Coredump

Okay, watching movies in the workplace is a definite no-no, but they didn’t say anything about listening to movies. But I’d rather do it offline, so I whipped up a little bookmarklet that will snag the .MP3 URL off the movies I chose.

1. First off, select a movie from the list.
2. Then list all the URLs in that page by using Javascript’s document.links object.
3. I noticed that the URI for the MP3 link is always the ninth, so just get the ninth URL: document.links[8].href.
4. Using a regular expression, winnow the URL:

   document.links[8].href.replace(new RegExp('[?&=]','g'),' ').split(' ')[2]

5. Drop in the javascript resource header, and voila! here’s the bookmarklet that will grab audio track’s URL for download. Right-click and bookmark the link. Or, drag and drop the link to the bookmarks toolbar.

I’m currently playing with Devil’s Pie, a utility that matches windows and window events to a set of rules similar to Emacs’ (yikes! :P) S-expressions.

I installed Devil’s Pie on my work desktop (running FC6), thus:

$ sudo yum install devilspie

(I have previously organized my desktop with four workspaces: for browsing, remote SSH sessions, remote desktop sessions, and other tasks.) I then created a configuration file:

$ mkdir .devilspie && vi ~/.devilspie/workspaces.ds
   (debug)
   (if (is (application_name) "Firefox") (begin maximize (undecorate (set_workspace 1))))
   (if (is (application_name) "Terminal") (begin maximize (undecorate (set_workspace 2))))
   (if (matches (application_name) "^rdesktop.+") (begin center (maximize (set_workspace 3))))

and invoked Devil’s Pie: devilspie -d ~/.devilspie/workspaces.ds &. The (debug) line in the configuration is, heh, for debugging purposes so Devil’s Pie will print out events and other information, which I can then later use.

Seems pretty straightforward, though there isn’t much functionality that I can use. (Then again, my requirement is minimal: I just want to group apps to different workspaces to avoid clutter.) I can then drop Devil’s Pie in my X startup script, along with the other startup apps.

Here’s a great way of displaying Flickr photos in a bunch. And for a spendthrift like me who doesn’t have a Pro account (yet), this is a nifty method of retrieving that long-gone photo that has been bumped off the 200-photo display limit for the free accounts.

Via Lifehacker.

Interesting news at NY Times: IBM is set to launch social software tools in the corporate world.

(Hmm… I wonder if Sacha Chua’s ongoing research is part of this tool set?)

Here at work, we use Lotus Notes for typical “groupware” applications: calendars, email, instant messaging, and task management. I have also explored the use of blogs and wikis in my previous companies, but they did not really took off that well. Perhaps the IBM experience can lead the way in exploring the use of these thriving media for the workplace.

• Starting today, we’re on DST, so a one-hour shift in the work sked. Yaiks.
• Last weekend, we were off to Taal Vista Lodge in Tagaytay for the Tech University, a two-day company event. The first day started off with an “Amazing Race”-style tech challenge — a battle of wits to solve real-world cases in 30 minutes or less. At stake: a 4GB iPod nano for each group member (five per group, two categories, SMB and enterprise). Unfortunately, we didn’t win, so there goes the nano.
• Sunday was capped with a teambuilding activity, complete with a motivational talk by APO Jim Paredes (something about creativity — I didn’t get to go through that one straight on, had to chow on the sumptuous buffet breakfast at the Cafe-on-the-ridge, heh).
• Got sick on purpose yesterday, so I could be with Peng and Gab at home. I really needed that. Tiyo Paeng was raging, so we snuggled in bed, and went through three “American Tail” DVDs (Gab’s current fave). Didn’t catch the endings, though, as I dozed off a few times in between.
• Question: you’re a system admin in a big-time government installation, handling a fairly large environment, when you come across a problem of the mail queue backing up because of multiple incoming connections (in the thousands), half of which are spam. The spam don’t get through, of course, but still you face the problem of the growing queue, so what do you do?
• I’m getting the hang of Firefox 2.0. The del.icio.us bookmarks extension by Yahoo! is constantly nagging me about uninstalling the Google Browser Sync extension, though. I also saved some precious screen real estate, with the chrome settling on less than 100 pixels or so of the top part. Coolness.
• Gone blog reading again, when the case load was low. I’m totally hooked on Google Reader. Stand-alone RSS readers are so overrated, but I still find them useful for offline reading so I still keep one at hand: why, Feedreader, of course.
• On to more Lifehacking, I’m using Password Safe to, er, keep my passwords safe. I used to keep a GPG-encrypted and signed text file for that, but then after 50 or so accounts (including 10 something just for work — talk about single-sign-on!), it got a bit tedious. Thanks, Bruce Schneir!