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---
title: To Blog or Not to Blog
layout: post
---
The original intention of this blog was to serve as a place where I could
showcase the programming work I have done and detail my process. However, as
you can tell, there hasn't been any posts since my first ["Hello,
World!"](/blog/hello-world/) post. Sure, I've been working on projects, but I
just haven't gotten to the point in any of those projects where I felt like I
could blog in detail about it.
Then I watched this great talk that [Brian
Jones](http://pyvideo.org/speaker/352/brian-k-jones) gave at
[PyCon](http://pycon.org) that my friend, [Daniel Bond](http://dbond.cc/),
pointed out to me:
<div class="flex-video widescreen"><iframe width="640" height="360"
src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BBfW3m3TK0w?feature=player_embedded"
frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
One point that he makes that really resonates with me is how I should write
even if I feel like I don't know what I'm talking about. The reluctance to show
my inexperience is essentially the reason this blog sat stale for so many
months after its inception.
I have decided I will take Brian's words to heart, and start blogging just for
the sake of writing. Henceforth, I will no longer hesitate to chronicle my
journey through programming, writing, and any other quest which may take a hold
of me as I continue to improve and broaden my skills. I'll be wrong, I'll ask
questions, and I may frankly look like a blundering idiot at times; but, I only
ask that you just bear with me and understand that I'm new at all this still,
and I appreciate any constructive criticism that anyone has for me.
Let's see how far I can go.

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---
title: Visualizing Laundry Usage
layout: post
---
George Mason University uses a system called
[eSuds](http://www.usatech.com/esuds/) to control the laundry machine
transactions in the dorms. What makes eSuds really cool though, is that it
keeps track of the status of every machine and displays it on a
[website](http://gmu.esuds.net/) so students can check how full the machines
are before making the trek down to the laundry rooms. The system emails each
student when their laundry is finished as well.
The only problem is that their user interface is pretty atrocious. I wrote up a
[usability analysis](https://gist.github.com/thallada/5351114) of the site for
my *SWE 205: Software Usability Analysis and Design* class, but most people
agree it's a pretty painful interface to use ([just see for
yourself](http://gmu.esuds.net/)). The thing is, most of the information that's
on the website could be reduced to a few charts. I'm a big fan of simplifying
data, so I thought: why not?
I decided to create the visualizations with [pygal](http://pygal.org/), because
the charts it spits out are absolutely gorgeous and well... it's in python,
which made it easy for me to dive right in. I'll probably try out
[d3js](http://d3js.org/) for my next visualization project though, it looks a
whole lot more advanced.
###Current laundry usage charts###
I created an [app](/laundry) in [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) to
display current laundry machine usage charts for all of the laundry rooms on
George Mason's campus. All of the data is scraped from the eSuds site using
[Beautiful Soup](http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/) and updated
every time you refresh the page.
<div style="text-align: center"><a href="/laundry" alt="See it in action"><img
src="/static/img/laundry_preview.png" /></a></div>
The site will save which laundry room you select so when you come back you will
immediately see the chart for your laundry room.
You can see the code for this on my
[GitHub](https://github.com/thallada/personalsite/) (look in the "laundry"
folder).
The point was to make this as dead simple and easy to use as possible. Do you
think I succeeded?
###Weekly laundry usage chart###
Knowing the *current* laundry machine usage is nice for saving a wasted trip
down to the laundry room, but what if you wanted to plan ahead and do your
laundry when you know other people are less likely to do laundry? That's why I
recorded the laundry usage with a [cronjob](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron)
every 15 minutes for an entire week: to get an idea of when there is a high
probability of open machines.
<embed type="image/svg+xml" src="/static/record.svg">
This one is a little interactive.
As you can see, the laundry usage jumps around all over the place very quickly.
This definitely provides evidence to some previous frustrations I've had when I
had checked eSuds, saw that most machines were open, and arrived in the laundry
room to suddenly find that no machines were open.
