the Pleb

Textmate to Tumblr

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:05:35 -0600

I went looking for a way to post to Tumblr via the command line the other day, and I was very interested in M. Wunsch’s post. He has created a Ruby gem which elegantly speaks to the Tumblr API and creates posts with attributes specified in a YAML front matter, a la Jekyll. This is brilliant, and wonderful. A really good idea sparks other ideas, and this one sent lightbulbs off in my head. I could use this to create a script that would automatically post to Tumblr, or even better I could use the still fabulous Textmate to make a bundle that would make my blogging just a few button presses away. Seems wonderful.

Now a few brief words on why anyone would ever want to go to this trouble. Isn’t there a nice little text box on the Tumblr post screen that would do this for me?

I could just enter my posts that way, and hey, I can even write them in Markdown! Off the top of my head, here is why I would want to do this.

Have a copy of every post I ever made in an easily readable, renderable format
Luxury of writing in my favorite text editor
No suffering from closed tab syndrome (ask my wife, who posts from a Wordpress entry form)
Able to write posts even when Tumblr is down (hey it has had more uptime than me recently)

Some of these need no explanation. I cannot emphasize enough how nice it is to have the ability to compose in my own editor, with its over abundance of tricks and hacks that I have built up. So, on to the how-to.

This is taking place on a Mac. Primarily because that is where you can use Textmate. Now the first part would be equally viable on any Linux Ruby install. Install the gem:

sudo gem install tumblr-rb

That builds it out and installs the tumblr executable. You can check the extensive documentation on how this CLI tool works on M. Wunsch’s excellent github page. The flexibility of the tool is truly excellent. Many modes are supported. However, it is fairly simple to use to setup a Textmate bundle. First create a file in your home directory to store your Tumblr credentials.

mate ~/.tumblrcreds

Enter your username and password as such

username: YOURuserNAME
password: myCRAZYAWESOMEsecurePASS

Please substitute your own combination. And email me if that really is your password cause that is epic. Do not tell me to what it is your password. Now in Textmate open up your bundle editor, available in Bundles -> Bundle Editor -> Show Bundle Editor. Create a new bundle using the plus sign at the bottom. Use these settings as a guide.

If this is done correctly, it will take the entire document and feed it into the tumblr command line utility. The command line utility, using the file we created earlier for reference, posts your document to Tumblr. If there is any feedback, it will provide it to you in a fresh document in Textmate. Now you are just a key combination away from a fast Tumblr post. It even supports queued posts with specified publish times, if you are one of those real bloggers that has several posts in the queue ready to go.

Let me know how it works for you!

SOPA is a Terrible Idea

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:19:34 -0600

SOPA is a Terrible Idea:

Mike from Techdirt nails SOPA to the wall. SOPA has been getting more and more bad press lately, probably why copyright monopolies were trying to ram it through legislation before anyone could protest. I am hoping at this point it dies, even big companies are coming out against it.

Writing Again

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:14:00 -0600

I plan on a triumphant return to the land of blogging sometime soon, I know that people are desperate for my input on matters technical or otherwise. What I am planning is to get somethings together that make it easy to post, remove some of the friction, so to speak, so that I have a little more flexibility. This particular post is written in Elements, the dropbox text editor for iPad that can magically make markdown formatted text into tumblr posts. This is one option I am pursuing. The other option is to get things working with Textmate so that I can simply use a Textmate bundle to post markdown with some YAML front matter to the blog, which, combined with Brett Terpstra’s blogsmith bundle and some interesting textexpander snippets, would make blogging a breeze.

So, I certainly do not remember this being here pre-Lion....

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:19:00 -0500

So, I certainly do not remember this being here pre-Lion. Apparently there is a utility that can put your wireless card into promiscuous mode just that easily. By telling it to capture raw frames you can capture all the network traffic around you. Then it will spit out a zipped pcap file wherever you would like, to use whatever command line tools you might want to on it. I certainly aliased this little utility into my applications folder. It is found by default in all Lion computers in /System/Library/Core Services/Wi-fi Diagnostics.

