Moparx

Fish 2.0: The Friendly Interactive Shell

2013-05-18T11:14:00-04:00

The developers of fish, the friendly interactive shell, released version 2.0 today and the discussions on both Reddit and Hacker News piqued my interest enough that I decided to install it.

I've only been playing around with the shell for a little while now and I am quite impressed with it. Fish is very quick and comes with myriad of features such as auto-suggestions, tab completions, syntax highlighting, and an easy-to-use scripting syntax built-in and working right out of the box.

It also bundles a tiny web server which allows you to configure various settings such as changing colors and switching between predefined prompts on-the-fly right from your web browser when you run fish_config.

I have used zsh since late 2007 and I have to say that fish is an excellent shell which honestly gives zsh a run for its money in a lot of areas. In order to match most of fish's built-in features within zsh you have to install a plugin framework such as oh-my-zsh or other software.

Regardless, both shells are absolutely great in their own right wand both have various capabilities that the other does not have.

An important thing to note is that fish is not compliant with POSIX. This is an absolute deal breaker for some people, but others consider the non-compliance an advantage which leaves behind legacy 'baggage' that would compromise usability.

I like fish enough that I plan on using it as my main shell for the next week so that I can give it a proper test run.

If you would like some more information on fish, check out the following links:

Let me know what you think as well.

Impressions: My week with XMonad

2013-04-04T01:30:00-04:00

I have been a fan of minimalistic window managers for a long time. It began when I first switched to Blackbox in 2002 and continued on as I migrated to newer Blackbox variants such as Fluxbox and then on to Openbox. Although, when I switched to Openbox in 2005 it had been rewritten and no longer shared any code with its predecessor.

Openbox has remained my preferred stacking window manager and it probably always will be.

However, about a week ago I became interested in trying out a tiling window manager for once and see how I liked it.

I have a dual monitor setup with a plethora of windows constantly on the screen at any given time so the decision to try out a tiling window manager really was a no brainer. I did some basic research into a few of the popular tiling window managers that are available and installed a few as well so that I could get an initial feel for each of them.

I seemed to gravitate more towards XMonad , a dynamic tiling window manager written in Haskel and licensed under the BSD 3-Clause "Revised" License, so after some deliberation I decided that it would be the one that I would be using.

XMonad is also generally pretty predominant within the Desktop Screenshot threads on the Arch Linux forums so that helped sway my decision a bit as well along with the project's documentation which showed that it was a highly extendable and customizable.

The amount of customization available did come with a price though. Even though I got the hang of things pretty quick it still took me a few days of reading through the documentation, inspecting various sample configuration files, and trying out parts that interested me before I was confident enough to create a configuration file of my own that I would truly be happy with.

To be honest, each day that I spent tinkering with Xmonad was rather fun in a way. I truly enjoyed seeking what made it tick and learning what it was capable of doing. The Magnifier combined with the Grid layout quickly became my defacto setup for the monitor which held all my terminal windows and I also liked being able to create a prompt which enabled me to initiate searchs through DuckDuckGo and other search engines of my choosing right from my desktop.

The past week with XMonad has been a great experience and I plan on using continuing to use it on my main computer. I have found that XMonad is an excellent tiling window manager which holds true to its claim that it proudly displays at the top of its website:

"In a normal WM, you spend half your time aligning and searching for windows. xmonad makes work easier, by automating this."

I would recommend that you at least give it a shot if you are on the fence or simply have a passing interest in it. XMonad can also be configured to integrate into the GNOME, KDE, or XFCE desktop environments should you be interested in doing that instead of running it standalone as it normally would.

Adding new features to the jskomment commenting system

2013-03-13T22:19:00-04:00

I had some free time today and I decided to make a few changes to jskomment so that I could implement a few features that I felt were missing.

Here are the changes that I made:

Change Log:

jskomment has been given an overall nicer design.
The data is now sanitized when saved.
If the name field is left blank it will be changed to 'Anonymous' rather than display a blank string.
The time and date a comment was posted has now been added. It is customizable by defining JSKOMMENT_DATE in the jskomment.local.php file.
Added the ability for a commenter to add their website.
Added the ability for a commenter to leave their email address.
Added very basic parsing for the Markdown syntax (Bold, Italics, and URLs).

You can make the changes yourself or download a copy of the modified files that I have made available for you.

