numerical codepoint definition means to an Emoji definition in terms of web browser tab icon creation capabilities
… shone a light, a “lightbulb moment” for us, in terms of the fact that so many Emojis of interest are actually multiple HTML entity ones (eg. all the national flag emojis are actually made up of four HTML entities) and our initial textbox design of …
<?php echo ”
<input title='Emoji codepoint as web browser tab icon (ie. look up to see after clicking display)' type=number onchange=emnone(); onblur=emnone(); id=codepoint name=codepoint step='1' value='-1' min='-1'></input>
“; ?>
… should be able to become the more savvy (for multiple emojis now possible because of the logics behind the new textbox mentioned below) via this new Javascript …
<?php echo ”
/**
* Convert a string to HTML entities ... thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18749591/encode-html-entities-in-javascript
*/
String.prototype.toHtmlEntities = function() {
return this.replace(/./gm, function(s) {
// return \"&#\" + s.charCodeAt(0) + \";\";
return (s.match(/[a-z0-9\s]+/i)) ? s : \"&#\" + s.charCodeAt(0) + \";\";
});
};
function emnone() {
document.getElementById('anemoji').value='';
}
function cpit(otb) {
if (otb.value != '') {
if (otb.value.toHtmlEntities().indexOf('&#x') != -1) {
} else if (otb.value.toHtmlEntities().indexOf('&#') != -1) {
document.getElementById('codepoint').type='text';
//alert('' + otb.value.toHtmlEntities().replace(/^\&\#/g,'').replace(/\;$/g,'').replace(/\;\&\#/g,'.'));
document.getElementById('codepoint').value='' + otb.value.toHtmlEntities().replace(/^\&\#/g,'').replace(/\;$/g,'').replace(/\;\&\#/g,'.');
} else {
document.getElementById('codepoint').value='';
for (var jj=0; jj<otb.value.length; jj++) {
if (document.getElementById('codepoint').value == '') {
document.getElementById('codepoint').value='' + otb.value.substring(jj).substring(0,1).charCodeAt();
} else {
document.getElementById('codepoint').type='text';
document.getElementById('codepoint').value+='.' + otb.value.substring(jj).substring(0,1).charCodeAt();
}
}
}
//alert(otb.value.toHtmlEntities());
}
}
“; ?>
… that supplements the web application user interaction possibilities via a new HTML textbox definition …
<?php echo ”
<input type=text placeholder=Emoji onblur=cpit(this); maxlength=4 value='' id=anemoji title='Emoji ... perhaps via control-command-space for macOS or Mac OS X, logo key + . (period) for Windows, control=space for iOS, top left + for Android keyboard ... but please note not all International codes work with XML 1.0'></input>
“; ?>
… and the new intelligence catered for via the more astute PHP …
Basically, we only offered cryptic (ie. address bar) ways the user could control the look of their web browser (but some, like Safari, do not support SVG content based) tab icon via …
codepoint number based emoji SVG icon content … and, as of today, also available to the user in the user input parts to the web application involves the optional use of a …
textarea … default “red hexagon” … based SVG that may work as suitable for a web browser tab icon (ie. not too big)
Is there anything as easy to arrange as the great HTML textarea element as far as “programming code as data” navigational purposes the way the static innerHTML …
… where you can plug just about anything, as is, into, at the onload event, and which can be magically converted into an appropriate textarea value attribute, the contents of which, is encodeURIComponent encrypted by the HTML form element hosting to arrive at the recipient in good condition?
favicon web browser tab icon … SVG type not accepted by all browsers and platforms …
dynamism … and today we start with another offshoot of thought regarding this, as well as …
document.title also showing in the web browser tab icon … universally accepted …
… ideas we wanted to get into by writing a pretty simple generic PHP helper emojiicon.php, we got a great heads up from regarding its logic, thanks, to dynamically create favicon.svg, currently looking like …
… in our nominated folder (so, so far not catering for a lot of online traffic … we’ll see) …
Well, we were re-researching the topic of Favicon (those images on the tabs of your web browser tabs) that we talked about when we presented Gimp Favicon via Logo Primer Tutorial, but we realize now, things have moved on with the web browsers supporting SVG svg+xml “favicons” so much better these days, that we’d better “get with the plan”, so to speak (though it might be better if I give that a rest for a minute).
