Entries from September 2004 ↓

I spent a little time working on my blog. I have a layout I really like although it still needs some fixing. I managed to put in some plugins like my now playing one, catagories, and I got a very hacked version of the booklist plugin working with amazon after dome discussion with jay huie. I’d love some feedback or suggestions of what else should be there.

Another round of empty the browser tabs.

clarkbw, since you car keeps getting hit maybe you should get these .
I think these are really cool, way too expensive though.
This is fucked up. Fucked up.
Also this is very, very, odd .

I wanted to add a dynamic string to my webpage displaying what rhythmbox was currently playing. I asked a few people if they had seen a script that would do this, but the best anyone came up with was looking at the source for the rhythmbox-gaim plugin and going from there. After checking out the plugin I remembered how much I hate c I decieded to try it out in python.
Since my desktop sits behind a cablemodem and buzzco uses the ip to host buzzco.org I couldn’t query my machine whenever my page is loaded. So instead I look up the songinfo through bonobo write that to a file and scp it to my server. Here is the script to get the info and send it:

import pygtk
pygtk.require(’2.0′)
import bonobo
import os

bonobo.activate()
try:
rb = bonobo.get_object(’OAFIID:GNOME_Rhythmbox’, ‘GNOME/Rhythmbox’)
properties = rb.getPlayerProperties()
v = properties.getValue(’song’)
songinfo = v.value()

open(’/home/matt/tunes’, ‘w’).write(songinfo.artist + ‘ - ‘ + songinfo.title)
except:
open(’/home/matt/tunes’, ‘w’).write(”nothing, rhythmbox isn’t running”)

os.system(’/usr/bin/scp /home/matt/tunes root@unsure.org:/var/www/’)

In order to keep the info current I created a cron job to run the script every 2 minutes. Two important things to note about cron (besides cron sucks).

Whichever user is running rhythmbox is the user that needs to run the cron job.
Cron doesn’t know a flipping thing about any system or user info so you have to use absolute paths.

*/2 * * * * /usr/bin/python /home/matt/rhythmbox.py
I also wrote a small plugin to pyblosxom to display to info. It still needs a little work so I’ll post it in a day or two. For now check out unsure to see whay i’m listening to.

You know, chile pepper made themselves really hot as a defense mechanism against predators. Unfortunately, they just made themselves super tasty. Spicy Spicy evolution at work.

It’s been a while since I posted to this blog. Mostly because I’m completly lazy. Yesterday I went to the hudson valley wine festival. I got a bottle of wine, some fried dough, and drunk. You see I got a decent buzz just tasting wine. Then we decided to go through the corn maze. Balls, Tracy, and I went one way, Buzzco and Danielle went the wrong way. Balls brought a bottle of wine in with us and we drank that pretty quick. After we got out of the maze Balls bought another bottle. We finished that before buzzco and Danielle got out. Needless to say it was a drunk ride home. Mike informs me we yelled at many people from the car.
When we got back pizza and 40’s were had by some. The is the end of my story.

So I am reading a huge book, i’m aiming at going to bed a little earlier and reading for an hour or so before I sleep. I picked up ‘The Source’ by James Michener for a quarter at the Poughkeepsie Library Book Sale. I had read about half of this book before but I lost my copy before I could finish it (It’s 1075 pages so I had been working on it a while before I lost it.)
I am posting this for Eli so he remembers he wanted to check it out. Anyway a brief synopsis: This book covers the fictitious history of Makor, a city in Israel, from prehistory to modern times. Starting in the 1960s, an archeological dig turns up artifacts in an ancient mound composed of the remains of successive settlements in Makor. Then, starting with the deepest, oldest artifact and moving forward in time, in successive chapters Michener chronologically describes the inhabitants and events in and around the city over thousands of years. In this way, he tells the fascinating story of the Jews and other local inhabitants, of Judaism and its role in the creation of Christianity and Islam, and of the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
I am really enjoying this book, I think it’s an intersting look in the roots of world religieon and since it follows real historical happenings in the books timeline not only does it give an in depth look at how Judaism has affected our world but offers some insight as to why the middle east has some of the problems it does now.

Aren’t there two g’s in Wiggity?