projects

Short story collection: A Pocketful of Lies, December 2006

As a prelude to the relaunch of short-story website Quiet little Lies (a relaunch which is long overdue), I'm distributing in print a seasonal special for 2006 called:

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Realplayer to mp3: a configurable Python wrapper

It’s one of the worst-kept tech secrets in the world, but Real Audio streams can be downloaded using software such as mplayer and then converted to MP3 format with lame. Both of these are available in Ubuntu using the non-Ubuntu package manager Automatix. The possibility of doing this conversion implies that, although the BBC offer all their programs in Real Audio and only a few as podcasts, you can in principle put any you like on your portable music device.

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New version of rmrip

Following user requests, I’ve uploaded a new version of rmrip which takes a command-line argument specifying your configuration file:

./rmrip.py foo.conf

As the user himself implied, this has the added bonus of making it more crontab-friendly e.g. you can have a crontab entry saying:

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Image manipulation in the browser

While Picnik gradually converts the functionality of desktop image processing software into online tools (in the hope, presumably, of being bought up by one of the big players), Flash has found other, more piecemeal uses in augmenting the image and font functionality of your average browser.

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Every dog has more than one day

Every productivity tool is a blessing and a curse, or rather: for extended periods of time a given tool can chime perfectly with your way of working and thinking; when it doesn’t, it ceases to be a machine for converting your energy into accomplishment and becomes a wastebin for everything you throw at it.

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Home is where the heart-shaped souvenir is

Remember in the days before blogs, when we used to have homepages? Well, technically I suppose I still have one, separate from my blog. How retro is that, eh? My online presence is so fragmented (arguably because my offline presence is that of a genre-flitting dilettante who can’t just sit still for five minutes) that the index of www.jpstacey.info is still not my actual blog, even in 2007.

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Team Drupal FTW!

Coming to the end of the Drupal project on which I’m currently working, I spotted someone else’s brand new site on drupal.org: TeamSugar.

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Drupal site finished

Those who may have tuned into the long, slow rumblings of my work Drupal project may be pleased to hear that the site is finally live:

CRUDE: The new documentary from director Franny Armstrong (McLibel) and Oscar-winning producer John Battsek (One Day In September)

Was programming in Drupal a pleasant experience? Yes and no. Was it the perfect tool for the job? Yes and no. Will I be happy to program in Drupal again? Emphatically, yes.

Drupal in five minutes

Will wonders never cease? I’m helping a friend build a website for his driving school, and decided to give Drupal a try so he could have all the whistles and bells he might want. It seemed a bit like overkill, but it would also be instructive for me and would mean that he could always turn to someone else in future to do the development. The number of sites that must founder because they’re maintained by a friend that becomes an ex-friend….

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Open sauce

Drupal, along with Plone and dotnetnuke, beat some monumentally big playas to the first awards of the OpenID bounty. This is awarded to projects which implement a number of requirements which, together, constitute agreed OpenID functionality.

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