Making the changes

CSS Changes

I restyled the way the comments, text-boxes, and submit button looked so that they were relatively pleasing to look at as jskomment's default style does not exactly win it any beauty contests. :)

In the interest of time, you can acquire my updated CSS file here.

Modifying jskomment-core.js

Open jskomment-core.js and find the following at line 141:

$(array).each(function (k,commentEntry) {
  if (commentEntry.title != title) { throw new Exception('oops, precondition failed'); };
    var ePoster = $('<span class="jskomment_user"/>').text(commentEntry.name+': ');
    var eContent = $('<span class="jskomment_commentval"/>').html(commentEntry.comment.replace(/\n/g,'<br/>'));
    var eComment = $('<div class="jskomment_comment"/>').append(ePoster).append(eContent);
    elem.find('.jskomment_previous').append(eComment);
  }

Replace it with:

$(array).each(function (k,commentEntry) {
  if (commentEntry.title != title) { throw new Exception('oops, precondition failed'); };
    var ePoster = $('<span class="jskomment_user"/>').html(commentEntry.name+': ');
    var eDate = $('<span class="jskomment_date"/>').text(commentEntry.date);
    var eContent = $('<br /><span class="jskomment_commentval"/>').html(commentEntry.comment.replace(/\n/g,'<br/>'));
    var eComment = $('<div class="jskomment_comment"/>').append(ePoster).append(eDate).append(eContent);
    elem.find('.jskomment_previous').append(eComment);
  }

Find the following around line 214:

try { name = localStorage.getItem('jskomment_username') || name; } catch (e) {}
var form = $('<form class="jskomment_form jskomment_add_comment">'
+'<input id="title" type="hidden" name="title" value="'+title+'"/>'
+'<div class="jskomment_input1">New comment from <input type="text" name="name" size="10"  value="'+name+'"/>: </div>'
+'<div class="jskomment_commentval"><textarea class="jskomment_input2" rows="6" cols="32" name="comment" value="your comment"/></div>'
+'<div class="jskomment_submit"><input class="jskomment_button" name="submit" type="submit" value="submit"/></div>'
+'</form>');

Replace it with:

var date='';
try { name = localStorage.getItem('jskomment_username') || name; } catch (e) {}
var form = $('<form class="jskomment_form jskomment_add_comment">'
+'<input id="title" type="hidden" name="title" value="'+title+'"/>'
+'<div class="jskomment_input1"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="name" placeholder="Name" size="30" maxlength="60 value="'+name+'" /></div>'
+'<div class="jskomment_input1"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="email" placeholder="Email (It will not be shared)" size="30" maxlength="60 value="" /></div>'
+'<div class="jskomment_input1"><input class="textbox" type="text" name="website" placeholder="Website" size="30" maxlength="60 value="" /></div>'
+'<div class="jskomment_commentval"><textarea class="jskomment_input2" cols="60" rows="5" name="comment" value="" placeholder="Please be respectful to others in your comments." /></div>'
+'<div class="jskomment_submit"><input class="jskomment_button" name="submit" type="submit" value="submit"/></div><br />'
+'You may use basic Markdown syntax in your post. **Bold**, __Italic__, and [Text](URL)'
+'</form>'
);

Modifying jskomment.php

Open jskomment.php file and find the get_comments() function near line 76 and replace it with:

function get_comments($query) {
  $result = array();
  $fname=DATADIR.sha1($query['title']);
  //echo $fname;
  if (file_exists($fname)) {
    foreach(file($fname) as $comment) {
      $comment = markdown($comment);
      $result[] = json_decode($comment, true);
    }
  } // end if
  return $result;
}

/** Implements some very basic Markdown */
function markdown($mdinput) {
  $mdinput = preg_replace("/\*\*(.*?)\*\*/", "<strong>$1</strong>", $mdinput);
  $mdinput = preg_replace("/\*(.*?)\*/", "<strong>$1</strong>", $mdinput);
  $mdinput = preg_replace("/\_\_(.*?)\_\_/", "<em>$1</em>", $mdinput);
  $mdinput = preg_replace("/\_(.*?)\_/", "<em>$1</em>", $mdinput);
  $mdinput = preg_replace('/\[(.*?)\]\s?\((.*?)\)/i', '<a href=\"$2\" rel=\"nofollow\">$1</a>', $mdinput);
  return $mdinput;
}

