It is based on these instructions for vim, combined with this method to allow piping text into JSLint from the standard input.

1. Install SpiderMonkey
See the build instructions page for installing on many different architectures, or these instructions for quick installations on Ubuntu and CentOS 5.

2. Download JSLint SpiderMonkey Hack Edition
Get this version of JSLint which has been modified to allow piping code from the standard input. Save it somewhere in your home directory, say /home/username/bin/js/jslinthack.js. You’ll also need to make it executable by typing chmod +x /home/username/bin/js/jslinthack.js

3. Enable the External Tools plugin in gedit
Open gedit and click the Edit menu, then choose Preferences. Click the Plugins tab and tick to enable the Extenal Tools plugin.

4. Set up the JSLint External Tool
In gedit, open the Tools menu and click External Tools. Click the New button and give your new tool the name JSLint. Give it a descriptive name like “Check JavaScript source code”. Give it an Accelerator if you wish (mine is Shift+Ctrl+j). Set the Command to the location at which you saved the hacked JSLint file, eg. /home/username/bin/js/jslinthack.js. Set Input to Current Document and set Output to Insert in Output Panel (you’ll need to have the Bottom Panel enabled in gedit’s View menu).

5. Profit!
Open up a JavaScript source file, and either press your Accelarator keyboard shortcut, or go to Tools > JSLint. The results of the syntax check will be output in the bottom panel.

If you search Google for certain sites which are themselves searchable, you’ll get an inline search box right in your Google results.

So, searching for “wikipedia” gives you:

It works for Urban Dictionary too..

Using the search box doesn’t take you directly to the results, but to another Google page with an appropriate “site:” keyword added, so Google still get their advert imprints.

Nice.

Note: I’m fairly sure you need to enable UI scripting for this to work.

1. tell application "System Events" to tell process "Dock"
set dock_dimensions to size in list 1
set dock_width to item 1 of dock_dimensions
set dock_height to item 2 of dock_dimensions
end tell

This is an example of something I have often found to be a problem on many social websites (for example, online forums). The owners and operators of the website should not be responsible, legally or morally, for the conduct of its users. A social platform provides a canvas upon which people can express themselves. Asking the company behind the social platform to moderate the user-generated content is like holding a notepad manufacturer responsible for offensive messages written on its paper, or a brick manufacturer responsible for unpleasant graffiti daubed upon walls constructed from its products.

Perhaps Twitter could (and should) have been more clear in their TOS, but in the end the responsibility for moderating the content of a social network should lie with the participants in that network, not the creators. Once censorship begins to creep in, all is lost. It’s impossible to draw lines between acceptable and unacceptable content, and it’s impossible to please everyone.

As Twitter employee Jason Goldman states on the support thread for this issue:

What we believe is that Twitter is a recipient-driven utility; you choose what content appears in your timeline. We offer tools like block so that users can distance themselves from others with whom they have disputes or disagreements.

So if someone offends you on Twitter, you know where to click:

Richard Stallman, Manchester, 1st May 2008.

PS.. the router is fantastic, especially with the replacement firmware. Realtime bandwidth monitoring, QOS.. rather better than my crappy old Belkin!

I’ve recently started using Twitter, but its “What are you doing?” functionality does have some overlap with the Facebook “Status“. It’d be nice to join these two things together, so that an update in one place would automatically update the other.

The current solutions to this (both the official Twitter Facebook app, and the unofficial Twittersync app) allow you to import your Twitter updates into Facebook. This is great for some people, but I’d rather not force all my none-geeky Facebook friends to put up with my geeky Twittering.

A better solution for me would be syncing from Facebook to Twitter. Facebook publishes an RSS feed of your status updates, and Twitterfeed can monitor feeds and post updates to Twitter. Perfect.. except it seems to be a bit flaky (I was getting double posts to Twitter of all my Facebook updates). It’s also lacking some customisation options which I’d like.

So.. if all else fails, do it yourself. Below is PyTwitFace, a Python script which grabs your RSS feed from Facebook, checks whether your most recent update has been posted to Twitter, and if not, posts it.

You will need:

• The python-twitter library.
• The Universal Feed Parser library
• The URL of your Facebook status RSS feed. Instructions to find it here.

This script doesn’t do any caching. It checks your recent Twitter updates to see if your Facebook status has already been imported. Twitter only publishes your twenty most recent Twitter updates via its API. So, if you update your Facebook status, then post 20 updates to Twitter, your status will be copied over again (duplicated). This isn’t a problem for me, but it may be for you.

The script does a bit of pre-processing of your Facebook status before posting it to Twitter. It chops off the first word (which is your name), and then checks whether the the next word is in a list of verbs (mine includes “is” and “has”, but you can add your own). It then appends “(from Facebook)” to the message. This means that a Facebook status of:

Jamie is trying out PyTwitFace.

will appear on Twitter as..

Trying out PyTwitFace (from Facebook)

Here’s the code. Don’t forget to have a look at it, and put in your Twitter username and password and your Facebook feed URL.

1. import twitter, feedparser, socket
2.  
3. #
4. # SETTINGS
5. #
6.  
7. twitteruser = 'username'
8. twitterpassword = 'password'
9. facebook_feed_address = "Your full Facebook status feed URL"
10.  
11. # Will be appended to facebook status
12. to_append = "(from Facebook)"
13.  
14. # These words will be removed from the
15. # beginning of your status if present
16. prefixes = ['is', 'has']
17.  
18.  
19.  
20. # Make sure the script doesn't hang if it can't get through to
21. # Twitter or Facebook (ie network is down).
22. timeout = 60 # seconds
23. socket.setdefaulttimeout(timeout)
24.  
25. #
26. # FACEBOOK STUFF
27. #
28.  
29. # Get most recent facebook status.
30. feed = feedparser.parse(facebook_feed_address)
31. most_recent_facebook = feed.entries[0].title
32.  
33. # Convert facebook status string into a list of words
34. most_recent_facebook_words = most_recent_facebook.split()
35.  
36. # Get rid of name from start of string.
37. del most_recent_facebook_words[0]
38.  
39. # If next word is in verb list, remove it.
40. if most_recent_facebook_words[0] in prefixes:
41. del most_recent_facebook_words[0]
42.  
43. # Capitalise first word.
44. most_recent_facebook_words[0] = most_recent_facebook_words[0].title()
45.  
46. # Append selected string.
47. most_recent_facebook_words.append(to_append)
48.  
49. # Convert back into a string
50. most_recent_facebook = " ".join(most_recent_facebook_words)
51.  
52. #
53. # TWITTER STUFF
54. #
55.  
56. # Set up API
57. twitterapi = twitter.Api(username=twitteruser, password=twitterpassword)
58.  
59. # Get list of statuses
60. twitter_statuses = twitterapi.GetUserTimeline(twitteruser)
61. twitter_statuses_text = [s.text for s in twitter_statuses]
62.  
63. # Check if your current Facebook status
64. # has already been posted to Twitter
65. if not most_recent_facebook in twitter_statuses_text:
66. # If not, post it!
67. twitterapi.PostUpdate(most_recent_facebook)
68.  
69.  

You can either run this manually when you update your Facebook status (which may slightly defeat the object), or put it on a server and set up a cron job, or (like me) run it automatically every so often on your own computer. I’m doing this using launchd in Mac OS X. See my Physical Gmail Notifier post for instructions of how to do this.

A final note: while I was writing this post, I came across Twitterbook, which does a similar thing with PHP. It does seem to require manually visiting the script’s URL to work though, which isn’t ideal. Try it out if you’re more of a PHP person.

Sigh.

Get lost, hi-tech nosey neighbour!