**So when is the best time to do laundry?**
After analyzing the data for a bit, I noticed that there still seemed to be
quite a bit of usage around midnight and 1 AM, which, I suppose, would be
expected of college students. However, after about 2 AM the laundry usage
consistently teeters off until about 10 AM. So I guess there's no way around
it; if you want to have the laundry room to yourself, you'll have to be the
early bird.
Also, I should note that this was during the week of spring break. I'm
currently working on recording data over a few normal weeks and then compiling
it into one average week in order to see the patterns more clearly. I'll post
again once I've done that.
This was a lot of fun and I expect to make more data visualizations in the
future.
**Let me know what you think!**
EDIT: Check out the [comments on
Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/gmu/comments/1c1ehg/i_dont_like_esuds/).

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---
title: How to Download a RTMP Video
layout: post
---
[RTMP or Real Time Messaging
Protocol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Messaging_Protocol) is a
protocol developed by Adobe to stream Flash videos. It's currently in use by
sites like the New York Times, ABC, NBC, Hulu, and so on. Since the video is
streamed to the user's Flash player (in their browser) bit-by-bit, the full
video file is never given to the user for them to keep. This is desirable to a
lot of media companies because then they can force you to watch through ads to
see their content and can charge you to download the full video.
However, [RTMPDump](http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/), an open-source tool
designed to intercept RTMP streams, can download the full video.
Despite numerous “How to use RTMPDump” tutorials and forum posts coming up
with a brief Google search, I've found a large portion of them are either
completely incorrect or are far too complicated since they are not using the
full toolkit that RTMPDump provides. Since it took me so long to find a decent
procedure for downloading a RTMP video, I thought it would be worth sharing
here.
Since this is questionably legal, make sure you understand any Terms of
Services you accepted or laws in your locality regarding this before you follow
the steps below ;).
###Have Linux### Most of these instructions will assume you have Ubuntu, but
most distributions will work.
While RTMPDump works on a variety of operating systems, I've only researched
how to do this on Linux. Feel free to comment if you know how to do this in
Windows or OSX.
###Install RTMPDump### This open source goodness can be found at
[http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/](http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/) or you can just
intall it using your Linux distro's package manager. For Ubuntu, that would be
typing the following into your terminal:
sudo apt-get install rtmpdump
###Redirect ALL the RTMP!### Now we need to configure your firewall to redirect
all RTMP traffic to a local port on your computer (Note: this will screw up any
RTMP streaming video you try to watch on your computer, so make sure you run
the undo command in one of the later steps to return things to normal). Type
the following into your terminal, there should be no output from the command:
sudo iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 1935 -j REDIRECT
###Run rtmpsrv### When you install `rtmpdump`, a program called `rtmpsrv`
should have been bundled with it and installed as well. We will want to run
this now by entering the following command in a terminal:
rtmpsrv
This should output something that looks like this:
RTMP Server v2.4 (c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu; license: GPL
Streaming on rtmp://0.0.0.0:1935
###Feed rtmpsrv the Precious Video### Now go to your browser and open/refresh
the page with the desired video. Try playing the video. If nothing happens and
it just continues to give you a black screen, then you're on the right track:
rtmpsrv has intercepted the video.
If you look back at the terminal that's running rtmpsrv you should see that
some text was outputted. There is one line in this printout that we need; it
should be a command that starts with `rtmpdump`. Copy that entire command, we
will need it later.
You can CTRL+C out of rtmpsrv now that we have what we need.
###Undo the Redirection### You must undo the iptables redirection command we
performed earlier before you can do anything else, so run this in your
terminal:
sudo iptables -t nat -D OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 1935 -j REDIRECT
###Finally, Download the Precious Video### Now paste that command you copied
from the rtmpsrv output in the step before last into your terminal prompt and
hit enter. You should now see a torrent of `INFO` printout along with a
percentage as the video is being downloaded.
