So I finally found a few minutes to set up my Radxa Rock. I’m still not to sure on how to say the name.
It’s a pretty nifty little machine. I’ll have to spend some time with the documentation to see exactly what I can make it do (or not!).
The video is 18 minutes long, and in HD. It’s a good thing YouTube decided to increase the video limit to longer than 15 minutes!
due to its length, it may not play on mobile devices, or anywhere there isn’t a WiFi connection. If it’s needed, I’ll split it into two videos and re-post.
They say the best camera you have is the one that’s with you. This is where the Nexus 5 fell down. I had to take a couple of quick photos of my niece, who generally is only still when she’s sleeping. My iPhone 5 normally handles this task with ease. Every now and then, there will be a blurry movement where she was standing, but generally the photo before or after captures a picture in pretty sharp detail. The Nexus 5 introduced a delay after trying the auto focus or tap to focus. This meant that when pressing the volume up button to take a snap, the delay introduced, although minimal, stops perfect snaps being taken. After this, I called Google and arranged a return of the phone.
So, based on my last post, I wanted to see if I could do everything with PHP. After a bit of google-fu and using the php.net manual, I’ve managed this beauty. Use at your own risk! This works with my Google Starred items, and you still have to obtain the starred.json file from the Google Take Out service (See my last post for more information).
If you have any tips on how to improve this, drop me a comment!
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Instapaper: Export</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Unread</h1>
<ol>
<?php
// First off, we start by opening the file required (starred.json),
// Then we set the $galbool paramater (This is used where sites have
// given a "Gallery" URL (To make it more cosmetic, it appends the
// text [Gallery] to the end of the description.
$file_handle = fopen("starred.json", "r");
while (!feof($file_handle)) {
$galbool = FALSE;
$line = fgets($file_handle);
// This is our first check. We run through the json file and look for
// lines that contain the text "href". If it does not have that text,
// we are not interested, and set that line to be blank.
$preg = "(\"href\")";
$urlcheck = preg_match($preg, $line);
if ($urlcheck !== 1) {
$line = "";
} else {
// A cheeky little bit of coding. Whislt we are in the loop, and
// I know that this is a URL we are intersted in, I'll have a look
// at the last character. If its a ",", I also want to delete that
// line. Looking at the JSON file, if a line contains a URL and
// ends with a ",", it means its not the *ACTUAL* URL we want, so
// we continue our ruthless streak and set that line to blank!
// (This was included ot deal with hackaday.com URL's, which for
// some reason doubled up, and this was a quick and easy way to
// get rid of them!
$preg = "(,)";
$clean = preg_match($preg, $line);
if ($clean !== 0) {
$line = "";
}
}
// Now we trim the whitespace and other non-needed characters, and
// we remove the first bit from the string thats not needed. This
// takes us right to the http:// part of the link, which is what we
// need! We also remove the trailing slash from the link as well.
trim($line);
$line = substr($line, 16);
$line = substr_replace($line, "", -2);
$string = $line;
$check = $string[strlen($string)-2];
if ( $check == "/"){
$string = rtrim($string);
$string = rtrim($string, "/");
$desc = $string;
}
$check = $string[strlen($string)-1];
if ( $check == "/"){
$string = rtrim($string);
$string = rtrim($string, "/");
$desc = $string;
}
// This is just a quick check to see if the URL passed is a gallery
// URL. If so, we set the $galbool value to true, and then do our
// usual URL cleanup. I have removed the /gallery part from the URL
// This is personal preferance, and I've not had any adverse effects
// from either taking it in, or removing it. It has to be removed
// just now to make figuring out the link text easier though.
// We can add it back in later if required.
$gallerycheck = str_replace("/gallery", "", $string, $count);
if ($count == 1){
$galbool = TRUE;
$string = rtrim($string);
$string = rtrim($string, "/gallery");
$desc = $string;
}
// And now for the (almost) finale! We take everything after the
// forward slash in the URL, remove that forward slash, then we
// run through and replace every "-" with a space. This makes the
// end HTML page look nice, and it keeps with Instapapers Export
// option. If the $galbool value is true, we create a [Gallery]
// tag.
