Tonight I needed to transfer files directly between two servers via the terminal and figured this would be useful information for others, so here’s how to do it:
Upload to a remove server:
$ ssh username@remote_address cat < localfile ">" remote_file |
Download to your server:
$ ssh username@remote_address cat remote_file > local_file |
Source: the incomplete news project
I’ve been frustrated for a while now at Chromes lack of a decent Amazon S3 extension. Firefox has S3Fox but the closest Chrome users come is S3 which only lets you browse and not modify the files in your buckets. Well that’s just changed!
Over the weekend I finally gathered up enough free time to add support for creation and deletion of files/buckets. While I was in there I made a few other modifications to improve performance and clean things up a bit.
Download the latest version (and the source: Github repo)
Earlier today I completed my first project in Django and it came time to do some database optimization. I wanted to get a list of SQL queries executed for each page and a bit of Googling let me to this script on DjangoSnippets. It did everything I needed it to do, however I noticed it interfered with dynamically generated binary file outputs (such as the images made with django-simple-captcha). For this I needed to check if the output was in binary, and if so just return it without attempting to print the SQL log. I found what I was looking for here and after combining the two had the perfect SQL logger! Below is my finished code.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 | from django.db import connection from django.template import Template, Context import string #http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/161/class SQLLogMiddleware: def process_response ( self, request, response ): #Don't print SQL queries for binary outputs! if istext(response.content) == 0: return response time = 0.0 for q in connection.queries: time += float(q['time']) t = Template(''' <p><em>Total query count:</em> {{ count }}<br/> <em>Total execution time:</em> {{ time }}</p> <ul class="sqllog"> {% for sql in sqllog %} <li>{{ sql.time }}: {{ sql.sql }}</li> {% endfor %} </ul> ''') response.content = "%s%s" % ( response.content, t.render(Context({'sqllog':connection.queries,'count':len(connection.queries),'time':time}))) return response #http://code.activestate.com/recipes/173220-test-if-a-file-or-string-is-text-or-binary/def istext(s): if " " in s: return 0 if not s: # Empty files are considered text return 1 # Get the non-text characters (maps a character to itself then # use the 'remove' option to get rid of the text characters.) t = s.translate(string.maketrans("", ""), "".join(map(chr, range(32, 127)) + list("nrtb"))) # If more than 30% non-text characters, then # this is considered a binary file if float(len(t))/len(s) >= 0.30: return 0 |
To get this working on your site just add it to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES in settings.py and make DEBUG is set to True.
While aimlessly browsing my Twitter feed last night, I came across this tutorial on using CodeIgniter‘s Zip class. Kohana 3.1 doesn’t seem to come with similar functionality out of the box (at least from the brief glance I took), so I figured I’d write up a quick patch to get CI’s class working with it.
Download the module with example controller and test files here.
You can read up on how to use the class in CodeIgniter’s documentation or the tutorial linked to above. I’ve included a controller and 2 test files in the download above as a kind of ‘quick start guide’. To access them simply go to /koziptest and /koziptest/invalid for a successful and unsuccessful download respectively.
There isn’t really any more to say about this one other than the fact that I made the methods in my module chainable for convenience and consistency with other Kohana classes. Note that this means the read_file, read_dir and archive methods will now throw exceptions if you use an invalid file/directory path or your input or output files aren’t readable/writable – so remember to use a try..catch block! I’ve also made the download method take a Request variable as its first argument – simply pass your controllers current request to it like so:
$Zip->download( $this->response ) |
If you’re paginating your data and have tens or hundreds of pages, chances are you’d prefer only a subset of these be displayed in your page number list (example – see page list at bottom). Django-paginator gets 90% of your work done for you however it doesn’t support this one very useful feature. To make a developers life easier, meet flynsarmy_paginator!
Download it here.