Next, you will need to find the add_comment() function near line 130 and replace it with:

function add_comment($comment) {
  $comment = check_recaptcha($comment);
  $fname=DATADIR.sha1(@$comment['title']);

  // Check to see if the user has defined how they want the comment date to look.
  if (!defined('JSKOMMENT_DATE')) {
    @$comment['date'] = date("M d, Y - g:i a");
  } else {
    @$comment['date'] = date(JSKOMMENT_DATE);
  }

  // Strip any tabs or spaces from the name and website fields.
  $namecheck = trim(@$comment['name'], " \t");
  $websitecheck = trim(@$comment['website'], " \t");

  // Replace a  blank user name with Anonymous. If a name is given sanitize it.
  if (empty($namecheck)) {
    @$comment['name'] = 'Anonymous';
  } else {
    @$comment['name'] = htmlspecialchars(strip_tags(@$comment['name']), ENT_NOQUOTES, 'utf-8');
  }

  // Attach the commenter's website to their name if included.
  if (!empty($websitecheck)) {
    @$comment['website'] = htmlspecialchars(strip_tags(@$comment['website']), ENT_NOQUOTES, 'utf-8');
    // Markdown. It will be converted to a proper link when displayed.
    @$comment['name'] = '['. @$comment['name'] . '](' . @$comment['website']. ')';
  }

  // Sanitize the remaining fields.
  @$comment['email'] = htmlspecialchars(strip_tags(@$comment['email']), ENT_NOQUOTES, 'utf-8');
  @$comment['comment'] = htmlspecialchars(strip_tags(@$comment['comment']), ENT_NOQUOTES, 'utf-8');

  $file  = fopen($fname, "a");
  fputs($file,json_encode($comment)."\n");
  fclose($file);
  return '{}'; // for json-p
}

Adjust the time and day format for comments (Optional)

By default comments will have the following format: Mar 13, 2013 - 7:31 pm

However, the time and day format is easily changed by defining JSKOMMENT_DATE in the jskomment.local.php file.

Please see the PHP manual for available formatting options.

Example:

Supplying the following format would would make it look like 2013-03-13 19:22:31

<?
    @define('JSKOMMENT_DATE','Y-m-d H:i:s');
?>

Implementing the jskomment open source commenting system within Pelican

2013-03-11T21:03:00-04:00

In my earlier post I referred to jskomment, the open source comment system that I use, and I thought that I would create a quick tutorial on setting it up and integrating it with Pelican.

However, This tutorial is easily adaptable for use with any website.

Background

jskomment is an open source AJAX-powered commenting system. It is developed by Martin Monperrus and licensed under the MIT License.

It is relatively light weight and comes with two server-side implementations. One is a Java version for use with the Google AppEngine and the other is PHP-powered. This tutorial deals solely with the PHP version.

Additonally, jskomment is completely themable via CSS and offers the unique ability to support multiple discussion threads per page should someone wish to do so.

Getting started

In order to acquire jskomment you will need to clone a local copy of its repository with Mercurial by issuing the following command:

hg clone https://code.google.com/p/jskomment/

Now that you have a copy of jskomment on your system we are going to need the PHP files from jskomment/src/php/ and the most of the files from jskomment/war/ as we do not need the WEB-INF folder or the HTML files.

I would also recommend that you take a moment to update the supplied json2.js file with a much more recent version available from https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js

Important File Change

jskomment does have one flaw which you need to fix before you go live with it. I discovered that it does not seem to properly sanitize the output so it will display any HTML that it is given. I created a very simple fix which will remove the ability to display HTML in comments.

Open jskomment.php and find the following line:

foreach(file($fname) as $comment) {

Add the following piece of code directly under it and then save the file:

$comment = htmlspecialchars(strip_tags($comment), ENT_NOQUOTES, 'utf-8');

I have emailed the developer about this issue and he will hopefully see it and apply a proper fix with his next release.

Website setup

Create the folder jskomment in your website's root directory. You can do this through your FTP client or through SSH via issuing the following command in the proper web directory:

mkdir jskomment

You then need to upload all of jskomment's files to the directory.