$desc = strrchr($string, "/");
$desc = str_replace("/", "", $desc);
$desc = str_replace("-", " ", $desc);
$desc = ucwords($desc);
if ($string != "" ){
if ($galbool == TRUE){
// you can add back in the /gallery link here again if you need it!
// Just uncomment the relevant line and comment out the other!
// -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// $formatted = ' <li><a href="' . $string . '/gallery">' . $desc . '[Gallery]</a></li>';
// ----------------------------------***OR THIS LINE***---------------------------------------------
$formatted = ' <li><a href="' . $string . '">' . $desc . '[Gallery]</a></li>';
// -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
} else {
$formatted = ' <li><a href="' . $string . '">' . $desc . '</a></li>';
}
echo $formatted;
}
}
// We now close the file (good housekeeping), and finish up
// the script.
fclose($file_handle);
?>
</ol>
</body>
</html>
So. Google Reader is closing down. I’m not going to get all high and mighty – It’s Google’s product. They do with it as they wish! There are several places that let you save your feeds from Google Reader, but I wanted to add all my Starred Items from Reader into Pocket. It turns out it wasn’t the easiest thing to do! After a few terminal commands and some PHP, this is what I came up with!
Firstly, head to Google Reader, and use the Data Takeout feature that Google provides to save your Reader Data only. The outputted ZIP file should contain a folder entitled “Reader”. Within that, there should be a file named “starred.json”.
Now the fun begins! To make it easy (and quick) I used the Terminal on Mac and ran these commands within the above folder. I used two files (new.txt and newnew.txt) just to keep track of what was happening. There are easier ways of doing this! I ran the following commands from terminal:
The “grep” command looks through text files for specific expressions. “cat” outputs a full file, “rev” reverses items, “cut” cuts text, “rm” removes files and “mv” moves files.
To make this easier, I created a Shell Script (Tested on OSX 10.8.2 only)
You can run that file by saving it to the same location as the Google Reader folder, and running the following in terminal first:
chmod 755 script.sh
./script.sh
the first line tells the computer to allow script.sh to be executed, and the second line executes the script.
I then moved the url.txt file that had just been created to my www root folder (for me its under /users/~name/sites/), and created the following PHP/HTML code:
People often don’t realise how versatile PHP and its add-on’s, including Imagik can be. I’ve used the following code in the past, and again recently, and I always receive comments on how nicely created invitations are. Its the personal touch that does it!
Firstly, I created an invitation using the awesome Pixelmator for Mac. You can use Gimp or Photoshop, or whatever takes your fancy, but what your looking for is a nice invitation with room for peoples names, like this:
(I’ve saved this as a PNG file)
Next up, some pre-processing work is required. I’ll go into this stuff in more detail in future blog posts, but what you want to do is set up a LAMP install (Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP). Make sure you have Imagik installed. You then want to install PHPMyAdmin, and create a database and one table with 2 columns (ID and Name).
ID
Name
1
Nick T
2
Mr. A. N. Other
You can then plop the following code into your root directory, customise as needed, and away you go!
<?php
$con=mysqli_connect("localhost","USERNAME","PASSWORD","DATABASENAME");
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error();
}
// Database connection has passed, now to select ALL the data from the Table "NAME"
$result = mysqli_query($con,"SELECT * FROM name");
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) //Grab everything and put it into an array
{ //Start the loop
$image = new Imagick('siteinfo.png'); //The name of the background image
$draw = new ImagickDraw(); //Tell imagick were going to draw on this image
$draw->setGravity (Imagick::GRAVITY_CENTER); //Centre our Text
$draw->setFillColor('black'); //Set the font colour to BLACK
$draw->setFont("/var/www/skia.ttf"); //Load the font we want to use
$draw->setFontSize( 40 ); //Set our font size
$text = $row['name']; //Place the name into a variable
$image->annotateImage($draw, 240, -150, 0, $text); //Write this name into the image at the location specified
$image->setImageFormat('jpg'); //Tell imagick were going to save it as a JPG
$name = $row['id'] . ".jpg"; //Give it the file name of its ROW in the database
$image->writeImages($name, TRUE); //Save it to the root folder (where the script was ran)
} //Lather, Rinse, Repeat!