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Okay, minutes up!
With increased usage of SVG svg+xml text element solutions for things around here lately, we wondered whether there was a dynamic way to start using these SVG favicons, in some way. Then we thought of our SVG Clock work. At first we thought a favicon that is a relevant timestamp, but realized the impost on the web server is too big for that, and so we set out to present a local start time of the SVG Clock for a user of this web application. The SVG favicon basis is so simple …
Stick the SVG file in Document Root folder, and replace “11:54” with the relevant timestamp and we’re away, right? Yes, sort of, but there is the little matter of the relevant favicon link statement existing as a non-dynamic call to that SVG in the head section of the webpage.
Bit onerous, huh? But, what did work for us was to have a static starting wrong favicon SVG link (in head) statement that now goes in the parental svg_clock.htmlSVG Network Clock …
… those Page Visibility API ideas you might equate to “minimize” concepts, that originated when GUIs were left to deal with how to present the representation of an application when it is no longer front and center in front of the user as an opened up window. We’d “minimize” back down to the desktop icon or toolbar view of the application. Web browsers can have tabs for this equivalent purpose, and we can improve the usefulness of a web application that can still be useful when “minimized” out of the top viewing tab. Date and time themed web applications can be your more obvious candidate for usefulness here. Just present a form of “digital clock readout” and your web applications like our SVG Network Clock can still be a source of information, even when “minimized”. We think that is an improvement?!
MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Desktop Application Tutorial
We figured that an improvement on the progress with our Timekeeping web application of the recent MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Audio Broadcast Tutorial would be to mention what macOS or Mac OS X Desktop Application is topmost when the screenshot is taken. When thinking about solutions for this, there was not much time before thinking turned to …
Apple Script, which has its GUI Apple “look” … but also …
Apple Script PHP shell_exec and (macOS Terminal) command line accessible osascript command line “look” too
… and excellent resources such as this excellent one to read that made us realize a PHP codeline such as …
<?php
$tma="";
if (!file_exists($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'script.jxa')) {
// Thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5292204/macosx-get-foremost-window-title
$scris="var seApp = Application(\"System Events\");
var oProcess = seApp.processes.whose({frontmost: true})[0];
var appName = oProcess.displayedName();
var url;
var title;
switch(appName) {
case \"Safari\":
url = Application(appName).documents[0].url();
title = Application(appName).documents[0].name();
break;
case \"Opera\":
url = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().url();
title = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().name();
break;
case \"Google Chrome\":
url = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().url();
title = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().name();
break;
case \"Google Chrome Canary\", \"Chromium\":
url = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().url();
title = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().name();
break;
default:
title = oProcess.
windows().
find(w => w.attributes.byName(\"AXMain\").value() === true).
attributes.
byName(\"AXTitle\").
value()
}
offer an optional audio broadcasting piece of functionality … presented via a new 📢 (📢) emoji button, that might accompany …
notifications
… when a screenshot is taken. As good as notifications are, it could be that the user is beavering away with their head down at work as the screenshot is taken, but welcome the audio queue that a Timekeeping screenshot has been taken. As well as that, with this new audio broadcasting, the *.aiff audio files created are available to share via email or SMS using the Web Share API interfacing code. This involved changes to …
MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Web Share Personalization Tutorial
Your words, helped out by some computer derived detail data, can help personalize your work using the Quarter Hour Timekeeping web application of yesterday’s MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Web Share API Tutorial which, at least with the Safari browser (and a whole lot of other macOS conditions), now integrates with the Web Share API to attach images to prepared emails with a “body blurb”. It is that prepared “body blurb” we are trying to refine, today, should the user attach any of those Timekeeper screenshot files created via macOS screencapture command.
