Luke Lives Here

CR, LF, and Unix vs DOS/Windows text file formats

Luke — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 11:12:59 +0000

If you open a text file in Notepad and it all looks like one giant wrapped around line, it’s probably in Unix format.

It’s all about computer history. In the dawn of time, computer output all used to come out of printers. Different old operating systems told printers to go to a new line using different codes. Unix systems all used CR (and still do). Various other operating systems (mostly obsolete now) used LF.

Carriage Return or CR: move the printing head back to the beginning of the line on the left…
Line Feed or LF: …and move it down to the next line

When the ASCII standard was created, everybody split the difference. The standard said you had to use both CR+LF for newlines when transferring files across the network. Windows was just a baby then, so it adopted the new CR + LF ASCII standard for storing text files – not just transferring.

But in practice, the CR+LF standard isn’t always used for file transfers. Sometimes files get transferred as binary files instead of ASCII text, so they’re stuck in their native Unix format. Most text editors will fix it up for you – they’ll add the missing LFs as you open the file. Wordpad does, for example. But Notepad is more or less unchanged since Windows 3.1 fifteen years ago. It doesn’t understand CR without the LF.

Believe it or not, there are stacks of different ways to store pure text files. Big Endian vs Little Endian, ASCII/ANSI/Unicode/UTF-8/other encodings, etc etc. But that’s the main difference you need to know. Unix (CR for newlines) vs DOS/Windows (CR+LF for newlines). And if you’re riveted with this history lesson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline

Essential Firefox Addons

Luke — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:38:26 +0000

Here are some of my critical Firefox addons that I always install immediately. Some only have Firefox 3 support if you download from the developers website, so I’ve included those links here:

Adblock Plus
English (Australian) Dictionary so the Firefox spellcheck works without that crazy American spelling
Foxmarks is great for keeping old-school boorkmarks synced between computers…
…although who doesn’t love a bit of del.icio.us bookmarks if social tagging is your thing (via del.icio.us)
Deskcut lets you drop a shortcut to the page on your desktop, a la IE.
Permit Cookies @ Gorgia Firefox Extensions is great if you like keeping control of your cookies. You can leave cookies off each page by default, and just enable the ones you need. (I start by clearing all cookies, browsing to the important sites with “ask me every time” on for a while, and allowing the ones I’m happy with, then using Permit Cookies from then on to whitelist as needed.)
NoScript does for JavaScript what Permit Cookies does for cookies. Only allow JavaScript on whitelisted sites.
Quick Restart lets me update these things and keep rebooting easily from the File… menu
IE tab lets me use IE to view certain sites from within Firefox tabs if they don’t behave properly for FF. FirefoxView lets me go the other way.
PDF Download stops Acrobat Reader loading inline and getting generally stuck
Nuke Anything Enhanced lets me remove clutter for printing (or just on-screen reading)
GMail Notifier checks my GMail account every now and then
gSpace for saving files into the storage available in Gmail
MacFox themes @ WebEther (I’m still hoping for FF3 support)

Now We Are Six

Luke — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:08:02 +0000

The Creem Soder Plant and The Fairy

Ah, my little one turned six today. It all goes way too fast.

She’s a beautiful artist, check out this one. It’s called “The Creem Soder Plant and The Fairy”.

The Creem Soder Plant is thinking about when the creem soder is coming out. The fairy is singing, “Laaaa.” And that’s a hummingbird on the left, saying “Hmmmmmmmmmm”. She draws the speech bubbles first, usually on the left, and so the writing for those usually comes out mirror-image. I hope that never changes. Now let’s see if I can freeze time…

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever,
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.

A.A.Milne

But wait, there’s more:

Ebba at the disco

Luke — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:48:57 +0000

Flickr / WordPress integration

Luke — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:24:45 +0000

I’ve just got me a account, so I’m going to have to test out some WordPress>Flickr integration thingies. Starting from…

…I’ve found a few too many options. Ah, Web 2.0. Anyhow, we have

Flickr’s own blog tools (including cool email to Flickr and blog at the same time options)
A tutorial @ Download Squad for inserting a whole Flickr slideshow as an IFRAME
Slickr Gallery
FAlbum
flickrRSS @ eightface
Flickr Insert plugin @ StuffedGuys: Allows you to selectively insert Flickr photos while writing posts in the WordPress admin interface
Flickr Post Bar @ Tan Tan Noodles: ditto
Flickr Photo Album for WordPress @ Tan Tan Noodles: seems to create weird URLs
Flickr Widget Plugin: adds Flickr photos to the sidebar
Kubrikr: grabs one of your Flickr photos as a banner
a Flickr tag cloud widget: gives you a tag cloud of your Flickr tags

A few that I think don’t actually use YOUR photos…

AutoFlickr: grabs a a random picture from Flickr (not just from your photos) based on the content of your post
a plugin that takes Technorati tags from your post and again grabs a random related Flickr photo

More general Flickr API tools (not WordPress specific):

phpFlickr

I’ll have a play with it all, let you know what I find.

A burglar…?

Luke — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:00:25 +0000

When I first looked over Eva’s shoulder she’d only drawn the face.? I asked, “Is that me?”
“Yes,” she said.

That was before she drew the belly and the hairy bellybutton, and before some cheeky remarks from Dr Bellanta.

I think Eva must have overheard, and decided she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Because a couple of minutes later, she said it was “A burglar tiptoe-ing through the house”.

Much better. Doesn’t look anything like me, really.

WordPress as a CMS

Luke — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:46:12 +0000

Plus

3 Witches and a Cauldron

Luke — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:00:14 +0000

A mean pelican eating a one-eyed fish

Luke — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:00:17 +0000

I think the palm tree is a nice touch.

Mama Stole My Ring

Luke — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 14:00:54 +0000

“A boy is angry with his Mama because she stole his ring. He is about to go swimming. He told his Mama not to steal again but she did. There’s a bird in the sky who thinks it’s too loud down below.”

Somehow hearing the story of the picture made the boy look like Smeagol to me.

(Check out the flippers, and the “This is my name up in lights”)