This app is a simple subclass of django’s built in Paginator and Page classes. The only changes I’ve made are to add an optional adjacent_pages parameter to FlynsarmyPaginator and a .page_range_data variable to the FlynsarmyPage object with the following contents:
Update 2011-11-20: Now working with Ubuntu 11.10+
I’ve always been pretty jealous of my Windows 7-using friends with their fancy rotating backgrounds so I thought I’d do a bit of research into adding similar functionality into Ubuntu. After a little investigation I found that sure enough, Ubuntu supported background lists through the use of XML files. The only problem now was: How do I automatically generate the XML file and set the active background to it?
Behold! My automatic rotating background generator! Below is the code, or you can download it here.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 | #!/bin/bash # # Author: Flynsarmy # Contributor: Ariel Barabas (ariel.baras atGmail) # #interval in seconds INTERVAL=1800 OUTFILE=backgrounds.xml DIR=$(pwd) if [ $1 ]; then if [ $1 == "--help" ]; then echo " Creates the background configuration xml file with 30min of delay between pictures with the images found in the same directory, you can modify that delay entering other number Example: ./createSlideShow.sh 15 makes the delay of 15 minutes" exit else INTERVAL=$(expr $1 * 60) fi fi echo "<background> <starttime> <year>2009</year> <month>08</month> <day>04</day> <hour>00</hour> <minute>00</minute> <second>00</second> </starttime> " > $OUTFILE while read -r IMG; do if [ "$FIRST_IMG" ]; then echo "<transition> <duration>5.0</duration> <from>$DIR/$LAST_IMG</from> <to>$DIR/$IMG</to> </transition>" >> $OUTFILE else FIRST_IMG="$IMG" fi echo "<static> <duration>$INTERVAL</duration> <file>$DIR/$IMG</file> </static> " >> $OUTFILE done < <(find -name "*.jpg" -o -name "*.png" -o -name "*.gif" | shuf) echo "<transition> <duration>5.0</duration> <from>$DIR/$LAST_IMG</from> <to>$DIR/$FIRST_IMG</to> </transition> </background>" >> $OUTFILE if hash gsettings &>/dev/null; then gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "file://$DIR/$OUTFILE" else gconftool-2 -t string --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename "$DIR/$OUTFILE" fi |
Remember to chmod +x ./createSlideshow.sh to add execute permissions then ./createSlideshow.sh to run it.
Unlike the original script (written by Ariel Barabas), this version will search recursively from its location for jpg, png and gif files and will work with files/folders containing spaces in their names. It also shuffles the files in the slideshow so if you need to regenerate the background list you won’t get the same list every time.
It defaults to rotating every 3 minutes but you can change this by using ./createSlideshow.sh <minutes>.
Have fun with it!
Update 06 June 2011: I’ve contacted the current developer and he’s accepted the patch. It should be appearing in a WP-Syntax near you shortly!
Update 16 July 2011: I’ve merged Chimo’s excellent patch which adds page range support. See the updated tutorial below for usage instructions. Thanks Chimo!
Update 27 July 2011: We have liftoff! This patch is finally part of the official plugin!
I’ve used a few different WordPress syntax highlighters in my day but WP-Syntax is easily the best of them. One issue that’s bothered me with WP-Syntax for a while now, however, is lack of line highlighting support so I decided to look into adding it myself. At the time of writing I’m using WP-Syntax 0.9.9.