mysqli_close($con); //Close the MySQL connection
?>
One of the important functions in the above script is the
$image->annotateImage($draw, 240, -150, 0, $text); //Write this name into the image at the location specified
Using the awesome documentation online at PHP.net, you find out that the 3 numbers, in order mean X position, Y position and angle. Angle is set to 0 because I don’t want the text angled. A nice straight line of text. The X position relates to where in the image the text is placed horizontally, and the Y relates to the vertical position. There was no hard and fast way to figure out those numbers, so I played about with them until I was happy. There is more than likely a function already created, or you could write your own that works out the exact location, but for my needs, a little bit of guessing with a small sample yielded pretty good results!
After running that PHP file, you get this at the other end:
Image 1
and
Image 2
The above took less than 1 second to produce, once the script was ran. I used this to create over 60 invites, and that took around 10 seconds of script execution time! (If I remember, I’ll put in a timer to see how long exactly it took. Bare in mind this was completed on the Ubuntu Laptop – which isn’t exactly a powerhouse!)
I’m fully aware that there was probably a workflow for Automator on the Mac which I could have used – but its nice to keep the PHP skills going for little things like this!
UPDATE: Using the 2 names above, the script was executed in 0.74 seconds – This is on a Dual Core Intel(R) CPU T1400 @ 1.73GHz with 1Gb of RAM.
UPDATE 2: Using 59 names from the database, the script was executed in 6.01 seconds. Not bad!
I came across a problem when installing Windows 7 to my Mac using Bootcamp. I purchased my copy of Windows 7 when I had my older Windows PC meaning I was eligible for the upgrade pricing. Using a Mac, however meant I couldn’t use the upgrade disc. Seeing as I don’t use my Windows PC anymore (it’s since been wiped and Ubuntu installed) I think I’m entitled to use the software I purchased on my Mac! The installation runs fine, with no issues, except when you enter your Product Key in. Windows gives you a nice error during install saying the Key is Invalid. It still allows you to install Windows 7, but you must reactivate within 3 days.
The quickest, and easiest way to activate Windows 7 using your own Product Key is to do the following: 1- Open up regedit (Click the Start Orb, type regedit and press enter) 2- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/ 3- On the right hand side, double click MediaBootInstall and change the value to 0 (from 1) 4- Close regedit, and start a command prompt as an administrator 5- Enter slmgr /rearm and wait for a message box telling you the command completed successfully 6- Reboot your Mac 7- Click Start, and type Activate Windows 8- Enter your Product Key and click OK.
Easy as pie! Special Thanks to Justin Kerr of the MaximumPC blog for the information. Their site has pictures that can also be followed!
As well as creating the blog, I also have to create a development environment. There are plenty of ways to do it, and no way is right, but in my circumstances I have chosen to use a late 2012 Mac Mini running OS X 10.8.2 and using Bootcamp with Windows 7. I also have Ubuntu running on a nearby laptop, as well as a Virtualised image on OSX.
The set up of everything went relatively smoothly, excluding using the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad in Windows 7. My specific issue resolves around both the mouse and trackpad appearing “jittery”, as if te batteries were dying and the full smooth movement of the mouse was not being sent to the computer. This has annoyed a lot of folk online, and as it turns out after lots of Googling, you have to do the following:
1 – Head to Device Manager, Then Network Adapters 2 – Right-Click the Broadcom 802.11n 3 – Choose the Advanced Tab. 4 – Locate Bluetooth Collaboration from the drop-down list, then choose “Enable”
A quick and simple fix! Many thanks to Kemal Kocabiyik and his blog for assisting me with this one!
The video is 18 minutes long, and in HD. It’s a good thing YouTube decided to increase the video limit to longer than 15 minutes!
