Announcement

Upload multiple photos to Meetup without Flash

Samat Jain — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:09:11 +0000

Do you use Meetup and upload multiple photos regularly, but hate doing it?

Meetup has an multiple-photo feature that uses Adobe Flash, but as you can expect of Flash it’s not particularly reliable or stable. There no reason to put up with Flash’s nonsense—HTML5 includes a multiple-file upload control, well-supported by the latest Web browsers. Unfortunately, despite my posting a wishlist item (please vote!), Meetup has done nothing to support it.

So I did it myself: if you use Chrome or Greasemonkey/Scriptish for Firefox, install this user script: Meetup: HTML5 multiple-file upload for photos.

Once installed:

Go to the “Old Upload Form” for your Meetup group or album. This can be tricky to get to, but the URL looks like: http://www.meetup.com/GROUPNAME/photos/upload/
Make sure you’ve selected the right album.
You should only see one file upload widget (the “Old Upload Form”, before this script, had 10).
Click it, and you’ll notice you can select multiple photos you want to upload. Go ahead and do so.
After you’re done selecting and dismiss the widget, the page will now tell you which photos you’ll be uploading.
Click upload to start uploading photos.

Enjoy uploading your photos without Flash’s crashing, errors, or mayhem!

A note: if you use Firefox, you won’t be able to know how much you’ve uploaded (unlike Chrome, Firefox has no built-in upload progress meter). Try the Upload Progress add-on to keep tabs on your uploads.

Topic:

Userscript

Making Firefox's Web Console readable

Samat Jain — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:38:10 +0000

Are you blind (like me), but you still want to use Firefox’s new Web Console? Yeah, maybe you’ve noticed that the Web Console has abnormally small fonts with no obvious way to adjust them.

I’ve created a new user style that makes Firefox use your configured monospace font (I use Inconsolata), and also lets you configure font size.

Get it at Userstyles

Topic:

Firefox

BrowserID session API support for Drupal

Samat Jain — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:55:47 +0000

Late last week, Mozilla’s Identity team made available a Firefox extension for BrowserID, a new browser-oriented single-sign on mechanism. Click a button in your address bar and automagically login into a website.

Along with it they made available a browser session API—that is, the browser can now keep track and show whether you’re logged in, logged out, etc, also displayed in your address bar.

Drupal had a BrowserID module less than 24 hours after BrowserID’s initial announcement (thanks Isaac Sukin!). Likewise, in the weekend after the session API announcement I helped out and wrote a patch adding support for the new API.

If you’re familiar with Drupal development, install the Drupal module, ~~apply the patch,~~ install the Firefox add-on, and get browser-integrated, one-click login to your Drupal-powered website.

The patched module is running live on this site right now, so please play with it (myfavoritebeer.org does get boring).

At the moment, Drupal’s BrowserID module does not create an account on my blog, so you must do that first, separately. Create an account here, or if you’ve an OpenID, logon with your OpenID directly to also create an account (funny how complicated this has gotten already). Make sure to set and use the same e-mail address as the one you use for your BrowserID. After creating an account, logout, and then log back in using your BrowserID. If you’ve problems/find a bug, please leave comments on the Drupal bug or this blog post—thanks!

[UPDATE: 16 Aug 2010]: Drupal’s BrowserID module now includes my patch; you don’t need to download and apply the patch separately.

Topic:

Firefox

Drupal

BrowserID

gpxsplitter: Split GPX files with their waypoints

Samat Jain — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 06:54:52 +0000

gpxsplitter splits multi-track GPX files, containing waypoints, into individual one-track GPX files with their respective waypoints.

GPX files containing multiple tracks and waypoints jumbled together are produced on export by many GPS units, particularly MTK chipset-based devices such as the Qstarz Q1000 and Transystem i-Blue 474. Separating tracks and their associated waypoints was a headache until gpxsplitter came along. It’s meant to be run first-thing after downloading data from your unit via gpsbabel or mtkbabel. It’s a quick little script written in Python 2.x, with dependencies on mxDateTime and lxml.

