So the laptop is old and slow, and we don’t really watch movies or TV or play video games. So these heavy duty media server installs are too much, clearly. We want to play music, and maybe be able to hop onto allmusic.com or wikipedia for some fact-checking. We want to use mainly web-based streaming apps like MOG, Spotify and last.fm, be able to listen to NPR and other podcasts, watch/listen to stuff on youtube, and play from our iTunes libraries remotely. Hmm, barring that last requirement, doesn’t it just sound like what I really need is a Chromebook (Google’s netbook? Say, can I install Chrome OS on my machine? No, but you can install Chromium OS and it might not work amazingly well. Read through that post and its one of those that keeps us all afraid of Linux. But check the comments and enter Jolicloud OS!

Joli OS is built on top of Ubuntu, tweaked for netbooks and other computers with limited disk storage, memory, and screen size. Joli OS was designed for easy installation, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G modem support all included. Jolicloud claims the OS supports 98% of netbooks with out-of-the-box compatibility but also works on a very large number of other devices, up to 10 years old: laptops, desktops and tablets. Bottom line is it just worked for me.

The natural comparison in look and function is iOS, the operating system used by the Apple iPad/iPhone, though with the folders and files and CLI of a conventional Linux install tucked deep away. The user interface is built primarily in HTML5 that includes an application launcher and a library of compatible applications with one-click installation and removal.

Boxee, Dropbox, VLC, Skype and Google Chrome are all featured as one-click installs. So are Gmail, Google Maps, Wikipedia, MOG and Facebook. Many of the applications available to Jolicloud users are, in fact, websites but really, of course, better thought of as applications. Open any of these up, and you get the website, e.g. Gmail, as program in a heavily tweaked full-screen browser, minus most of the browser toolbars and menus. You don’t need that browser stuff though for these web apps, so when you browse, you can just browser and not waste your tabs on the web apps.

The distinction is further broken down in your one-click dashboard apps (a mixture of mostly web-apps and some local programs) and “native” apps like gedit, terminal, gnome settings, etc. If you know what you’re doing you can add whatever to your installation and put shortcuts in your “local apps” folder on you application launcher/dash, but not your dash proper, which is annoying. For example, if you install last.fm as an app through Joli, it just gives you the web app, whilst there is a perfectly good linux port of the superior last.fm scrobbler program. So I added it through apt and I wish I could get it directly onto the main launching area rather than having to add it as a shortcut in a folder on my main area. But there are some workarounds like adding it to the little upper “taskbar” and I don’t foresee adding many other programs, since Joli makes intelligent choices about whether to give me the web app or real app otherwise.

Anyway, blathering on. Some tips and tricks for this setup soon!

Suppose I want to find the files with .png and .jpg extensions.

Its not

$ find /path/ -name '*.png' -and -name '*.jpg'

but

$ find /path/ -name '*.png' -or -name '*.jpg'

The “-and” refers to one set of file names where both conditions are met (as if we didn’t use the boolean at all). The “-or” says I’m looking for either/both of two sets.

So to explain further:

$ find . -iname david\ bowie\*ogg -type f > david_bowie.m3u

(This will find any files called, in one way or the other, “david bowie….ogg” and write that list to a .m3u file.)

Per above this is semantically equivalent to:

$ find . -iname david\ bowie\*ogg -and -type f > david_bowie.m3u

And equivalent to:

$ find . -iname "david bowie*ogg" -a -type f > david_bowie.m3u

So the and isn’t usually so helpful – its implied by the succession or arguments.

If you wanted to find all files that aren’t owned by a user, you could use the -not operator:

$ find -not -user jfishwick

It’s also possible to have one invocation of find perform more than one task with using “and,” “or,” or “not.” Use the “,” operator. The gotcha here is that the value of the list returned is the value of the last expression. The other values are thrown away unless we do something with them immediately.

So, to compile two lists, one containing the names of all .php files and the other the names of all .js files use:

$ find ~ -type f \( -name \*.php -fprint php_files ,
                    -name \*.js -fprint javascript_files \)

A summary of the operators, Listed in order of decreasing precedence:

( expr )

Force precedence.

-not expr

True if expr is false. With find, matches everything but this expressed value.