Next you will want to create the folder jskomment-data within the jskomment folder. This folder is where jskomment will store all of your comments.

mkdir jskomment/jskomment-data

In order for jskomment to work properly via PHP it needs a few entries added to your .htaccess file which allow it to essentially pretend to be a JavaScript file. This is done by simply appending the following lines into your existing file or creating a new file if required:

RewriteEngine on
# serving the composite js file
RewriteRule ^jskomment/jskomment.js$ jskomment/jskomment.php?file=jskomment.js [QSA,L]

# test service
RewriteRule ^jskomment/t$ jskomment/jskomment.php?action=t [QSA,L]

# getting a list of comments
RewriteRule ^jskomment/s$ jskomment/jskomment.php?action=s [QSA,L]

# getting a list of list of comments
RewriteRule ^jskomment/sx$ jskomment/jskomment.php?action=sx [QSA,L]

# posting a new comment
RewriteRule ^jskomment/p$ jskomment/jskomment.php?action=p [QSA,L]

Once you have completed this the last step for you to do is to add jskomment to your HTML code where you want it to show up on the page.

Edit your Pelican theme's article.html file and add the following directly above {% if DISQUS_SITENAME %}:

<div class="comments">
  <h2>Comments?</h2>
  <div class="jskomment" title="{{ SITEURL }}/{{ article.url }}"></div>
  <script src="{{ SITEURL }}/jskomment.js"></script>
  <script>JSKOMMENT.url="{{ SITEURL }}/jskomment";</script>
</div>

Save it and recreate your static HTML files via make html as usual.
Once you have reuploaded your files you should have a working installation of jskomment.

All that is left is for you to change how it looks so it suits the design of your website better.
You can do this by editing the CSS in jskomment.css to your liking.

Anti-Spam Support (Optional)

jskomment has built-in support for reCAPTCHA to help combat comment spam. If you do not have an account you will need to get one as it requires a supplied public and private key to work.

Open jskomment-core.js. You will need to edit the lines that contain JSKOMMENT.url = and JSKOMMENT.recaptchaPublicKey = and adapt them to your website.

It should look like the following when you are done.

JSKOMMENT.url = 'http://yourwebsite.com/jskomment';
JSKOMMENT.recaptchaPublicKey = "Your_reCAPTCHA_Public_Key";

Finally, you will need to create a file called jskomment.local.php and insert the following code:

<?
    @define('RECAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY','Your_reCAPTCHA_PRIVATE_Key');
?>

Save and upload the two files and you will be done.

Open source orientated websites and proprietary comment systems

2013-03-10T21:14:00-04:00

I like to frequent a variety of websites and blogs which discuss and advocate open source software.

Recently I had some time to kill and I did a few searches on DuckDuckGo in order find a few more decent ones to read.

This prompted me to write this post in regards to emphasize the sole issue of using such services while simultaneously advocating open source software in the same breath. I have no comment regarding sites that do not fit this particular issue.

As I have looked around I could not help but notice that a growing number of these websites are powering their comments section with Disqus, a closed source proprietary comment hosting service, instead of either using their website's built-in comment system or an equivalent open source system.

Not only does using an external service like Disqus take various points of control away from the site owner, it also undermines the very principles that these sites are trying to convey when they promote open source software.

If an external service goes down you can't do anything at all to bring it back online quickly and efficiently. All a site owner can do is wait and hope for the best.

Also, if their database was ever compromised or corrupted in such away that your data could not be completely retrieved you would be unable fix it. While Disqus does allow you to export your comments for 'backup purposes only', it does not allow you to re-import that very data back into their ecosystem.

The proprietary nature and lack of control is not the only issue in regards to using this service. If you read their privacy policy you will many issues from a privacy standpoint as well. They track user activity and usage patterns across a variety of websites through various means in addition to selling that personally identifiable information to third parties.

I will concede that there are times when at least initially, a service like Disqus is the only easy method of attaining a comment system depending on the website or blogging platform they choose to deploy.

Pelican, the open source static blog generator which I use for this site, is a great example of this. Because due to its very nature of providing solely static html files they have added Disqus as an optional feature for those who want a comments system with it.

Other times it can simply come down to the fact that they are on a shared host and which restricts what they can run as some of the much nicer open source commenting systems like Juvia and talkatv need additional software such as ruby or python and a back-end program running to work.

