Shallow Thoughts : : tech

Bitlbee tips: hide timestamps, and share configurations

I recently set up bitlbee on a new machine. Things worked fine, mostly -- but here are a couple of tweaks that should speed things up when moving a bitlbee configuration to another machine.

Sharing configuration files

I get so tired of re-authenticating with Twitter every time I move to a new machine, disk, or distro. And it turns out you don't have to!

Your configuration is in /var/lib/bitlbee/yournick.xml, and you can copy that file to other machines and it will work just fine -- with one caveat.

Assuming you have bitlbee set up to run as a user named "bitlbee", rather than as root (the default is bitlbee), you'll need to make sure the /var/lib/bitlbee/yournick.xml file is owned by the bitlbee user. If you just copy it as root, you'll get an error like "The nick is (probably) not registered". You can fix it with chown bitlbee /var/lib/bitlbee/yournick.xml

Hiding timestamps

On the new machine, every new tweet had a timestamp added. Timestamps look like this:

<NatGeo> [20:26:24] Elusive marbled cat filmed: http://t.co/oOo3Xa81 
<OliverSacks> [20:28:09] Happy Thanksgiving week! Check out Dr. Sacks's new blog post about Gabby Giffords and what he is reading now: http://t.co/kZCTx53h 

These timestamps add clutter and make the lines too long. But googling for bitlbee timestamps only gets a lot of people who couldn't figure out how to suppress them and ended up writing scripts to hide them in various IRC clients.

Turns out bitlbee has a perfectly straightforward way to hide them. Go to your &bitlbee tab -- you know, the one that always opens first that you have to close manually every time after it finally opens the #twitter tab (I wish I could find a way to auto-close it!) and type:

set display_timestamps 'false'

That's it! Timestamps-b-gone.

You can see more bitlbee variables by typing set in the &bitlbee tab, or get help by typing help there.

Tags: bitlbee, twitter
[ 19:13 Nov 30, 2011    More tech | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Disable Google's Instant mode, and Instant Previews

A group of us were commiserating about that widely-reviled feature, Google Instant. That's the thing that refreshes your Google search page while you're still typing, so you always feel like you have to type reallyreallyfasttofinishyourquerybeforeitupdates. Google lets you turn off Instant -- but only if you let them set and remember your cookies, meaning they can also track you across the web. Isn't there a more privacy-preserving way to get a simple Google page that doesn't constantly change as you change your search query?

Disable Instant

It turns out there is. Just add complete=0 to your search queries.

How do you do that? Well, in Firefox, I search in the normal URL bar. No need for a separate search field taking up space in the browser window; any time you type multiple terms (or a space followed by a single term) in Firefox's URLbar, it appends your terms to whatever you have set as the keyword.URL preference.

So go to about:config and search for keyword, then double-click on keyword.URL and make sure it's something like "http://www.google.com/search?complete=0&q=". Or if you want to make sure it won't be overridden, find your Firefox profile, edit user.js (create it if you don't have one already), and add a line like:

user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://www.google.com/search?complete=0&q=");

Show only pages matching the search terms

I use a slightly longer query, myself:

user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://www.google.com/search?complete=0&q=allintext%3A+"

Adding allintext: as the first word in any search query tells Google not to show pages that don't have the search terms as part of the page. You might think this would be the default ... but The Google Works in Mysterious Ways and it is Not Ours to Question.

Disable Instant Previews

Finally, just recently Google has changed their search page again to add a bunch of crap down the right side of the page which, if you accidentally mouse on it, loads a miniature preview of the page over on your sidebar. You have to be very careful with your mouse not to have stuff you might not be interested in popping up all the time.

A moment's work with Firebug gave me the CSS classes I needed to hide. Edit chrome/userContent.css in your Firefox profile (create it if you don't already have one) and add this rule:

/* Turn off the "instant preview" annoying buttons in google search results */
.vspib, .vspii { display: none !important; }

Really, it's a darn shame that Google has gone from its origins as a clean, simple website to something like Facebook with things popping up all over that users have to bend over backward to disable. But that seems to be the way of the web. Good thing browsers are configurable!

Tags: firefox, mozilla, web, google, annoyances, user interface
[ 21:31 Oct 09, 2011    More tech/web | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Hiding that pesky Facebook ticker

So everybody's complaining about that new Facebook ticker. You know, the thing that sits on the right sidebar and constantly and distractingly updates with stupid stuff you don't care about and wouldn't be able to click on quickly enough even if you tried.

