++)
      {
        if( (inputs[i].attributes[j].nodeName == 'onclick') && (inputs[i].attributes[j].nodeValue.indexOf('click_add_platform_app') != -1) )
        {
          var js = (inputs[i].attributes[j].nodeValue).split(' ');
          js.shift();
          js = js.join(' ');
          location.href = 'javascript:' + js;
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

function getSubDomain()
{
  var subDomainRegExp = /http:\/\/(.*\.)facebook\.com/;
  var subDomain = '';
  if (subDomainRegExp.exec(document.location) != 0)
  {
    subDomain = RegExp.$1;
  }
  return subDomain;
}

Facebook Profile Cleaner

2007-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

I use Facebook the way you should; for keeping track of my friends, their information, planning events, discussing things, etc. I don’t believe that Facebook should be another MySpace (a popularity contest).

That being aside, I didn’t enjoy the fact that Facebook now allows “apps” (applications/widgets) to be added to profiles. Sure, some applications are useful, but like MySpace, it gets annoying. So, with that I created a Greasemonkey script to remove, per se, all those apps. You can also specify others, such as “Mini-Feed”, “Education”, etc.

To use this script, you need Greasemonkey add-on. Once you have it, just go here and click install: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/11747.

I spent around 1 hour and whipped it up and it works better wonders. To me, it loads the page faster. Here’s the code:

// Facebook Profile Cleaner
//
// Version 1.0
//
// Date Written: 2007-08-26
//
// Copyright (c) 2007, Ali Karbassi
// Released under the GPL license
// http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// This is a Greasemonkey user script.
//
// To install, you need Greasemonkey: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
// Then restart Firefox and revisit this script.
// Under Tools, there will be a new menu item to "Install User Script".
// Accept the default configuration and install.
//
// To uninstall, go to Tools/Manage User Scripts,
// select "Facebook Profile Cleaner", and click Uninstall.
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// WHAT IT DOES:
// After the facebook profile page is loaded, it finds all the
// applications that are not in the list below and 'removes' them. By
// remove, I mean, not display them.
//
// NOTE: This does not alter, delete, edit, add, or anything else to
//       your facebook profile. Just remove or disable this script and
//       everything will be displayed the same as it used to
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// ==UserScript==
// @name           Facebook Profile Cleaner
// @namespace      http://tech.karbassi.com/
// @description    Removes applications from all profiles. Clean out
//                 all those annoying applications people add. This
//                 script will remove all the applications (plus
//                 others if specified) from any facebook profile
//                 you view.
// @include        http://*.facebook.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

// Comment out the ones you don't want displayed
// Note: This list is the 'original' apps
var AppsToKeep =
	[
		'box_app_2407511955',	// Mutual Friends
		'box_app_2356318349',	// Local Network Friends
		//'box_app_2503140832',	// Friends in Other Networks
		'box_app_2305272732',	// Photos
		//'box_app_2347471856',	// Notes
		//'box_app_2361831622',	// Groups
		//'box_app_2341989679',	// Mini-Feed
		'box_app_2327158227',	// Information
		'box_app_2297529396',	// Education and Work
		//'box_app_2386512837',	// Gifts
		'box_app_2719290516',	// The Wall
	];


// DO NOT EDIT
// Well, unless you know what you're doing

Array.prototype.inArray = function (value)
{
	var i = this.length;
	while( i-- )
	{
		if( this[i] === value )
		{
			return true;
		}
	}
	return false;
};

pageDivs = document.getElementsByTagName('div');

// Delete application divs
for(var i = 0; i < pageDivs.length; i++)
{
	if( ( pageDivs[i].id.indexOf( 'box_app_' ) === 0 ) && ( !AppsToKeep.inArray( pageDivs[i].id ) ) )
	{
		pageDivs[i].style.display = 'none';
	}
}

Cols and Colgroups

2007-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

Who loves working with tables in HTML(Hypertext Markup Language) or XHTML(Extensible HyperText Markup Language)?

<sarcasm> I know I do! </sarcasm>

Recently I’ve been working with trying to get a column in a table to format correctly. It’s something very simple; I have 3 columns and X rows. I want the first column to be aligned left while the other columns to aligned right. Also, I want to style each column differently. Going through W3C’s HTML 4.01 Specification, I found column groups. After a few minutes of reading, it looked like exactly what I needed.

I grabbed W3C’s sample table to test with. Wow, that didn’t work. I dumped their code into a page (and fixed it so it validates with XHTML 1.0 Strict) so you can see it’s not what they say it should be. Surprisingly it doesn’t work the way they say it does.

