Python

The last couple of weeks I’ve been busy building a Raspberry Pi 2 Raspberry Pi 3 connected to my Trimble GPSDO using the 1 PPS output. The Trimble unit synchronizes with the atomic clocks onboard the GPS satellites, and the precision is fantastic! I bought the GPSDO to get a 10 MHz lab reference for my measure equipment, but after reading an article about Time-Nuts, people obsessed with measuring time as accurately as possible, and one of my friends showed me pictures of their new Stratum-1 NTP server rack he helped design, I was hooked. ...

I’m working on my script for uploading images directly from the iOS Markdown text editor app Editorial to Wordpress. The current script uses xmlrpc-Wordpress library, but I’m writing my own so the user doesn’t have to install the extra library just to use my script. When uploading files with xmlrpclib, I got this annoying thing happening. Every time I uploaded an image using xmlrpclib and the function wp.uploadFile the uploaded file got wpid- prepended to the filename of all my uploaded files. ...

I’ve tried a lot of blogging apps for the iPad, but none of them handles images the way I want. Images gets the weird name iOS has assigned to them which is not good for SEO. When I upload images to Wordpress, I want them to end up in the Wordpress Media Library and have all the theme defined sizes created automatically. Just like when you upload from the web interface in Wordpress. There’s an added problem when you want your site to support images displayed on a Retina or high DPI device, showing the picture in high resolution using a plugin like WP Retina x2. My favourite text editor on iOS is Editorial app, So I made this Workflow so I can do the naming, resizing and uploading of the images directly inside the app from my iPad or iPhone 6 Plus. You can select which of the theme defined image sizes you want to display and also set the image alignment. This workflow works excellent with the WP Retina x2 plugin, which is the one I use on my site. When everything is done, you have an MultiMarkdown referred image link at the cursor position in the text editor, and the image link and information like width, height and alt-text is added to the end of the document. This makes a very convenient way of blogging on the iPad. ...

My Raspberry Pi Car Audio Player A lot of people are using the excellent Linux microcomputer Raspberry Pi and install it in their cars. Usually, they use a color screen that is touch sensitive, being able to play back video and music. But I’m only interested in high-quality audio playback, being able to have all my CDs in lossless FLAC format for optimal sound quality. So a 16x2 LCD with some buttons is plenty. I now have a working system (but not yet installed in my car.) here’s a description of how I’ve built it. Most of the installations I’ve seen the use of the audio out from the Raspberry Pi, but it’s only 11-bit and sounds like crap. I want to use an external DAC, and you can get that to work in XBMC, but only menu and music output, not films. There are some HDMI to audio converters, but I’ll instead use a quality USB DAC. http://youtu.be/wzmFZlpbBCQ ...

Importing pipista modules in Editorial Lets face it, the Editorial App is a fantastic text/Markdown editor. It’s incredibly powerful with scripting abilities. But one of the most amazing tool for a power user is the ability to write Python scripts that can do almost anything. There are a lot of modules included with Editorial, but how do you add a library if it’s not included? There is a script for Editorials sister application Pythonista, that makes it easy to add modules, and you can use that for importing libraries to Editorial as well. The script is called Pipista. ...

Editorial iOS Markdown Text Editor So I found a new favorite iPad text editor called Editorial. After reading Federico Viticci’s great review of Editorial on macstories.net I bought the app, because the creator Ole Zorn wrote one of my other favorite apps Pythonista. And Editorial is amazing! ...

Reinventing iOS Automation: Editorial Review: Editorial for iPad, redefines the market of text editors for iOS, and, in many ways, sets a new standard for iOS automation and desktop-class apps. Editorial makes me want to work from my iPad. Editorial is my new favorite Markdown editor with amazing workflow scripting abilities and a complete Python interpreter from the programmer that made Pythonista. Link to an extensive review of the app and its capabilities.

I want to be able to share interesting web pages on my Wordpress blog using iOS directly from Safari using a bookmark and a Pythonista Python script. The script takes the URL of the page, any text you copied and the page title, formats it in Markdown and creates a new post in Poster App automatically. ...

Pythonista, finally programming workflow automation for iOS? I’m doing most of my writing on my iPad or occasionally on my iPhone, and I write everything in Markdown. There are some great scripts in my current favorite language Python out there for doing Markdown conversions, image manipulations, etc., but unfortunately, Apple rules regarding programming apps on iOS devices are pretty stringent. But an app for programming Python on iOS called Pythonista have some smart ways of getting around some of Apple’s restrictions. And one of the wonderful things you can do is home screen shortcuts, making your scripts available directly from the home screen of your iOS device. All you have to do to create a Pythonista home screen shortcut is to go to a web page and enter the script name and optional arguments. After that, add the page home-screen with Safari’s bookmarks button. Another way of starting your scripts is directly as bookmarks in Safari or another web browser. I found the app from this article about making life easier by scripting with Pythonista, a great read of all the functions available in the app. Because they added a Python library for managing the clipboard, you can copy pictures or text to it, then start your script that reads from the clipboard and then put the new modified text/picture back to the clipboard, ready for pasting into any app. Very handy! ...

Everytime (well, last night actually) when I need to do something with Applescript I shudder with horror. The syntax is actually something you forget all the time. There must be better alternatives for Apple to use as a scripting language. I agree with this article, but Python or Ruby would be a better alternative I think.