Parse Command Line Arguments in PHP

This afternoon I needed an easy way to upload files to Amazon S3 and set specific headers on them. I’ve built one-off scripts like this in the past, but this time I wanted to generalize the problem into a reusable shell command. I pulled in some code from PHP-AWS and got it working fairly quickly. … Read more

How to Stream Your iTunes Music Over the Internet

Update: Want to stream your iTunes music over the internet? Try Highwire! It streams your iTunes library and a whole lot more 🙂 I keep all of my iTunes music stored on a Drobo attached to an Airport at home. This frees up valuable space on my laptop and lets me listen to it via … Read more

Too Soon

I think everyone has a core group of artists they grew up listening to — that made an indelible mark on their lives. LeRoi Moore was one of mine.

Dial a Phone Number Using Grand Central and PHP

If you’re lucky enough to have a Grand Central account, here’s a quick PHP class that will login to your account and dial a phone number. This is probably one of the more random bits of code I’ve ever written, but I think it’s useful. And that’s it. Grand Central will call $yournumber and connect … Read more

Let Google Do The Work For You

One of the major challenges in web scraping is figuring out which page to scrape in the first place. Here’s a scenario: Say you need to pull some information for the film 30 Days of Night off IMDB. It would be great if you knew in advance what the URL was — something you could … Read more

Sort Apple Mail Messages Using the Keyboard

I don’t know how I ever missed this Apple Mail plugin, but you absolutely have to give MsgFiler a try if you’re a heavy keyboard user. It lets you move messages into any folder in your mailbox using only the keyboard. Press ⌘9 to pull up a TextMate-like list of your mailbox folders. Then, select … Read more

Introducing Appcaster + OpenFeedback

Today I’m proud to announce the release of two new open source projects: Appcaster and OpenFeedback. I’ve been working on them off and on for over nine months, so I’m very excited to finally see them out the door. Appcaster, which I’ve written about before, is a web-based dashboard for indie Mac developers. It’s designed … Read more

Scraping IMDB With PHP

For an upcoming project, I need to pull in metadata about movies and TV shows — genres, plot summaries, actors, etc. The de-facto source is, of course, IMDB. Unfortunately, they’re behind the times and don’t offer an API to access their data. (At least not one that I’ve ever found.) So, here’s a quick PHP … Read more

Two Weeks With Drobo

So it’s been two weeks since my Drobo arrived from Amazon. I’m sure they’re selling like hotcakes, but I don’t personally know anyone else with one — I figured I might as well gather my thoughts and post a review. Hopefully this will give a good overview if you’re not already familiar with the device. … Read more