Man oh Man
This little AppleScript prompts you to name a term (typically, a command line program) to look up in your Mac’s man pages. Rather than display the manual text in a tedious little terminal window, you can peruse it in your web browser using Bwana (a free prerequisite) or render a high-quality version suitable for printing with Preview.
Here are examples of the cp manual page as rendered by both output options:
- Bwana Example (HTML)
- Preview Example (PDF)
You can download a plain text version of the script or a precompiled version ready to drop in your ~/Library/Scripts folder.
Just a handy helper for you programmer types.
Posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007. Tags: mac.
Road Trip Recap
Here is a highly abbreviated summary of the road trip Dan and I took in January. The trip lasted two weeks and covered 3672 miles (thanks to space truck).
- Monday: Binghamton, NY to Hagerstown, MD by way of Pennsylvania.
- Tuesday: Hagerstown, MD to Huntington, WV by way of Charleston, WV.
- Wednesday: Huntington, WV to Nashville, TN by way of Lexington, KY.
- Thursday: Nashville, TN to Hattiesburg, MS by way of Birmingham, AL.
- Friday: Hattiesburg, MS to New Orleans, LA by way of Biloxi, MS.
- Saturday: Volunteered gutting flood-damaged homes in New Orleans with
a bunch of hippiesthe Common Ground Collective. - Sunday: Ditto.
- Monday: Good food and authentic New Orleans jazz.
- Tuesday: New Orleans, LA to Pensacola, FL.
- Wednesday: Pensacola, FL to Lake City, FL.
- Thursday: Lake City, FL to Myrtle Beach, NC by way of Georgia’s Golden Isles.
- Friday: Myrtle Beach, NC to Charlottesville, VA.
- Saturday: Charlottesville, VA to Front Royal, VA by way of Shenandoah National Park.
- Sunday: Front Royal, VA to Baltimore, MD by way of Washington, DC.
- Monday: Baltimore, MD to Binghamton, NY.
The linked photos were not necessarily taken at exactly that location, but they were taken at that general point in the trip.
Posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007. Tags: car.
B-Wing Variant
The first in a series of alternate spacecraft built from the pieces of the LEGO B-Wing kit.
From certain angles I think it even bears a slight resemblance to some WWII-era fighters:
Bricksmith CAD screenshots:
The MPD file is available, as are more photos.
Posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007. Tags: LEGO.
Pasteboard Accumulator Service
Daniel Jalkut’s Xcode Pasteboard Accumulator script can be packaged without modification as a service available to all applications with Jesper’s ThisService. Just select the “Acts on input” service type. The script implements an alternative copy function that appends the selected text to the clipboard.
Posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007. Tags: mac.
Yojimbo Tag List
Here is a little AppleScript that lists the tags you’ve used in Yojimbo. If you select some tags, it will copy them to the clipboard concatenated with commas.
-- get list of known tags
set _tags to {}
tell application "Yojimbo"
repeat with _tag in tags
set end of _tags to name of _tag
end repeat
end tell
-- show list to user
set _choice to choose from list _tags with title "Yojimbo Tags" with prompt "Select tags:" with multiple selections allowed without empty selection allowed
if _choice is equal to false then return
-- concatenate and copy chosen tags
set _dtid to text item delimiters
set text item delimiters to {","}
set the clipboard to ("" & _choice)
set text item delimiters to _dtid
You can copy and paste the above code into a new Script Editor document, or you can download the script directly:
- Yojimbo Tag List 1.1 (2.3K)
Unzip the file and put it in ~/Library/Scripts to access it from your system’s script menu. If there is sufficient interest I may try to integrate it with my other Yojimbo script.
Posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007. Tags: applescript, mac, yojimbo.
Linking to an informal group of Flickr photos associated by date
I’ve wanted a way to link to batches of Flickr photos associated by date without grouping them explicitly. There are probably cleaner ways to do this, but Flickr’s search mechanism can be used for this purpose, as demonstrated in a couple of my recent posts.
Start with http://flickr.com/search/ and add the following criteria as parameters:
Whose Pictures?
Restrict search results to a particular user ID (such as yours) using the w parameter. You can look up user IDs easily using idGettr. If present in the user ID, the “@” symbol should be escaped as %40.
w=93931947%40N00
Of What?
Define a search query with q and specify what should be searched with m. The possible values for m are text and tags. In my case, I’m just looking for photos tagged as drawings.
q=drawing m=tags
From When?
Use the d parameter to define a date range to search. Only photos that fall within this range which match the query defined above will be returned. The date range is given in three parts delimited by hyphens.
First, either posted or taken is used to specify whether you’re talking about the date the photos were posted to Flickr or actually taken. Then the starting date is given, followed by the ending date.
Dates are given as eight-digit strings in the format YYYYMMDD (year, month, day, padded with zeros if necessary). To search a single day, give the same date for the start and finish, as I have:
d=posted-20070202-20070202
Display Mode
If the z parameter is given the value t, the results will be displayed as a grid of thumbnail images. If omitted, matching photos will be presented in a less compact annotated list format.
z=t
Putting it All Together
Separate each parameter=value pair with an ampersand (“&”) and use a question mark to indicate where the parameters begin. The final URL will look something like this:
http://flickr.com/search/?w=93931947%40N00&q=drawing&m=tags&d=posted-20070202-20070202&z=t
As I said, it’s quite likely there’s already an easier way to do this. If not, I suppose I could write a little script to do the trick.
Posted on Saturday, February 3rd, 2007. Tags: code.
Fresh Sketches
Just a few new sketches drawn “on location” this evening at a free Ron Sunshine concert in the Bing. Finished off a little sketchbook, if nothing else. Getting an urge to do some bigger drawings!
Posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007. Tags: art.
Breakin’ the Law
So I step outside a few minutes ago to get some snacks at the convenience store. I notice two Binghamton city police cars conferring at the intersection of my street; one pulls away, down Vestal Ave. As I step to the curb towards my truck, the other guns it and starts spinning his wheels down my street in the new-fallen snow. The car stops abruptly, presumably as I am noticed, and I smirk. Busted! I make a “what gives?” gesture (my best indignant citizen affectation), and observe as the officer in the passenger seat attempts to look occupied. After a moment I imagine to be prolonged by guilt and indecision, the car creeps down the street, turns around, and drives away.
Not that I have anything against horsing around in the snow, mind you. I just found the irony of the situation amusing.
Posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007.
New Doodles
I’ve uploaded 26 recent sketches to my gallery. A few are based on people met or seen in New Orleans. The rest, as usual, are drawn from random sources around the internet (primarily Flickr). The self portrait, of course, was drawn from my reflection in the window.
Posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007. Tags: art.