###Feast Eyes on Precious Video### Once downloaded, the video file, which has a
`flv` extension and was named by the `-o` parameter in the command you copied
and pasted, should be in your current directory (`ls | grep flv` can find it as
well). Any video player should be able to play it, but vlc is a nice video
player for Ubuntu.
You're welcome.

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---
title: Hackers
layout: post
---
*The following is a non-fiction essay I wrote for my* ENGH 396: Intro to
Creative Writing *class. I decided to write about my experience with
discovering and getting involved with the eccentric community of hackers that I
met since the past two internships I've had at [Valti](https:/www.valti.com/)
and [Humbug](https://humbughq.com/) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Seeing as it
encapsulated what I've learned culturally since then, I decided to post it here
as well.*
Hackers -- not your malicious meddling Hollywood-style speed-typists -- but the
type who sees a toaster and turns it into a computer capable of etching emails
into the crispy surface of toast. Those who would create a programming language
consisting exclusively of expletives and then use it to filter out offensive
words from websites just for the irony. They would never steal a password or
cause any harm -- unless, perhaps, you gave them a powerful rocket and a bad
idea. Their curiosity leaves them with a burning desire to break all
assumptions and to answer "what if" questions as if they were a challenge to
their very existence.
My personal foray within the realm of hackers began with Boston. I had snagged
an internship with a startup called Valti started by a couple of Harvard
students who wanted to create an online platform that enabled college students
to exchange dresses. Startup businesses are dime a dozen in the hacker culture.
With so many wild ideas going around, every once in a while a profitable one
comes by. Hackers despise cubicles and big corporations, so starting their own
company on their own rules is the usual course of action.
While Harvard's snobby atmosphere put me off, MIT seemed to call out to the
hacker within me. Now, MIT is arguably the birthplace of the hacker, so when I
say that I was thrown into the thick of the hacker culture all at once, it is
no over-exaggeration. This is the place where people would regularly discuss
mathematical and computer science theories over a casual lunch with each other.
Computer Science is the de facto "undecided" major at MIT. You would be
hard-pressed to find a student who didn’t know their way around a Linux
terminal. Now imagine the computer club of such a university.
The Student Information Processing Board, or SIPB for short, was at least one
such computer club of MIT that I began to get involved with. This club, which
was established in the 60s, packaged their own operating system and distributed
computing environment called Project Athena that was good enough that the
university installed it on all of their computers. The members were laughably
out of my league in terms of computer science experience; I would find myself
regularly searching Wikipedia for every other word they would mention while in
a heated discussion concerning some technology. But, what surprised me the most
was not the depth of their knowledge, but the breadth; each of them seemed to
have an unlimited capacity for various trivial tidbits of knowledge from the
etymology of words to the physics of the universe. Being around that kind of
intelligence was fascinating, while at the same time frustrating, since it was
often hard to follow.
Whenever I wasn't building the website for Valti, I was out in the city going
to various meetups to meet people and learn about new upcoming technologies.
This was a totally new world for me. Hackers didn't exist in high school, they
were just those weird nerds in the computer classes. And, even at George Mason,
there still wasn't the same atmosphere of ingenuity as in Boston that gave me
the motivation to want to change the world. I had the feeling most CS students
at Mason were only there for the degree just so they could go work at some
boring government contractor in DC when they graduated. After seeing the hacker
culture in Boston, that type of job seemed like death to me.
Hackers, a world-wide amorphous group of people who enjoy discussing (and
arguing) various topics, naturally congregate among sites like Slashdot,
Reddit, and Hacker News (often abbreviated to HN -- hackers, much like the
military, are fond of their abbreviations) to get quick syndicated news and to
have large in-depth discussions in the comments. Locally, there are groups that
meet to discuss certain technologies or set up spaces where hackers can easily
build prototypes (usually referred to as "hackerspaces"). Unsurprisingly, the
hubs for these local communities are usually centered around cities that are
hosts to major computer science universities: San Fransisco, Boston, New York,
etc.