To add highlighting support, open up /wp-content/plugins/wp-syntax/wp-syntax.php. You’ll need to modify two functions - wp_syntax_highlight and wp_syntax_before_filter. Here’s wp_syntax_highlight:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 | function wp_syntax_highlight($match) { global $wp_syntax_matches; $i = intval($match[1]); $match = $wp_syntax_matches[$i]; $language = strtolower(trim($match[1])); $line = trim($match[2]); $escaped = trim($match[3]); $code = wp_syntax_code_trim($match[5]); if ($escaped == "true") $code = htmlspecialchars_decode($code); $geshi = new GeSHi($code, $language); $geshi->enable_keyword_links(false); do_action_ref_array('wp_syntax_init_geshi', array(&$geshi)); //START LINE HIGHLIGHT SUPPORT $highlight = array(); if ( !empty($match[4]) ) { $highlight = strpos($match[4],',') == false ? array($match[4]) : explode(',', $match[4]); $h_lines = array(); for( $i=0; $i<sizeof($highlight); $i++ ) { $h_range = explode('-', $highlight[$i]); if( sizeof($h_range) == 2 ) $h_lines = array_merge( $h_lines, range($h_range[0], $h_range[1]) ); else array_push($h_lines, $highlight[$i]); } $geshi->highlight_lines_extra( $h_lines ); } //END LINE HIGHLIGHT SUPPORT $output = "n<div class="wp_syntax">"; if ($line) { $output .= "<table><tr><td class="line_numbers">"; $output .= wp_syntax_line_numbers($code, $line); $output .= "</td><td class="code">"; $output .= $geshi->parse_code(); $output .= "</td></tr></table>"; } else { $output .= "<div class="code">"; $output .= $geshi->parse_code(); $output .= "</div>"; } return $output .= "</div>n"; return $output; } |
and here’s wp_syntax_before_filter:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | function wp_syntax_before_filter($content) { return preg_replace_callback( "/s*<pre(?:lang=["']([w-]+)["']|line=["'](d*)["']|escaped=["'](true|false)?["']|highlight=["']((?:d+[,-])*d+)["']|s)+>(.*)</pre>s*/siU", "wp_syntax_substitute", $content ); } |
Updated/added lines are, of course, highlighted 
Below is an example of the new functionality:
<pre lang=”php” highlight=”2″>
$foo = ‘foo’;
$bar = ‘bar’;
$foobar = ‘foobar’;
</pre>
$foo = 'foo'; $bar = 'bar'; $foobar = 'foobar'; |
<pre lang=”php” highlight=”1,2,5-7″>
$foo = ‘foo’;
$bar = ‘bar’;
$foobar = ‘foobar’;
$foo = ‘foo’;
$bar = ‘bar’;
$foobar = ‘foobar’;
$foo = ‘foo’;
$bar = ‘bar’;
$foobar = ‘foobar’;
</pre>
$foo = 'foo'; $bar = 'bar'; $foobar = 'foobar'; $foo = 'foo'; $bar = 'bar'; $foobar = 'foobar'; $foo = 'foo'; $bar = 'bar'; $foobar = 'foobar'; |
Remember to add highlight to the list of allowed <PRE> tag arguments in your themes functions.php file. Details on doing so can be found here.
I discovered recently a little quirk with accessing a JQuery UI Dialog‘s options and methods from within the dialog itself. I was AJAXing the dialog’s contents and was having difficulty figuring out how to access the dialog’s methods. As it turns out, from the contents of the dialog you don’t use
$(this).closest('.ui-dialog').option() |
which returns a javascript object, but instead use
$(this).closest('.ui-dialog-content').option() |
Seeing as this post would otherwise be pretty short, let’s do a little more than simply retrieving options. Below I’ll explain not only to open a AJAX dialog from a HTML link, but also tell the dialog what element opened it. This could be useful in such instances as when you need to click a link which opens a dialog allowing you to upload a user avatar, and upon uploading, replaces the link with the avatar image.
For the lazy, you can download the complete tutorial files here.
Upon downgrading back to Ubuntu 10.10 after my horrendously bad experience with 11.04, I’ve been reunited with a bug I’d previously put up with for 6 months: The trackpad on my laptop often ‘mouseups’ when dragging, resulting in windows not being dragged correctly. In addition, web browser and pidgin tabs will occasionally close on click instead of giving focus to that tab. Well here’s the fix!
Make sure the following 2 lines are In the InputClass section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf:
Option "ClickFinger3" "1" Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "280" |
Here’s what mine looks like:
Section "InputClass" Identifier "touchpad catchall" Driver "synaptics" MatchIsTouchpad "on" MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*" Option "ClickFinger3" "1" Option "EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" "280" EndSection |
You’ll probably need to do a reboot for the changes to take effect.
Thanks to users egermani and ejmarkow for their respective fixes here and here.