P e r t u r b . o r g

LiveJournal

Pictures

GCount

Quotes

Login

Detailed look at fonts 2008-07-04 08:32am

I had no idea fonts display was so detailed, and so complicated. Maxim Shemanarev wrote an extremely detailed analysis of how modern computers display fonts on a screen. I found the second on moving fonts 1/10th of a pixel horizontally fascinating. Interesting read if you like fonts and typography.

Perl output buffering on files 2008-07-01 02:36pm

To turn off output buffering in Perl you just do:

Code:

$| = 1;

To do it on an open filehandle you have (so the file gets written right away) do:

Code:

open(LOG,">>$log");
LOG->autoflush(1);

Piers Anthony - Xanth 2008-06-30 01:57pm

Here is a borrowed list of Xanth books.

Perlfunc: get_file_perm() 2008-06-26 11:53am

Quick function to get the permissions of a file with Perl.

Code:

sub get_file_perm {
	my $file = shift();

	# Permissions are the second element of stat
	my $mode = (stat($file))[2];
	my $perm = sprintf("%04o",$mode & 07777);

	return $perm;
}

Bash reading a file line by line 2008-05-20 01:56pm

Here are the directions borrowed from the BashFAQ.

Code:

cat /tmp/foo.txt | while read line; do echo $line; done;

Linux date manipulation 2008-05-12 09:54am

The date command in Linux is very powerful for converting dates and times. If you have a given time in another timezone, or even UTC, you can convert it to your local timezone with this command:

Code:

date -d '2008-05-13 14:00 UTC'

If you want to convert a given time into unixtime just use a date format:

Code:

date +%s -d '2008-05-13 14:00 UTC'

Free SSL Cert 2008-05-09 02:23pm

I just got a free SSL certificate for this site from StartCom. They have limited browser support, but Firefox is in the list. Not perfect, but not bad for free.

Wii/Friend Codes 2008-05-09 09:11am

Wii code: 2166-1639-8425-8450
Mario Kart Friend code: 2191-8139-1611

ImageMagick borders and shadows 2008-04-21 09:52am

I borrowed this simple ImageMagick hack to make images have a small border and drop shadow.

Original:

Code:

convert foo.jpg -resize 200 -bordercolor white -border 1 -bordercolor black -border 1 -background black bar.jpg

Code:

convert foo.jpg -resize 200 -bordercolor white -border 1 -bordercolor black -border 1 \
-background black \( +clone -shadow 80x1+1+1 \) +swap -background white -flatten bar.jpg

The drop shadow example needs a white background to look decent.

Save The Developers 2008-03-28 12:16pm

My good buddy Dave just pointed out a cool site: SaveTheDevelopers.com. They have a cool little javascript script that detects if you're running IE6 (an old browser) and prompts you to upgrade to a newer and more current browser. The code is now live on most perturb.org pages.

Lorwyn Dual Lands 2008-03-18 10:03am

There are only five dual lands (there are 10 color combos), so my guess is they'll do the rest of them in Shadowmoor.

Linux encryption - encrypted directories 2008-03-17 08:45pm

I've always been fond of storing a directory structure encrypted in a file (ala TrueCrypt or PGPDisk). I borrowed instructions from here.

Create the raw file to contain your encrypted data.

Code:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=~/encrypted.bin bs=1M count=100

Find the next available loop device and map this file to it.

Code:

losetup -f
losetup /dev/loop0 ~/encrypted.bin

Setup the crypto filesystem, open it with the correct password, format the partition ext3, and finally mount the newly created filesystem as /mnt/tmp

Code:

cryptsetup --verbose --cipher "aes-cbc-essiv:sha256" --key-size 256 --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/loop0
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/loop0 my-crypt
mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/my-crypt
mount -t ext3 -o rw,defaults /dev/mapper/my-crypt /mnt/tmp/

When you're all done, and want to secure all the files do the following. Umount the filesystem, close the crypto link, remove the file to loopback device link.

Code:

umount /mnt/tmp/
cryptsetup luksClose my-crypt
losetup -d /dev/loop0

10th Edition Dual Lands 2008-03-17 02:58pm

RIP Gary Gygax 2008 2008-03-11 11:32am

In honor of Gary Gygax dying I wrote a Perl script to roll dice (D&D style). I know a billion people before me have probably written better dice rolling programs, but this was quick, simple, and I was bored.

Time keeping nerdiness 2008-03-07 01:21pm

I have not decided if this is totally nerdy, or totally cool (or both).

scott@perturb.org (GPG)