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Posts concerning software

Open Source Thanks

23:54 26 Nov 2009. Updated: 03:56 27 Nov 2009

It’s traditional on Thanksgiving to list things you’re thankful for. It struck me today that I should be extremely thankful for the existence of free software, and the contributions of thousands and thousands of programmers who have made their work freely available for others to use.
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RTF/Word–reStructuredText Toolchain

12:05 24 Sep 2009. Updated: 14:19 06 Oct 2009

It took me a while to get there, but I now have a working toolchain to automate going from an RTF file (or a Word document) to reStructuredText. The final link took the longest to find, and turned out to have been right there all along (no, I’m not going to turn this into a retelling of The Alchemist). But if you’re interested in how to get from Word to a sane format (like reStructuredText), this post will interest you.
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Python Script for Subversion Status

23:48 02 Aug 2009. Updated: 11:33 06 Apr 2010

I find in my use of Subversion that I often want to see a side-by-side list of files that aren’t under version control and files that have some other status. I also want these lists to be sorted alphabetically. Naturally, I ended up writing a Python script for this.
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2009 Goals Status

22:50 30 Jul 2009

At the start of the year I laid out some goals for 2009, and it’s time to review how they’re going.
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Better reST–WordPress Pipeline

23:15 28 Jul 2009

Last week I posted about my setup for going from reStructuredText to WordPress. It involved a shell script, some Python scripts, and the pbpaste and pbcopy commands. It worked, but it was a little on the convoluted side.

Now I have a slightly better process, and one that I will have used to publish this post.
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Better Word Count in jEdit

22:33 19 Jul 2009

I tend to care about word count in my writing. I’ve never been paid by the word, but nevertheless, it matters to me. From time to time I write fiction where I set the word count in advance, and then I try to hit it precisely. Even when that’s not the case, I just like to know how many words there are in a piece I’m writing. For this reason, a "word count" function is completely critical to me for whatever word processor or text editor I’m using to write.

jEdit has such a feature. It’s more or less the same as the one that I’ve been using in AbiWord, and in various word processors before that. But for quite some time I’ve wanted a better word counter. Since jEdit is now my application for all writing and I can script for it in Python, it was time to make the word counter I wanted.
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Blog Workflow with reStructuredText

22:57 14 Jul 2009. Updated: 23:13 28 Jul 2009

I wrote about moving my writing over to reStructuredText on Sunday, and since then I’ve moved both my morning pages and my blog writing to it. The latter proved more complicated, primarily because I wanted to make the process almost as easy as writing pseudo-HTML (which is more or less WordPress’ native format, and kind of mine, too, for the last several years). With some hacky wrangling, I’ve managed to set that up.
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Moving From Word Processors to reStructuredText

23:54 12 Jul 2009. Updated: 17:17 28 Dec 2009

I’ve written before about my wish for semantic word processing tools, and two years on I still haven’t found something that suits me. I think that WYMeditor has definite promise, but unfortunately the authors are aiming that at browser-to-server functionality, rather than in-browser standalone functionality. This isn’t such a major obstacle for me, but it is one of the reasons why I’m hesitant to move over to using a project that hasn’t reached version 0.5 yet.
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Version Control Recovery

23:40 04 May 2009

Last year, the server with my Subversion repository on it died suddenly. I’ve made several attempts to revive it, none of which have worked. I tried to get the data off of it, but had trouble doing this as well. Having been frustrated a number of times, I gradually got used to not having it… which is something I should have fought harder against.
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AI and Games

18:14 26 Feb 2009

I recently came across this article about an AI program winning two Traveller competitions in the early 80s. (This was naval space combat simulation with Traveller rules, “Trillion Credit Squadron”, not roleplaying.)
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Another Text Editor?

15:56 15 Feb 2009

Mozilla Labs recently introduced Bespin, a browser-based fully-featured text editor. I have mixed feelings about this, because I wonder if the time would be better spent working on other things (or improving other editors), but on the other hand I like the idea of a text editor written using languages that web developers can tweak, and being in the browser offers a tremendously rich framework for layout and presentation. I also wonder if it might lead to the kind of semantic “word processing” tool I’ve previously mentioned looking for.

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2009 Goals

17:49 01 Jan 2009. Updated: 14:32 30 Jul 2009

Happy New Year!

That’s goals for the year 2009, not two thousand and nine goals, people.

I tend to start the year with a bunch of ambitions and projects—many of which I even accomplish. Some of them for this year follow.
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VMware Fusion

19:47 14 Aug 2008. Updated: 17:58 28 Jan 2009

I had to find a quick and reliable way to test IE7 on my MacBook Pro this week, and so ended up using VMware Fusion. Various people at work recommended it over Parallels.
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Some Minor Software Projects

14:37 27 Jan 2008. Updated: 23:14 28 Jul 2009

I already have a buch of plans for larger projects, including finishing the sfmagic.org rewrite, but I think it makes sense to have some smaller projects to work on as well, things that I can switch to and make significant progress on in a relatively short amount of time.
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Metaweb Machine Setup Steps

23:45 15 May 2007. Updated: 10:10 18 May 2007

Starting at Metaweb, I had to set up a new machine, something I haven’t done in a while. One thing that made it a lot easier this time is that I have a lot of my config in my Subversion repository, which saved me quite a lot of time. This also reflects some changes I’ve made since writing Essential Windows Software last year. (Oh, and all the software is Free Software.)
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DMCA Hacking

23:53 04 May 2007. Updated: 04:54 05 May 2007

The DMCA is, as discussed two days ago, a piece of legislation with a rather broadly-reaching grasp. Particularly in giving copyright holders a lot of leeway in preventing the dissemination of “circumvention devices”. I suspect that certain approachs could exploit this latitude and make the absurdity of the law even more evident than it already is.
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Illegal Colors?

23:24 02 May 2007. Updated: 23:03 18 Mar 2011

In this entry I’m going to share a series of colored squares which it could be illegal for me to post.
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Shell Script for Remote Database Subversion Checkin

17:09 25 Apr 2007. Updated: 09:36 26 Apr 2007

The MySQL backup script I posted the other day backs up the databases on the local machine. I have a case where the local machine doesn’t have the subversion client, and so I need to pull them onto a machine that does, and check them in.
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Windows Future

23:50 24 Apr 2007. Updated: 00:52 25 Apr 2007

It’s not new, but I’ve been reading over Peter Gutmann’s A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. This mightsound dry and of interest only to geeks, but it’s pretty important for the future of computing in general. In certain respects is another story about Microsoft trying to take over the world.
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Shell Script for MySQL Backup

22:17 21 Apr 2007

I’ve finally gotten around to writing a shell script to back up my databases. It’s not particularly complicated, but it works, backing up, timestamping, and gzipping each database.
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AJAX Cross-Site Scripting with Apache RewriteRule

23:48 16 Apr 2007. Updated: 10:22 17 Apr 2007

AJAX has a significant limitation: for security reasons, it can’t fetch data from sites other than the one the user is on. This makes a number of cool things much harder to do.

One way around this is the script tag hack. But that requires a third party that outputs JavaScript files, whereas what I want is to be able to process XML and/or HTML from that third party.
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Semantic Editor Application Search

15:10 08 Apr 2007

I’m still searching for semantic authoring tools, and spent some time yesterday trying out Vex and WYM editor. Both look promising, but neither does enough of what I want.
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Photo Management

23:53 30 Mar 2007. Updated: 14:26 31 Mar 2007

I’ve been using iPhoto since I got my Powershot G2 years back, and it’s never struck me as anything more than “okay”. Sure, it’s simple, and does the simple things well, but when you have thousands of photos, you need something else.
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