Tag Archives: programming

Saving My iLife With Applescript and rsync

Posted on 2008.08.22 by Alan

With a little bit of spare time this week, I finally got myself synchronized – my MacBook now has the same versions of all of my important files as my desktop machine, even down to mirrored libraries in iTunes and … Continue reading →

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Callsign Search Widget Fixed

Posted on 2007.05.19 by admin

If you’re a ham radio operator who uses a Mac, chances are you’ve enjoyed the KC9L callsign search widget, which provides an instant lookup for any US ham operator’s name and address right in your Mac’s Dashboard. If you’re not a ham, you won’t understand how useful this is, and should probably skip to the next post.

Unfortunately, the callsign widget broke around the beginning of May, because of a formatting change on the American Radio Relay League Web site. Worse, KC9L doesn’t seem to have a valid email address in anyone’s records. My Javascript skills are rudimentary, but with a little patience, some luck, and the arrogance of a rank beginner, I was able to fix the thing today. You can download my repaired version here. Now I’ll send an old-fashioned paper letter to KC9L to let him know. Continue reading →

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A Bash Script to Create Photo Galleries

Posted on 2007.01.24 by admin

I’ve started a second blog on the site, under the name “N3IMU.” That’s my nom de nerd, and the new blog will include everything not related to science or journalism. You can subscribe to the RSS feeds separately, so people only interested in the science posts can avoid the other geekery.

Now for some of that other geekery. I maintain a couple of Web sites for a volunteer organization, and one of the recurring problems I have involves posting photos. People routinely send me dozens of digital images from some recent event and ask if I can put them on the group’s site somewhere. Of course, the images haven’t been cropped to Web-appropriate sizes, or processed in any other way. What I need is some magical folder where I can dump the images and have them turn into a nice, W3C-compliant HTML photo gallery. Continue reading →

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Learning New Languages

Posted on 2006.08.29 by admin

Recently, I started getting back into an old hobby: computer programming. My use of the term “computer programming” suggests just how old this hobby is for me; these days, it’s known as Information Technology, Application Development, Software Engineering, or some other corporate designation, reflecting the field’s near-total professionalization. Indeed, I’d tried to get back into it a few years ago, but quickly concluded that writing my own software, like repairing my own car, was one of those self-reliant activities of yesteryear that had been removed, gently but firmly, from the hands of mere amateurs. The programming hobbyist had apparently gone the way of the shade-tree mechanic. Continue reading →

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