! expr

Same as -not expr.

expr1 -and expr2

expr2 is not evaluated if expr1 is false. So with find, only returns matches that meet both criteria.

expr1 expr2

And (implied); same as above

expr1 -a expr2

Same as expr1 expr2.

expr1 -or expr2

Or; expr2 is not evaluated if expr1 is true. With find return if either expression matches the list.

expr1 -o expr2

Same as expr1 -or expr2.

expr1 , expr2

List; both expr1 and expr2 are always evaluated. The value of expr1 is discarded; the value of the list is the value of expr2.

One last note, using -exec at the end of a long boolean chain will only effect the last option and expression.

If I try

$ find -iname \*asx -or -iname \*clean.txt -or -iname \*dvdIt.txt -or -iname \*.qt.\* -or -iname \*.rt\* -or -iname \*scc -or -iname \*sdf -or -iname \*smi -or -iname \*srt -or -iname \*stl -exec rm -rf {} \;

only the *.stl files would get deleted. To pass everything on, use xargs, natch.

$find -iname \*asx -or -iname \*clean.txt -or -iname \*dvdIt.txt -or -iname \*.qt.\* -or -iname \*.rt\* -or -iname \*scc -or -iname \*sdf -or -iname \*smi -or -iname \*srt -or -iname \*stl | xargs rm -rf

Where ‘list.txt’ is a list of URLs separated by line breaks.

If you aren’t interested in certain files, say images, there is a further flag to reject certain file types:

--reject=gif,jpg,png

I love wget!

For a custom taxonomy page, you use is_tax(). By itself it returns true for any custom taxonomy archive page.

That might be enough, if not, there are arguments:

is_tax( $taxonomy, $term );

$taxonomy is a Taxonomy slug or slugs, while $term The term(s) ID, Name or Slug.

is_tax();
// When any custom taxonomy archive page is being displayed.

is_tax( 'wpsc_product_category' );
// When the archive page for taxonomy of 'wpsc_product_category' is being displayed.

is_tax( 'wpsc_product_category', 'audio' );
// When the archive page for taxonomy of 'wpsc_product_category' is being displayed and the 'wpsc_product_category' taxonomy term is 'audio

is_tax( 'wpsc_product_category', array( 'audio', 'video', 'download' ) )
// Returns true when the 'wpsc_product_category' taxonomy archive being displayed has a slug of either "audio", "video", or "download".

It is a little less obvious how to use a Conditional Tag for a single instance of a Custom Post (in many instances this is the “single” you hit from clicking an instance of on the archive page above).

is_singular();

Using this with do arguments returns true when any of following return true: is_single(), is_page() or is_attachment(). This probably isn’t helpful. So pass in your Custom Post Type:

is_singular('wpsc_product')';

One thing that you can’t do with the predefined Conditionals is determine whether your “single” (custom or not) in inside a custom taxonomy. We have to build our own, like so:

<?php
function has_wpsc_product_category( $wpsc_product_category, $_post = null ) {
	if ( empty( $wpsc_product_category ) )
		return false;
	if ( $_post )
		$_post = get_post( $_post );
	else
		$_post =& $GLOBALS['post'];
	if ( !$_post )
		return false;
	$r = is_object_in_term( $_post->ID, 'wpsc_product_category', $wpsc_product_category );
	if ( is_wp_error( $r ) )
		return false;
	return $r;
}
?>

How to use:

has_wpsc_product_category( 'audio' );

Of course, you would alter the function for your taxonomy. You could also pass in an array of terms and iterate thorough them, using is_object_in_term on each, and returning if any are true.

Finally, there is the issue of child terms in your custom taxonomy. Currently, is_tax() won’t return turn for child taxonomies. It only works for the explicit term. Bainternet has a great solution here.

Finally, here is a real world usage, where I’m calling up a certain sidebar for a collection of views that relate to the eCommerce portion of a blog, where there is a Custom Post Type for products with a Custom Taxonomy for sorting them. There are also some pages relating to the cart and checkout, etc. It also sometimes becomes easiest and most practical just to put your complicated query on a Page and not get all worked up with conditionals or template overrides:

<div class="sidebar" id="page-sidebar"></div>
            <?php
			wp_reset_query();
			elseif ( is_page_template('page-wide.php') || is_page_template('page-donation.php') || is_page_template('page-contact.php') ) :; // no sidebar
			elseif ( is_tax( 'wpsc_product_category' ) || is_page(array('products-page','checkout','transaction-results','your-account')) || is_singular('wpsc-product') ) : // for eCommerce views
    			get_sidebar('store');
			elseif ( is_page() ) :
    			get_sidebar('page');
			elseif ( is_single() ) :
    			get_sidebar('single');
			else :
    			get_sidebar();
			endif;
			?>

            </div>

To test if something is not checked:

if ($("input").is(":not(:checked)"))

Or more naturally:

if ( ! $("input").is(':checked') )

I want to be able to use jQuery in my complete callbacks. I, of course, want to be able to use wp_enqueue_script.