I was looking for a simple light-weight PHP-based commenting system that I could add to Pelican and I quickly found jskomment. It is AJAX-powered and although it obviously is not the fanciest system around it does exactly what I wanted.

In conclusion, there is always an alternative to using a closed source environment and if you are going to promote open source software in any form you should take the time to make sure that you don't send mixed messages.

If anyone knows of other excellent open source commenting systems please let me know and I'll add them to this article.

Migrating to Pelican from Drupal

2013-03-08T03:19:00-05:00

What is Pelican?

Pelican is a Python-powered static website generator which comes with a rather decent feature set. It allows you to write your blog entries in reStructuredText, Markdown, or AsciiDoc using any editor that you desire.

It also supports:

Atom/RSS feeds.
Code syntax highlighting.
Integration with various services such as Disqus and Twitter.
Optional PDF generation of your posts.

It is also possible to extend its capabilities through the usage of plugins.

Installing Pelican and getting an initial website setup is as simple as following the Getting Started guide and answering the questions that come up when running pelican-quickstart.

Why did I switch?

I want to preface this by saying that I still really like Drupal. I have been running it on various websites for almost a decade now so I will not be completely abandoning by any means. I'll eventually find another project which is much more suited to what it can do than my relatively humble blog.

Why would I switch from a powerful and highly customizable content management system which I have used for years to a something that simply generates a static website? It is really interesting how things happen.

To be perfectly honest, switching to a different blogging system wasn't something that I had planned on doing at all initially as I was pretty content with how things were. I discovered Pelican by sheer chance a few days ago and it intrigued me.

The more I read the documentation and various posts about it online the more I liked it and wanted to try it out. In fact, I had originally decided to do this conversion from Drupal as a fun little side project to satisfy an itch. This itch of course branched into a myriad of reasons for why I wanted to give Pelican a real shot and let it run my actual website.

One reason is that it allows me to quickly create a post, format it properly, and automatically add it to a category on the website by simply moving or saving the file into a directory with the category's name.

Essentially, I found Pelican to be an elegant solution in my opinion as well as very simple to maintain and update.

Starting the Conversion

Pelican comes with an importer which allows you to import posts from Atom and RSS feeds. This was my ticket to export all my posts within Drupal quickly and efficiently.

I slightly modified the Atom feed module for Drupal, which normally has a cap of 100 posts, so that it would output all published nodes in the database.

The importer allows you to convert the feed into a few formats. I personally chose to go with Markdown because that is the format I plan on using for all my future posts and I like to have consistency.

pelican-import --feed -o ~/http/content -m markdown "http://moparx.com/atom.xml"

The conversion went relatively well, but there were a few things that I needed to fix which consisted of leftover HTML and a bunch of newlines in each file.

This is where sed comes into play and makes the problem extremely easy to fix.

# Removes all HTML   
sed -i 's/<[^>]\+>//g' *.md

# Removes all double newlines  
sed -i '/./,/^$/!d' *.md

I also decided that I wanted to switch my large image thumbnails to a smaller counterpart that was available so that they looked better on Pelican's default theme.

sed -i 's/styles\/large/styles\/medium/g' *.md

Finally, I began going through each post to add tags where relevant and to ensure that the slug would match the original post's URL. As I was going through the posts containing screenshots and my photos I discovered that images linked via a thumbnail were not converted properly.

After converting image links to the following format I was ready to go.

[![Alt Text](Thumbnail Image)](URL to large image)

Configuring Pelican

Pelican reads the configuration file each time it is run to regenerate the website.

My configuration file was created with Clean URLs in mind because I think it simply looks better and even more importantly the URLs would match the original posts locations.

I had really wanted to use the sitemap plugin as well, but I quickly discovered it simply does not work if the post's slug does not have a file extension appended to it.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- #

AUTHOR = u'Moparx'
SITENAME = u'Moparx'
SITESUBTITLE = u'$ cat >> /dev/blog'
SITEURL = 'http://moparx.com'
TIMEZONE = 'America/New_York'

DEFAULT_LANG = u'en'
DEFAULT_PAGINATION = 10

MENUITEMS = (('Home', 'http://moparx.com'),
)

DEFAULT_CATEGORY = ('Articles')
FILES_TO_COPY = (('extra/.htaccess', '.htaccess'), ('extra/robots.txt', 'robots.txt'),)
STATIC_PATHS = ['css', 'images', 'js']