I went looking for some answers and Mark J. Reed said it best:

First, you should know that due to the CSS rendering model, <col> and <colgroup> are both severely limited in what styling they support (at least outside of IE, which violates the CSS rendering model to provide them more power, breaking other things in the process). To be precise, there are only four things you’re allowed to do with a table-column (individual or group) style:

set the background color

set the width

set up a border

control visibility

That’s it. You can’t make a column bold or in a different font or give it centered text or any of the other things that seem perfectly reasonable before you dive into the detailed requirements of the CSS spec.

So what now? Will HTML5 fix this? I rather not use some hack to do something that should work already.

Mac Tip #2: Automatic iTunes Podcast Playlist

2007-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

I show you how to listen to your podcasts continuously. I hope you like it.

Mac Tip #1: Setting Two Sound Settings

2007-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Mac Tip #1: A very simple how to on how to set two different sound settings.

What is detroit.app.Application?

2007-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Recently Google Docs & Spreadsheets released a new version of their wonderful application. It’s a wonderful new interface and foreshadows what Google Docs is going to turn into.

Like always, I went snooping around to see what I could find. It’s usually fun to see what they didn’t implement yet. Taking a look at the javascript source (notice the link might change) I found something very interesting.

ac[_P].Ca = function()
{
   throw Error("[detroit.app.Application] Not implemented");
};

Apart from it being “Google Code” (no useful variable names), it shows that their is an application called “detroit.app” being developed. There is a Google Sales office in Detroit, but apart from that, I could not find anything related.

Most applications will have a codename before it’s final release. So now our part is to figure out what “detroit.app.Application” is.

Update: There seems to be many calls to “detroit.ui.” however. One of them is “detroit.ui.Pager”. The name “detroit” could be the code-name for the next release.

Presentations coming to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

2007-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Taking a snoop into the new (mentioned everywhere) Google Doc & Spreadsheets javascript, I found an the icon for Presentation. Presentation is basically Keynote on Mac or Powerpoint on Windows.

The Presentation icon might join the already implemented are the Google Document icon and Google Spreadsheet icon .

It seems Google is pushing towards the Office App that has been rumored.

Conky

2007-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been asked several times about how I set up my Conky. First a little about Conky. It is a light-weight system monitor, according to their website, but you can do much more. You can show basic system stats to grab RSS Feeds to show your Media Player (Amarok for me) status.

Now onto my configurations. Rather than explain each thing, I will show you how mine is set up (without the RSS, weather, and Amarok).

# UBUNTU-CONKY
# A comprehensive conky script, configured for use on
# Ubuntu / Debian Gnome, without the need for any external scripts.
#
# Based on conky-jc and the default .conkyrc.
# INCLUDES:
# - tail of /var/log/messages
# - netstat connections to your computer
#
# -- Pengo (conky@pengo.us)
#

# set to yes if you want tormo to be forked in the background
background no
cpu_avg_samples 2
net_avg_samples 2

out_to_console no

# Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus)
own_window yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
own_window_colour brown

# Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone)
double_buffer yes

# Subtract file system buffers from used memory?
no_buffers yes

# fiddle with window
use_spacer yes
use_xft no

# Update interval in seconds
update_interval 2

# Minimum size of text area
# minimum_size 250 5

# Draw shades?
draw_shades no
draw_borders no

# Text stuff
draw_outline no # amplifies text if yes
draw_borders no
xftfont Monospace:size=9
xftalpha 0.8
uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase

# Stippled borders?
stippled_borders 3

# border margins
border_margin 9

# border width
border_width 10

# Default colors and also border colors, grey90 == #e5e5e5
default_color gray

# Text alignment, other possible values are commented
#alignment top_left
alignment top_right
#alignment bottom_left
#alignment bottom_right

# Gap between borders of screen and text
gap_x 10
gap_y 10

# stuff after 'TEXT' will be formatted on screen

TEXT
${color white}$alignc$sysname $kernel on $machine
${color white}$alignc${exec whoami} @ $nodename
${color orange}INFORMATION ${hr 2}${color 000000}
${color 000000}Date: ${color white}${time %A,%d %B}
${color 000000}Time: ${color white}${time %k:%M:%S}${alignr}${color 000000}Uptime: ${color white}$uptime

