Feature requirements:

• Should only move a file if it has been edited. (we assume that the filesize will have changed by at least 1 byte!)
• Should not just sit there copying all the time.
• Should find out about all files in the specified directory.
• Should report when it updated the file and which file was updated
• First run should copy all files to the destination directory. (assumes I have updated my working copy from svn)

So after several attempts, here is a more polished version which stores the filename and the last size of the file in a ‘bash hash’. OK bash doesn’t have hashes (mores the pity) but reading around on the web I found this post with a comment from Scott Mcdermott which does the job nicely (once I had stripped offending characters from the file names).

So here is the full code of the deployment assistant:

#!/bin/bash
# script to deploy code from SOURCEDIR to DELIVERDIR 

PROJECTNAME="blog-in-blog"
SOURCEDIR=blog-in-blog/trunk
DELIVERDIR=/var/www/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/blog-in-blog/
FILENAMES=blog-in-blog/trunk/*
LASTFILESIZE=0
COUNTER=1

echo "======================================================"
echo -e "delivering changes \n\tin \033[1m$SOURCEDIR\033[0m \n\tto \033[1m$DELIVERDIR\033[0m"
echo "======================================================"		

if [ -z $1 ]
then
	echo "usage$  $0 "
	exit 1
fi

hash_insert ()
{
	local name=$1 key=$2 val=$3
	eval __hash_${name}_${key}=$val
}

hash_find ()
{
	local name=$1 key=$2
	local var=__hash_${name}_${key}
	echo -n ${!var}
}

while true
do
	for FILE in $FILENAMES
	do
		FILESIZE=$(stat -c%s "$FILE")

		#tidy up file to avoid problems in variable name
		FILE=`basename $FILE`
		FILEORIG=$FILE
		FILE=`echo "$FILE" | sed 's/[\.\_-]//g'`

		LASTFILESIZE=`hash_find fileHash $FILE`
		#echo "filesize:"$FILESIZE
		#echo "lastfilesize:"$LASTFILESIZE
		if [ "$FILESIZE" != "$LASTFILESIZE" ]
		then
			echo "--- $COUNTER ---------------------------------------"
			date
			echo -e "deploying \033[1m$FILEORIG\033[0m from project $PROJECTNAME"
			echo "Size was $LASTFILESIZE bytes, now $FILESIZE bytes."
			cp $SOURCEDIR/$FILEORIG $DELIVERDIR
			hash_insert fileHash $FILE $FILESIZE
			UPDATE=1
		elif [ "$UPDATE" -ne "1" ]
		then
			UPDATE=0
		fi
	done

	if [ "$UPDATE" = 1 ]
	then
		echo "======================================================"
		let COUNTER+=1
		UPDATE=0
	fi

	sleep $1
done
#ends

Basically I wanted to be able to use my DV camera to take single frames, which could then be rolled into a finished video.

A little shell script follows, which does just what I need, using dvgrab and ffplay.

#!/bin/bash
# script to take a shot with DV camera

count=1
calldir=`pwd`
wrapdir='wraps'

function help_me
{
echo -e "HELP!"
echo -e "h - shows this help!"
echo -e "s - takes a shot"
echo -e "p - shows a preview of all the shots so far"
echo -e "w - writes the shots to a wrap file in ./$wrapdir"
echo -e "q - quits\n"
}

help_me

if [ ! -d $calldir/$wrapdir ] ; then
mkdir $calldir/$wrapdir || exit
fi

while [ "$ans" != "q" ]
do

echo -e "I'm waiting for instructions:(h|s|p|w|q)"
read -sn1 ans

if [ "$ans" = "h" ] ; then

help_me

elif [ "$ans" = "s" ] ; then

echo -e "grabbing a frame"
dvgrab --every 25 --duration 1 2>/dev/null
echo -e "grabbed $count\n\a"

count=$(($count+1))

elif [ "$ans" = "p" ] ; then

echo -e "Preview"
cat $calldir/*.dv | ffplay -
echo -e "Preview ended"