MD_EXTENSIONS = ['codehilite','extra']
MARKUP = ('rst', 'md')

THEME = 'themes/moparx'

#PLUGINS = ['pelican.plugins.sitemap',]


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# EXTERNAL LINKS
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Recommended Sites
LINKS =  (('DuckDuckGo', 'https://duckduckgo.com/'),
          ('EFF.org', 'https://www.eff.org/'),
          ('Project Honeypot', 'https://www.projecthoneypot.org/'),)

# Social widget
SOCIAL = (('identi.ca', 'https://identi.ca/moparx'),
          ('libre.fm', 'http://libre.fm/user-profile.php?user=moparx'),
          ('reddit', 'http://reddit.com/user/Moparx/'),
          ('minecraft', 'http://mintyfreshcreepers.net'),)


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# URL PATHS
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Configure Pelican to output Clean URLs
ARTICLE_URL = '{slug}'
AUTHOR_URL = 'author/{slug}'
CATEGORY_URL = 'category/{slug}'
PAGE_URL =  '{slug}'
TAG_URL = 'tags/{slug}'

# Adjust save location to match previous files.
PAGE_SAVE_AS = '{slug}.html'
TAG_SAVE_AS = 'tags/{slug}.html'

# Atom and RSS feeds
CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM = ''
FEED_ALL_ATOM = 'atom.xml'
FEED_ALL_RSS = 'rss.xml'
FEED_MAX_ITEMS = 15


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# PLUGINS
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

SITEMAP = {
    'format': 'xml',
    'priorities': {
        'articles': 0.5,
        'indexes': 0.5,
        'pages': 0.5
    },
        'changefreqs': {
        'articles': 'monthly',
        'indexes': 'daily',
        'pages': 'monthly'
    }
}

Additionally, I am using a slightly modified version of the default theme as I removed the ability for it to automatically add all available categories to the main menu.

I'll probably be making my own theme soon anyway as there are possible licensing issues with Pelican's default theme from what I have been hearing.

Finalizing the setup

Since I modified all the slugs in the configuration file so that Pelican outputs Clean URLs, it was very important that I configured the server properly so that it knew what to do with them as well.

This is the .htaccess file I have created to ensure things run smoothly.

The important stuff is all after the aptly titled "Clean URLs" as it allows the Clean URLs to work as intended. If a visitor requests a post with .html extension attached it will strip the extension and redirect the visitor to the 'proper' URL.

# Don't show directory listings.
Options -Indexes

# Follow symbolic links.
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Disable the server signature.
ServerSignature Off

# Custom 404 error page.
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

# Clean URLs
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

# Remove any trailing slashes from URL    
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://moparx.com/$1 [R=301,L]

# Redirect index.html to /    
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[^/]*/index\.html [NC]
RewriteRule . / [R=301,L]

# Redirect pages with .html to the Clean URL 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /[^?\s]+\.html
RewriteRule (.*)\.html$ /$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html

# Redirect page queries to their new location    
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^page=([0-9]+)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index%1.html

I also created a robots.txt which tells web crawling bots that they are not allowed to access the author listing and the themes directory. This one is completely optional if you are pondering if you should use it or not.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /author/
Disallow: /theme/

Making the Switch: Moving on from Irssi and GNU Screen to WeeChat and tmux

2012-12-14T22:11:00-05:00

I have used Irssi and GNU Screen together for what seems to have been well over a decade now. Both applications do the job required of them quite well and as such they have always been one of the first things I installed an a fresh system.

Unfortunately, neither of the projects has had an official release in the past few years. This obviously isn't that big a deal of course since the Git versions of both are readily available to anyone who chooses to use them. I personally have used the Git version of GNU Screen for some time now.

A week ago I decided that I wanted to expand my horizons a bit and branch out to other software to see how they compared against both applications. Since WeeChat and tmux have been rapidly growing in popularity they were the obvious choice for this impromptu test.

My goal was to run them both for an entire week after configuring them to my liking and see how things went. I will admit that I honestly fully expected to switch back to Irssi and GNU Screen after things were all said and done.

As the title of this post has already alluded to, that didn't exactly happen as I quickly discovered that I really liked both WeeChat and tmux.

