February 2012
1 post
3 tags
There's just no decent media centre devices
so I’m reading this article:
http://deviceguru.com/google-tv-vs-apple-tv-vs-boxee-vs-roku/
and I’m now 100% convinced that there is no decent media centre device. They’re all too locked down to do anything useful as you’re at the mercy of the manufacturer to resolve bugs and implement new features and support new media sources.
I think the best bet is to...
September 2011
1 post
5 tags
mcwrapper 1.4.2
Last night I released version 1.4.2 of mcwrapper. This fixes a major bug that cropped up recently involving the mechanism that reads commands from the FIFO. A nice Redditor fixed the bug, refactored my function and sent me a pull request last night and after a little QA, I merged his code and tagged the 1.4.2 release.
When I release 1.5 (towards the end of september), it will have an updater...
August 2011
1 post
4 tags
mcwrapper 1.4 released
I just released version 1.4 of my mcwrapper application. This update improves usability, and adds a couple new features. Overall, it’s a minor release.
Changes include:
New log action. Will show server.log output in real-time.
Added new BACKUP_ON_EXIT config option. When enabled, this will create a backup whenever you stop the Minecraft server.
Added new scripts which can be...
June 2011
1 post
3 tags
mcwrapper v1.1.0 released
I updated mcwrapper to fix some bugs since my last post. mcwrapper now creates the pipe properly and allows for more configuration options.
I also added a new script called mcbackup which will allow you to back up your Minecraft world data while the server is running without any service interruption. The backup script creates a directory called ‘backup’ in the Minecraft server...
January 2011
1 post
6 tags
Automated Minecraft Server backups
Update (2011-08-30)
mcwrapper 1.4 has been released. it includes a slew of new features including backups. See other posts for more info or look at the github page:
https://github.com/spikegrobstein/mcwrapper
I’ve been running a Minecraft server off my MacMini for the past month or so and, in doing as much work as I have and being the vigilant SysAdmin that I am, it was really starting...
December 2010
1 post
5 tags
Conway's Game of Life
I’ve been doing a lot of dabbling with Javascript lately; primarily focusing on working with the canvas element. It’s some pretty sweet stuff and really reminds me of my early pixel manipulation tasks in C++ and REALbasic in the late 90s.
I had written a version of Conway’s Game of Life in C++ on my mac at the time (7600/132mhz) and was surprised at how fast it ran. I figured I...
November 2010
3 posts
POC Builder
Frequently, I have a need to create little bits of code to test functionality of new languages, libraries, functions, plugins or routines. Because of this, I have stuck a directory in my home on all my computers which contains all these bits of test code. Since I’ve begun turning these tests in to git repositories, I decided to slap together a little script for managing new projects.
The...
6 tags
Javascript Router
I just made my first release of some code I was working on for the past couple days. It’s a Javascript library whose purpose is to simplify delegation of web requests by leveraging anchor URLs (the data in the trailing # of the URL).
The project has been released under the MIT license.
The advantage of this library is that you don’t need to use CSS selectors to locate your links...
5 tags
Capturing the version of an OSX application via...
I recently needed to capture the version of OSX components (application, bundle, quicktime components) via the commandline as part of some administration infrastructure I was building. After doing some research and experimentation, I came to the conclusion that it could best be built using PlistBuddy.
Here is the script that I built. I hope you find it as useful as I have:
...
October 2010
1 post
3 tags
A case for PHP (Part 1)
The purpose of this post is not simply to bash PHP, but rather to express what I see as severe shortcomings in the PHP language. Ultimately, I’d like to make an argument for a fork of PHP as a way to resolve these shortcomings and it a better language for everyone. Because it would be impossible to make my changes without a completely new project and the final result wouldn’t look much...
August 2010
1 post
4 tags
Throughput and the power it holds
I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with the current broadband offerings provided by nearly all of the ISPs in the area. Although they place a lot of restrictions on their users, the most annoying restriction that I’ve encountered from my own provider (TimeWarner’s RoadRunner cable internet service) is that, even with their “Turbo” package, their upstream...