Their awareness of the languages they use and their fondness of breaking beyond
the norm lends hackers a great affinity to the game of word play, and thus they
have created their own lexicon of slang that borrows much from the jargon of
computer science. "Foobar," "grok," "cruft," "distro," "kluge," "phreaking,"
the words that are common knowledge among those already within the society put
a barrier in front of those like me looking to understand the culture.
Many of the students I met at MIT use a chat protocol called Zephyr as cross
between email and instant messaging to communicate with each other. Zephyr was
created in the 80’s as one of the first instant-messaging systems (the other,
more popular protocol being IRC), and, because of the culture surrounding the
program, it is still widely used at the university. "Zephyrisms" have developed
over the years to aid in simplifying communication. For example, "==" is used
to indicate agreement and "++" is used by what would probably be the equivalent
to a "Like" on Facebook. Both can find their parallels as symbols used in many
programming languages, the former for equality and the later for incrementing
an integer by one. Other more obscure zephyrisms include "starking," or
reviving an old thread of conversation, "prnf" which stands for "Pseudo-Random
Neuron Firings", and "i, i" which would mean "I have no point here, I just like
saying" and would usually prefix some snarky comment in reply to an otherwise
serious thread of conversation (some people would just omit the "i, i" and put
quotes around said snarky comment instead). Even though these zephyrisms seemed
completely arbitrary to me when I first encountered them, after a while of use
they came to me naturally, and I would even accidentally use them outside
Zephyr to the confusion of my friends. It was easy to see how such conventions
of speech developed originally.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF), which advocates for free, open-source,
non-proprietary software (free as in "free speech," not "free beer"), is based
in Boston and is one of the focal points of the hacker culture. The president,
Richard Stallman (who is often referred to as RMS), a big, heavily bearded
fellow, is particularly legendary in the community. Being nearly militant about
the goals of FSF, he refuses to use software that contains any proprietary code
at all: no cellphone, only uses a laptop developed completely open-source,
doesn’t use a browser to view the internet, and even refuses to use a key card,
which makes it difficult for him to get into his office at MIT. Though often
painfully stubborn about his ideas, he is the ultimate activist for hackers:
making sure the government and big corporations do not misuse people's
information or kill off the hacker culture.
While nowadays I like to call myself an aspiring hacker, I’m not so sure I
could ever match the intelligence and indestructible curiosity of those that I
met in Boston. Perhaps it is their unique culture of constantly questioning the
norm and striving for knowledge of the world around them that allows them to
transcend into true hackerdom. Either way, I now know never to tell a hacker
that something is impossible, because they will surely find a way to prove me
wrong.

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---
title: GMU Bookstore Homepage Concept and Staw Dispensers
layout: post
---
I have finally finished my second year of college. Now that finals are over, I
can post about some of the things I have been working on. First, a front-end I
made with a group in my [*SWE 205 : Software Usability Analysis and
Design*](http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/classes/205/) class. The assignment was
to create a homepage for the University's bookstore website, applying all of the
usability principles we had learned over the semester. I ended up working on it
when I wanted to procrastinate on assignments in my other classes, so I put
quite a bit of effort into it.
See it here: [swe205.hallada.net](http://swe205.hallada.net)
<div style="text-align: center">
<a href="http://swe205.hallada.net" alt="See it in action">
<img src="/static/img/gmu_bookstore_preview.jpg">
</a>
</div>
<br>
You can see all the code for it [up on my
GitHub](https://github.com/thallada/gmu-bookstore-concept).
Our group researched other university bookstore websites to get some ideas and
we liked the layout of [Virginia Tech's](http://www.bookstore.vt.edu/) (but
hated the colors). We liked how everything needed was presented immediately
upfront in a Windows 8 metro-esque grid.
Since the main feature of the site was a grid and I was already familiar with it
I used [Twitter Bootstrap](http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/) to help with the
CSS. Bootstrap also helped make the design responsive and look nice on mobile
phones (try resizing your window to see it in action). I also used the
[Bootstrap modal](http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/javascript.html#modals) for
the "Contact Us" form which is activated by the link in the footer of the page.