My mom forwarded me a link to a neat page she'd seen with instructions on removing the ticker using Adblock Plus. A good idea -- I hadn't thought about using Adblock, though it does seem obvious in retrospect.

But I don't currently have Adblock installed in the profile I use for Facebook -- I keep Facebook separate from my everyday browsing, since I don't want Facebook tracking all the other sites I visit. Could I do the same thing with userContent.css?

It turned out to be quite easy. Copying the exact pattern didn't work, but a minute or two with Firebug told me the CSS class of the ticker. I edited chrome/userContent.css in my profile. If you don't have one already, just look for userContent-example.css and create a new file in the same directory without the -example part, named just userContent.css. I added this line:

.tickerOnTop { display: none !important; }

Restart firefox, and presto! No more ticker.

Tags: web.firefox, mozilla, annoyances, user interface
[ 20:58 Sep 30, 2011    More tech/web | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Headhunters: don't spam people if you want to seem credible

I suspect all technical people -- at least those with a web presence -- get headhunter spam. You know, email saying you're perfect for a job opportunity at "a large Fortune 500 company" requiring ten years' experience with technologies you've never used.

Mostly I just delete it. But this one sent me a followup -- I hadn't responded the first time, so surely I hadn't seen it and here it was again, please respond since I was perfect for it. Maybe I was just in a pissy mood that night. But look, I'm a programmer, not a DBA -- I had to look it up to verify that I knew what DBA stood for. I've never used Oracle. A "Production DBA with extensive Oracle experience" job is right out, and there's certainly nothing in my resume that would suggest that's my line of work.

So I sent a brief reply, asking,

Why do you keep sending this? Why exactly do you think I'm a DBA or an Oracle expert? Have you looked at my resume? Do you think spamming people with jobs completely unrelated to their field will get many responses or help your credibility?

I didn't expect a reply. But I got one:

I must say my credibility is most important and it's unfortunate that recruiters are thought of as less than in these regards. And, I know it is well deserved by many of them.
In fact, Linux and SQL experience is more important than Oracle in this situation and I got your email address through the Peninsula Linux Users Group site which is old info and doesn't give any information about its members' skill or experience. I only used a few addresses to experiment with to see if their info has any value. Sorry you were one of the test cases but I don't think this is spamming and apologize for any inconvenience it caused you.

[name removed], PhD

A courteous reply. But it stunned me. Harvesting names from old pages on a LUG website, then sending a rather specific job description out to all the names harvested, regardless of their skillset -- how could that possibly not be considered spam? isn't that practically the definition of spam? And how could a recruiter expect to seem credible after sending this sort of non-targeted mass solicitation?

To technical recruiters/headhunters: if you're looking for good technical candidates, it does not help your case to spam people with jobs that show you haven't read or understood their resume. All it does is get you a reputation as a spammer. Then if you do, some day, have a job that's relevant, you'll already have lost all credibility.

Tags: spam, headhunters, tech
[ 20:30 Sep 24, 2011    More tech | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Fixing broken highlighting in Google search bar

Google has been doing a horrible UI experiment with me recently involving its search field.

I search for something -- fine, I get a normal search page page. At the top of the page is a text field with my search terms, like this:

Now suppose I want to modify my search. Suppose I double-click the word "ui", or drag my mouse across it to select it, perhaps intending to replace it with something else. Here's what happens:

Whoops! It highlighted something other than what I clicked, changed the font size of the highlighted text and moved it. Now I have no idea what I'm modifying.

This started happening several weeks ago (at about the same time they made Instant Seach mandatory -- yuck). It only happens on one of my machines, so I can only assume they're running one of their little UI experiments with me, but clearing google cookies (or even banning cookies from Google) didn't help. Blacklisting Google from javascript cures it, but then I can't use Google Maps or other services.

For a week or so, I tried using other search engines. Someone pointed me to Duck Duck Go, which isn't bad for general searches. But when it gets to technical searches, or elaborate searches with OR and - operators, google's search really is better. Except for, you know, minor details like not being able to edit your search terms.

But finally it occurred to me to try firebug. Maybe I could find out why the font size was getting changed. Indeed, a little poking around with firebug showed a suspicious-looking rule on the search field:

.gsfi, .lst {
    font: 17px arial,sans-serif;
}

and disabling that made highlighting work again.