You can get it from the gpxsplitter repository on gitorious, and the GpxSplitter wiki page is the one-stop place that will collect information about it.

I thought about turning this into a web service, where users can upload their GPX files and have them split, but I’d like to know the demand for such a service before writing it. Ideally, gpxsplitter should be part of gpsbabel or something… but yeah, I’ll save the XML parsing in C for a very, very rainy day.

There are probably any number of bugs. If you find one, please let me know—and send a testcase too!

Topic:

Python

OpenStreetMap

Bing Imagery Misaligned at Lower Zooms

Samat Jain — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:59:03 +0000

Microsoft’s Bing aerial imagery (that’s recently been donated to OSM for use in tracing) is offset by a few meters in some places.

For example, earlier this week I traced buildings with imagery from USDA’s NAIP program. Besides a history of being well-rectified, a GPS track in the parking lot confirms that I was spot on. However, on Bing with a low zoom, they’re misaligned:

Zoom in a bit, and they magically align again:

Apparently, different, well-rectified imagery is used at higher zooms. If I’ve found one problem, it then follows that it exists elsewhere. Be careful when tracing!

Topic:

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap "Geolocate me" user script

Samat Jain — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:27:36 +0000

OpenStreetMap Geolocate is a user script that adds a “Geolocate me” link next to the OpenStreetMap.org search box. If your browser supports it and you’ve granted permission, clicking on this link will center your map window to your location, as reported by your browser via the HTML 5 geolocation API.

Say you’ve taken your laptop to a new cafe or conference—as soon as you open up OpenStreetMap, you can hit the “Geolocate me” link and quickly see what’s around you, without fiddling with search or endlessly dragging the slippy map. Or, better yet, quickly add what’s missing.

This definitely needs to be built into the OpenStreetMap website.

On most browsers, the geolocation API uses Google Location Services or Skyhook, which determine your location based on nearby wireless 802.11 access points. However, some browsers, like Firefox 3.6 on Linux, can talk to gpsd and your GPS unit, so geolocation can get quite accurate.

I’ve tested it on Firefox 3.6, Chrome 5, and Opera 10.60 (which, interestingly enough, is the first non-beta of Opera that supports geolocation). I’ve been told it also works on Safari 5.

I should make a note in the interest of accuracy: geolocation isn’t actually part of “HTML 5”—it’s a product of the W3C Geolocation Working Group. However, the need to be accurate didn’t keep the XML out of AJAX, and by and far geolocation is one of the technologies people think about when they hear HTML5.

This entry is cross-posted on my OpenStreetMap user diary.

Topic:

Transitioning to a 4096-bit RSA OpenPGP key

Samat Jain — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:36:34 +0000

I created a new GnuPG key two months ago (see key ID 0x4A456FBA). Now is a good a time as any to publicly announce it. Information for the key:

pub   4096R/4A456FBA 2009-05-08 [expires: 2015-01-01]
      Key fingerprint = E95D 7465 5B35 C5F6 B3B6  68CC 20C6 F0A6 4A45 6FBA
uid                  Samat K Jain XXX@samat.org
uid                  Samat K Jain XXX@cs.nmsu.edu
uid                  Samat K Jain XXX@rhombic.net
uid                  Samat K Jain XXX@dbmi.columbia.edu
sub   4096R/8D18D72F 2009-05-15 [expires: 2015-01-01]

All this information (as well as the downloadable public key itself) is available on my CryptoKeys wiki page.

The new key uses 4096-bit RSA keys for both digital signatures and encryption. The change is prompted by questions regarding SHA-1’s viability, detailed by Daniel Gillmore. The concern is not new, as Bruce Schneier reported SHA-1 weaknesses back in 2005. The concerns have simply become worse, and they’re likely to become worse. So much so that the US government’s NIST has recommended the phasing out of SHA-1 by the end of 2010. GnuPG’s maintainers don’t trust SHA-1 either, as upstream GnuPG now defaults to RSA as well.