Not Like you Like

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:00:32 -0500

Launchbar 5, when invoked from a fullscreen Lion-ified application, rips you out of the custom space and drops you on another desktop. Unfortunate behavior, that. You find anything strange after your upgrade?

Saddleback Now for iPad2

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:28:28 -0500

Saddleback Now for iPad2:

I love my iPad sleeve from here, still works on the iPad 2. But their custom built iPad 2 case is certainly drool worthy.

Signals of A Degree

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:54:41 -0500

Signals of A Degree:

I certainly enjoyed this as a read, knowing what signals you are sending to a potential employer with your degree is a valuable skill, and one worth knowing.

Remiel: Making the leap to SSD on a MacBook

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 14:25:44 -0600

Remiel: Making the leap to SSD on a MacBook:

remiel:

It used to take 28 seconds for my 13-inch MacBook Pro to load the folders on my desktop after I logged in. Now it takes five seconds.

Large-footprint apps like Photoshop and Dreamweaver now load near-instantly.

The machine now has 1.16 terabytes (1,160 gigabytes) of hard drive space, 160 gigs of…

Textual is a lightweight IRC client designed specifically for...

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:37:08 -0600

Textual is a lightweight IRC client designed specifically for Mac OS X. It was designed with simplicity in mind.

AutoCAD now out for Mac

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:45:59 -0500

AutoCAD now out for Mac:

And available for free for students

Notational Velocity w/ Markdown

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:53:42 -0500

Notational Velocity w/ Markdown:

A simple fork with a simple specific feature. I don’t think it detracts from the Notational Velocity philosophy at all. (‘Crazy fast: dead simple’ if you were wondering)

Stainless Browser

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:28:01 -0500

Stainless Browser:

A multi-processing browser for OSX that is not Google Chrome. Very fast, very private, still in development.

OmniFocus and Things, Followup

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:05:38 -0500

So maybe you read my last piece on my dilemma in selecting a project organization app from the app store. Maybe you even commented on it, or gave your two cents in answer to my question. Well for me, the question has been solved, and I thought that I should let you know, and give the matter a few final thoughts.

OmniFocus and Things were the two major competitors for my app store dollars. OmniFocus weighs in with a price tag of $40, while Things comes in at a relatively inexpensive $20. Neither of these apps are for casual use really, if you want casual, look at my old post for some ideas. What I ended up doing was going with OmniFocus, here is why.

OmniFocus

Basically, it boils down to the ecosystem. For me, OmniFocus had already been purchased on both my iPhone and desktop. I decided not to abandon those dollars quite yet, and I knew OmniFocus would be a great product. What I did not know at the time, was that the purchase of OmniFocus for the iPad got me into a private beta of a wireless syncing system, which works between all my devices. It is great, in fact, it is better than Frosted Flakes. Although it doesn’t auto sync at the end of my tasking session, as long as I remember to tap that sync button before I close it, the syncing is flawless. Way to go, OmniGroup. I may have contemplated leaving, but you really earned your place on my dock.

Things

Ah, the runner-up. It is really a tough place to be in. Especially when the product is as good as Things is. Believe me, Things is good. Great feature set, thoughtful design, useful organization. Things has all of these, er, things. It also has an iPhone as well as a desktop client, if you are looking for the complete ecosystem. The only problem for me was that I already owned 2/3 of the other ecosystem. Sorry Things.

So in the final analysis, I did go with OmniFocus. If you already own pieces of the OmniFocus puzzle, or if cloud based syncing gives you goosebumps just thinking about it, I might suggest that you do the same as me. However, if you are new to the game, looking for an iPad only task manager, or just need to save some sponduli, Things is your pony. I can heartily recommend it.

Baremetal OS

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:01:00 -0500

Baremetal OS:

onethingwell:

BareMetal is a 64-bit OS for x86-64 based computers. The OS is written entirely in Assembly, while applications can be written in Assembly or C/C++.

The operating system binary is 16384 bytes.

I really like this, but I am trying to think of a use case for myself, to justify it.