So to fix it permanently, I added the following to chrome/userContent.css in my Firefox profile directory:

.gsfi, .lst {
  font-family: inherit !important;
  font-size: inherit !important;
}

And now I can select text again! At least until the next time Google changes the rule and I have to go back to Firebug to chase it down all over again.

Note to Google UI testers:

No, it does not make search easier to use to change the font size in the middle of someone's edits. It just drives the victim away to try other search engines.

Tags: tech, google, css, web
[ 21:05 Aug 16, 2011    More tech/web | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Changing your email address in Yahoo Groups

A while ago I switched ISPs, and maintaining a lot of email addresses got more complicated. So I decided to consolidate.

But changing your email address turns out to be tricky on some sites. For example, on Amazon it apparently requires a phone call to customer support (I haven't gotten around to it yet, but that's what their email support people told me to do).

Then there's Yahoo groups. I'm in quite a few groups, so when I made the switch, I went to groups.yahoo.com, added a valid address and made it my primary address. Great -- thought I was done.

Weeks later, it occurred to me that I hadn't been getting any mail from a bunch of groups I used to get mail from. I went to Yahoo groups and clicked around for five minutes trying to find something that would show me my email addresses. Eventually I gave up on that, went to one of the groups I hadn't been getting, and saw a notice at the top:

The email address you are using for this group is currently bouncing. More info here.

So naturally, I clicked on the More info here link, and got taken to a page that said:

Groups Error: No Permission

No Permission
You do not have permission to access this page.

Gosh, that's some helpful info, Yahoo!

So how do you really change it?

There are lots of ways to get to the Yahoo Groups "Manage your email addresses" page -- but it shows only the new address, listed as primary, as primary, and doesn't show the old address where it's actually trying to send all the mail. No way to delete it from there.

Now, you can Edit membership in any particular group: that shows both the old nonworking address (with the box checked) and the new one (check the box to change it). Great -- so I'm supposed to do that for all 25 or so groups I'm in? Seriously?

After much searching, I finally found an old discussion thread with a link to the Edit my groups page. Scroll down to the bottom and look for "Set all of the above to".

It's still not a one-step operation -- my groups are spread across three pages and there's no "View all on one page", and each time you submit a page, it takes you back to "View groups" mode so you have to click on the next page, then click on "Edit groups" again. Still, it's a heck of a lot faster than going through all the groups one by one.

In theory it's all changed now. But then, I thought that last time ... time will tell whether the mail actually starts flowing again.

Meanwhile, Yahoo developers: you might want to take a look at that "More info" page that just gives a permission error.

Tags: email, web
[ 17:58 Aug 09, 2011    More tech | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Nook Touch: the good, the bad, and the crazy

I've been dying to play with an ebook reader, and this week my mother got a new Nook Touch. That's not its official name, but since Barnes & Noble doesn't seem interested in giving it a model name to tell it apart from the two older Nooks, that's the name the internet seems to have chosen for this new small model with the 6-inch touchscreen.

Here's a preliminary review, based on a few days of playing with it.

Nice size, nice screen

The Nook Touch feels very light. It's a little heavier than a paperback, but it's easy to hold, and the rubbery back feels nice in the hand. The touchscreen works well enough for book reading, though you wouldn't want to try to play video games or draw pictures on it.

It's very easy to turn pages, either with the hardware buttons on the bezel or a tap on the edges of the screen. Page changes are much faster than with older e-ink readers like the original Nook or the Sony Pocket: the screen still flashes black with each page change, but only very briefly.

I'd wondered how a non-backlit e-ink display would work in dim light, since that's one thing you can't test in stores. It turns out it's not as good as a paper book -- neither as sharp nor as contrasty -- but still readable with my normal dim bedside lighting.

Changing fonts, line spacing and margins is easy once you figure out that you need to tap on the screen to get to that menu. Navigating within a book is also via that tap-on-page menu -- it gives you a progress meter you can drag, or a "jump to page" option. Which is a good thing. This is sadly very important (see below).

Searching within books isn't terribly convenient. I wanted to figure out from the user manual how to set a bookmark, and I couldn't find anything that looked helpful in the user manual's table of contents, so I tried searching for "bookmark". The search results don't show much context, so I had to try them one at a time, and there's no easy way to go back and try the next match. (Turns out you set a bookmark by tapping in the upper right corner, and then the bookmark applies to the next several pages.)