However, I had to modify it quite a bit to make sure it was fully usable and
would prompt the user before they closed out of the modal with text entered.
Overall, this was a fun project to end off a very fun and interesting course. I
highly recommend any one at GMU to take this course with Prof. Offutt even if
they don't plan on being web designers. I have come away from the class with not
only the principles for making usable web interfaces but also a habit of
analyzing nearly any interface in the real-world.
For example, I noticed the other day while getting food in the [Johnson
Center](http://jcweb.gmu.edu/) that they had installed a [new paper-less straw
dispenser](http://i.imgur.com/s9olzcg.jpg). When I first encountered it, I
didn't know how to operate it (and at the time there was no sign to tell me
how). Since there seemed to be a chute at the bottom of the contraption, I
figured there must be a way to get a straw to drop down into it, but the
dispenser didn't give any hints to how to do that. The knobs on the side had
looked purely decorative to me. Giving up, I opened the top of the dispenser and
grabed a straw from the pile of them, cursing the whole thing for it's bad
usability.
The next day I came by for food again, and I noticed that it now had a sign
instructing everyone to not do exactly what I had done the other day: "Do Not
Open. Just turn knob". More people than just I must have been perplexed by this
dispenser. As Offutt had said countless times in class before: if a interface
requires a manual then it has failed.
It's the little things, like the straw dispensers that no one knows how to use,
that you begin to notice after taking SWE 205. It's both a blessing and curse.
Bad interfaces drive me insane, and to my frustration I notice them everywhere
now. But, at least know the most basic things to avoid in the interfaces I
design now.

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---
title: w3m-reddit
layout: post
---
I've been moving a lot of my daily tasks to the command-line lately, and that
includes redditing. I probably spend far too much time on
[reddit](http://reddit.com) as it is, but I really wanted to find an efficient
way to view reddit through the command-line. [w3m](http://w3m.sourceforge.net/)
could render reddit okay, but I couldn't view my personal front-page because
that required me to login to my profile.
The solution was [cortex](http://cortex.glacicle.org/), a CLI app for viewing
reddit.
However, I kind of got tired of viewing reddit through w3m, the header alone is
a few pages long to scroll through, and the CSS for the comments doesn't load so
there isn't any sense of threading. But, then I discovered reddit's mobile
website: [http://m.reddit.com](http://m.reddit.com), and it looks absolutely
beautiful in w3m. In fact, I think I prefer it to the normal website in any
modern browser; there are no distractions, just pure content.
<a href="/static/img/w3m_mobile_reddit.png"><img src="/static/img/w3m_mobile_reddit.png" alt="m.reddit.com rendered in w3m"></a>
In order to get cortex to open the mobile version of reddit, I made a bash
script wrapper around w3m that takes urls and replaces `"http://reddit.com"` and
`"http://www.reddit.com"` with `"http://m.reddit.com"` before passing them to
w3m (as well as fixing a double forward slash error in the comment uri cortex
outputs that desktop reddit accepts but mobile reddit 404s on). The script:
#!/bin/bash
args=()
until [ -z "$1" ]; do
case "$1" in
-t|--tmux) t=1; shift ;;
--) shift ; break ;;
-*) echo "invalid option $1" 1>&2 ; shift ;; # or, error and exit 1 just like getopt does
*) args+=("$1") ; shift ;;
esac
done
args+=("$@")
for arg in "${args[@]}" ; do
# Switch to mobile reddit
url=${arg/http:\/\/reddit.com/http:\/\/m.reddit.com}
url=${url/http:\/\/www.reddit.com/http:\/\/m.reddit.com}
# Fix double backslash error in comment uri for mobile reddit
url=${url/\/\/comments/\/comments}
if [[ $t == "1" ]]; then
tmux new-window 'w3m "'${url}'"'
else
w3m "${url}"
fi
done
Since I regurally use [Tmux](http://tmux.sourceforge.net/) (with
[Byobu](http://byobu.co/)), I also added an optional `-t`/`--tmux` switch that
will open w3m in a temporary new tmux window that will close when w3m is closed.