OpenBSD Firewall: Configuration

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:15:00 -0500

Now you have your clean, freshly installed system. Or at least you should! This is a continuation of the article I wrote previously on installing OpenBSD. This particular article will cover the system settings that you need to get setup so that you can use your awesome new OpenBSD box as an extremely powerful firewall. So the question is, where do you go from here?

This is actually going to be just a series of commands and a few file creations. Hopefully you set yourself up an account that is not root in the install process. If you haven’t, that is the first thing that I recommend you do. Type adduser and follow the instructions. Now there are a few quick things that you need to take care of so that you can use the sudo command as intended. Login as yourself, then switch temporarily to root using this command:

su root

and the providing the root password. Now edit the file /etc/groups like this:

vi /etc/groups

Add your user name to the wheel group, so if your username is bob the first line of your groups file should look like this:

wheel:*:0:root,bob

Save changes and exit. Now exit out of your root shell with exit and then out of your user shell with exit. Log back in, and run a test by typing:

sudo ifconfig

If everything was done correctly you can provide your password and perform the root action. You can, of course, perform all these steps as root, but I don’t condone it! So let’s get started. First we need to collect some network information. Type:

ifconfig

This will display all the networking interfaces that you have available. You don’t need lo. You want the names of the other network devices, which correspond to your actual physical network cards. I will call mine vr0 and vr1. Make a mental note of your interfaces so that you don’t get confused. Remember, it is highly unlikely that your network cards will be named the same as mine. Yours may be something like ath0. So let’s set these up:

sudo echo 'up' >>  /etc/hostname.vr0
sudo echo 'up' >> /etc/hostname.vr1

This tells the computer to bring your network interfaces up at startup. Now you need to create a bridge.

sudo ifconfig bridge0 create add vr0 add vr1 up

This will create and start a bridge for you. To make it permanent you need to create a file named hostname.bridge0 in /etc/ with this command:

sudo vim /etc/hostname.bridge0

and the file should contain the following lines:

add vr0
add vr1
up

Just those three lines (looks similar to the command we issued earlier, doesn’t it?). Your bridge is now configured! We still have a few shenanigans to cover before we are protecting ourselves with the firewall, though, and that is to turn on pf. Pf, or the packet filter, is what makes OpenBSD such a great firewall. To enable we need to add a line to our local rc file. Edit it with this command

sudo vi /etc/rc.local

and add a line to the end of the file that reads like this:

pf=YES #enable pf

Everything else we need to do we will have to do from the pf file itself. You can test the connection to see if you are properly bridging by putting the ethernet cord from your internet into one port of the firewall, and have another cord from the other firewall port going to a switch. Anything that is hooked up to that switch should still be able to communicate across the network. It should get an IP address just as it normally does.

Things to check if it doesn’t work.

Your system may not work at first. There are a few things that you can check if it doesn’t work the first time. One thing you can check is to make sure that one of your interfaces isn’t still in DHCP mode. In order to work in transparent mode neither of your interfaces that consist of the bridge can have IP addresses. Check your hostname.vr0 and hostname.vr1 files located in /etc. They should only contain one line up.

Another thing you can check is that IP forwarding is turned on. In rc.conf you should see a line that controls the IP forwarding. It should look like this:

ip_forwarding=YES #turn on IP forwarding

You can restart your interfaces by issuning the command sudo ifconfig vr0 down and then tell sudo ifconfig vr0 up. This should reset the interface. Do that every time you make changes to the interface. Also, you can try a restart sudo halt. The restart will put all your networking to the state that you specified in the files we created earlier. It may help if something really weird is going on.

Focusing on Things

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:45:00 -0500

I do not know if you subscribe to the Get Things Done (GTD) philosophy or not. My personal point of view is that some people make the system more important than the actual doing of the tasks, and it can lead to procrastination. It doesn’t help to have a system if you spend more time curating the system than you do getting actual work done. With that being said, I say do what works for you. I certainly have over the years, using notecards, a handy little moleskin, writing a text document. I have tried lots and lots of programs on my computer in an attempt to keep myself organized as well. TaskMate, ToDoist, Today (which is actually really cool), the Hit List, etc. So my history is long and varied with these types of things.

