iMac Pr0n Blog - scpit & rsyncit

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scpit & rsyncit

Friday, June 1, 2007

# I use scp and rsync to upload this blog and a lot more. I have environment variables set up in ~/.profile that make it easy to type the address of my web site ssh servers. For example, to sync my blog, I can do the following, in its directory:

rsync -av ./ $IMAC:/home/htdocs/blog

But that's more typing than I like to do. Today I got an idea to help that. I put an executable file named .sshdir in each directory that mirrors a web directory. That file echoes the ssh directory:

echo "$IMAC:/home/htdocs/blog"

Then I have two scripts, in a directory on my path (I use ~/bin).

scpit:

#!/bin/bash scp $* `./.sshdir`/

rsyncit:

#!/bin/bash if [[ -z $* ]] then rsync -av ./ `./.sshdir` else rsync $* `./.sshdir` fi

Now I can upload my blog with simply:

cd ~/imacpr0n/blog rsyncit

And upload a single file with:

scpit index.html

# Dan Moren at MacUser - How to: buy evil-free tracks from iTunes - everybody and his brother is talking about the new iTunes 7.2 and the DRM-free "iTunes Plus" music that it enables. This article tells you how to enable iTunes Plus. To upgrade your existing songs, go to the Complete my Album page. The albums for which you have existing, DRM'd tunes, won't have a price next to the "Complete My Album" link. You can click that link to get to the area that upgrades your entire library to iTunes plus, at 30¢ per song. I had only two iTunes Plus tunes. One of them sounded subtly better in iTunes Plus. The other didn't. To see all your iTunes Plus music, create a new smart playlist, and set the rule to "Kind - contains - Purchased AAC". [macuser macosxhints]

# Michael Rose at The Unofficial Apple Weblog - Parallels 3.0 RC Announced - a bunch of new features, though I don't see 64-bit virtual machines. I bought the upgrade, to save the $10 more it will cost after June 7 ($40 now, $50 then). [everybody]

# Michael Rose at the Unofficial Apple Weblog - ChangeShortName updated to 1.3 - The ChangeShortName utility is a potentially dangerous way to change the short name on an OS X account. Haven't tried it. [tuaw]

IMPORTANT! Although ChangeShortName has been thoroughly tested, you must read the documentation included with ChangeShortName before using it. This is not optional. It's also worth nothing that because changing an account's short username is a serious procedure, you should do it only as a last resort. The best option is to simply learn to live with your present short username. Or, if the account was just created, create a new account with the desired short username and then delete the "unwanted" account. That said, if you're determined to change the short username of an account, ChangeShortName is your best option for doing so.

# Scott Gilbertson at Wired - Google Gears Brings Offline Functionality To Web Apps - Google Gears is a Firefox and Internet Explorer plug-in that allows you to view Google Reader, and soon other web apps, off-line. Downloaded about 700K and auto-installed for me in Firefox. Worked with Google Reader, but downloaded 2000 articles every time I went off-line, with no recognition that it had already downloaded most of them.

Google Gears

# Ryan Paul at Ars Technica - Fedora 7 released - haven't downloaded it yet. Will probably eventually upgrade my Fedora Core 6 virtual machine. Release notes are here. Mirrors and torrents are available for downloading. Slashdot discussion. [/.]