First, I know that its recommended to call all your wp_enqueue_script functions from inside the wp_enqueue_scripts action, but I’m just defining all of my scripts and calling them to be enqueued directly in my header.php. This is mainly to make my example easier, but also because I want my script references to be in my header markup, not buried in my functions.php. WordPress wants you to obfuscate stuff too much methinks! I suppose the best compromise would be to use wp_register_script for all my JavaScript in a function tied to wp_enqueue_scripts in my functions.php, and then just use wp_enqueue_script in the head with the sole handle argument. Check the function reference in the codex for more on the above.

Anyway, here is an example of what I like to do:

wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
wp_enqueue_script('modernizr', 'http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/modernizr/2.0.6/modernizr.min.js', 'jquery', false);
if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script('slideshow', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/jquery.cycle.all.min.js', 'jquery', false);
wp_enqueue_script('lazyload', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/jquery.lazyload.mini.js', 'jquery', false);
wp_enqueue_script('script', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/script.js', array('jquery','modernizr'), false);

So, jQuery is given as a dependency for Modernizr. And script.js depends on both of those. Rather than putting my Modernizer.load inline, as seems to be the trend, I just include it this script, which serves as a catch all for various jQuery effects and other stuff. Here is the function:

Modernizr.load({
  test: Modernizr.textshadow,
  nope : ['https://raw.github.com/heygrady/textshadow/master/jquery.textshadow.js'],
  complete: function() {
	 jQuery.noConflict();
	 jQuery('h2#desc, .page h2').textshadow();
  }

Note that you’ll almost positively need to call

jQuery.noConflict();

when using this setup.

A more complicated usage of these guys, would be be calling wp_enqueue_script inside your yep/nope callback. In such a case, you’d want to call your Modernizr.load function inline, maybe even between other “enqueue” calls.

First, you’ll need to register all your scripts in the way I mentioned at the onset. That is, hook a function to thewp_enqueue_scripts action in which you register all your scripts with wp_register_script. So, since I didn’t show this explicitly before:

<?php
function my_scripts_method() { // you would probably be loading more than one here if you were using this technique
    wp_register_script('textshadow','https://raw.github.com/heygrady/textshadow/master/jquery.textshadow.js', false);
}    

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'my_scripts_method');
?>

Next you’ll also add this function to your functions.php:

function registered_scripts( $handles = array() ) {
    global $wp_scripts, $wp_styles;

    foreach ( $wp_scripts->registered as $registered )
        $script_urls[ $registered->handle ] = $registered->src;

    foreach ( $wp_styles->registered as $registered )
        $style_urls[ $registered->handle ] = $registered->src;

    if ( empty( $handles ) ) {

        $handles = array_merge( $wp_scripts->queue, $wp_styles->queue );
        array_values( $handles );

    }

    $output = '';

    foreach ( $handles as $handle ) {

        if ( !empty( $script_urls[ $handle ] ) )
            $output .= $script_urls[ $handle ] . ',';

        if ( !empty( $style_urls[ $handle ] ) )
            $output .= $style_urls[ $handle ] . ',';

    }

    $output = substr( $output, 0, -1 );

    echo $output;

}

Basically, this will allow you to reach into your registered scripts and style-sheets and call one out to be enqueued by it’s registered handle.

So, I could now do something like:

<script>
Modernizr.load([
  {
    test : Modernizr.textshadow,
    nope : [<?php registered_scripts( array('textshadow') ); ?>],
    complete: function() {
      jQuery.noConflict();
      jQuery('h2#desc, .page h2').textshadow();
    }
  }
]);
</script>

and the “textshadow” polyfill would be enqueued, instead of just manually loaded.

svn: warning: Error handling externals definition for XXXX
svn: warning: PROPFIND of '/!svn/XXXX/default': could not connect to server (http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org)

Strangely, I was able to browse the repository via my browser, as well as checkout other public svns. I’m not behind a proxy, with a normal COMCAST connection.

What gives and how did I get around it?

After I bit of research, I stumbled across this link: http://www.cybersprocket.com/2011/tips-tricks/is-comcast-playing-big-brother-with-your-internet/.

