Programs and other cool stuff I've done

X

I haven't used these programs in many years, so no guarantee bit rot hasn't taken place.

C

Python

Perl

Here's a weather script in perl to connect to the wunderground weather server and print useful information. It's the back-end behind xforecast, mentioned above.

This script gets aviation weather reports (METARs and TAFs) for U.S. airports using airnav.com.

I wrote an address book program to manage addresses as well as remind me of birthdays. Here is a page that documents the program. Once, when I was stuck at an airport and out of touch, electronically, I realized I needed a way to print a hardcopy of the address book. So, I wrote a script to print a "little white book". It generates postscript output and requires that you have this postscript header file too.

Altavista was a cool search engine. I like google better. However, babelfish was very cool. So I wrote a script that provides a command line interface to babelfish, suitable to be use with pipes as a filter.

I'm working on a web based adventure game. I've got the basic engine done and the world will be created based on a story Pierce and I wrote. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to put into this in a while. At some point there'll be a link to it.

As part of the GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA) practical exam, I wrote a tool to help investigators conduct experiments on the effects of different archiving programs. The tool is called tar2d2 and (sort of) stands for "Testing of Archivers for Reference of Restored Disk Data," but in fact it is just "a little helpful droid."

Pretty much all of the code running MyCause is mine. That is not public, at the moment.

Junk Mail Filters

1. Does the Received: line match the From: line?
2. Is the host in the Received: line listed in the open relay data base (ordb.org)?
   [Update] ordb.org ceased to exist in 2006, so that check should be removed from the code before use!
3. Is my name listed in the To: or Cc:? and
4. Does the mail have a Content-type: text/html or multipart tag?

1. If the From: address is included in the EvilFucks list, then no matter what, it is considered junk.
2. If the From: address is in the GoodFroms list, then it's OK. All aliases in my .mailrc file are automatically added to the list.
3. If the To: address is in the GoodTos list, then it's OK (this handles people that send Bcc:'s a lot or mailing lists that put the list name in the To:).

It seems to do a pretty good job filtering mail. But then I wondered, exactly how good of a job was it doing? So I modified the script to automatically add an entry to a log file for each message it processes. Of course, it sometimes gets things wrong. So then I write the jmlc (Junk Mail Log Corrector) Program. Run it and cut-and-paste the "From " (note: not the "From:") line of the mail message as standard input and it'll mark the proper entry in the log file as being misfiled.

Then I wrote the jstats (junkmail stats) program. It takes two command line arguments, a start time and and end time, both of the form: MM/DD/YYYY [HH:MM[:SS]]. It prints out:

• # of messages in interval
• # and % of total messages filed as good
• # and % of total messages filed as junk
• # and % of total messages improperly filed as good
• # and % of total messages improperly filed as junk
• # and % of total messages that are good
• # and % of total messages that are junk
• % accuracy of filter
• % of false positives (filed as junk)
• % of false negatives (filed as good).

Sample output is:
$ jstats.pl 09/01/2003 09/17/2003 23:09
1062388800 1063854540
1329 total messages
201 filed as good, 1128 filed as junk
18 misfiled as good, 5 misfiled as junk
188 actual good, 1141 actual junk
Junkmail is 85.85% of total mail
False positive is: 2.66%, false negative is: 1.58%


Not too bad. On average I get 60-80 pieces of junkmail a day and this makes it manageable (under 3% failure rate).

Linux Graphic Battery Monitor

It indicates the percent battery power, shows a graphic, showing 1-10 rectangles (1 rectangle=10 percent power, 10=100 percent power), and the rectangles change from green, blue, yellow, and red, to indicate full, good, low, and critial levels of battery power. Below the graphic are optional messages that indicate how much time is left on the battery (e.g., "03:14:34 remaining") or how long till it's fully charged (e.g., "00:15:35 until charged").

An appropriate entry in /etc/X11/fvwm2/system.fvwm2rc or one's own personal .fvwm2rc file to put it in the Button or Menu bar would be something like:
*FvwmButtons: (Swallow FvwmXbattery 'Exec battery.pl -name "FvwmXbattery" -geometry +0+0 -padding 1 -bg rgb:91/ae/d6 &')

Here's the source for battery.pl

As an aside, I was at a conference (Usenix 2008) when I started writing this, as I wanted to know how much battery power was left when I was working while not plugged in. Within a few hours, my battery died—we're talking fried, going from working fine to totally holding no charge. Nothing I did, really (calling acpi won't damage it), but the timing was amusing. I was very tempted to simplify this whole process by just displaying a permanent "0%" in red in a window and being done with it.

Configuring imap and sendmail smtp auth

Configuring an Intuos4 tablet under VirutalBox

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