While both applications do exactly the same thing as their respective counterparts, they each had a lot little things that won me over. For instance, tux's status line is much easier to configure and I like the split pane implementation better than the one the Git version of GNU Screen provides. The mouse support for it is a nice bonus as well.

WeeChat has various features like SASL, Colorized Nick Names, and a Nick list built-in that could only be incorporated into Irssi through the usage of a third-party script.

Although the respective scripts for Irssi work quite well on their own and are admittedly mostly cosmetic in nature, I was nevertheless pleased to see them built into WeeChat's core.

Having SASL built into the client was somewhat important in my decision to stay with WeeChat. I use it for every server that I connect to and I've long felt that Irssi should have it built into its core as well.

I also liked WeeChat's smart filtering, gestures implementation, and the aspell plugin it comes with.

In conclusion, all the applications are absolutely fantastic in their own right and all of them have their own pros and cons to using them.

It all boils down to personal preference in the end. In my case, both WeeChat and tmux offered me things that their counterpart either lacked or did not implement as well.

That's not to say that they not lacking in areas as well. One example would be that WeeChat does not have proper theme support. I must admit that I wouldn't use it much, but it would be nice to have just the same.

Even if you have no interest in ever switching from your preferred terminal multiplexer or IRC client of choice, I hope this article makes you consider giving their alternatives a try at least once.

My Firefox Setup

2012-10-18T17:19:00-04:00

This post is more for my future reference than anything, but hopefully it is useful to others as well. :)

Browser Information:

Firefox with OpenSUSE's patches which allows it to integrate better into KDE.

If you use Archlinux, it can be obtained through the AUR. The package name is firefox-kde-opensuse

Theme:

Oxygen KDE

Imitates KDE's Oxygen style.

Extensions:

Adblock Plus

It blocks advertisements just like the name implies.
Adblock Plus Pop-up Addon

Makes it easy to block pop-ups with Adblock Plus.
AutoPager

Autoload the next page of a website in the background.
BetterPrivacy

Removes Flash "Super-Cookies".
Cookie Monster

Comprehensive Cookie Management
Cryptocat

Lets you instantly set up encrypted conversations.
DuckDuckComplete!

Shows answers, search results, or search suggestions from DuckDuckGo! in the URL bar.
DuckDuckGo for Firefox

DuckDuckGo enhancements for Firefox. (Adds DDG's Zero-Click information to Google, Bing, etc)
Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus

Helps you create element hiding rules for Adblock Plus to fight the text ads.
FireGloves

Attempts to impede fingerprinting-based tracking.
Flashblock

Replaces Flash objects with a button you can click to view them.
Ghostery

Identifies and allows you to block the 3rd parties (web bugs) that are hidden on the current page you're visiting. Web bugs include ad networks, behavioral data collectors and web analytics providers.
HTTPS Finder

Automatically detect and alert when SSL is available on a web page. Automated rule creation for HTTPS Everywhere
HTTPS-Everywhere

Automatically use HTTPS security on many sites.
KDE Wallet password integration

Enable passwords and form logins to be stored in KDE Wallet.
NoScript

Blocks JavaScript, Java, and other plugins on all sites except for domains of your choice.
Oxygen KDE Options (Comes with the theme)

Allows you to tweak the appearance of the "Oxygen KDE" firefox theme
PDF Viewer

PDF.js adds PDF reading capabilities to the browser using HTML5.
Priv3

Helps protects you from being tracked by social networks.
Reddit Enhancement Suite

Enhances your experience on Reddit.
Redirect Cleaner

Redirect Cleaner cleans Redirects from Links
RefControl

Control what gets sent as the HTTP Referer on a per-site basis.
RequestPolicy

Control which cross-site requests are allowed.
Scriptish

A user script manager for Firefox (A fork of Greasemonkey).
Suspend background tabs

Suspends actions in background tabs until they become active again..
United States English Spell-checker

Spell-checker
WebPG for Firefox

Provides GnuPG/GPG/PGP related functions to Firefox.

