Mark Trapp. Projects.

Kongregate Latest Badges Feed

Mark Trapp — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 03:53:57 +0000

Kongregate is a great site for online Flash gaming, combining the ease of use of Flash with the addiction of an achievement system. However, for some reason, they don't provide an RSS feed of the latest badges added to the site. So, I've created a feed using Feed43 you can use to view badges as they come in. Feed URL: http://feed43.com/2506827300517453.xml If you're interested in how I got the right parameters for this feed, read on.

I've protected the specific feed listed here so I don't have to go and recreate it should some jokester mess with it, but I'll outline the parameters I used here so you can recreate or tweak it for your own use:

Step 1 — Specify Source Address (URL)

Address: http://kongregate.com/badges
Encoding: leave blank

Click the switch to advanced mode link to continue on.

Step 2 — Define Extraction Rules

Global Search Pattern: leave blank
Item (repeatable) Search Pattern: <div class="view_badgeinfo"{*}href="{%}"{*}src="{%}"{*}<dd class="badge_name">{%}</dd>{*}<dd class="badge_difficulty">{%}</dd>{*}<dt class="achievement_description">{%}</dt>{*}</div>

Step 3 — Define Output Format

RSS Feed Properties

Feed Title: Kongregate - Latest Badges
Feed Link: http://kongregate.com/badges
Feed Description: Kongregate: Play Free Games Online

RSS Item Properties

Item Title Template: {%3} {%4}
Item Link Template: {%1}
Item Content Template: {%5}

And that's it!

Dated Notes Automation

Mark Trapp — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:04:28 +0000

This Automator workflow will create a new text file on the Desktop with the name notes-YYYY-MM-DD.txt, where YYYY, MM, and DD are replaced with the current year, month, and day, respectively. It will then open that file in the default text editor. This was inspired by a conversation with Nic Boman.

Save for Web Automation

Mark Trapp — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:03:51 +0000

This is an automator script saved as an application for converting images to a web-ready format. Download and unzip the application, then drag your photos onto it: the converted photos will be placed on your desktop. Inspiration for this program can be found on Friendfeed here. It should work in Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5: hopefully it works for you!

Special note: It saves all files on the desktop, and if it sees a file on the desktop with the same name, it won't overwrite that file. So, make sure you keep your originals somewhere other than the desktop (like maybe in a folder).