Bilal Syed Hussain

CSPLib

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 06:11:55 +0000

I maintain the website of CSPLib, a library of test problems for constraint solvers. The site is generated (using Python) from markdown specifications in addition to associated metadata and data files. I also wrote most of the scripts that perform the generation.

The website is located at http://csplib.org

The github repository is located at https://github.com/csplib/csplib

gmusic-sync-rating

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 06:01:32 +0000

gmusic-sync-rating is a command line tool to sync iTunes rating to google music. It supports the 5 star rating scale.

Installation

gmusic-sync-rating can be installed from PyPI using pip:

$ pip install gmusic-sync-rating

Usage

usage: gmusic-sync-ratings [-h] [--password PASSWORD] [--itunes-xml FILE]
                         [--only-rated]
                         username

positional arguments:
  username             Google music Username

optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  --password PASSWORD  Google music Password
  --itunes-xml FILE    iTunes xml file
  --only-rated         Only sync non empty ratings

`--password`

If --password is not specified then gmusic-sync-rating will prompt you to enter it

$ gmusic-sync-rating 'myemail@example.com'
Enter your google music password
Password:

`--only-rated`

Only upload non empty rating.

`--itunes-xml FILE`

If you keep your iTunes library in an non standard location (i.e not ~/Music/iTunes/), you have specify the full path to iTunes Music Library.xml` in your iTunes folder.

License

gmusic-sync-rating is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License

Viewing .csv files on the command line

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 16:46:31 +0000

It can be convenient to view a .csv file from the command line, when using SSH connection for example. A basic version with no dependencies is as follows:

function see_csv(){
    column -s, -t <"$1" | less --shift 2  -SN
}

with example output:

1 seq    run_no  kind        iterations  timeout
2 12001  1       undirected  64          600
3 12002  1       nsample     64          600

To handle blank fields we can use sed to add extra spaces for use with column:

function see_csv(){
    cat "$1" | sed 's/,,/, ,/g;s/,,/, ,/g' | column -s, -t | less --shift 2 -SN
}

If the .csv has many columns, you change the less options to the following:

function see_csv(){
    cat "$1" | sed 's/,,/, ,/g;s/,,/, ,/g' | column -s, -t | less -SN -Xs
}

So that the columns that can fit on the screen are printed, for convenience.

❯ see_csv experiment.csv
      1 seq    run_no  kind        iterations param timeout  
      2 16001  1       undirected  64               38400            
      3 16002  1       nsample     64               38400            
      4 16003  1       undirected  64               38400            

~/Desktop/Results/
❯

~/Desktop/Results/
❯

To access any addition columns use the arrow keys, this will cause the screen to be redrawn.

Alfred Extensions

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:15:21 +0000

Workflows and Extensions for Alfred hosted on https://github.com/Bilalh/AlfredExtensions

iTunes Ratings

Allows you to set the rating of the currently playing song. Support halves stars and empty ratings

based off https://github.com/qlassiqa/qWorkflow/tree/master/example%20workflows

Toggle Extension

A file action which toggles the visibility of file extensions for the selected files

Shellmarks

Allow the use of Shellmarks, a shell script that allows you to save and jump to commonly used directories from Alfred.

Tagger 1.6.2

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:07:03 +0000

Tagger 1.6.2 has been released.

Tagger launches much faster (now loads instantly compared with 10 seconds before).
File size has been reduced by over 50%.
Auto tagging has been rewritten in C++/Objective C instead of Ruby hence it is much faster.
Updated Libraries.

MPlayer OSX Extended Release 2

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:48:44 +0000

This is build contains all the features in the previous build with a few new additions.

Download Link

GitHub Repository

New Features

Proxy Icons

I Added a Proxy Icon when a file is playing, which is invoke by clicking on the icon in the menu bar, this brings up the menu shown below which allows the user to open the folder the movie is placed in.

Next Episode

A menu item (Play Next Episode) that plays the next episode based on the currently playing file was added in previous build and was bound to ⌘E. This works for most formats of naming including

File Name 01
File_Name_1
File Name Episode 1

This build added an extra option to play the next episode automatically, saving the user from clicking on the Play Next Episode menu item each time.

Compatibility

Nearly all of he features have been merged in the main repository, meaning that will no compatibility issues in the future.

Other Improvements

This build also contains other features to improve the image quality.

Pipe output from command line tools to a text editor

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:01:23 +0000

A useful feature is to pipe the result of a command such as ls to a text editor. This can be done by using:

	ls | open -f

Using the -a flag for open makes this even more useful allowing you to specify the application to open the output in e.g to open in TextMate use:

	ls | open -f -a Textmate

Sync iCloud Calendars on OS X Snow Leaopard

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 04:50:10 +0000

Syncing iCloud’s Calendars on Snow Leopard is quite simple. The only information that requirement is your iCloud Server Number which nearly always in the form pXX-caldav.icloud.com.

To find this number open Safari and login to your iCloud account.

Click on Calendar and then chose Windows —> Activity from menu bar.

In the window you should see something that is similar to this:

p01-contactsws.icloud.com/co/mecard/?dsid=1325673149

The iCloud Server Number is the first part of the address namely p01 in this case.

Syncing iCal

Open iCal’s Preferences, then pick the Accounts Tab. Click the plus sign at the bottom left.

Fill in the fields with the following settings:

Field	Value
Account Type:	CalDAV
User name:	yourUserName@me.com
Password:	yourPassword
Server Address	pXX-caldav.icloud.com

pXX is your iCloud Server Number from above.

Now click create create. If it asks you to pick a server choose pXX-caldav.icloud.com from the above settings.

It should work now!

