Often I find myself in the need to base64 encode a file. Typically an image to inline in a CSS file. I added the following to my ~/.bash_profile (OSX) for convenience:
function base64() {
openssl base64 < $1 | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy
}
Now I simply run base64 <filename> from the terminal to get the base64 encoded file in the clipboard for easy pasting into wherever I want to.
Open the terminal and type (on one line):
grep -A 1 CFBundleVersion /Library/Frameworks/Adobe\ AIR.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/Info.plist
It will return something like:
<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>3.5.0.600</string>
Where the string entry is the current installed version of Adobe AIR.
Mantis has a SOAP API, but I wanted JSON to display the most recent tickets on a web page using JavaScript. Hence I wrote a simple wrapper in PHP that does a SOAP call and returns the result as JSON to be conveniently digested by JavaScript.
Put the mantisconnect_json.php file wherever you want, it doesn’t need to be on the same server or have the same domain as the Mantis installation. Edit the MANTISCONNECT_URL and your Mantis username and password.
The query string parameter name defines what SOAP action to call, the rest of the query string parameters are passed as arguments in the SOAP call. Note that the Mantis username/password is inserted automatically as arguments by the PHP code to avoid having you expose it publicly in JavaScript (but they may be overridden if desired).
Please note that this is a very simple wrapper for read-only purpose (e.g. it will not work to create new issues).
Wiping and shutting down a headless linux server over SSH.
Wipe
Copies zeros over the whole disk.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdaX
Where sdaX is the device you want to wipe. Read discussion at security.stackexchange.
Shutdown
Since the shutdown command will be trashed by the wiping, we need to force shutdown in another way.
echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
echo o > /proc/sysrq-trigger
Don’t try this at home.
Since I’ve got a Swedish keyboard on my MacBook Pro tab-indenting using “Shift Left ⌘[" and "Shift Right ⌘]” does not work (or actually only Shift Right works).
The reason for this is that you must use the Alt-key to get a bracket [, and apparently Command-Alt-[ is already taken by toggling zoom on/off.
To make tab-indenting work in Coda, open System Preferences, Keyboard, click Keyboard Shortcuts tab, select Universal Access and finally uncheck the box for Turn zoom on or off.
Being very humbled to be part of the star struck lineup at The Scandinavian Web Developer Conference 2010 I did a talk about Developing Large-Scale JavaScript Web Sites (slides available here as PDF).
The presentation is basically a quick high-level overview of some of the main points I’ve encountered after several workshops at different clients wanting to take the step from a legacy server centric web site architecture to a modern rich client side implementation.
I did a presentation at Optimera STHLM entitled Faster websites with AJAX and REST architecture. The talk are more on an architecture level, rather than about implementation details.
Slides are available as PDF here (this is an english version of what was presented).
The demo I did of the Friendly Iframe ad-loading optimization by Tobias Järlund at Aftonbladet is available at the Aftonbladet dev blog (swedish).
I’m speaking at Optimera STHLM (that’s Optimize Stockholm) 31st of May about modern web architecture using JavaScript, Ajax and RESTful web services and what that means to both frontend and backend.