I have begun a new semester at school, and so my life has become very busy once again. I do full time school on top of my full time job, and the now I am a daddy at the same time! So, I am very busy, and if I don’t think about something, it can fall through the cracks so quickly, it is frankly ridiculous. I had been lackadaisically tracking a few tasks in TaskMate on my work laptop, but this wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to do some comprehensive task and project management. Since I have used a GTD system before, I knew that I needed one place, always accessible to store my tasks. I liked that. I always have my iPad with me, so I began to look into some of the task management suites available. Some, like Next Thing were to simple. Taska worked, but I could never get it to sync to Toodledo correctly: the iPhone version could never pull my tasks. It also seemed a little complex when doing a simple brain dump scenario, a common use case for me. I disliked the kitsch of ToDo, so that one was out. Finally I narrowed the list to 2 candidates, Things and OmniFocus. Now I need to figure out which one to buy.

Things is a great program. I have used it before on the iPad, and I loved the ability to dump tasks, and tag them. Contexts is also wonderful. I can also tell that they have put lots of thought into the interface. It tries to be as unobtrusive as possible, and yet still manages to provide deep functionality. This is the secret of really good, thoughtful design. It was also fast, and fully functional, the hallmarks of good coding. In short, I really like this one. The price tag is $20 for the iPad app. However, an ecosystem does exist, the companion iPhone app is $10 and a desktop client is available for $50. Of course I could simply use the iPad app as a standalone. Attractive thought, because I would not have to worry about syncing, which is the true bane of anyone seeking to keep all the lists current. The desktop client seems very attractive and thoughtful, just as the iPad app does.

The other option is OmniFocus. This requires a rather large layout on the get go; it is $40. I have not used it before, but it seems very clean and functional, with lots of added functionality like maps of contexts and special features that would be unavailable to to-do lists on other platforms. Also in favor of OmniFocus is this, a long time ago I shelled out for OmniFocus for OSX ($80), as well as OmniFocus for iPhone ($20). I already have an ecosystem in place. That is actually pretty handy. The desktop client is starting to show its age, but I hear that they are working on OmniFocus 2 soon, they stopped working on it to turn out the iPad application. Of course, that means to stay current I will have to shell out for a new desktop client in the near future. It is not problem that it feels a little stale though, because for the most part I would be managing tasks on my iPad, using my iPhone for universal capture, and then using my desktop client to keep it all synced together and current. Not bad, not bad.

So these are my two options. I could be relatively cheap now and only shell out for Things, but I then run the risk of wanting to buy into the ecosystem later for much more dinero. Alternatively, I could drop the dough on OmniFocus now, and enjoy the advanced features (which I will probably rarely use, honestly) and the existing ecosystem (which I will use all the time). Of course, I might end up spending some extra cash (ha!) down the line on that too, if the new desktop version comes out. It is something of a quandary. I am sure that I will figure something out soon, I really need something like this, the sooner the better. While I mull it over, what are your thoughts?

Note Taking Nirvana

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:49:00 -0500

What I want is simple. I want to be able to take notes on any of my devices, and then have them instantly accessible on any other of my devices instantly, and without me having to do anything. Impossible you say? Not so. I have just entered Note Taking Nirvana, and best of all, the price was free! Well, for the software anyway. This is my setup.

On my Macs I use Notational Velocity. It has fantastic keyboard shortcuts, and super simple, fast searching. I can find the note I am looking for usually with a few keystrokes. This little desktop gem syncs with the Simplenote service, ensuring that my notes propagate across all my Notational Velocity enabled computers. That would be my iMac at home, my main Macbook Pro, and even my old Macbook Pro that my wife mainly uses.

Of course, what matters here is ubiquitous capture, I need to capture the note, thought, or idea wherever I am with whatever I have. For that I have the newly updated Simplenote app [iTunes link!]. It is a free Universal Binary for my iPhone and iPad. Just in time for me to start taking notes in class, they even updated these excellent little apps with the one feature that I wanted most, full screen entry. Yes! So yesterday, when I wanted to remember a license plate number, I just punched it into my phone. When I was sitting in class, I typed all my notes into my iPad comfortably in fullscreen. It is much much lighter than lugging a computer around campus. When I got home from work and sat down in front of my computer all my class notes, as well as the license plate number of the car and an idea I jotted down on the bus, were available at the tips of my fingers. No manual syncing needed. I can go about my day in full confidence that the things I write down will be available to me anywhere. My wife’s preferred order at Firehouse subs that I took down months ago? If I need it, I can just pull it up on my phone.

