• Online beautifier for JavaScript | js beautify, pretty-print» code javascript tools

• Scott Hurring: Code: Python: PHP Serialize implemented in Python: v0.4b: This is a python implementation of PHP’s native serialize() and unserialize() functions.
  » php programming python tools

Seeing as how I haven’t played a PC-based game in over three months, and having realized that The GIMP does everything that I ever actually use Photoshop for quite well (and do not. even. get me started on iTunes), today I installed Ubuntu. If you know me at all, you know that what followed was a ten-hour hacking session. And so: my first shell script replaces your desktop background with a random fave from flickr. Whee!

#set u to your user id (on your system)
u="jrhyley"
#set f to your userid OR username (on flickr)
f="11349677@N00"
cp /home/$u/pic.jpg /home/$u/pic.bak.jpg
# php source of the server-side script, if you want to host it yourself: http://dev.rhyley.org/randfavedesktop.txt
wget --output-document=/home/$u/pic.jpg http://dev.rhyley.org/randfavedesktop.php?u=$f
x=$(stat -c %s /home/$u/pic.jpg)
if [ $x < 2901 ]
then
	mv -f /home/$u/pic.bak.jpg /home/$u/pic.jpg
fi
gconftool-2 -t str --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename /home/$u/pic.jpg
gconftool-2 -t str --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_options "zoom"

I’m enjoying Ubuntu a great deal so far. I had run a few livecd distros in the past to sort of dip my feet in, but I never found one that I thought I could use on a daily basis until now. Updates as events warrant.

Update 11 May 2007:Updated shell script to avoid blank images, and for ease of configuration.
Update 13 May 2007:Updated shell script to fix bug — I’m still learning this bash stuff.

• National Survey Reveals More than 70% of Americans Don’t Know Plastic is Made from Oi: The American educational system is an unequivocal failure.
  » education environment science

• How U.S. farm policy makes us fatter and sicker - NYTimes: "The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones [the US government] pay farmers to grow."
  » Politics economics food

• Greasemonkey EASY authenticated Flickr API call: Documents F.API.callMethod(). Thanks be to Bob, this saved me about two days of de-obfuscating.
  » code flickr greasemonkey

• Breaking: Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick: I wonder if there was any regulatory oversight on this. This does very nearly create an online advertising monopoly. MS and Yahoo may have no other choice but to gang up when it comes down to it.
  » advertising biz goog google news

Things I have done in the last week or so:

• Turned my MySpace page into a tumbleblog (cooler non-myspace version here) to try to funnel some of my friends who live on myspace out into the actual internet. This is all powered by standard PHP5 with lastRSS.
• PHP script to provide an RSS feed of your weekly last.fm charts. It just displays the most recent week’s charts, but that’s enough really. Useful for, say, including the charts in your tumbleblog. [source]
• Updated Flickr Photo Page Enhancer greasemonkey script. Changes to flickr site = changes to script.

I’ve also worked 43 hours as of Thursday, and also, excitingly, my car blew up. Which means lots of exciting meetings with loan officers at my bank as they try to find polite ways to say “have you actually seen your credit report, fool?” So I don’t know what else you might want from me, but you ain’t getting it. I’m going to bed now.

• Internet Access CAPTCHAs: Let’s get a coalition of browser developers, and the W3C, and… well whoever it takes, really, but let’s start work on this pronto.
  » funny grammar humor
• dooce: Caught in the middle of something potentially scandalous: So. Best. (Or: I think icanhascheezeburger is altering my personality in subtle and pervasive ways.)
  » animals cute dooce funny sobest
• xkcd - no recursing: Seriously, if you’re not reading xkcd, there’s something wrong with you.
  » comix funny geek humor