Mr. Speaker

Finally got around to “finishing” this FireFox extension. I called it “FileFisher” and only just realised what a crappy name it is. Hopefully that’ll get an upgrade in the next version… Anyhoo, FileFisher is a tool to download photos that your friends have been too lazy to meaningfully rename before they stuck them on the web. You use it anytime you realise that the file names you want have an obvious sequence - like image01.jpg, image02.jpg, image03.jpg… image50.jpg etc etc..

Click on the first image and load it into a browser tab. Now start FileFisher from the tools menu. You will see the current URL in the top bar of FileFisher, and many wierd options below it… What we are going to do is swap the “sequence number” part of the URL for our token…. so if the URL in FileFisher is “http://www.allThesesImages.com/media/image01.jpg” manually change the “image01.jpg” to read “imageAA.jpg”.

Then set the numbers you want to try and grab… so, say you want to grab image1.jpg through to image99.jpg, put “1″ in the start field, and “99″ in the end field. Choose your download directory and “go fish”. The AA bit will be substituted with each number in turn, and the files downloaded.

It works with any file type - but for zip, wav and other filetypes that download rather than displaying in the browser, you’ll need to paste the URL directly into FileFisher. Filefisher has a couple of other tricks up it’s sleeve too, but you can read all about them in the Help.

Theres heaps planned for the next version, but I have a very short attention span and it’s amazing it got as polished as it is now. As it stands, the program is filled with bugs and strange behaviour so let me know what interesting and wonderful problems you find.

So get crackin’ and install FileFisher v0.4 (for Firefox 2.0.* and below)

The old lady and the magpies

Google may have noticed that I recently deleted a whole swag of posts from this blog. The posts were all titled “The old woman at the bus stop who I cycle past everyday said:” and the body of the posts contained a (usually one sentance) transcript of what the old woman had chirpped to me as I struggled up the hill to work.

She always said something different. “Tough going today!”, “You’ll never get in the Olympics at that rate..”, “Where’s your hat today?”.. In a flash of inspiration I realised and once I collected 50 or so posts it really would have been an item of interest and beauty. It was not to be. I ended up collecting about 4.

It wasn’t my fault, honest. First, a couple of families of magpies set up home right near the bus stop. And they were swoopy little buggers. After a few days of having shattered nerves I changed route with the intention of resuming the posting once the lil’ magpies was all grown up.

Then I got a new job and never saw the old lady again.

The new job

I had to go for an interview for the new job. Running late, I decided to ride in on my pushy. That was silly because it was the hottest October day recorded since they stopped using the Fahrenheit temperature scale. I arrived dishevelled and sweaty. Consulting a toilet mirror confirmed I looked like a long-time homeless person wearing a suit. My bike helmet had given me a hair-do which some how made it look like an attempted comb-over. I tried to fix my hair but all attempts only worsened the sitution.

Running out of time and patience, I stuck my head under the hand drier machine. As I went to fix up the devestation I thought that move would have caused, I realised a hair-styling miracle had occurred. My hair look snazzy. Better than ever, I’d say. I didn’t even have to touch it. All I could do was adopt a Fonz stance and say “‘eeey!”

New job: Part 2 - the job

Needless to say, with a Fonz-like level of confidence I got the job. I have a desk and a chair and a plastic cup for the watercooler that says “Neverfail” (a Coke subsidiary I think…) I’ve used the same cup for several days and so far it has lived up to its name.

On the first day of work I spilled coffee on my shirt. I didn’t notice till I went to the toilet. I took off my shirt and washed it in the sink, then dried it under the hand drier machine. The hand drier machine has already saved me twice.

I don’t know how many people saw coffee on my shirt but didn’t tell me. The old woman at the bus stop who I cycled past everyday would have told me.

A crazy breaks and broken mash of noise and things. Featuring BaikinMan on vocals, this track packs quite an “an-pun-chi”.

The Young And The Wrestlers [~3.0Mb, mp3].

Javascript - the demon of space… Only you can pre-emptively strike on these possibly hostile space vehicles which may or may not be plotting to attack you or an ally of yours.

Deamons of space is a DHTML javascript game I started and will hopefully never complete. Once you figure out the odd “braking” system you may find it a little easy… So to make the game more difficult, it doesnt work in Firefox. This should add a significant challenge.

When I get a couple-a-hours free I’ll fix it up for Mozilla. I think (hope) I was just not using getElementById(). It was my best effort at object-oriented javascript at the time. I’ll put the “source code” here too to save having to grab ‘em all.

P.S. The “demon of space” line comes from the stunningly brilliant and hilarous sci-fi musical thriller - Naked Space, or as it was also known, The Creature Wasn’t Nice starring Leslie Nielson. A film that requires several viewings to understand the attempted jokes. Time well spent. “Pressure….. The demon of space.”

Another not so new track. Thought I’d whack it up. Non-breaking space was getting a swag of radio play on Sydney’s fbi radio, which was fun.

Clikity cricks and trickles with too much reverb but lovely beats. And you can never have too much reverb.

Non-breaking space [~2.8Mb, mp3].