Life Stream plug-in now working

Posted about 2 weeks ago on: 23/02/2010 - No comments
Tagged in: blog, lifestream, nowplaying, location, bookmarklets.

I mentioned a while ago life streaming, so I wrote firstly a plug-in for xtengine (the system that runs this site) and a bunch of scripts that sit on various boxes sort of monitoring what I am doing (semi-randomly) so you get snippets of what I am doing. Any bookmarking is tracked, semi-randomly the music I am listening to will get posted and of course the blogs. My location is also tracked, only when I OK it though.

I'll be adding the moblog back at some point.

I managed to integrate my listening habits right back to 2007 (with some large gaps when I used a different media player and never bothered writing a currently listening plug-in, which is a bummer) from a local database I keep.

So let's see how it tests :)

Fluxbox theme I am working on

Posted about 3 weeks ago on: 15/02/2010 - 2 comments
Tagged in: fluxbox, theme, screenshot.

Here is a quick shot of the Fluxbox theme I am currently working on. Click for full resolution.



Up here for download soon. Let me know what you think.

Closure of free risingdragon email

Posted about 3 weeks ago on: 14/02/2010 - No comments
Tagged in: free, email, risingdragon, closure.

Dear risingdragon users,

After a decade of free email services from me it's with a heavy heart that I am sorry to inform you that during the summer this year I plan to close down the service.

I find it fitting that on the 25th July, the very day I first entered in the freemail.risingdragon.org DNS entry, I will be finally removing it. At that point your email accounts will cease to function and will no longer be valid.

Please ensure you have migrated to a new email provider by that point.

A few fun facts are that:

You've been part of a system with a six figure userbase
Over the last decade I have blocked as many spam emails as the system has had legit ones
Despite repeated attempts from China the system has never been compromised

Thank you for continuing to use the system for all these years. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

tek (owner of the system)

Simple battery monitor for fbpanel

Posted about 1 month ago on: 18/01/2010 - No comments
Tagged in: fluxbox, fbpanel, battery, bash, send-nofity, libnofity-bin, debian.

I realised that fbpanel didn't have a default battery monitor and I got sick of opening a shell and typing "acpi -V" all the time, well actually I am lazy and forgot and had a few Homer moments and lost bits of work. So I knocked up this script for fbpanel.

On Debian it requires libnotify-bin for the send-notify to work correctly and here is the battery icon. You will need to place both in a directory called "bin" in your home directory and make sure both the directory bin and the script are executable (chmod +x battery etc) and in your $PATH.

The fbpanel bit is added to ~/.fbpanel/default

Make sure you back it up first eh?

Plugin {
type = genmon
config {
Command = ~/bin/battery
PollingTime = 60
TextSize = xx-small
TextColor = white
}
}

Command is obviously a call to the script
PollingTime is how often it is run (in secs)
TextSize is obvious along with TextColor

You'll need to restart the panel so open a shell and:

killall fbpanel && fbpanel &

This will gracefully stop and restart the panel to a background job.

If you're using this on something other than a notebook then you'll have to mess with the coordinates of the notifications. I've set the script to notify on anything below 11% (it's adequate for me and keeps the script simple) feel free to adjust to your needs. In fact you can safely remove it if you just want to sit in the bottom right (default). I think the script is easy to understand but ask away if you don't get anything or indeed have a better way of doing it.

Spicing it up, of course you can add sound notifications to it, or if you're a festival user you can add something like:

echo "Battery Low"| festival --tts

if like me you've constantly got headphones in to the end of the notification. Beware if you've got a busy CPU you may end up with race conditions.

Known Issues: Incorrect string when less than 10% - might fix it but since 10% = 20mins on my battery I am not that fussed as I will have plugged the power in. If you decide to fix this that's up to you.

Anti-whaling activists accuse Japan fleet of attack

Posted about 2 months ago on: 06/01/2010 - No comments
Tagged in: whaling, sea shepherd, campaigners, japan.

Anti-whaling activists have accused a Japanese vessel of ramming their high-tech speed boat during a confrontation in the Southern Ocean.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society says its vessel was sliced in half, but all six crew were rescued.

Read the rest here.