In this space was a paragraph (or four) describing a little bit more in detail the interaction between encryption algorithms (e.g. RSA, DSA), encryption keys, and hash algorithms (e.g. SHA-1/SHA-160, SHA-512), etc. But as an end-user, I don’t care, and I don’t think other end users need to care either. With encryption, I follow the mantra: use the defaults; more than likely you don’t have a clue what you’re doing if you stray. If you use OpenPGP and use an older DSA-based key (2048-bit RSA is safe), keep in mind there may be issues soon regarding it’s security, and you should switch to DSA-2 or RSA (the new default) instead.

Since SHA-1 hasn’t actually been broken yet, I’ve decided to set an expiration date on my old key (0x1A1993D3), rather than outright revoke it.

Topic:

Crypto

Starbucks Gold Card

Samat Jain — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 05:15:04 +0000

Starbucks “Black” Gold Card

This summer I fell in love with Starbuck’s Vivanno, their high-protein, high-fiber smoothie beverage. My signature drink: a banana-chocolate Vivanno, one espresso shot, with non-fat milk. Because I was going there so often, and because the new Starbucks and AT&T partnership gave 2 hours free WiFi a day, I started buying things through a free Starbucks Card (essentially a prepaid, reloadable gift card).

Apparently, I went to Starbucks more than I thought. A few weeks ago, Starbucks invited me to be part of their Starbucks Gold program. The program provides a special card, which is quite pretty: the back is standard glossy card fare, but the front is a black matte with gold embossed logo.

Starbucks started this program earlier this summer, and they’ve been tweaking the benefits. The benefits my card comes with (as says the flyer that came with it):

10% off most purchases
Coffeehouse rewards, including special discounts on family and friend days
Surprise indulgences, like treats on my birthday
Members-only website and insider promotions

Unfortunately, this comes at a price. ~~It has a membership fee of $25/yr~~–only the hardcore Starbucks coffee drinkers (which isn’t me) need apply. Also, supposedly, the card does not provide any of the Starbucks Card Rewards, ~~such as the free WiFi~~, or free milk and syrup options. So far, I’m going to pass on the program, and continue using my old Starbucks Card. But I will keep the pretty-looking card.

Correction: My beta invite entitles me to the Starbucks Gold membership for free. Funny this not indicated anywhere. Also, even though the fine print says Starbucks Card Rewards do not apply, the Starbucks Gold program portal implies that WiFi is an included reward, and it does appear to work…

Update: Now that the Starbucks Gold membership has officially launched for the general public, you can get a description of the benefits in-store. With the Starbucks Gold card, you do not get all the Starbucks Card Rewards–that is, no free syrups, milk or whipped cream, refills on drip coffee, or free tall drink with purchase of whole bean coffee. However, as I mentioned, you do get WiFi.

Topic:

Corporations

Food

samat.org upgraded to Drupal 6.5

Samat Jain — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:17:06 +0000

After over 2 years, I’ve finally upgraded this website from Drupal 4.7 to 6.5. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a long while. Hopefully, with the new Drupal version management scheme I’ve developed for Rhombic Networks (article coming soon), along with the advancements in update management within Drupal itself, it will be much easier to keep current with updates.

Like I discussed my last upgrade to Drupal 4.7, there are several new features I’m excited about:

OpenID support. Instead of having to leave comments anonymously, or waste time creating an account, use your OpenID. If you have your own domain, check out Simon Willison’s article how to turn your blog into an OpenID. I’ve noticed with an OpenID, I find myself commenting and participating on sites much more often. Hopefully I can expect the same of others with my website.
Drupal’s Mollom module. The old site was getting hit with hundreds of spam comments a day. I gave up trying to filter them all, which meant it took a long time for users’ comments to show up on the site. Hopefully, with Mollom, that will change, and I will be able to screen comments again instead of screening spam. I like Mollom more than I do Akismet.
Drupal’s Atom module. RSS sucks. You can now aggregate this blog via an Atom feed. Like most home pages on the Internet, most surfers find content on this site via search engines, or via their feed reader.