I saved the script as `w3m-reddit` and made it an executable command. In Ubuntu
that's done with the following commands:
$ sudo mv w3m-reddit /usr/bin/
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/w3m-reddit
Now cortex needs to be configured to use `w3m-reddit`, and that's done by
setting `browser-command` in the cortex config at `~/.cortex/config` to
`w3m-reddit`:
## Command to invoke the webbrowser
## If left empty will try to autodetect the system default browser
##browser-command=firefox '{0}'
browser-command=w3m-reddit '{0}'
The result is a distraction-free reddit experience right in the command-line
without having to edit cortex directly. I've found that I even prefer reddit
this way. Without image thumbnails (I need to explicitly select the image links
to view the image in w3m) I am more inclined to pay equal attention to every
post, not just mindlessly scrolling through meme-fests. Thus I'm more focused
and tend to not loose myself like I do in the infinite scrolling of [RES
reddit](http://redditenhancementsuite.com/) in a GUI browser.
There are still some improvements I could make to the w3m-reddit script. Namely,
it should pass along any arguments to itself to w3m underneath. I'm still a
newby at bash though, and I couldn't figure out an easy way to do that without
scrapping the whole thing and starting over in Python instead.
Stay tuned for more posts on how I view images and videos efficiently from the
command-line.

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---
title: "Quick Command-line Search: search-pane"
layout: post
---
It's been a while since I last wrote, but I've still been busy. I began my
research position at the [MIT Media Lab](http://media.mit.edu) working with
[Fluid Interfaces](http://fluid.media.mit.edu). It feels like I'm designing the
future; I really couldn't ask for a better job right now. But, more on that
later.
I've still been continuously refining my workspace, and how I use my laptop. As
I mentioned in my [last blog post](/blog/w3m-reddit), I've been moving more and more towards the
command-line for day-to-day operations because of it's unparalleled level of
customizability and compatibility with other programs. There's nothing more
powerful than being able to whip up a small python or bash script that interacts
with a couple of other programs to achieve something instantly that optimizes my
work flow.
I use the [Awesome](http://awesome.naquadah.org/) window manager, which works
great for tiling up terminal windows right up next to browser windows. However,
I also use [Byobu](http://byobu.co/) (which uses
[tmux](http://tmux.sourceforge.net) as a backend), practically a tiling window
manager for terminals. While working with a whole bunch of terminals, I've found
that I actually prefer using byobu panes over separate terminal windows under
awesome.
I'm pretty sure I clock in somewhere at three to five Google searches a minute
when really focused on a programming task, especially when I'm working with
something I'm unfamiliar with. Historically, I've done this by switching tags in
awesome to my web browser and then searching in the Google Chrome omni-bar. It
required me to leave the context of my code and then flip back and forth between
code and browser if I needed to reference anything.
My new-found love of w3m's compact nature led me to design the perfect search
program for my setup. I dubbed it the generic name: search-pane, and it does the
following:
* Very light-weight interface for inputing a search query that is fed directly
to w3m in a Google search.
* Byobu/Tmux key bindings to open a new window for search that closes on quit.
* Byobu/Tmux bindings to open in a quick one-off vertical or horizontal pane.
* Search history. Just like the bash shell, press up to cycle through past
searches.
* Global history. When a search is performed on one computer using search-pane,
the search is added not only to that computer's history, but the history of
any computer listed in the other-hosts config file. I'm often sshed into many
different machines, so this feature was a big plus for me.
* Vim keybindings to open up the search for even quicker access.
