karlding

iTunes Artist Photos

The iTunes API doesn't provide a way to grab artist images, but the iTunes website uses Open Graph meta tags, which embeds a meta tag with a property attribute value set to og:image. As it turns out, this seems to be the same image used in the iTunes artwork.

The URL structure is similar to the artworkUrl values returned by the API, but what concerns us here is the part I've indicated at the end of the URL.

http://is3.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music7/v4/68/68/41/68684190-833b-bfb4-5018-e5a2e6f69eb0/source/1200x630bf.jpg
                                                                                                   └─ widthxheight

karlding

import xml.dom.minidom
import sys

data = "".join(sys.stdin)

dom = xml.dom.minidom.parseString(data)
ligature_sets = dom.getElementsByTagName('LigatureSet')
char_map = dom.getElementsByTagName('cmap')[0].getElementsByTagName('cmap_format_4')[0].getElementsByTagName('map')

for ligature_set in ligature_sets:

karlding

// ==UserScript==
// @name         JobMine4Days
// @namespace    https://github.com/karlding
// @version      1.1
// @description  Prevents uWaterloo's JobMine system from logging you out automatically
// @author       Karl Ding
// @include      https://jobmine.ccol.uwaterloo.ca/psp/SS*
// @include      https://jobmine.ccol.uwaterloo.ca/psc/SS*
// @include      https://jobmine.ccol.uwaterloo.ca/psp/ES*
// @include      https://jobmine.ccol.uwaterloo.ca/psc/ES*

karlding

var system = require('system');
var casper = require('casper').create({
  pageSettings: {
    loadImages: true,
    loadPlugins: false,
    userAgent: 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/44.0.2403.157 Safari/537.36'
  }
});

// read from cin to prevent login credentials being stored in bash history

karlding

Android fastboot flashing

Here are some instructions on how to successfully flash a new Android System Image.

Preparation

First download and extract the Android System Image that you want to flash. I'll be using hammerhead-mob30h, which is the May security update for my Nexus 5 (2013).

Extract the archive and enter the directory. You'll also want to extract the image-*.zip file as well (image-hammerhead-mob30h.zip in my case), which contains the other img files.

cd ~/Downloads/image-hammerhead-mob30h

karlding

On my Nexus 5, I started shooting in RAW mode with JPG previews. However, when I copy the DNGs over to my laptop for editing/archival, I don't care about the JPG files.

The camera app creates two files:

1. filename.jpg: the JPG preview
2. filename.dng: the RAW file

Basically, we want to remove any JPG files for which a RAW file also exists. I

karlding

pyenv + virtualenvwrapper cheat sheet

Requirements

• pyenv
• pyenv-virtualenvwrapper

Usage

Install new Python versions

karlding

#!/bin/bash

# Script for installing tmux on systems where you don't have root access.
# tmux will be installed in $HOME/local/bin.
# It's assumed that wget and a C/C++ compiler are installed.

# exit on error
set -e

TMUX_VERSION=2.5

karlding

Download Vagrant boxes manually

In this example, we're going to download the Midnight Sun box.

# The box URL is https://app.vagrantup.com/uwmidsun/boxes/box/versions/2.1.0
# In general, we just take the box URL, and then append the provider URL
# https://app.vagrantup.com/<organization name>/boxes/<box name>/versions/<version>/providers/<provider>.box
wget https://app.vagrantup.com/uwmidsun/boxes/box/versions/2.1.0/providers/virtualbox.box -O box-2.1.0.box

karlding

#!/bin/bash

# Backup all my music from my Windows Music folder 
# (/media/karl/5A14316614314673/Users/Karl/Music) to my 2 TB external drive 
# (/media/karl/A0D83FDAD83FAE02/bak/Users/Karl/Music) using rsync

WINDOWS_MEDIA_DIR="/media/karl/5A14316614314673/Users/Karl/Music"
EXTERNAL_DRIVE="/media/karl/A0D83FDAD83FAE02/bak/Users/Karl"

rsync -va "${WINDOWS_MEDIA_DIR}" "${EXTERNAL_DRIVE}"