Hopefully, I can get my development mojo going and finish porting my Drupal Sands and Sands_CSS themes to Drupal 5.x and 6.x. I’m sorry I took so long!

Topic:

Site

Upgrading samat.org to Drupal 4.7

Samat Jain — Thu, 11 May 2006 08:21:26 +0000

I’m in the process of upgrading this site to Drupal 4.7. Expect a lot to be broken, especially links. Please let me know if you find any problems!

Some changes:

Conversion of Topics taxonomy from a hierarchal taxonomy to a flat, free-tagging taxonomy.

I previously had the “Topics” taxonomy as a hierarchal tree, for example, CentOS would be under Linux. It looked like a good idea before I started to use it, but Drupal and hierarchies don’t work as well as I’d like… I converted it to a flat list, and then turned it into a Drupal 4.7 free-tagging taxonomy. Hopefully this will lead to better tagging of my posts.

Modiying page URLs to end in *.html.

I don’t need to do this, but I want to. It looks nicer, it makes pages easier to save, and it facilitates moving to another CMS if the need ever arises. For many URLs I’ve used permanent redirects to prevent old links from breaking.

Topic:

Drupal

Site

New versions of Sands available, in two different distributions

Samat Jain — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:57:21 +0000

I’ve taken my Drupal theme Sands and split it up into two different distributions/versions: one that uses tables for layout (will continue to be called Sands) and one that uses CSS (to be Sands_CSS).

Basically, they are the exact same thing, except a different columns.css and page.tpl.php file.

Drupal’s 4.6 use of the tag triggers strange bugs in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer when using some CSS-column layouts, like the one Sands uses. Splitting into two different themes was the only course of action: though, now that Drupal 4.7 does not use this tag and the bugs no longer occur, it may be a little late in doing this… Oh well.

You can read more about Sands on the page on this site, or through Drupal’s project pages for Sands and Sands_CSS.

Topic:

Drupal

Drupal themes section moved

Samat Jain — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 09:11:32 +0000

I’ve moved my Sands theme to a new location, at samat.org/drupal-themes/sands. The URL is nicer and shorter, and sets me up for the other Drupal themes I would like to create.

Topic:

Drupal

Site

Comments on comments

Samat Jain — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 01:10:29 +0000

I’ve added a “recent comments” sidebar block to the front page so I (and visitors) can keep track of comments people have made. I appreciate the comments–it makes as if people actually read this site!

If you’re not a registered user (it’s easy to become one!) your comments will have to be moderated (by me) before they show up on the page.

Topic:

Site

Changing domains AGAIN--welcome to samat.org

Samat Jain — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:46:34 +0000

Just when you thought I had settled on a domain name, I decide not to! Hah!

I’m going to be moving this site from tamasrepus.rhombic.net to samat.org. Some reasons why:

It’s actually available
It’s short
It’s more me and is more personal (Samat IS my name)
Less connection with my company, Rhombic Networks

Some negatives:

This is the… 4th or 5th time I’ve changed domains? I’m going to write up a history page one day…
It’s eerily similar to my friend Sudarshan’s domain.

While I am going to keep the same Drupal setup, expect some stuff to break. URLs hopefully will remain the same (as they have with tamasrepus.rhombic.net and tamasrepus.hotnudiegirls.com). I think I am going to try to figure out something fancy, such as a script that will issue HTTP status 301 (permanent redirect), which Google respects, so the old URLs don’t stay in search engines forever.

Topic:

Site

The M Roadster hits 30,000 miles today

Samat Jain — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 04:06:50 +0000

Just to document: my car has hit 30,000 miles today, February 29, 2006, around 12:10 PM, on interstate 10. I forgot to note when it turned 20,000, but my car passed 10,000 miles on September 23, 2002.

Topic:

Cars