This is how I got it setup (on any Ubuntu machine with sudo privileges):
Save the following python file in `/usr/bin/` as `search-pane` (no extension):
#!/usr/bin/python
from subprocess import call, check_output
from threading import Thread
import os
import sys
import readline
home = os.path.expanduser("~")
histfile = os.path.join(home, ".search-pane/history")
# load history
readline.read_history_file(histfile)
os.system('cls' if os.name=='nt' else 'clear') # clear the terminal
url = ''
query = ''
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
url = "http://google.com/search?q=" + '+'.join(sys.argv[1:]) # google url
query = ' '.join(sys.argv[1:])
readline.add_history(query) # add query to history buffer
else:
try:
query = raw_input('Search: ') # get user's search
url = "http://google.com/search?q=" + '+'.join(query.split()) # google
except KeyboardInterrupt:
sys.exit(0)
readline.write_history_file(histfile) # write search to history file
def write_other_hosts():
# write to history files on other registered hosts
with open(os.devnull, 'w') as FNULL:
with open(os.path.join(home, ".search-pane/other-hosts"), "r") as f:
for line in f:
line = line.strip().split()
host = line[0]
path = line[1]
# make sure we don't write to local file again
client_names = check_output(['hostname', '-A']).split()
if (host.split('@')[-1] not in client_names):
call(['ssh', host, 'echo', '"' + query + '"', '>>', path],
stderr=FNULL)
# Spin off another thread for sshing so user doesn't have to wait for
# connection to complete before viewing w3m.
try:
Thread(target=write_other_hosts).start()
except Exception, errtxt:
print errtxt
call(['w3m', url]) # pass url off to w3m
Make the directory and file for search history:
mkdir ~/.search-pane
touch ~/.search-pane/history
Allow anyone to execute the python script (make it into a program):
chmod a+x /usr/bin/search-pane
To get quick access to the program from the command-line edit `~/.bashrc` to
add:
alias s='search-pane'
To add byobu key bindings edit `~/.byobu/keybindings.tmux` (or `/usr/share/byobu/keybindings/f-keys.tmux`):
# thallada's keybindings:
bind-key Enter new-window -n "search" "search-pane"
bind-key - split-window -v -p 20 "search-pane"
bind-key = split-window -h -p 30 "search-pane"
To add vim key bindings edit ~/.vimrc
"Open google search in a tmux split beneath vim
map <leader>g :silent !tmux split-window -v -p 20 "search-pane"<CR>
If you wish to add the functionality to other machines then follow the steps
above and, on every machine, add the other hosts and the paths to the
search-pane history files on each to the other-hosts file:
vi ~/.search-pane/other-hosts
The syntax is:
user@host /path/to/history
Host separated by path by a space.
So far it's been really useful, and since it doesn't screw up my focus as much
I'm searching more.
Also, wow python is a lot easier than bash for these sorts of things...

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---
title: On Chromebooks
layout: post
---
I like to think that if only I find The Perfect Text Editor I will somehow
write better and more often. Obviously this is only a tactic I use to delay
actually writing anything, but I did come across something that might actually
help. [Draft](https://draftin.com) is a writing app being developed by one guy,
[Nate Kontny](https://twitter.com/natekontny), that has a ton of nifty
features, one of its best being a version control system that allows you to
send a draft to other people and accept or reject any changes they suggest. It
also has a minamilistic iA Writer type interface, which focuses on the actual
writing and nothing more.
One of my most favorite features that I have just discovered, though, is that
it allows publishing any Draft document to any arbitrary
[WebHook](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webhook). Which basically means I can
click a button in the interface and that will send a POST request to a URL I
specify with all of the data for my Draft document in JSON format. I can just
write a bit of code to parse that data and then I instantly have a better
editor for my blog.
It was really easy to do too. For this Django website, all it took [was adding
a view that parsed a JSON object and made a blog entry out of
it](https://github.com/thallada/personalsite/commit/c4694a6669dbc7b79a5bff3fb818a682ecacffbb).
You can read the
[documentation](https://draftin.com/documents/69898?token=5fjKKlZ0-AeBzqj_RAftAGdzRzl9VBfBHj5wpSWm_gU)
for more info on how to make a WebHook for Draft.
