Buzz Me..

This is just a dummy post to show you that I am not dead. Its been really long since I threw any update. I had quite a lot to rant but time and reluctance prevented me. In between :

• I was up to a self hosted Wordpress blog which I installed on maah gnutop. But then skipped the thought for no reason.


• Was the founding member and designer of our college's first full-fledged newsletter 'The Eminence' and it made me so proud.


• Built maah first Forum Application: Graph - Gaping Random Access Portal Host, totally from scratch.
  Member Credits
  • Rachit Gupta : For giving Graph its Name and Interface Design
  • Puneet Garg : For his work on Macromedia Flash and the Graph Banner
  
  Application Credits
  
  • Linux (Fedora) : Base operating system
  • Apache : Web Server
  • MySQL : DBMS Software
  • PHP : For SQL connectivity, front end and server side scripting
  • CSS : For interface upliftment
  • Javascript : For buttons
  
  


• Bid farewell to our Final Years (Bangla Meet 2009)


• blah.. blah.. blah..


• Ended up sophomoric stage of maah life

Hope to continue maah updates, and bring back the glory of Bright Edges..

P.S. : I missed the Indibloggers' Bhopal Meet, am really very sorry for that.

Rip Youtube the CLI way

There are many applications for extracting and downloading videos from youtube and other video hosts like web-based KeepVid or addons like VideoDownloader, and many others. There's also a very good technique of saving any streaming video by buffering it till 100%, navigate to the Cache folder and simply copy the video file (which is /tmp in case of linux).

But recently I got a python based CLI tool youtube-dl, which is a nifty yet a powerful must have tool. You can get it from your default repositories or for youtube-dl under Windows XP. Get it :

$ sudo yum install youtube-dl

Usage

• Simply download :

  $ youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id



• Specify filename
  
  Manually specify :

  $ youtube-dl -o output.flv http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id

  Use the original video title :

  $ youtube-dl -t http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id

  Have a literal title :

  $ youtube-dl -l http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id



• Download videos which requires your youtube account privileges and confirmation :

  $ youtube-dl -u username -p password http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id

  
  Or read account details from .netrc file :

  $ youtube-dl -n http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id

  Append this line to ~/.netrc file :
  

  machine youtube login username password password



• Simply print video URL instead of downloading :

  $ youtube-dl -g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id

  Or grab the Title :

  $ youtube-dl -2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id



• Download in silent mode (like wget) :

  $ youtube-dl -q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id &



• Get Help :

  $ youtube-dl -h

Know more at the Official Page.

Custom Search Tool in Firefox

There are search engines which you visit/use frequently and are not listed in Firefox plugin page, so what you will do? Create your own simple :

I will making a Google Linux search tool :

• Open any text editor and paste this code :

  <search 
   name="Google Linux"
   method="GET"
   action="http://www.google.co.in/linux"
   queryCharset="utf-8"
  > 
    <input name="q" user>
  </search>



• You can add more parameters other than query like "Search within a domain".
  Add

  <input name="sitesearch" value="gnu.org">

  below

  <input name="q" user>

  Just carefully observe the URL after you hit a search for the parameter name/value and keep adding for a filtered search.


• Save the file as filename.src (I am using glinux.src) to ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/searchplugins/
  
  TIP : To display icon next to your search engine create a 16X16 PNG or GIF image and save it in the same folder as glinux.src and name it glinux.png or glinux.gif as per your file format


• Restart Firefox, your source will be compiled and converted into a .XML file automatically and what next! use your engine

Also check : Mycroft Project

Attached few of my favorites : search.tar.gz

IP address from NetBIOS name

I will use ping command for knowing the IP address, but for a default *nix system we cannot ping a node using its NetBIOS name. So with a minor edit we can do it all. Here's the process :

• Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf :

  $ vim /etc/nsswitch.conf

  Or use any other editor of your choice


• Search for something similar to this :

  hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

  and add wins at the end of the line

  hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 wins

  Save the file and exit


• Now use ping command :

  $ ping xyz

  You will get a output something like this :

  PING xyz (192.168.2.1) 56(84) bytes of data.

  Here 192.168.2.1 is the required IP

There may be different ways but I find this one quite simple.

Source(s) : Samba HOWTO