elif [ "$ans" = "w" ] ; then

echo -e "Wrapping up"
echo -e "Creating in in $calldir/$wrapdir"
echo -e "Enter filename for wrap:"

read filename

cd $calldir/$wrapdir || exit

cat $calldir/*.dv | dvgrab -stdin --format dv2 $filename 2>/dev/null

clear

# reset count after wrapping file
count=1

echo -e "Tidying up last wrap: deleting $calldir/*.dv"
rm $calldir/*.dv

echo -e "Preview wrap"
ffplay $calldir/$wrapdir/$filename*
echo -e "Preview wrap ended"

cd $calldir || exit

elif [ "$ans" = "q" ] ; then

echo -e "Quitting...\n"
exit

fi

done

A Day In The Life.

New Hornby train set – Bernard Cribbins

Last time I tried Audio on linux I found it to be a sorely disappointing affair. That was some 6 to 12 months ago.

On my old Windows box I had an E-mu 1820, but when I bought it I didn’t know that Creative didn’t like to help out by open sourcing their drivers. (How many people have bought M-Audio cards now, knowing that they can get Open Source drivers for it!) On my old Windows box I thought that card was going to stay, until week before last…

I had had some recent successes with getting jack and pulseaudio playing nicely. I had had a play with Ardour and loved it. So I bit the bullet and gave it a go.

I now have glorious multi channel playback and recording via my E-mu audiodock, so I have taken the opportunity to throw together a few recordings of my poetry. The first couple were straight recordings with a bit of reverberation added for ambience.

Virility

The Tree I Wish I’d Been

The most recent is a full on four and a half minutes of sequenced sound and samples

A Rude Awakening

If you are viewing this on the site you’ll see the above links as little embedded mp3 players, courtesy of the very smart wpaudio plugin.

Anyway, the view from the bedroom window was still fairly spectacular for the high mortars, so I couldn’t resist a few firework shots. Here is one to wet your appetite.

View the full set

“To improve the accuracy of your account, we’ve changed the date when your next bill or statement will be issued.
Your next bill or statement will be produced on or around 08 February 2010 and will cover a shorter or longer period than normal.”

Now that’s accurate!

Highlights might be…

• The Langdale Heights page
• The scripts section
• Some poetry
• A few photographs

And, of course, I eat my own dog food… Several sections of the site are powered by my increasingly popular wordpress plugin blog-in-blog (over 2000 downloads and counting)  that allows you to show posts on pages as part of the content. I use it for the ‘Writing’ subsections, and for the updates on the home page.

Enjoy

Scalextric – multilevel 2

So the book should come to you. Right?

How radically different should a mobile solution be?  What could it be?  What are the difficulties? Why would you want to be able to have some sort of book related service that was not tethered to a physical library location?

How about imagining that a man comes to your door, via car or scooter, and delivers a bundle of books that you chose earlier on the library’s website. Maybe that man is a volunteer with a local charity? Maybe you haven’t left your house in years, not least because there is no one to take you to the library?  Imagine that in the five minutes the man was at your doorstop, he was able to suggest that you might like Author B because you had already read several of Author A, and could also check to see if there was a copy of that book your saw on telly last night, “withering something or other”? Maybe the man at the door is also your social worker and provides books as an extra little service?

Imagine that you could set preferences for your book selection and that 3 of your 6 should be chosen by serendipity?

Imagine that you were only staying at a hotel for a couple of nights, but the hotel could get you some books to read from the local library so that they were ready for your arrival? Maybe you travelled by plane and didn’t want to carry in your baggage that 800 page hardback epic that you were in the middle of?

Imagine that for a small subscription you could have a selection of DVDs delivered to your door along with related reading material?

Imagine that a youngster on a moped with a box deliveres your reserved book to you as soon as it becomes available in the library?

What would a library service that was mobile mean to you?

This is something I have been thinking on for a while now, and I am convinced that libraries could be a whole lot better at reaching out to the ‘unlibraried’ if they were more mobile, and if the system for managing the mobile stock was a combination of user driven on-line processes and basic functionality hosted on a hand-held device.