Shellmarks - terminal directory bookmarks

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:57:33 +0000

shellmarks is a shell script that allows you to save and jump to commonly used directories.

Usage Example

$ cd /var/www/
$ s web
$ cd /usr/local/bin/
$ s localbin
$ l
    web          /var/www/
    localbin     /usr/local/bin/
$ g web<tab>
$ g web          # cd to /var/www/
$ o web     	 # Open in Finder if on a mac

Extra Features

if no bookmark name is specified the default directory is used instead ($HOME unless changed)

cd ~/projects
s
g              # g now defaults to ~/projects

Commands can be placed after the bookmark

$ g web ls     # cd to ~/home/projects/www/ then executes ls
~/var/www/
index.html
site.css
$

cd like features

g -   # does cd -
g ..  # does cd ..
g /   # does cd /

Mac Specific Features

o command which opens the specified bookmark in Finder
t command which opens the specified bookmark in a new Terminal tab.

y web          # opens ~/home/projects/www/  in a new tab
cd javascript
y              # opens ~/home/projects/www/javascript in a new tab

o              # opens ~/home/projects/www/javascript in Finder

Install

git clone git://github.com/Bilalh/shellmarks.git
make install
source ~/.local/bin/shellmarks.sh from within your ~.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc

download https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Bilalh/shellmarks/master/shellmarks.sh and source it from within your ~.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc

More Information

See the project page for information.

fixing corrupt mp3s

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:33:17 +0000

To fix a corrupt mp3 mp3val can be used. The website provides binaries for Windows, and sources for other platforms including Linux and Mac OS X.

Installation

Update: binaries for Mac OS X (tested on 10.6) here

To install on a Mac either install it the easy way:

brew install mp3val

or download the sources and then cd to the directory of sources and then do

make -f Makefile.gcc

and then place the binaries in you $PATH e.g. /usr/local/bin

Usage

To fix the corrupt mp3s use the following

mp3val -f

which tells mp3val to fix the errors in the mp3s. Shell wildcards can be used e.g.

mp3val -f *.mp3

which will fix all mp3 in the current directory.

mp3val also keeps all the old tags as well, which is useful.

MPlayer OSX Extended Release 1

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:37:31 +0000

A new binary of MPlayer OSX Extended has been released

Download Link

GitHub Repository

New Features

File Types Information

I added type information about movies as shown below. This gives the user more info when looking at video/audio files in Finder.

Media Keys

Support for media keys (F7, F8, F9) on Apple keyboards has been added.

Key	Function
PlayPause (F8)	Plays/Pauses
Rewind(F7)	Skip to Previous
Fast forward(F9)	Skip to Next

Keyboard

All of MPlayer keyboard shortcuts have been added, a list of keyboard shortcuts is in the help and can be viewed here.

Help

I am (re)wrote most of the help

Next Episode

A menu item (Play Next Episode) that plays the next episode based on the currently playing file has been added and is bound to ⌘E. This works for most formats of naming including

File Name 01
File_Name_1
File Name Episode 1

Icons

Icons for all the file types have been added, below are a sample the rest can seen here.

Video Icons

Audio Icons

Subtitles Icons

Binary Icon

MPlayer keybindings

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:25:32 +0000

A list of MPlayer’s keybindings since it hard to find a complete list online. If using a Mac consider using MPlayer OSX Extended which is the best GUI for MPlayer on the mac.

Common
p / SPACE	Pause (pressing again unpauses).
q / ESC	Stop playing.
f	Toggle fullscreen
#	Cycle through the available audio tracks.
T	Toggle stay-on-top
Navigation
← and →	Seek backward/forward 10 seconds.
↓ and ↑	Seek backward/forward 1 minute.
Pagedown and Pageup	Seek backward/forward 10 minutes.
! and @	Seek to the beginning of the previous/next chapter.
Volume
/ and *	Decrease/increase volume.
9 and 0	Decrease/increase volume.
m	Mute sound.
Subtitles
j	Cycle through the available subtitles.
J	Cycle through the available subtitles backwards.
y and g	Step forward/backward in the subtitle list.
x and z	Adjust subtitle delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.

Playlists

< and >	Go backward/forward in the playlist.
ENTER	Go forward in the playlist.
HOME and END	next/previous playtree entry in the parent list.
Information
I	Show filename on the OSD.
P	Show current time/total time
o	Toggle OSD states: none / seek / seek + timer / seek + timer + total time.
⇥ (Tab)	Cycle timestamp display modes
\1
+ and -	Adjust audio delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.
d	Toggle frame dropping states: none / skip display / skip decoding.
Playback Speed
[ and ]	Decrease/increase current playback speed by 10%.
{ and }	Halve/double current playback speed.
backspace	Reset playback speed to normal
Video Equaliser
1 and 2	Adjust contrast.
3 and 4	Adjust brightness.
5 and 6	Adjust hue.
7 and 8	Adjust saturation.

Blueboard TextMate Theme

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 23:20:14 +0000

My theme for TextMate, works well for Ruby, CSS, Markdown, C, Bash and TeX:

Ruby

TeX

Markdown

CSS

Download Link

GitHub Repository

Useful sed commands

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:20:59 +0000

Delete nth line inplace

sed -i .tmp '<n>d' <filename>

Get the nth line

sed '<n>q;d' <filename>

Delete the first 10 lines of a file

sed '1,10d'

Delete lines matching pattern

 sed '/pattern/d'

ls colours

bilalshussain@gmail.com (Bilal Syed Hussain) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:12:45 +0000

To get ls colours on a mac add the follow to your .bash_profile.

#light colours
export LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxbxegedabagacad

# dark colours
export LSCOLORS=gxBxhxDxfxhxhxhxhxcxcx