This is because these screenshot file names, by our convention, are of the format …
screen-yyyymmdd-hhmi.jpg
… within the macOS MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] folder (though the path to the file is unavailable to File API File object programmers).
That, teamed with the fact that individual user comments linked to any one quarter hour screenshot image has an ID attribute of the form …
tatd_yyyymmdd_hhmi
… and you have modified Javascript helping the user to tailor better personalized and detail email or SMS communications using the changedmacos_say_record.js external Javascript via …
var wsadate=new Date();
var lfd=String.fromCharCode(10);
function getwsadate(dd, mm, yyyy, hh, mi) {
wsadate=new Date(yyyy, eval(-1 + eval('' + mm)), dd, hh, mi, 0, 0);
var outdstr=wsadate.toDateString() + ' ' + wsadate.toTimeString();
outdstr=outdstr.replace('Sun ', 'Sunday ').replace('Mon ', 'Monday ').replace('Tue ', 'Tuesday ').replace('Wed ', 'Wednesday ').replace('Thu ', 'Thursday ').replace('Fri ', 'Friday ').replace('Sat ', 'Saturday ');
outdstr=outdstr.replace(':00 ', ' ').replace(' Jan ', ' January ').replace(' Feb ', ' February ').replace(' Mar ', ' March ').replace(' Apr ', ' April ').replace(' Jun ', ' June ').replace(' Jul ', ' July ').replace(' Aug ', ' August ').replace(' Sep ', ' September ').replace(' Oct ', ' October ').replace(' Nov ', ' November ').replace(' Dec ', ' December ');
//console.log('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi);
if (document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi)) {
//console.log('yes tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi);
if (document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi).value.trim() != '') {
outdstr+=' ' + String.fromCharCode(10) + '"' + document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi).value + '"';
} else if (document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi).innerHTML.trim() != '') {
outdstr+=' ' + String.fromCharCode(10) + '"' + document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi).innerHTML + '"';
}
}
lfd='';
return outdstr + String.fromCharCode(10);
}
async function atclick() {
const files = document.getElementById('files').files;
var moressi='', ifl=0, lessssi='';
lessssi=moressi;
while (lessssi.indexOf(String.fromCharCode(10)) != -1) {
lessssi=lessssi.replace(String.fromCharCode(10), ' ');
}
// feature detecting navigator.canShare() also implies
// the same for the navigator.share()
if (!navigator.canShare) {
//if (document.URL.indexOf('localhost') != -1) { alert('Can not share'); }
document.getElementById('output').textContent = `Your browser doesn't support the Web Share API.`;
return;
//} else {
//if (document.URL.indexOf('localhost') != -1) { alert('Can Share'); }
}
if (navigator.canShare({ files })) {
try {
console.log('Can share');
await navigator.share({
files,
title: 'Timekeeping screenshots' + lessssi + ' or media or documents',
text: 'Timekeeping screenshots' + moressi + ' perhaps?! Take a look at media or documents below' + String.fromCharCode(10) + String.fromCharCode(10)
});
document.getElementById('output').textContent = 'Shared!';
} catch (error) {
document.getElementById('output').textContent = `Error: ${error.message}`;
}
} else {
//if (document.URL.indexOf('localhost') != -1) { alert('Cannot share'); }
document.getElementById('output').textContent = `Your system doesn't support sharing these files.`;
}
lfd=String.fromCharCode(10);
}
the changed HTML and Javascriptquarter_hour_timer.html (we still ask you to download to MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] “HTMLCSS” subfolder) Web Application supervisor …
<script type='text/javascript' src='//www.rjmprogramming.com.au/web_share_api_test.js?populate=as_necessary' defer></script>
… nicely
… but as we’ve warned before you may need all these for total success for the Timekeeping Quarter Hour Timer web application (that can screenshot, can create notification when screenshot taken, and have audio commentary, and share screenshot image(s) or Timekeeper URL) …
… sitting up at the Document Root of your public domain, that “?ongoing=” based $_GET[‘ongoing’] argument deliberate, effectively asking the code to look out for “on the fly” HTML elements created within an execution run of the webpage.
