Happy 2 Year Anniversary

Two years ago today I received my HTC Nexus One by Google. I've used it every day since. It is a great device. Mine is warn but still going strong.

I ordered the phone site unseen over the web. No wireless carrier to deal with. It was a great experience. Too bad Google closed their store a few months later.

Since January 15, 2010 I have:

• Listened to approximately 1000 hours of podcasts
• Listened to approximately 1000 hours of music
• Logged 283 jogging tracks spanning 1,126 miles
• Had over 1400 text message conversations
• Snapped 100s of photos
• Traveled over 50,000 (I'm skeptical of this stat from Google Latitude)
• Purchased music
• Watched videos
• Scheduled appointments
• Sent and received thousands of email messages
• Surfed the web
• Read a couple of books
• Sent out dozens of crap alerts
• Edited documents
• Recorded audio
• Tuned guitars
• Navigated to new destinations
• Checked sports scores
• Analyzed networks
• Tweeted and dented 100s of microblog messages
• Dropped it many times
• Broken the glass twice. HTC service rocks
• Gotten caught in the rain with it
• Oh yeah, I almost forgot... I've made and received a few phone calls

The only issue I've had with the Nexus One is low internal storage.  This requires me to do a little more   app management than I would prefer but it is no big deal.

If I had to do it all over again I would not change a thing. The Nexus One may be the most useful devices I've ever owned!

Google Reader Feed Checker

I wrote this web app to check for possible dead Google Reader feeds.

To get started, download your Google Reader subscriptions and upload the file using the file uploader. The app will check each feed returning the number of entries and the last date. If an error is found an X will be by the feed. Hover over the X to display the error message. Check the feed manually before un-subscribing the feed from Google Reader.

http://pla1.net/GoogleReaderFeedChecker/

GWT - Position Popup To Current Mouse Position

It took me a while to stumble upon how to position my popup at the current mouse position so I thought I'd share it.

Watch a folder and send images to your Google Plus Instant Upload album

The bash script below will watch the PicasaWeb folder in your home directory for new files. When a new image is dropped in the folder it is uploaded to the Google Plus Instant Upload Picasa album. After the upload is complete the script launches your browser to your Google Plus photos. It also starts a Gwibber widget. If you want dent, or tweet the image URL.

#!/bin/sh
# Blog post: http://platechnotes.patrickarchibald.com/2011/08/watch-folder-and-send-images-to-your.html
# 1. Watch ~/PicasaWeb folder. 
# 2. Upload new file to Picasa using Google CLI. 
# 3. Launch the browser to Google Plus photos URL. 
# 
WATCHED_DIR=~/PicasaWeb
googleVersion=$(google --version)
echo $googleVersion
while [ 1 ]
do
  echo 'Watching directory: '$WATCHED_DIR 'for new files'
  while file=$(inotifywait -q -e create "$WATCHED_DIR" --format "%f")
  do
    echo 'New file to upload to PicasaWeb:' $file
    notify-send -i "gtk-go-up" "Picasa Web Monitor" "Uploading image $file"
    mythtvosd --template=alert --alert_text="Uploading image $file"
    google picasa post --title "Instant Upload" "$WATCHED_DIR/$file"
    if [ "$googleVersion" = "google 0.9.5" ]; then
     url=$(google picasa list url-direct --title "Instant Upload" | grep "$file" | sed -e "s/$file\,//g")
    else 
     url=$(google picasa list --fields url-direct --title "Instant Upload" | grep "$file" | sed -e "s/$file\,//g")
    fi
    echo 'Picasa url: ' $url
    notify-send -i "gtk-home" "Picasa Web Monitor" "Image uploaded. Starting Gwibber and going to G+"
    xdg-open https://plus.google.com/photos/fromphone
    python ~/Ubuntu\ One/scripts/gwibber-widget.py $url
  done
done

Prerequisites and Instructions

• You should be running Linux. I am using Ubuntu
• You need the command inotifywait. On Ubuntu I installed it via sudo apt-get install inotify-tools
• You must have a Picasa account
• Install libnotify-bin for the notify-send command
• Install Google CLI
• Create "PicasaWeb" folder in your home directory mkdir ~/PicasaWeb
• Copy and paste my bash script above into a file. I named mine PicasaWebMonitor.sh.
• Make PicasaWebMonitor.sh executable chmod +x PicasaWebMonitor.sh
• Start the bash script ./PicasaWebMonitor.sh.
• Create some images and save them to the ~/PicasaWeb folder
• Avoid using spaces and special characters in your picture file names. The Picasa Web direct URL will be encoded and won't match your file name. The grep statement will fail to show you the direct URL.

Let me know if you find any bugs in this script or if there is a better way to do it.

Join Me On Google Plus

Create Images Of Identi.ca Messages

I created a web utility to create an image of Identi.ca messages, also known as dents. The images can be used when referencing Identi.ca messages in other systems such as Google Plus. To create an image you will need to know the numeric notice id. The format of the URL is: http://dentimage.com/notice-id-goes-here.png

Below is an image of Evan Prodromou's first dent. The URL for this image is:  http://dentimage.com/1.png

To get the notice id for a dent find the dent on Identi.ca and click on or hover above the time the dent was published. You will see the numeric notice-id. That number is what you need to insert into this URL http://dentimage.com/notice-id-goes-here.png

StatusNet instances other than Identi.ca can be used by specifying the hostName parameter. The following are valid parameter names: h, hostName, host, and instance. For example: http://dentimage.com/408450.png?h=brainbird.net

If you have any comments please dent me at @pla1

Official StatusNet Desktop Client Update Experience

It had been a while since I'd used the official StatusNet desktop client. I was prompted with a software update notification. The upgrade went off without a hitch. Version 0.9.1 looks good and is responsive. See screen shots below.