flagrantdisregard » software

Console password management script

John — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:06:10 +0000

I’ve been using a couple of bash scripts for a while to manage my password collection (over 100) and I thought I’d share them since I find them very useful. They’re BSD licensed so you can do whatever you want with the code. Click here to get ‘em.

Things that are awesome

John — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:45:31 +0000

In the spirit of Dive Into Mark’s list…

Guitar Noise, an awesome blog for guitar players of all levels, especially this section for beginners.
An online metronome, because I don’t have an offline metronome.
Guake, which lets me access my terminal almost as fast as I can think.
Frati Gelato Cafe in downtown Fullerton.
rdiff-backup, which keeps an automatic rolling 30 day backup of all of my stuff.
Gnome Do, which I’ve been using for months and is shaping up to be Quicksilver for Linux.
Meld, a super, visual diff tool.

Find anything awesome lately?

Writer poised to take the intertubes by storm

John — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:29:34 +0000

So, that app I wrote, Writer (“The Internet Typewriter”), was published today by the CNET staff at Download.com. Very cool. I’m now one step closer to taking over the world:

Create awesome web app.
Get published at Download.com.
?
Profit!

If only I could figure out step three.

Footnotes plugin for WordPress released

John — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:31:33 +0000

I just released a new plugin for WordPress for adding footnotes (well, endnotes really) to posts. You can check it out and download it from here: Footnotes Plugin. Also, I’ve written a couple of other plugins you may be interested in.

Weather forecast for kids

John — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:34:57 +0000

I’m just Mr. Software lately. Every morning my kids ask me about the weather so they can get dressed. This is my first attempt at building a simplified weather forecast page for them.

It’s the weather report for today and tomorrow in a kid-friendly format. Once you’ve got it bookmarked, your kids are just one-click away from knowing what they should wear today. It shows the current conditions plus clothing suggestions for cold, cool, and warm weather. Works for any city in the world. (See the help page for setting up cities outside of the U.S.)

Usefulness varies depending on your weather and children.

KidsWeatherReport.com

Send To Flickr: a Flickr photo uploader for the Gnome desktop (Linux)

John — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 03:07:48 +0000

I’ve been searching for the “perfect” Flickr photo uploader for a long time so I finally broke down and decided to write it. Of course, my idea of perfect may be different than yours. (I am but a simple caveman programmer.)

A video demonstration of version 1.0 along with downloads in various formats are available. Huge thanks to my volunteer testers. Please spread the news far and wide.

Send To Flickr →

“Send to Flickr” call for testers

John — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:03:28 +0000

Update: Thanks for your help, everybody. No more testers needed. I’ll be releasing it soon.

Over the weekend I created a photo uploader for Linux, specifically for Gnome desktop users:

I’m looking for some people who can install and try the package out before I release it publicly. Ideally I’d like several people to run the installer (a .deb package) and make sure it does all the right things. I’m targeting Ubuntu but (in theory) the .deb should work on any Debian system and a tarball is also available. A mix of technical and non-technical users would be nice. Please only respond if you are able to spend some time using the app and share feedback with me via email. Contact me if you’re interested.

Big Huge Thesaurus API

John — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:02:04 +0000

I’ve just rolled out an API for the Big Huge Thesaurus. Need synonyms? Give the free API a try.

Free and open source database design software

John — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:06:39 +0000

DBDesigner 4
“DBDesigner 4 is a visual database design system that integrates database design, modeling, creation and maintenance into a single, seamless environment.” Looks very robust. One of the few tools that supports reverse engineering.

MySQL Workbench
“MySQL Workbench is a cross-platform, visual database design tool developed by MySQL. It is the highly anticipated successor application of the DBDesigner4 project. MySQL Workbench will be available as a native GUI tool on Window, Linux and OS X.” Currently beta but check out the screenshots.

phpMyAdmin
“phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields.” Web-based, very mature and stable product.

MySQL Query Browser
“MySQL Query Browser is the easiest visual tool for creating, executing, and optimizing SQL queries for your MySQL Database Server. The MySQL Query Browser gives you a complete set of drag-and-drop tools to visually build, analyze and manage your queries.” Includes simple but solid tools for building and managing databases and tables.

Ferret
“GNU Ferret (formerly known as GerWin) is the Free Entity Relationship and Reverse Engineering Tool.” Development seems to have stopped which is too bad because it has potential.

And here are links to some more database design applications (some commercial) at del.icio.us.

My backup system saved me today

John — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:27:30 +0000

Last November, after around 25 years of computing, finally, I setup a reliable, automatic backup system for all of my important files, documents, photos, and music.

And today I needed it (timing, eh?). A bunch of important files took collateral damage from a program I was writing. And I almost panicked. But then the backup system worked beautifully. And I did a happy dance. And, no, there is no video of that.

If I’d been manually backing up weekly I’d be able to salvage some and rebuild the rest and be very annoyed. If I’d been manually backing up my files every month or so I’d be screwed.

The backup system I use (rdiff-backup) takes a system snapshot once every 24 hours and keeps a rolling 30 day history (sort of like a less anxious version of Time Machine). So I’m able to restore my system to its state at any day within the last 30 days.

Anyway, it works. In five minutes it was like it never happened. Yay, technology!