futilities

• acuff

  Attemps to generate a list of all configuration files the local Apache installation uses. Great when you're working on a new and/or strange Apache installation. Requires Perl 5 with no extras, and an urgent need to know the location of a mysterious RedirectMatch.

• alac2mp3

  When I buy music from Bandcamp, I choose Apple Lossless, since, unlike FLAC, iTunes can play the format. Since I have devices that won't play ALAC, I want mp3 format as well. I can make iTunes do the conversion, but it's no fun at all, so I wrote alac2mp3. I haven't tried, but this thing may also convert AAC (iTunes store) format files to mp3 as well.

  Requires afconvert (standard on OS X), lame, Ruby with the taglib gem, and ALACs.

• cpansion

  If you, like me, find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting the next update of DateTime::Format::RFC3339, cpansion is for you.

  It takes one argument: the name of a Perl module. Then it scrapes the module's page on search.cpan.org to find its current version number and prints it to standard output for you to examine.

  Requires Perl 5 with LWP and HTML::TokeParser.

• doublebounce_faster

  Long-time qmail administrators (and that's most of them I think) configured their servers to blackhole double bounce messages years ago.

  Meanwhile, qmail keeps these messages you will ignore in its queue in its doomed attempt to deliver bounces to ocaubag255@brasiltelecom.net.br and the like for 7 days.

  Running doublebounce_faster (as root) searches your queue for all the messages over a day old destined to double bounce and makes qmail think it's been trying to deliver them since the Ford administration.

  Once qmail notices these (svc -a /service/qmail to make that time NOW), it gives them one more chance at delivery before discarding them forever.

  Requires Ruby 1.something and a qmail installation with a queue overflowing with crap.

• flac2mp3

  I sometimes want to convert a directory of flacs into mp3s. Maybe you do too.

  Flac2mp3 expects to find flac and lame executables in your $PATH. It also expects your flac files to begin with numbers, and uses them to set id3 track numbers in the mp3 files.

  The call to lame uses parameters that I've read are decent and they sound all right to me: -V2 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 19.7.

  Also any arguments you specify on the flac2mp3 command line are passed straight to lame, so you might find yourself wanting to tack on --ta (artist), --tl (album), --ty (year) and/or --tg (genre).

  When flac2mp3 finishes, you're left with not just mp3s, but also uncompressed wavs and of course the original flacs. I thought about having it remove the wav files automatically, but sometimes I want them, like when I want burn a CD. Run rm *.wav if it really bothers you.

  Requires ruby, flac, lame, and above-board flac files.

• modiff

  Your version control system is happy to tell you how your working version differs from the last committed version, but it won't tell you how it differs from what's actually installed.

  Modiff is for those times you suspect whoever installed the version of some Perl module you're working on now never bothered to check it in, and a make install can mean wiping the only known working copy.

  Requires Perl 5 and skepticism.

• phpmyadmin-backup

  MySQL and PHP can be bad enough all by themselves.

  But add a web host that won't allow shell access (lame) or direct connections to port 3306 (understandable, but inconvenient), and there's no nice way to do automated backups.

  I found a Python script to pull backups through phpMyAdmin, but it has some problems. The big one is that Python's urllib2 honors robots.txt, and the server I needed to back up had "Disallow: /" in it. 10 minutes of googling later, I still did not know to override this so I decided to write my own version, not in Python.

  I thought about writing it in Ruby, but gem install mechanize did not go well (some complications with libxslt) so Perl it is!

  Requires Perl 5, WWW::Mechanize, and restricted access to "your" server.

• ssldates

  How do you know when an SSL certificate is due to expire?

  Do you point your browser at the site, click the little "lock" icon, and examine the certificate info? Or do you just wait until people start complaining that your site is giving them a scary security warning the morning after?

  No, silly, you use ssldates!

  I know what you're going to ask: "Hey, what about SSL services that are not HTTP? Can you check those, too smart guy? These are CRITICAL for my ENTERPRISE! FIVE NINES!"

  I have SSL certificates on non-HTTP services such as POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP and I can assure you ssldates works on these too.

  Requires Perl 5 with the Net::SSLeay module and a proactive attitude, I guess.

• timemachiner

  Let's say you have a TODO list in a text file that you update a lot. If you're running OS X's Time Machine, it has all your old versions, but do you really want to use that crazy Star Wars interface to look at them? Wouldn't you rather use git (and friends like tig)?

  Timemachiner figures out where your Time Machine backups are, finds all the previous revisions of your file (the 1st argument), and commits them to a git repository (the 2nd argument), creating the repo if necessary (you probably don't want to use this on an existing repo anyway). Timemachiner also forges the commit timestamps to match Time Machine's backup times.

  Example usage:

    % timemachiner /Users/drench/TODO /Users/drench/gitified-TODO
  

  Timemachiner has its own large, unwritten TODO list of its own.

  Requires OS X, Ruby 1.whatever-ships-with-OS X, Time Machine, and git.

• twid

  If you use the Twitter API, you often need a user's ID number, as opposed to the screen name. You could use the API to look this up, but why bother when you can get this ID by parsing the public HTML? This works for private accounts, too! It doesn't work for suspended accounts. Sorry!

  Example usage:

  twid kree10

  Requires curl and https://github.com/ericchiang/pup.

• weedagents

  If you use ssh-agent, you probably have a bunch of dead agents in your /tmp directory. Weedagents runs through them and weeds the dead ones.

  Requires Ruby 1.something (1.8 will do) and a system that doesn't clean /tmp enough to your liking.

• wpdb

  If you work on several different WordPress sites, you may want wpdb. Even if you only work on a single WordPress site, you may want wpdb.

  wpdb is a wrapper around mysql that looks in (and around!) your working directory for a wp-config.php file. If it finds one, it grabs the host name, database name, username and password for it and executes mysql, saving you time and/or money (or maybe just time, if you're doing it fixed-rate or worse, gratis).

  Example:

    % cd /path/to/some/wordpress/site
    % echo "show tables;" | wpdb
  

  Look, you don't even have to be in the root directory:

    % cd /path/to/some/wordpress/site/wp-admin/css
    % echo "select count(*) from wp_users" | wpdb
  

  But that's not all! It will run mysqldump instead if you ask it to:

    % cd /path/to/some/wordpress/site/wp-includes/js/tinymce
    % wpdb --exec=mysqldump > /tmp/wp-snapshot.sql
  

  You can also explicitly point at a Wordpress install in another directory:

    % wpdb --wp_conf=/path/to/another/wordpress/site
  

  wpdb will pass on any extra arguments you specify to mysql too:

    % wpdb --i-am-a-dummy
  

  I wrote this in Perl because I lifted the bulk of it from phpmyadmin-backup (see above).

  Requires Perl 5, little patience, and little else.