You can read the poop there, but the long-and-short is that Comcast is doing “some sort of traffic shaping or other network manipulation” and making the internet fail. The solution offered is to connect through alternate connection. Nope, don’t have that. And how to setup a proxy for subversion?

First, you need a proxy to connect through. Here are three easy ways (for which you the end user will need evaluate the security of, ymmv):

1) Look up a free public proxy

2) Use the Google App Engine as a proxy server

3) Configure an Apache development (production not advised) server you “own” somewherw to run as your Proxy.

Add these directives somewhere in your Apache configuration file chain (httpd.conf, vhosts.d directory, etc.):

Listen 8080

<virtualhost _default_:8080>
    ProxyRequests On
    ProxyVia On
    ProxyPreserveHost On

    <proxy *>
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
    </proxy>
</virtualhost>

This assumes you have mod_proxy installed. Port 8080 is arbitrary. Basically for an unmatched virtual host (i.e. any request that doesn’t match your other hosts you have set up) it will turn proxy on and proxy the request through. Obviously, “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx” should be your own IP address.

Now, we need to route all subversion http requests via your proxy of choice:

Open up:

~/.subversion/servers

Find this section in your globals:

# http-proxy-exceptions = *.exception.com, www.internal-site.org
# http-proxy-host = proxy1.some-domain-name.com
# http-proxy-port = 80
# http-proxy-username = defaultusername
# http-proxy-password = defaultpassword
# http-compression = no
# http-auth-types = basic;digest;negotiate
# No http-timeout, so just use the builtin default.
# No neon-debug-mask, so neon debugging is disabled.
# ssl-authority-files = /path/to/CAcert.pem;/path/to/CAcert2.pem

Uncomment http-proxy-host and http-proxy-port. For host use a spare domain name you have mapped to your development server or just the proxy server IP. Then set the port to 8080 or whatever other port needs to be used.

Note: This doesn’t affect straight-up svn or svn+ssh requests.

While I have a very specific and regular use-case for textutil, namely converting Word .docs into barebones HTML or PDFS, there are plenty of features that make it a highly useful and general purpose tool. textutil can convert from/to txt, html, rtf, rtfd, doc, docx, wordml, odt and webarchive.

The basic syntax is:

textutil -convert fmt filename

So, we can convert a Microsoft Word format document into html by typing:

textutil -convert html "My Word Document.doc"

Executing this command will create an html file called MyWord.html. The HTML generated is 4.01, but you can cope! You’ll find a bit of CSS code, too, but otherwise it’s fairly clean… It will also take blank lines between text paragraphs and attempt to replicate the space using a

<p><br /></p>

combo. Finally, I sometimes notice some weird spans and crap like

<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">      </span>

, but these usecases are only if your source docs have lots of soft returns and forced tabs. Look, its stillmuch, much better HTML than Word writes!

Again, fairly clean, but you’ll maybe want to to a couple universal search-and-replaces, or more preferably a proper run of Tidy to set your prefered DOCTYPE and blast the above tag soup. Also, the “-excludedelements” switch can help you out. This switch allows you to specify which HTML elements should not be used in the generated HTML.

Some other help examples of textutil:

Create an HTML document from a plain text file with the title and keyword tags set:

textutil -convert html -title "My HTML Page" -keywords "(web,php,'object orientated',physics)" -author "Jimmy James" mytextfile.txt

Find recursively in the current directory, by name, all the doc files. Execute the textutil ‘convert to text’ command with the found files:

find . -name *.doc -exec textutil -convert txt '{}' \;

If you have multiple text documents that you want to join together into a single new file, use textutil’s built-in cat function:

textutil -cat rtf file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt -output combinedFiles.rtf

Use the -info flag to display information about a file. This displays the type, size, length (in characters), other metadata and an abstract from the contents of the text file:

textutil -info "My Word Document.doc"

File: My Word Document.doc
Type: Word format
Size: 26700 bytes
Length: 4236 characters
Title: My Word Document
Author: Stephanie Fishwick
Last Editor: James Fishwick
Company: Fishwick Design
Subject:
Keywords:
Created: 2010-11-02 17:56:00 -0500
Last Modified: 2011-11-06 09:47:00 -0500

Convert a docx document to doc format.

textutil -convert doc myFile.docx

If you want to convert all of the files in a folder to one format you can type

textutil -convert doc /path/to/location/*.docx

Of course, check the man page for all the goodness.