In short, I am in true note taking nirvana. All my note taking is now focused on the notes themselves, I don’t have to worry about availability or formatting. Do you want to know perhaps the best part about all this note taking? Not a Marker Felt typefaced word in sight. Now that is saying something.

AutoCAD coming (back) to Mac

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:20:00 -0500

AutoCAD coming (back) to Mac:

I am sure that many people will be happy to hear this, and even though I am not an AutoCAD user, I am happy to see enterprise software come to the Mac. It will be out around October. iOS reading apps are coming, too.

OpenBSD: Installation

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:11:00 -0500

The primary purpose of this is to get OpenBSD installed. Really, this is much more straightforward than it used to be. Our install will focus on getting a transparent firewall ready, and the decisions that we make will be with that in mind. I know that I said that the install process has been made easier, but it still is fairly complicated, especially if you are not used to it. I will walk you though all the responses that you need. To build and OpenBSD transparent firewall you will need the following.

Internet Access - to read this guide!
A computer to dedicate to it
At least 2 ethernet interfaces, 3 preferred.
CD Burner and blank CD

First you need to get OpenBSD. In all likelihood you will want the i386 flavor of the latest version, which at the time of writing is 4.7. Download the install47.iso and burn it to your CD. Excellent, you now have the media you need.

Next, put in the CD and boot to it. It doesn’t particularly matter if you have wiped your hard drive before hand, the install process will certainly do some of that for you. Now the first thing that you are prompted with, after you see the screen scroll by as it detects your hardware is this, with your response in bold:

(I)nstall, (U)pgrade or (S)hell? I
Choose your keyboard layout: [Enter]
System hostname? (short form, e.g. foo) awesome_fw

All of these are fairly self explanatory. You can name your system whatever you want, I certainly won’t stop you. Now we get to some more critical stuff, networking. I am going to assume that you have 3 interfaces, this works best if you do. If you don’t, don’t sweat it! Just substitute the name of one of your interfaces here, and I will tell you when you will need to make other adjustments later in the guide. My interfaces will be names vr0, vr1, and vr2. I plan on making vr0 and vr1 into a bridge (later), with vr2 as a management interface. So I configure it now like this. Please configure at least one of your interfaces at this point, using these steps, even if you only have 2! We will change its configuration later. You need to do this in order to have access to the Internet and install some extra packages later.

Available network interfaces are: vr0 vr1 vr2
Which one would you like to configure? [vr0] vr2
IPv4 address for vr2? (or 'dhcp' or 'none') [dhcp] dhcp

We have now told OpenBSD to configure the interface using DHCP. As this is the case for the vast majority of people, I have said this. Obviously if you’re network doesn’t support DHCP (you will probably know this), then enter the IP you wish to use. There should be some text scrolling to the effect that there was an offer of an address which the dhclient accepted. Now it will ask you about IPv6, which has been supported for awhile in OpenBSD. Just answer none.

IPv6 address for [vr2] (or 'rtsol' or 'none') [none] none

Now it will ask if you want to configure any other interfaces. We don’t at this point.

Available network interfaces are: vr0 vr1 vr2

Which one would you like to configure? done

...

Do you want to do any manual network configuration? [no] no

Now we are through for the moment with networking. It is time to setup your root account. Remember, do not forget this password, it is your link to the computer! Enter it at the following prompt, keeping in mind that the entry will not be visible on the screen:

Password for root account? (will not echo) s3curem3!