<script type='text/javascript'>
var commentary_array=['textarea', 'You can enter comments about this screenshot here %value%outerHTML%@yyyymmdd%hhmm%.', 'img', 'Timekeeper screenshot here %id%@yyyymmdd%hhmm%.'];
</script>
… where the first field describes an HTML element attribute to first look at, the optional second is a stand by attribute, followed by “date extraction” fields to match with numerical data found so as to substitute the blue parts with a “date and timestamp” string.
not necessarily frontmost … but benefitting from any …
notification reminders separate from web activities and webpage focus issues can help tell the user when they might want to turn back attention to the timekeeping screenshot recording
This needs PHP to work and it needs real access via PHP exec function to underlying operating system commands. When this happens, we still try to offer a public RJM Programming interface but this interface is far less useful if you have not downloaded to your local Apache/PHP/MySql local web server (such as a MAMP one) as per …
settle for mobile platforms never being able to screenshot, on this round of looking, and redirecting to the “Monthly Chronicler” web application (of (the unchanged) monthly_chronicler.html we ask you to download to MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] “HTMLCSS” subfolder) …
<script>
if (navigator.userAgent.match(/Android|BlackBerry|iPhone|iPod|iPad|Opera Mini|IEMobile/i)) {
document.write("<scri" + "pt> location.href='./monthly_chronicler.html'; </scr" + "ipt> <style> a.adate { border:1px solid green; background-color:#f0f0f0; border-radius:50px; } </style> <table id=mtable style=display:none;width:95%;><tr><th><input style=width:450px; placeholder='' id=iask type=text value=''></input><</th><th><input onclick=\" document.getElementById('mtable').style.display='none'; document.getElementById('mybod').style.opacity='1.0'; postask(document.getElementById('iask'));\" type=button value=OK></input></th><th><input onclick=\"document.getElementById('iask').value=''; document.getElementById('mtable').style.display='none'; document.getElementById('mybod').style.opacity='1.0'; \" type=button value=Cancel></input></th></tr></table>");
}
</script>
… dumbing down, but working more reliably, using “Javascript writes Javascript” methodology
Again, feel free to try the changedquarter_hour_timer.html (we ask you to download to MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] “HTMLCSS” subfolder) Timekeeping Web Application suited to macOS (or Mac OS X) “screencapture” command line usage, is helped out by a “mobile platform check” changedquarter_hour_timer.php PHP (we ask you to download to MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] “HTMLCSS” subfolder) for you to try out on your MAMP macOS environment, or all showing up at an RJM Programming public domain webpage, in an iframe element, visible now.
… which you may glean has a Windows “fallback” position (with that “copy” codeline). Why? Well, we found a .Net framework “exe creation via bat” using ScreenCapture.bat (thanks to this useful link) created black screen shots. Probably a privilege thing or PHP exec thing, but we’ve opted for the workaround, which is just “Windows talk” …
write Windows batch scapcontinuous.bat as a continuous fifteen minute user of the .Net Framework (ScreenCapture.exe) derived from above
set up a task via “Task Schedular” (please ignore the warts ‘n all “garden path” schtask ideas in the video below) that has an action “C:\MAMP\htdocs\scapcontinuous.bat” and starts when the Windows user logs in and takes (successful) screen shots at 14 and 29 and 44 and 59 minutes (in the hour) times
Take a more detailed look at “warts ‘n all” crab progression towards the Windows (client) solution, below …
This bit of functionality works (interfacing) both with MAMP and with the public RJM Programming domain incarnation of the Timekeeping web application, so that could be interesting. It can interface via …
… modes of use. In action, should you create an iCal file this way, the web application will download the resultant .ics file into your Downloads folder and to interface into your default online Calendar application double click that Downloads folder file to complete the Calendar integration …
function icalpostit(tl, tg) {
var today = new Date();
var dd = today.getDate();
var mm = today.getMonth()+1; //January is 0!
var yyyy = today.getFullYear();
var hh = today.getHours();
var minm = today.getMinutes(); //January is 0!
