Schinckel.net

I cannot post via ecto, or any other offline client at the moment: Blogsome has disabled XMLRPC support, due to a security issue. Since they use Multi-User WordPress, there is not fix for this build as yet.

I had possibly the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever had the other night. “Le Bon”, in the southern (station) end of the Adelaide Railway Station Underpass, sells coffees for $2.20, which is much less than most other places. But, you do get what you pay for. This was worse than instant coffee. And, it was so hot it burned the crap out of my tongue. Even then, I could still tell just how putrid this was. By that stage, I was on the train, so I had to hold on to a full cup of woeful coffee for 20 minutes, and once I forgot just how bad it was and took a sip. Don’t ever buy coffee there. Ever.

There is a man who catches my train in the mornings who looks an awful lot like Mr. Bean. I don’t mean he looks a bit like Rowan Atkinson, he really has the Mr. Bean expression and all. Oh, and I’m sitting right across from him. If this damn Zire 31 had a camera I’d take a photo.

I had planned to create a GUI wrapper, perhaps in AppleScript Studio, for Apple’s Chapter Tool command line program. My application was going to have an interface very similar to QuickTime Player, but with an extra section where you entered data about the chapter(s). You would be able to scrub through the track, and find the place to insert the Chapter Marker: then you would have a list of Chapter Markers, and the ability to edit the location, and the attributes. I did a bit of stuff with Python’s XML handling features, enough to basically figure out how to write out the required XML basic structure, and I think I know how to do the attributes. What I cannot do is figure out how to get a QT viewer in the AppleScript Studio progam (or Interface Builder, actually). There seems to be some templates for PyObj-C applications, I may use one of those. Or, I might just make an application that controls/gets data from QuickTime Player (iTunes isn’t so good for this, as it requires files to be imported before playing them). Then, all it needs to do is look after the XML generation, and bingo, easy Chapters. Actually, I remember why I stopped: Chapter Tool would not work on my Mac.

There you go. Visit http://schinckel.net/software/, and then visit http://schinckel.net/software/acronymmerpy/ No difference, even though there is a page in acronymmerpy/ I’ll put this in the blogsome forums when I get a chance.

The BBC has been offering free downloads of the BBC Philharmonic performing Beethoven’s Symphonies as a part of their Beethoven Experience. I finally finished downloading the entire set. I also leeched (using realdump) the complete Sonata Cycle, as performed in 2003 by Artur Pizzaro. The BBC website doesn’t allow resume transfers on downloading, so I had to have several tries at some of the files. And a couple of the Sontatas don’t seem to be all there - but there ain’t any more on the server.

iTunesRater seems to be leaking memory, and I think I know where. I discovered this by just watching the amount of memory it used, and each time a new track plays, the memory usage goes up. I think it’s to do with the artwork display: I thought I deleted the image being displayed, but maybe I don’t. Before I update the image with a new one, I use the code:

        delete image of image view “Artwork”

(both times: when I replace the artwork in the main window, and the previous track drawer). However, unless I’m missing something else, this is where the leak is!

Taking into account the comments on PhotoMatt’s acronymit page (where I shamelessly stole some ideas, including the list of words!), I’ve modified acronymmer.py so that it:

1. Does not apply <acronym> tags to instances that have been acronymmed already.
2. Does not apply tags to instances that are inside href or title strings.
3. Does not save the file if no changes have been made.

Here it is, including my current acronym list. (I know some of these are Abbreviations, but ecto, and some browsers do not handle this tag). Also, this code needs to be re-pasted - I was trying to make it (XHTML) valid, and it’s broken now.

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    #! /usr/bin/env python
        
    'A script for ecto that adds abbr and acronym tags to the text'
        