Please don’t use that password. It will ask you to repeat it, to ensure that there is no mistake. After that it will want to know if you want to start a few services by default. Since I am planning to manage this headless via ssh (without a monitor) then I answer yes to the first, and no to the second. We certainly don’t need X-Windows, not with Commad-Fu at our disposal!:

Start sshd(8) by default? [yes] yes
Start ntpd(8) by default? [no] no
Do you expect to run the X Window System? [yes] no

Now lets follow the prompts to setup a user. Enter your own information here, I provide answers only as a template:

Setup a user? (enter a lower-case login name, or 'no') [no] bob
Full user name for bob? [bob] Enter
 Password for bob account? (will not echo) S{_}p3Rbob

Password for bob account? (again) Since you set up a user, disable sshd(8) logins to root? [yes] yes

And with that we have setup our new user, and disabled root logins via ssh. I am so happy. Now there is a quick question about your timezone, mine is US/Central, but you may have to hit the ? to get yours:

What timezone are you in? (? for list) [US/Central] US/Central

Alright, it is time to setup your hard disk. Since we are planning on using this as a dedicated firewall, we will use the whole disk. My disk is called wd0, yours may be something else.

Available disks are: wd0
Which one is the root disk? (or 'done') [wd0] wd0
Use (W)hole disk or (E)dit the MBR? [whole] whole

Now it will scroll out a suggested partitioning scheme. Usually you can just accept the defaults here. If you want to get fancy, remember the c: represents the entire drive. We will just use the defaults here:

Use (A)uto layout, (E)dit auto layout, or create (C)ustom layout? [a] a

It will print some cylinder information and then we are into installing the sets. We want to get the sets that we need, without getting a bunch of stuff on there that we don’t need. What I propose here is a lean version, of course, you can install everything, the rest of the guide will still function.

Let's install the sets!

Location of the sets? [cd] cd
Available CD-ROMs are: cd0
Which one contains the install media? (or 'done') [cd0] cd0
Pathname to the sets? (or 'done') [4.7/i386] Enter

Now it should scroll by you to show which sets will be installed by default. We of course, want to modify those. The … represent the same prompt, we have to remove everything that we don’t want!

Set name(s)? (or 'abort' or 'done') -misc47.tgz

... -comp47.tgz

... -game47.tgz

... -xbase47.tgz

... -xetc47.tgz

... -xshare47.tgz

... -xfont47.tgz

... -xserv47.tgz

... done

It will now load the sets specified. For various reasons, it asks about the sets again.

Location of the set(s)? done

It will now scroll some stuff and the end with Congratulations! You have installed! or something like that. It drops you to a prompt were all you have to enter is reboot, and you will reboot into your newly setup system! Make sure that you remove your install media from the CD drive, otherwise you may be left wondering what happened! Now that you have your new system, there is still a ton to do before you have a firewall up and humming. However, the first steps have been taken! Feel free to play around with your new system, configuring the prompt and such, while you wait for the next post in the series, on configuring your system for a firewall.

OpenBSD: Series Intro

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:53:24 -0500

Since my work and interests have led me in the direction of OpenBSD recently, I decided to do a brief series on getting OpenBSD running as a home firewall for yourself. Why OpenBSD? Simple: it is secure by default, has some great options that are matched only by some very expensive enterprise firewall appliances, and can almost certainly run on that 2 generation old computer that you have been planning to do something with, but is actually just gathering dust somewhere. This will be an update and expansion on some previous OpenBSD articles that I have written. The old articles were written circa OpenBSD 4.4, and with 4.7 out now and 4.8 looming in the near future, I have decided to go over and update my notes.

There have been a few important changes in the way OpenBSD works with transparent firewalls, and by and large I think those changes are for the better, they just need some clear documentation. As an improvement over my last articles on OpenBSD firewalls, I am going to break it into a series of more manageable chunks, rather than one massive post. I think that that will make it more simple to find just that one thing that you remember you read, but can’t quite remember the exact command. Something else to remember is this, clicking on the OpenBSD tag on the left will bring up a page with all my OpenBSD related posts, should you find yourself lost. This will be the order in which I publish.

Installation: Should publish concurrently with this overview piece.
Configuration: Some of the config files you will need to make it work.
pf.conf: How to make you firewall sing, securely

These three areas will cover the basics of the firewall. I may add additional tips later.