magpiebrain

Made quite a few changes to the site over the last few days – some more noticeable than others. Internally I’ve reorganised a lot of stuff to make more use of Movable Type “Template modules”:http://www.movabletype.org/docs/mtmanual_templates.html#template%20modules to cut down on the reproduced code. I’ve also added a new category for “static” files, and used the “CatEntries”:http://markpasc.org/code/mt/CatEntries/ plugin to filter out this category from feeds, indexes etc. There does seem to be a small glitch with it though – if I try using the tag in the monthly date archive it gets confused and shows me everything I’ve ever published, so I’ve gone back to using a normal @MTEntries@ tag for these pages. I have added two static pages, I’ve finally got around to adding a proper About page, and have also added a Colophon so you can work out exactly what MovableType plugins I’m using.

Most of this was done in an attempt to clean the interface up a bit – you should notice the controls for each post are simplified and a bit more contextually sensible. I’ve also removed the ‘Recent Entries’ sidebar entry as it was adding too much clutter, and I’ve also got rid of comment popups as they were annoying me. Also gone were the huge amount of lines that I was using everywhere – I may of gone too far the other way, but it seems much more pleasing to me. In comes a list of Related Entries thanks to the “MT plugin”:http://mt-plugins.org/archives/entry/relatedentries.php of the same name, but I’m only displaying this on the individual entry pages, and I’ve also merged Trackbacks and comments together using “SimpleComments”:http://mt-plugins.org/archives/entry/simplecomments.php (both plugins courtesy of “Adam Kalsey(Adam Kalsey – Measure Twice)”:http://kalsey.com/blog/).

Next up is to fix the comment display and better differentiate trackbacks from comments, sort the sidebar out as its pig ugly, rationalise the categories, and add a Contact page. I’m also considering adding a stylesheet switcher to test out some different fonts/colour schemes. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not I’ll get any of this done before I start my new job on Monday.

Anyway, enough blogging – I’m off to see “Zatoichi”:http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/zatoichi.html.

Has moved. Please go to the “new location”:http://www.magpiebrain.com/colophon.html.

Has moved. Please go to the “new location”:http://www.magpiebrain.com/about.html.

The last week of work is a strange affair. Time assigned for finishing off work, writing that “What’s wrong with the company and Here’s How To Fix It” document inevitably vanishes amidst joking with friends, telling people how you REALLY feel about other people (behind their backs of course), performing the inevitable countdown performed by all men previously thought condemned but who’ve now been reprieved (“This is the last Monday at 1:56pm I’ll ever have to worry about”). And that’s cool and all, but I’m already bored by it! I want out! All the actual and metaphorical debriefing that could be done has been done, and all I’m left with is an increasingly small amount of time left in which to get something done – or should I say something I actually want to do. Its only Monday afternoon and already my apathy has soared to new heights. Next thing you know I’ll be turning up to work in my dressing gown. Roll on next week…

Continuing in my brief series of posts on the wonder of @sed@, this time we will be looking at using @sed@’s addressing features to generate code.
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For years now I have extolled the virtues of the SuSE Linux distribution on the basis of it coming with every application under the Sun (yes, including a JDK!) and the fact that YaST is an excellent install and administration program, far better than any other distributions (this was certainly the case a couple of years ago, I’m not sure about now). Therefore the news that Novell are to “open source YaST(Novell management tool going open source)”:http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5175682.html?tag=nefd_top does leave me with mixed feelings – on the one hand you’ll now have no problems downloading SuSE with “YaST”:http://www.suse.de/en/private/products/suse_linux/i386/yast.html for free, on the other hand other distros are now free to include it therefore potentially reducing the target audience for what is an excellent distribution. Either way an open source YaST can do nothing but promote Linux as a whole.

Following up my “previous post(A brief history of ed, sed and Regular Expressions)”:http://www.magpiebrain.com/archives/000199.html on @sed@, I thought I’d post a little tutorial on using @sed@ and @grep@ for the purposes of cleaning up logfiles. To follow the examples you’ll need @sed@ or @grep@ for your platform.
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As “promised(A brief history of ed, sed and Regular Expressions)”:http://www.magpiebrain.com/archives/000199.html, I’ve found a nice script which will allow you to edit the original files using @sed@, making running @sed@ on multiple files much more useful. The script come from O’Reilly’s excellent “UNIX Power Tools”:http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/upt3/ (which is probably the most useful book on actually using Unix/Linux/cygwin that I’ve ever read), and can be viewed on the “UNIX Power Tools Examples(http://examples.oreilly.com/upt3/#runsed, 3rd Edition – runsed)”:http://examples.oreilly.com/upt3/#runsed site.

The shell script @runsed@ was developed to make changes to a file permanently. It applies your @sedscr@ to an input file, creates a temporary file, then copies that file over the original. @runsed@ has several safety checks:

• It won’t edit the @sed@ script file (if you accidentally include @sedscr@ on the command line).
• It complains if you try to edit an empty file or something that isn’t a file (like a directory).
• If the @sed@ script doesn’t produce any output, @runsed@ aborts instead of emptying your original file.

@runsed@ only modifies a file if your @sedscr@ made edits. So, the file’s timestamp (Section 8.2) won’t change if the file’s contents weren’t changed.

Also of possible interest is “checksed(http://examples.oreilly.com/upt3/#runsed, 3rd Edition – checksed)”:http://examples.oreilly.com/upt3/#checksed, which unlike @runsed@ simply provides a @diff@ allowing you to check the changes your @sed@ commands will make. Very handy before you start thinking about running @sed@ on several thousand files!

I was about to post some helpful tips on using @sed@ to generate code, but thought a brief introduction of @sed@ was in order.
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