Our Randomness

Yet another crazy ass email from my father-in-law.

A young Texan grew up wanting to be a law man. He grew up big, 6' 2'', and strong as a longhorn and fast as a mustang. He could shoot a bottle cap tossed in the air at 40 paces. When he finally became of age he applied to where he had only dreamed of working: the West Texas Sheriff’s Department.

After a big mess of tests and interviews the Chief Deputy finally called him into his office for the young man's last interview. The Chief Deputy says: "You're a big strong kid and you can really shoot. So far your qualifications all look good. But we have what you call an 'attitude suitability test' that you must take before you can be accepted. We just don't let anyone carry our badge son."

Then, sliding a service pistol and a box of ammo across the desk, the Chief says: "Take this pistol and go out and shoot: six lawyers, six politicians of any type, six meth dealers, six Muslim extremists, and a rabbit."

"Why the rabbit?"

"Great attitude," says the Chief Deputy. "When can you start?"

Yet another email from my father-in-law:

A couple were celebrating 50 years together. Their three kids, all very
successful, agreed to a Sunday dinner in their honor.

"Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad," gushed son number one .... 'Sorry I'm
running late. I had an emergency at the hospital with a patient, you know
how it is, and I didn't have time to get you a gift."

"Not to worry," said the father. "The important thing is that we're all
together today."

Son number two arrived and announced, "You and Mom look great, Dad. I just
flew in from Los Angeles between depositions and didn't have time to shop
for you." "It's nothing," said the father. "We're glad you were able to
come."

Just then the daughter arrived. "Hello and happy anniversary! I'm sorry, but
my boss is sending me out of town and I was really busy packing so I didn't
have time to get you anything."

After they had finished dessert, the father said, "There's something your
mother and I have wanted to tell you for a long time. You see, we were very
poor. Despite this, we were able to send each of you to college. Throughout
the years your mother and I knew that we loved each other very much, but we
just never found the time to get married."

The three children gasped and all said, "You mean we're bastards?"

"Yep," said the father. "And cheap ones too."

This one took me a little while to figure out, but I finally got it.

In the script below, you can just replace the USERNAME:PASSWORD with your Twitter credentials & it will work no problem. Or you can continue reading and learn how to modify it to your taste.

#!/bin/bash
curl --basic --user USERNAME:PASSWORD --data status="Listening to: ${*:1:1} #musicLibrary" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml > /dev/null

Line 1: path to your bash executable

Line 2: This is the part that has been throwing me for a loop for quite a while.

The first portion "curl --basic --username USERNAME:PASSWORD " is quite mandatory if you want to actually post anything. Curl is a CLI for pushing and pulling data on the internet.

The next part "--data " is telling curl what you want to do. In this case, we are telling curl to grab the supplied string "status="Listening to: ${*:1:1} #musicLibrary" and push it to "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml".

The last portion of this line "> /dev/null" is telling curl to send any and all returned data to the null device on the system which will prompty forget that it recieved anything at all.

Now, you may be wondering what exactly does the ${*:1:1} part of the command do. This is simply telling BaSH to pass all (${*) startup arguments beginning with position one (:1:) and only take one (1} argument and insert it into the text string. See line below for inserting the first five arguments.

eg: ${*:1:5} or if you want the fifth through seventh arguments ${*:5:3}

After you copy/paste & configure your own script, don't forget to make it executable with 'chmod +x FILENAME'!

Now for configuring xmms.

If you look closely, you can see I have the config window open for the 'Song Change' plugin in the XMMS preferences pane.

In the 'Song Change' dialog, type in the path to your new script followed by %n in quotes.

eg: /home/user/bin/tweet "%n"

If you read through the config page for xmms-song_change, you will find other variables & fun stuff to put into your command.

Don't forget to click the 'Enable plugin' check box after you have it configured & hit the [OK] button.

That's it for me. Lemme know what you think & if you come up with a better way, please let me know.

I've been working on my own style of a CMS system for about a month on and off, and I just wanted to show it off. It's no where near production quality yet, but I'm getting there. Anywho, here's a screenshot of what I have working so far.

hmm... yeah, forget about the color scheme at the moment; unless you like it.

Comments & critique welcome.

In my opinion, the best way to defeat terrorism is to simply stop being afraid of everything that could happen to you & your loved ones and others worldwide.

People need to start worrying about whats happening in their own backyard and house before they even step foot into city, state, national and international politics and media concerns.

I realize that this seems like a contradiction, but look at your backyard and your house for once and pay attention to ALL the little stuff for one day or even an hour. I'll bet that you find at least five things within that first hour that will drive you bat-shit crazy and you never even realized they were there or happened all because you weren't paying attention to the important stuff.