Plan to spend some quality time reading the full-length manual (provided as a pre-installed ebook, naturally) learning tricks like this: a lot of the UI isn't very discoverable (though it's simple enough once you learn it) so you'll miss a lot if you rely on what you can figure out by tapping around.

Off to a tricky start with minor Wi-fi issues

When we first powered up, we hit a couple of problems right off with wireless setup.

First, it had no way to set a static IP address. The only way we could get the Nook connected was to enable DHCP on the router.

But even then it wouldn't connect. We'd re-type the network password and hit "Connect"; the "Connect" button would flash a couple of times, leaving an "incorrect password" message at the top of the screen. This error message never went away, even after going back to the screen with the list of networks available, so it wasn't clear whether it was retrying the connection or not.

Finally through trial and error we found the answer: to clear a failed connection, you have to "Forget" the network and start over. So go back to the list of wireless networks, choose the right network, then tap the "Forget" button. Then go back and choose the network again and proceed to the connect screen.

Connecting to a computer

The Nook Touch doesn't come with much in the way of starter books -- just two public-domain titles, plus its own documentation -- so the first task was to download a couple of Project Gutenberg books that Mom had been reading on her Treo.

The Nook uses a standard micro-USB cable for both charging and its USB connection. Curiously, it shows up as a USB device with no partitions -- you have to mount sdb, not sdb1. Gnome handled that and mounted it without drama. Copying epub books to the Nook was just a matter of cp or drag-and-drop -- easy.

Getting library books may be moot

One big goal for this device is reading ebooks from the public library, and I had hoped to report on that. But it turns out to be a more difficult proposition than expected. There are all the expected DRM issues to surmount, but before that, there's the task of finding an ebook that's actually available to check out, getting the library's online credentials straightened out, and so forth. So that will be a separate article.

The fatal flaw: forgetting its position

Alas, the review is not all good news. While poking around, reading a page here and there, I started to notice that I kept getting reset back to the beginning of a book I'd already started. What was up?

For a while I thought it was my imagination. Surely remembering one's place in a book you're reading is fundamental to a device designed from the ground up as a book reader. But no -- it clearly was forgetting where I'd left off. How could that be?

It turns out this is a known and well reported problem with what B&N calls "side-loaded" content -- i.e. anything you load from your computer rather than download from their bookstore. With side-loaded books, apparently connecting the Nook to a PC causes it to lose its place in the book you're reading! (also discussed here and here).

There's no word from Barnes & Noble about this on any of the threads, but people writing about it speculate that when the Nook makes a USB connection, it internally unmounts its filesystems -- and forgets anything it knew about what was on those filesystems.

I know B&N wants to drive you to their site to buy all your books ... and I know they want to keep you online checking in with their store at every opportunity. But some people really do read free books, magazines and other "side loaded" content. An ebook reader that can't handle that properly isn't much of a reader.

It's too bad. The Nook Touch is a nice little piece of hardware. I love the size and light weight, the daylight-readable touchscreen, the fast page flips. Mom is being tolerant about her new toy, since she likes it otherwise -- "I'll just try to remember what page I was on." But come on, Barnes & Noble: a dedicated ebook reader that can't remember where you left off reading your book? Seriously?

Tags: ebook, tech
[ 19:46 Jul 26, 2011    More tech | permalink to this entry | comments ]

Bitlbee: How to re-authenticate with Twitter

I've been using Bitlbee for Twitter for quite a while now, and like it a lot.

But I guess Twitter recently changed something in their authentication, so I had to upgrade Bitlbee to the latest development version, 3.0.3, on each machine where I use it. Then on each machine, I got prompted to re-authenticate with Twitter -- except on one, my home desktop. There, all I saw was "Authentication failure" and "Logging out".

My normal procedure for setting up a Twitter account in Bitlbee didn't apply, because Bitlbee saw there was already an authenticated account, and didn't see any need to start over.

Here's the solution, courtesy of a helpful person on IRC: go to the Bitlbee channel where the authentication failed and type

acc 0 set password my-irc-passwd

-- substitute other account numbers for 0 as appropriate, and use the nickserv password you use for your bitlbee IRC account.

Then activate the account again:

account on

and it should contact Twitter and give you a URL to re-authenticate.

Tags: bitlbee, twitter
[ 19:05 Jul 05, 2011    More tech | permalink to this entry | comments ]