This Week: Notes, Names and New Sites
08 April 2008
This is the latest installment in my regular(ish) series looking at some of what I have read online since last time.
This Week: Encrypt /home campaign updates
23 December 2007
So a couple of weeks ago, I challenged all you warriors, well at least those of you using Linux on your laptops, to encrypt your /home directory by Christmas.
This Week: Freedom not Time-Bombs
07 December 2007
Hello everyone, welcome back to our occassional series about what I have read online since last time. Without further ado, let's dive in to the next installment.
Another reason why Linux is better for the environment
This Week - Linux is Linux
23 November 2007
Hello, this is my regular look at what I have read online since last time.
This Week: Free the Radio, Python Web Frameworks, Blank PCs and How to start in Linux
13 October 2007
Welcome to 'This Week', my occasional series about what I have read recently. You are encouraged to tell me if you have written or read something cool that I should notice. Another person to do just that is Rich McIver:
> Hi Zeth, ><br> We recently published "`Linux for Business: 50 Apps to Get your Office on Open Source`_". I figured I'd bring it to your attention in case you think your readers would find it useful. ><br>Either way, keep up the great blogging!
Reading through the list I was reminded how much great stuff there is available from the Open Source community. Are there any businesses of significant size that do not use at least any free/open-source software somewhere in the organisation? I doubt it. It just shows how far we have come. It won't be long before we will be at the point where no computer user will be without some free software on their PC, even if they do not realise that it is there. We are winning, just very subtly and quietly.
Calling all in transit - Radio Free Europe Amarok
This Week - IT in Russian schools and the Cybermen are on the move
25 September 2007
Here is another dose of what I have read online in the last week or so.
Fun and Freedom
This Week - PyconUK, Vista Idle usage, SCOX is bust but no need to pity Darl McBride
17 September 2007
Hello! So this is what I have read out on the web in the last week. As always, if I have missed something cool, then let me know in the comments.
This Week: Heroes and Monsters
17 August 2007
As regular readers will know, this is my occasional series of what I have read this week on the supersized interwibble.
Charting your command history
This Week: All quite on the Western Front and How many Linux users are there?
11 August 2007
So I continue my regular series of what I have read this week. Not a lot in fact as there is near silence in my RSS reader, it seems that everyone is on holiday and people are not blogging too much. However, a few people had some interesting things to say.
Organisations for Britain's first ever Python conference are continuing and seem to be going well, see you in September if you are going.
This Week on the Command Line: Lieutenant Worf's favourite distro is?
12 July 2007
I was at the LugradioLive 2007 conference this last weekend which was fab, see here for my take on it.
I am famous, well no, but at the end of the JakAttack podcast 55 [ogg | mp3], they read out my email, rock on!
This Week on the Command Line: The Light and Dark Sides
06 May 2007
Hello everyone, it has been a little while since I last did a round up of random blogs I have read. So lets get started.
Freedom of speech
This Week on the Command Line: Bring back CD-RWs but not the draft, also choose your dessert carefully!
30 March 2007
Long time readers will know that I occasionally do a Friday round up of selected things that I have read on blogs and so on since the last time. Hope you enjoy it!
Fixes and tips
This Week on the Command Line: Laptop Backups and apt-get for Windows
04 November 2006
It has been a while since last time, so lets do this. 'This week on the command line' is my look at what I have read online in the past seven days. If you have read or written anything cool then leave a comment below and tell me about it.
Phill has taken up Ruby on Rails which is kind of scary. Learning Python is quite enough for me right now, however I am just a humanist while but Phill is a proper computer scientist.
This week on the command line: Custom isos and barriers of entry
11 February 2006
At the end of each week I round up what I have been reading online. If you discover an interesting link that you think should be covered then please drop me an email using warrior at commandline dot org dot uk.
Automatic Custom Linux Isos
This week in the world of the Command Line; The Friday Round up!
03 February 2006
Package Management in Mac OS X... in Japanese!
A user has featured one of my posts with comments/criticisms in a post in a Japanese blog, I have no idea what he is saying, however Google Translator does attempt to make sense of it.
Blogwatch: cURL, ImageMagick, Network tools and Pizza
09 September 2005
Here is a round up of what I have noticed in the blog world about the command-line recently, if you know anymore good new links then let me know!
cURL tips
cURL is one of my favourite command-line applications. It is similar to wget but with all the features a modern browser would have, e.g. cookies, ssh, etc. You can use it to do anything a browser would do and script routine tasks that you may need to do.
World O' Matty has many posts of interest to those using the command-line. 'Grabbing a protected webpage' was a nicely-written practical example of how to use cURL:
> Ever needed to grab a password protected page from the command line? This can be accomplished with curl’s “-u� option:
$ curl -k -i https://www.daemons.net/secret -u me:somethingstrong |more
The username and password can be passed as an argument to the “-u� option. If you are paranoid about your password being visible on the command line, you can omit the password, and curl will prompt you for it:
$ curl -k -i https://www.daemons.net/secret -u me password:
In case you are curious, the “-k� option forces curl to dump the HTTP headers. I use both options to debug web server issues.
I have been using cURL a lot myself, and I plan to do a series on it in the future.
Introduction to ImageMagick
Another great tool that we have not yet touched on here is ImageMagick which is a great tool that allows you to work with images at the command-line.
Himal, the Essex boy that runs the Optimus blog, has a useful introduction, imagemagick and the strengths of the command line:
> Most people don’t think of the command as a place to do image manipulation. They are wrong.
Let’s say I have a situation where I’ve got about 50 images at 1024×768 in png format that I need to quickly turn into small jpg thumbnails. I could use Photoshop Actions, or perhaps some other tool. But that would be reinventing the wheel, why not do it all with the UNIX command line and ImageMagick?
Himal goes on to give practical examples of how to resize images. He also points out that ImageMagick can be used in server-side web-scripting to create image galleries 'on the fly'. The first example that he gives is the a simple one image job:
> convert someimage.png -resize 25% someimage.jpg
The above will take a png image called someimage.png and turn it into a jpg, scaling it down 25% from it’s previous size. Or this:
convert someimage.jpg -resize 640x480 -quality 40 someimage_1.jpg
That will create a scaled 640×480 image from someimage.jpg and save it as someimage_1.jpg, with jpg compression of 40%.
Network commands
Frank Teegelbeckers has a blog called Network+ and it has an interesting ` ">post about basic network commands: Ping, Traceroute, ifconfig/ipconfig, netstat, Telnet, and FTP.
Most of these utilities have been ported over to DOS and so Teegelbeckers gives both Unix/Linux and MS-DOG based explainations for them all. For example:
> Ping can tell you if the TCP/IP stack of another system on the network is functioning normally. The ping program generates a series of Echo Request messages using the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) and transmits them to the computer whose name or IP address you specify on the command line. The basic syntax of the ping program is as follows:
ping target
Bash with pepperoni
I am a bit fan of providing custom interfaces to Internet applications and sites. This website explains how to order Pizza using Bash!
The application works with Dominos' website and I found that the command-line modifiers in the man page were quite amusing!
I have not tried this yet so do not know if it will work with Dominos' non-us sites; if you try it out then do let us know if it worked, and of course whether it tasted any good!