Userscripts:

Ads Skipper

Skips advertisements on download sites.
Anti-Anti-AdBlock

Disables anti-adblocker script.
Jamendo Direct Ogg Download

Rewrites Jamendo's album download links to point to the direct-download Ogg Vorbis versions.
Straight Google

Remove Google's URL track redirection from Google Products.
Twitter Link Cleaner

Converts t.co wrapped links to actual urls and does minimal formatting on other wrappers (youtu.be, etc).
Twitter Promoted Killer

Hide promoted tweets, promoted accounts and promoted trends on Twitter.
Youtube Forced HTML5 Player

Plays Youtube videos in container (Works with embedded videos as well).
userscripts.org Bullshit Filter

Hides scripts for popular browser games and social networks as well as scripts that use "foreign" characters in description.

Firefox Configuration Tweaks:

about:home modified to use DuckDuckGo (Instructions)
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory = /dev/shm/firefox
browser.cache.memory.enable = false
browser.cache.offline.enable = false
browser.search.defaultenginename = DuckDuckGo
keyword.URL =
mousewheel.withnokey.numlines = 7
mousewheel.withnokey.sysnumlines = false

A blast from the past. My former online community and beyond.

2012-09-07T15:35:00-04:00

A member of a defunct community that I ran for eight years recently showed up on my site and it got me thinking about the past and how much fun we all had back then. It dawned on me that people from my old community might be interested in knowing what I have been doing these past few years, so this post is mostly geared towards them.

Since the closure of that community, I have been operating Minty Fresh Creepers, a Survival PvE (Player vs. Environment) Minecraft Server, which has been active for nearly two years now.

It has a friendly and tight-knit community behind it and overall it is a great place to be.

If you play Minecraft and are looking for a server to play on I highly recommend Minty Fresh Creepers (although I'm obviously biased since I run it).

However, even if you don't have Minecraft you are welcome to hang out on our community forums if you desired.

Simplifeed: A new open source social network

2012-09-01T21:26:00-04:00

While browsing Reddit today I discovered Simplifeed, a sleek new open source social network created by Dominic McPhee, and after playing around with it far a little bit I have to say that it is great so far.

Simplifeed is an elegant and simplistic service which is currently in alpha and distributed under the GPLv3 license.

You can download the source code from GitHub, or create an account on the site and check it out for yourself.

KDE-orientated usergroup on deviantART

2012-05-22T22:04:00-04:00

I recently started using deviantART again after a rather long hiatus and it seems that the Linux community on it has grown considerably.

These days it has user-groups for a variety of desktop environments, window managers, and miscellaneous Linux-orientated projects.

However, I discovered that deviantART surprisingly lacked a KDE-centric user-group so I decided to create one.

The user-group is a relatively standard group which focuses on curating KDE desktop screen shots, icons, themes, and wallpapers.

If you would like to check it out you can visit it at http://kde-users.deviantart.com/

mutt-kz: A new mutt fork

2012-05-15T04:27:00-04:00

I stumbled upon a relatively new fork of mutt recently called mutt-kz.

It is a project which was created with the purpose of modernizing mutt by heavily integrating notmuch, a fast mail indexer, into the client. This integration provides mutt-kz with the ability to have full-text searching, tagging, virtual folders, and more.

After compiling it and configuring the virtual folders and tags to my liking, I have to say that I am quite pleased with mutt-kz. It's now my defacto replacement for mutt on my machines.

If you are interested, you can download the source code or learn more about it by heading over to the Wiki and Mailing list.

May 2012 Screenshot #2

2012-05-13T20:55:00-04:00

Another screenshot for the month. This one of course featuring my Openbox install.

Information:

Wallpaper: eCO
VIM color scheme: xoria256
Terminal colors: My config file.
Compositing / Effects: Cairo Composite Manager
Browser: uzbl

May 2012 Screenshot

2012-05-13T17:46:00-04:00

Information:

Plasma Theme: A combination of Amakage and nowardev 2
Icons: elementary USU
Plasma Widget: Current Song
Wallpaper: curtns
Conky: My config file.

What podcasts does everyone recommend listening too?

2012-05-13T14:00:00-04:00

Podcasts are an excellent way to pass the time and it has been awhile since I updated my list to include 'new' shows.

What are some podcasts that you recommend listening too?

The podcasts I currently listen too:

2600: Off the Hook (RSS)
2600: Off the Wall (RSS)
Buzz Out Loud (RSS)
Common Sense with Dan Carlin (RSS)
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (RSS)
No Agenda (RSS)
The 404 (RSS)
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe (RSS)
The Skeptics' Guide 5X5 (RSS)
this WEEK in TECH (RSS)