${color orange}CPU ${hr 2}${color 000000}
Freq:${color white} ${freq}MHz ${alignr}${color 000000}Load:${color white} ${loadavg}${color 000000}
${color white}$cpubar
${cpugraph 000000 FCD116}
${color 000000}NAME             PID       CPU%      MEM%${color white}
${top name 1} ${top pid 1}   ${top cpu 1}    ${top mem 1}
${top name 2} ${top pid 2}   ${top cpu 2}    ${top mem 2}
${top name 3} ${top pid 3}   ${top cpu 3}    ${top mem 3}
${top name 4} ${top pid 4}   ${top cpu 4}    ${top mem 4}
${top name 5} ${top pid 5}   ${top cpu 5}    ${top mem 5}
${top name 6} ${top pid 6}   ${top cpu 6}    ${top mem 6}
${top name 7} ${top pid 7}   ${top cpu 7}    ${top mem 7}
${top name 8} ${top pid 8}   ${top cpu 8}    ${top mem 8}
${top name 9} ${top pid 9}   ${top cpu 9}    ${top mem 9}
${top name 10} ${top pid 10}   ${top cpu 10}    ${top mem 10}

${color orange}MEMORY ${hr 2}${color 000000}
RAM:${color white}   $memperc%   ${color white}${membar 6}${color 000000}
Swap:${color white}  $swapperc%   ${color white}${swapbar 6}${color 000000}

${color orange}DISK ${hr 2}${color 000000}
Linux   (${fs_size /})${color white} ${fs_bar 6 /}${color 000000}
Windows (${fs_size /media/windows})${color white}  ${fs_bar 6 /media/windows}${color 000000}
Storage (${fs_size /media/storage})${color white} ${fs_bar 6 /media/storage}${color 000000}
Web     (${fs_size /media/web})${color white}  ${fs_bar 6 /media/web}${color 000000}

${color orange}NETWORK (${addr eth0}) ${hr 2}${color 000000}
Down:${color white} ${downspeed eth0} k/s ${alignr}${color 000000}Up:${color white} ${upspeed eth0} k/s${color 000000}
${downspeedgraph eth0 25,140 000000 ff0000} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph eth0 25,140 000000 00ff00}${color 000000}
Total:${color white} ${totaldown eth0} ${alignr}${color 000000}Total:${color white} ${totalup eth0}${color 000000}
Inbound:${color white} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 count} ${color 000000}Outbound:${color white} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 count}${alignr}${color 000000}Total:${color white} ${tcp_portmon 1 65535 count}${color 000000}

Create a list of installed packages

2007-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

Ever wanted to know what applications are actually installed on your system? Sure you can view the applications via the applications bar, but there are so many other applications not shown there.

Also, what if you have your system with all the applications you want and want to install them again on another PC (or after a reinstall)? Cynical shows us how to do that with a few simple steps.

To output this information to a file in your home directory you would use:

dpkg --get-selections > installed-software

Note: installed-software is actually just a text file. You can open it to view it, but don’t modify it if you don’t know what you’re doing. It might screw up the next step.

If you wanted to use the list to reinstall this software on a fresh Ubuntu setup or on another computer, just do the following steps:

dpkg --set-selections < installed-software
dselect
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean

Convert any (or most) files to another format

2007-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

So, I was stuck with an OpenOffice text document (.odt) and the place were I was at didn’t have OpenOffice. They were using a Microsoft Office version (2000/XP I believe). What was I to do? A presentation due and I had no way of accessing my files.

Media Convert to the rescue. Yes, I know I sound like an advertisement, but this website has saved me multiple times. With just an internet connection, I can convert a OpenOffice Text Document to a .doc in a few seconds.

Gnome and Google Calendar

2007-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Britt Selvitelle writes on how to combine Google Calendar and Ubuntu. His post is based on Bryan Clark’s post on Mashing Google Calendar and GNOME.

Let’s get down to business.

First open up a terminal by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal (in Ubuntu) or press Alt + F2 and type in terminal. Now that you have a terminal open, let’s get down to viewing your history.

Ubuntu users type:

/usr/lib/evolution-webcal/evolution-webcal $GOOGLE_ICAL_URL

For any other GNOME environment:

/usr/libexec/evolution-webcal $GOOGLE_ICAL_URL

I hope you notice the difference.

View and Change bash history

2007-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

Always wanted to know what you have been doing via bash? Did you know bash keeps a history of that? Here is a quick way to check it and an easy way to change the history limit.

First open up a terminal by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal (in Ubuntu) or press Alt + F2 and type in terminal. Now that you have a terminal open, let’s get down to viewing your history.

