Ed's World » script

MythTweet – Twitter MythTV recordings

Ed — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:32:39 +0000

In the move to put as much of my house onto twitter as possible, MythTV was the next victim. I’d previously made a PHP script that sent MSN alerts, but now I don’t use MSN, it needed a revamp.

I knocked up a small PHP script that grabs the backend status, finds what is being recorded or watched, compares with the previous run, and sends a message to twitter using wget.

To use it, grab the script, change the username/password variables, chmod +x it, and then add it to your “Startup Applications” or equivalent if you’re not using Ubuntu.

Handwritten post-it notes generated from Google Calendar

Ed — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:44:26 +0000

I’ve recently created a new website for my scout group, Highfield Scouts, and have put up a google calendar. More out of a challenge than a real need, I’ve knocked up a script that uses the Google Data API for PHP to query my calendar feed, grab the next event, and make a fake handwritten postit note. The script runs every hour to keep the images up to date.

I’ve made a little markup system so that the whole postit can be a link, and the time and location can be overridden (child protection malarky – can’t just put a time and location for some things!)

It’s all written in PHP, using the GD graphics features to put the text on a background image. If you’re interested in the code, comment, and I’ll give it to you (if you link to me!)

Improved Google mail number of unread emails script

Ed — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:20:17 +0000

Since writing “Get number of unread posts from google mail”, I realised that I didn’t care about a lot of emails that I get on a regular basis, things like ebuyer emails, stock-market alerts etc. I only want to be notified when I’ve got emails from real people.

By applying a “Newsletters” label on GMail to all automated messages by filtering messages, I can now see how many unread emails I have, then subtract the number of unread newsletters I have, and flash the ambient light that number of times.

Grab getGoogleMail.sh, change the usernames and passwords, and change “Newsletters” to whatever your google label is. Then use the $count variable to do whatever you want.