Nate has also made a lot of other neat features, like a [Chrome extension that
turns any textarea on the web into a Draft
document](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/draft/amlbbbgcijmiooecobhkjblcdkjldmdk).
Read about some of the other features in the [Lifehacker
article](http://lifehacker.com/5993339/draft-is-a-writing-app-with-serious-version-and-draft-control).
The app is still in development and new features are being added constantly.
I think the take-away here is that the Big Guys, with apps like Google Drive or
Evernote, don't always have the best solutions. I tried hacking Google Drive
into a more immersive writing experience with templates and so on, but nothing
came close to the experience of Draft, which was exactly what I wanted to begin
with. It's a wonder that more people don't know about Draft, but I guess that's
part of the magic. There's a real person, an innovative and driven hacker,
behind the product who might actually listen to what I have to say.
Now excuse me while I go waste more time scouring the web for more obscure but
brilliant apps.

47
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---
title: Publishing Draft Docs to my Blog
layout: post
---
I like to think that if only I find The Perfect Text Editor I will somehow
write better and more often. Obviously this is only a tactic I use to delay
actually writing anything, but I did come across something that might actually
help. [Draft](https://draftin.com) is a writing app being developed by one guy,
[Nate Kontny](https://twitter.com/natekontny), that has a ton of nifty
features, one of its best being a version control system that allows you to
send a draft to other people and accept or reject any changes they suggest. It
also has a minamilistic iA Writer type interface, which focuses on the actual
writing and nothing more.
One of my most favorite features that I have just discovered, though, is that
it allows publishing any Draft document to any arbitrary
[WebHook](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webhook). Which basically means I can
click a button in the interface and that will send a POST request to a URL I
specify with all of the data for my Draft document in JSON format. I can just
write a bit of code to parse that data and then I instantly have a better
editor for my blog.
It was really easy to do too. For this Django website, all it took [was adding
a view that parsed a JSON object and made a blog entry out of
it](https://github.com/thallada/personalsite/commit/c4694a6669dbc7b79a5bff3fb818a682ecacffbb).
You can read the
[documentation](https://draftin.com/documents/69898?token=5fjKKlZ0-AeBzqj_RAftAGdzRzl9VBfBHj5wpSWm_gU)
for more info on how to make a WebHook for Draft.
Nate has also made a lot of other neat features, like a [Chrome extension that
turns any textarea on the web into a Draft
document](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/draft/amlbbbgcijmiooecobhkjblcdkjldmdk).
Read about some of the other features in the [Lifehacker
article](http://lifehacker.com/5993339/draft-is-a-writing-app-with-serious-version-and-draft-control).
The app is still in development and new features are being added constantly.
I think the take-away here is that the Big Guys, with apps like Google Drive or
Evernote, don't always have the best solutions. I tried hacking Google Drive
into a more immersive writing experience with templates and so on, but nothing
came close to the experience of Draft, which was exactly what I wanted to begin
with. It's a wonder that more people don't know about Draft, but I guess that's
part of the magic. There's a real person, an innovative and driven hacker,
behind the product who might actually listen to what I have to say.
Now excuse me while I go waste more time scouring the web for more obscure but
brilliant apps.

24
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@ -1,24 +0,0 @@
---
layout: post
title: "Welcome to Jekyll!"
date: 2014-04-24 18:53:43
categories: jekyll update
---
You'll find this post in your `_posts` directory - edit this post and re-build (or run with the `-w` switch) to see your changes!
To add new posts, simply add a file in the `_posts` directory that follows the convention: YYYY-MM-DD-name-of-post.ext.
Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:
{% highlight ruby %}
def print_hi(name)
puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.
{% endhighlight %}
Check out the [Jekyll docs][jekyll] for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at [Jekyll's GitHub repo][jekyll-gh].
[jekyll-gh]: https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll
[jekyll]: http://jekyllrb.com