//if (icalavailable) { alert('is ' + ('' + yyyy + ('00' + mm).slice(-2) + ('00' + dd).slice(-2) ) + ' >= ' + tl.substring(1)); }
if ((document.getElementById('yics').value.indexOf('all') != -1 || tl.substring(1) >= ('' + yyyy + ('00' + mm).slice(-2) + ('00' + dd).slice(-2) )) && icalavailable && document.getElementById('yics').value != '') {
if (document.getElementById('yics').value.indexOf('nw') != -1) {
icald=tl.substring(1) + ':' + ('00' + hh).slice(-2) + ('00' + minm).slice(-2) + '59';
icalg=tg;
if (icalwo != null) { icalwo.close(); icalwo=null; }
icalwo=window.open('../PHP/ics_attachment.php','_blank','top=100,left=100,width=740,height=800');
if (1 == 1) {
setTimeout(icalw, 3000);
} else {
icalwo.document.getElementById('datestart').value=icald;
icalwo.document.getElementById('dateend').value=icald;
icalwo.document.getElementById('eventwords').value=icalg.replace(/\<br\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\<Br\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\<BR\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10));
if (document.URL.indexOf('localhost') != -1) {
var jcald=icalg.replace(/\<br\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\<Br\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\<BR\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\ \;>/g, ' ');
while (jcald.indexOf(String.fromCharCode(10)) != -1) { jcald=jcald.replace(String.fromCharCode(10),' '); }
icalwo.document.getElementById('title').value=jcald;
} else {
icalwo.document.getElementById('title').value='Calendar event at ' + icald;
}
icalwo.document.getElementById('description').value='Calendar event at ' + icald;
icalwo.document.getElementById('address').value=document.URL.split('?')[0].split('#')[0];
icalwo.document.getElementById('mmdatestart').value=icald.substring(4,6);
icalwo.document.getElementById('mmdateend').value=icald.substring(4,6);
icalwo.document.getElementById('dddatestart').value=icald.substring(6,8);
icalwo.document.getElementById('dddateend').value=icald.substring(6,8);
icalwo.document.getElementById('ssdatestart').value='59';
icalwo.document.getElementById('ssdateend').value='59';
icalwo.document.getElementById('yyyydatestart').value=icald.substring(0,4);
icalwo.document.getElementById('yyyydateend').value=icald.substring(0,4);
if ( ('' + today.getTimezoneOffset()).replace('null','').replace('undefined','') != '' ) {
//alert(('' + eval(eval('' + qd.getTimezoneOffset()) / 60.0)).replace('.00','').replace('.0',''));
icalwo.document.getElementById('tz').value=('' + eval(eval('' + today.getTimezoneOffset()) / 60.0)).replace('.00','').replace('.0','');
}
//icalwo.document.getElementById('pform').onsubmit=function() { window.opener.document.getElementById('icalstatus').innerHTML=' '; return true; };
Mac OS MAMP Timekeeping Web Application PHP Calendar Contenteditable Tutorial
We’ve spoken quite a bit in the past about the joys of involving the “contenteditable=true” attribute for HTML elements that have an “innerHTML” (ie. they have a formalized end tag arrangement eg. div, span, p, td, th etcetera) and with today’s work which extends that started with yesterday’s Mac OS MAMP Timekeeping Web Application PHP Calendar Past Tutorial it is the turn of a set of “p” elements it helps out today.