    acronyms = {
    'WYSIWYG' : 'what you see is what you get',
    'XHTML' : 'eXtensible HyperText Markup Language',
    'IIRC' : 'if I remember correctly',
    'HDTV' : 'High Definition TeleVision',
    'LGPL' : 'GNU Lesser General Public License',
    'MSDN' : 'Microsoft Developer Network',
    'WCAG' : 'Web Content Accessibility Guidelines',
    'SOAP' : 'Simple Object Access Protocol',
    'OPML' : 'Outline Processor Markup Language',
    'MSIE' : 'Microsoft Internet Explorer',
    'FOAF' : 'Friend of a Friend vocabulary',
    'GFDL' : 'GNU Free Documentation License',
    'XSLT' : 'eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation',
    'HTML' : 'HyperText Markup Language',
    'IMAP' : 'Internet Message Access Protocol',
    'RAID' : 'Redundant Array of Independent Disks',
    'MPEG' : 'Motion Picture Experts Group',
    'JPEG' : 'Joint Photographic Experts Group',
    'CSTA' : 'Central Scorpions Touch Association',
    'CDDB' : 'Compact Disc DataBase (Gracenote)',
    'XBMC' : 'Xbox Media Centre',
    'VNC' : 'Virtual Network Computing',
    'URL' : 'Uniform Resource Locator',
    'W3C' : 'World Wide Web Consortium',
    'MSN' : 'Microsoft Network',
    'USB' : 'Universal Serial Bus',
    'P2P' : 'Peer To Peer',
    'PBS' : 'Public Broadcasting System',
    'RSS' : 'Really Simple Syndication',
    'SIG' : 'Special Interest Group',
    'RDF' : 'Resource Description Framework',
    'AOL' : 'American Online',
    'PHP' : 'PHP Hypertext Processor',
    'SSN' : 'Social Security Number',
    'JSP' : 'Java Server Pages',
    'DOM' : 'Document Object Model',
    'DTD' : 'Document Type Definition',
    'DVD' : 'Digital Versatile Disc',
    'DNS' : 'Domain Name System',
    'CSS' : 'Cascading Style Sheets',
    'CGI' : 'Common Gateway Interface',
    'CMS' : 'Content Management System',
    'FAQ' : 'Frequently Asked Questions',
    'FSF' : 'Free Software Foundation',
    'API' : 'Application Interface',
    'PDF' : 'Portable Document Format',
    'IIS' : 'Internet Infomation Server',
    'XML' : 'eXtensible Markup Language',
    'XSL' : 'eXtensible Stylesheet Language',
    'GPL' : 'GNU General Public License',
    'KDE' : 'K Desktop Environment',
    'STB' : 'Set Top Box',
    'MP3' : 'Mpeg Layer 3',
    'PVR' : 'Personal (Digital) Video Recorder',
    'GUI' : 'Graphical User Interface',
    'CLI' : 'Command Line Interface',
    'AAC' : 'Advanced Audio Coding',
    'IE' : 'Internet Explorer',
    'CD' : 'Compact Disk',
    'GB' : 'Gigabyte',
    'MB' : 'Megabyte',
    'KB' : 'Kilobyte',
    'TV' : 'TeleVision',
    'PC' : 'Personal Computer',
    'NSLU2':'[Linksys] Network Storage Link (USB) 2.0'
    }
    
    
    import sys, re
    data = open(sys.argv[1]).read()
    olddata = data
    
    # replace only the first instance of each acronym/abbreviation
    for each in acronyms:
        d = re.search(r'(?!<.*(title|href)='*>)?\b%s\b(?!(.*'>|</acronym>))' % each, data)
        if d:
            data = data[:d.start()] + '<acronym title='' + \
                   acronyms[each] + '>' + \
                   each + '</acronym>' + data[d.end():]
        
    if data <> olddata:
        open(sys.argv[1],'w').write(data)

Apparently, Apple has a new tool for adding Chapter information to AAC files, but it is CLI only. I’ll write a wrapper GUI for it tonight, since Jaq is away, and I don’t need to go to bed tonight. But first, Chicken & Chips.

Man, this is cool. After reading about it on Fraser Speirs’ blog, I tried SubEthaEdit’s Copy As XHTML. (⇧⌘C) It is extremely good. See:

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    #! /usr/bin/env python
        
    """A script for ecto that adds abbr and acronym tags to the text"""
        
    TODO = """
    Lookup on the internet for a list of acronyms/abbreviations?
    """

The only thing missing for me is the ability to paste this into ecto, and have ecto be able to edit it in Rich Text mode, rather than just HTML. (Oh, and I think my stylesheet is stopping the comment/string/keywords appearing in colour). Edit: No, it was an issue with double-quotes being escaped by a slash! I’m not sure what caused it, but it was annoying

composed and posted with ecto