Author: Andy Balaam

Andy Balaam from Andy Balaam's Blog

If you use Wunderlist and want to be able to bulk-add tasks from a text file, first install and set up wunderline.

Now, to be able to right-click a text file containing one task per line on Ubuntu MATE, create a file called “wunderlist-bulk-add” in ~/.config/caja/scripts/ and make it executable. Paste the code below into that file.

(Note: it’s possible that this would work in GNOME if you replaced “caja” with “nautius” in that path – let me know in the comments.)

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e
set -u
set -o pipefail

function nonblank()
{
    grep -v -e '^[[:space:]]*$' "$@"
}

for F in "$@"; do
{
    COUNT=$(nonblank "$F" | wc -l | awk '{print $1}')
    if [ "$COUNT" = "" ]; then
    {
        zenity --info --no-wrap --text="File $F does not exist"
    }
    else
    {
        set +e
        zenity --question --no-wrap \
            --text="Add $COUNT items from $F to Wunderlist?"
        ANSWER=$?
        set -e

        if [ "$ANSWER" = "0" ]; then
        {
            set +e
            nonblank "$F" | \
                wunderline add --stdin | \
                zenity --progress --text "Adding $COUNT items to Wunderlist"
            SUCCEEDED=$?
            set -e
            if [ "$SUCCEEDED" = "0" ]; then
            {
                zenity --info --no-wrap --text "Added $COUNT items."
            }
            else
            {
                zenity --error --no-wrap \
                    --text "Failed to add some or all of these items."
            }; fi
        }; fi
    }; fi
}; done

Andy Balaam from Andy Balaam's Blog

In a previous post I described how to install Flarum locally on Ubuntu.

Here is how I set up my development environment on top of that setup so I was able to write a new Flarum extension and test it on my local machine.

Recap: I installed Apache and PHP and enabled mod_rewrite, installed MariaDB and made a database, installed Composer, and used Composer to install Flarum at /var/www/html/flarum.

More info: Flarum Contribution Guide, extension development guide, extension development quick start, workflow discussion.

I decided to call my extension “rabbitescape/flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor”, so that is the name you will see below.

Here’s what I did:

cd /var/www/html/flarum

Edit /var/www/html/flarum/composer.json (see the workbench explanation for examples of the full file).

At the end of the “require” section I added a line like this:

“rabbitescape/flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor”: “*@dev”

(Remembering to add a comma at the end of the previous line so it remained valid JSON.)

After the “require” section, I added this:

    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "workbench/*/"
        }
    ],

Next, I made the place where my extension would live:

mkdir workbench
cd workbench
mkdir flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor
cd flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor

Now I created a file inside flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor called composer.json like this:

{
    "name": "rabbitescape/flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor",
    "description": "Allow viewing and editing Rabbit Escape levels in posts",
    "type": "flarum-extension",
    "keywords": ["rabbitescape"],
    "license": "MIT",
    "authors": [
        {
            "name": "Andy Balaam",
            "email": "andybalaam@artificialworlds.net"
        }
    ],
    "support": {
        "issues": "https://github.com/andybalaam/flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor/issues",
        "source": "https://github.com/andybalaam/flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor"
    },
    "require": {
        "flarum/core": "^0.1.0-beta.5"
    },
    "extra": {
        "flarum-extension": {
            "title": "Rabbit Escape Level Editor"
        }
    }
}

In the same directory I created a file bootstrap.php like this:

<?php

return function () {
    echo 'Hello, world!';
};

Then I told Composer to refresh the project like this:

cd ../..   # Back up to the main directory
composer update

Among the output I saw a line like this which convinced me it had worked:

  - Installing rabbitescape/flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor (dev-master): Symlinking from workbench/flarum-ext-rabbitescape-leveleditor

Now I went to http://localhost/flarum, signed in as admin, adminpassword (as I set up in the previous post), clicked my username in the top right and chose Administration, then clicked Extensions on the left.

I saw my extension in the list, and turned it on by clicking the check box below it. This made the whole web site disappear, and instead just the text “Hello world!” appeared. This showed my extension was being loaded.

Finally, I edited bootstrap.php and commented out the line starting with “echo”. I refreshed the page in my browser and saw the Flarum site reappear.

Now, my extension is installed and ready to be developed! See flarum.org/docs/extend/start for how to get started making it do cool stuff.

Andy Balaam from Andy Balaam's Blog

I found out on Mastodon recently that the Compose key exists, allowing you to enter special characters using easy-to-remember key sequences (e.g. “<compose>/=” gives you “≠”).

To do this on Ubuntu (and probably many other systems), hold SHIFT, then press AltGr, release them both, and type something like “/=”. You should see the ≠ symbol appear.

In Ubuntu MATE, you can customise what key is the compose key by opening “Keyboard”, clicking “Layouts”, then “Options…” and checking a box under “Position of compose key”. I checked “Right Alt”, meaning my “AltGr” key is now the compose key.

More info: Ubuntu ComposeKey docs.

Want to explore? See the list of the default sequences you can type.

Andy Balaam from Andy Balaam&#039;s Blog

I want all requests to artificialworlds.net/rabbit-escape/levels/ to get redirected to use the https protocol, and to include “www.” at the beginning of the URL, and I found lots of Stack Overflow articles, but nothing that worked perfectly for me. Here is how I managed it.

I edited the .htaccess file in the directory where I want this to apply, and added this at the top:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^artificialworlds\.net$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^ https://www.artificialworlds.net%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
  RewriteRule ^ https://www.artificialworlds.net%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
</IfModule>