To view your history via the terminal, type:

history

This will show the whole list.

To view your history in a editor (to save for later), just type:

history -w ~/history.txt
vim ~/history.txt

What history -w ~/history.txt does is save the history to a file named history.txt on your home folder (cd ~/). The next command opens up the file for viewing in vim.

Note: For more information about history be sure to use the man pages by doing:

man history

Now to change your bash history length, just open up your .bashrc by doing so:

vim ~/.bashrc

Once open, at the top add.

export HISTFILESIZE=3000

As you can see, the limit can be changed.

Bash keeps it’s own history in a file. You can view that file as stated before, or by opening ~/.bash_history

You can search through your bash_history by piping your history file into grep like so:

history | grep "search term here"

Example:

history | grep "wget"

Remove temp folder contents on shutdown

2007-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

A few days ago Codejacked wrote an article talking about Delete your TEMP files on shutdown for Windows. As much as I loved the article, I have recently switched over to Ubuntu. Like all operating systems, GNU Linux has temporary files also. Here’s how to delete them on shutdown.

Back up what you’re going to working on.

 sudo cp /etc/init.d/sysklogd /etc/init.d/sysklogd_backup

Open the file in vim
```
 sudo vim /etc/init.d/sysklogd
```

Find the following section

 # ...
 stop)
 log_begin_msg "Stopping system log daemon..."
 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --exec $binpath --pidfile $pidfile
 log_end_msg $?
 # ...

Add the following line after log_end_msg $? or before ;;.
```
 rm -fr /tmp/* /tmp/.??*
```
Save the file and you’re set!

Change default editor

2007-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

There is a quick way to change your default editor, whichever you want.

Open up .bashrc by typing:

vim ~/.bashrc

Now to change your bash default editor find.

export EDITOR

However, if you can’t find that, just add this to the top.

export EDITOR=vim

Personally I like vim. You can use pico (/usr/bin/pico), nano (/usr/bin/nano), or any other editor you like.

Like always, you can learn more about this by doing the following:

man bash

Show My Computer, My Documents, and Trash

2007-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

If you are/were a Windows user, you are used to having “My Computer”, “My Documents” and/or “Recycle Bin” icons on your desktop. Well, Ubuntu can do this also. Here are 3 simple sets to do this.

Hit ALT-F2 and type: gconf-editor
Select Apps > Nautilus > Desktop
Check/uncheck the boxes for computer_icon_visible, documents_icon_visible, or trash_icon_visible.

Source: ubuntu-tutorials.com

Bash Aliases

2007-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Alias is a command that enables a replacement of a word with another string. It’s mainly used for abbreviating a system command, or for adding default arguments to a command which one regularly uses.

Under Ubuntu your bash alias is under your directory. To view your current collection of aliases all you need to do is load up a terminal. To do this just go to Applications > Accessories > Termininal

Once there, type the following:

cd ~

This changes the directory to the location of your folder. For me when that command is completed I see:

ali@ali-desktop:~$

Now enter the following:

vim .bashrc

This will open up your bash configuration file. There are many options already in there and much more you can add. For what we are trying to do, find this:

# Alias definitions.
# You may want to put all your additions into a separate file like
# ~/.bash_aliases, instead of adding them here directly.
# See /usr/share/doc/bash-doc/examples in the bash-doc package.

#if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
#   . ~/.bash_aliases
#fi

As it states, just uncomment (by removing the #’s) if statement. After you do so, it should look something like so:

# Alias definitions.
# You may want to put all your additions into a separate file like
# ~/.bash_aliases, instead of adding them here directly.
# See /usr/share/doc/bash-doc/examples in the bash-doc package.

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

Save the file and close vim. Now back in the terminal type:

vim .bash_aliases

That will open up vim again but the file you will probably see will be blank. (However, some of you might not have a blank file, that’s okay). Add the following to the file.

alias ls='ls —color=auto'
alias ll='ls -l'
alias la='ls -A'
alias l='ls -CF'

Remember, you can add any other command you might want. I have added a few more to mine.

alias restartpc='sudo shutdown -r 0 RESTARTING PC'
alias install='sudo aptitude install'
alias uninstall='sudo aptitude remove'
alias upgrade='sudo aptitude -y update && sudo aptitude -y upgrade && sudo aptitude -y dist-upgrade && sudo aptitude -y autoclean'

Close the file and reload the terminal. This will reload your bash profile and thus contain your aliases. To check your list of aliases, type alias in your terminal.

Note: Be careful with the sudo command.