The scenario is that yesterday’s work did not allow for “orphaned screenshots” of the past be allowed to be brought back into play to “annotate them” and in so doing “give them a home”. This led us to …
allow for a new “Infill Earlier Days All Screenshots” button augment yesterday‘s “Infill Earlier Days Just Annotated Screenshots” button …
the pressing of that new “Infill Earlier Days All Screenshots” button causes all screenshot 15 minute entries relevant to the current year be displayed in the calendar … but then it occurred to us users might want to “annotate them” … but how? …
?>
… to, when an “orphaned” screen shot image is happened upon, allows …
contenteditable=true “does its stuff” turning might might have been a pretty unintelligent HTML element into a “textarea” type collector of user input, and then that onblur event logic’s “midair feeling” Ajax/FormData “recursive feeling” methodology …
function repostit(ih) {
var ihis=(ih.innerText || ih.contentWindow || ih.contentDocument);
var pathpart=ih.id;
if (ihis != '') {
var xzhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
var xform=new FormData();
xform.append('myta',ihis);
xform.append(pathpart.split('.')[0].replace('ip_','screen-').replace('_','-'),'');
xzhr.open('post','./quarter_hour_timer.php',true);
xzhr.send(xform);
}
}
… which can cement that (newly user entered) annotation into future permanency in the “Yearly Report Calendar” section
… feel to it all. Today, we improve on the latter “restrictiveness” issue, within yesterday’s “Yearly Report Calendar” new functionality, by looking back into the current calendar year’s “past” with respect to the date of using the web application, whether that be …
screen captures from days in the current calendar year’s “past”
text entries made and remembered (in window.localStorage) in the current calendar year’s “past”
if ($bcontis != "''" && $bcontis != "") {
if ($htmlis == '') {
$htmlis="<html><head><script type=text/javascript> var imois=null, iwo=null; function wopen(event,overvsout) { if (!overvsout) { if (imois == event.target) { imois=null; } return; } imois=event.target; setTimeout(postwopen, 2000); } function postwopen() { var pois=imois; if (pois.outerHTML.indexOf('URL(') != -1) { window.open(pois.outerHTML.split('URL(')[1].split(')')[0].replace(String.fromCharCode(34),'').replace(String.fromCharCode(34),''),'_blank','top=50,left=50,width=600,height=600'); } }</script></head><body onload=\" var huhg=''; if (parent.document.getElementById('" . $idcali . "')) { huhg='" . $ccpre . $bcontis . $ccpost . "'; while (huhg.indexOf(String.fromCharCode(10)) != -1) { huhg=huhg.replace(String.fromCharCode(10),'<br>'); } parent.document.getElementById('" . $idcali . "').innerHTML+=huhg; } \"></body></html>";
} else if (strpos($htmlis, $bcontis) === false) {
$htmlis=str_replace("+=huhg; }", "+=huhg; huhg='" . $ccpre . $bcontis . $ccpost . "'; while (huhg.indexOf(String.fromCharCode(10)) != -1) { huhg=huhg.replace(String.fromCharCode(10),'<br>'); } parent.document.getElementById('" . $idcali . "').innerHTML+=huhg; }", $htmlis);
}
}
}
}
if ($htmlis != "") { echo $htmlis; }
}
}
}
}
}
}
// blah else if blah else if blah
?>
… which you may notice implements a “long hover” window.open scenario (using non-mobile platforms) for screenshot images on the calendar by combining the use of …
global variables …
var imois=null;
var iwo=null;
onmouseover event logic …
Call
onmouseover=wopen(event,true);
setTimeout delays …
Called
function wopen(event,overvsout) {
if (!overvsout) {
if (imois == event.target) {
imois=null;
}
return;
}
imois=event.target;
setTimeout(postwopen, 2000);
}
function postwopen() { //pois) {
if (imois) {
var pois=imois;
if (pois.outerHTML.indexOf('URL(') != -1) {
if (iwo) { iwo.close(); iwo=null; }
iwo = window.open(pois.outerHTML.split('URL(')[1].split(')')[0].replace(String.fromCharCode(34), '').replace(String.fromCharCode(34), ''), '_blank', 'top=50,left=50,width=600,height=600');
}
}
}
onmouseout event logic …
Call
onmouseout=wopen(event,false);
… so that this logic is not responsible for clobbering the default “hover” shows of the “p” element “title” attribute with the onmouseover event for non-mobile platforms.
Mac OS MAMP Timekeeping Web Application PHP Image Metadata Tutorial
In our opinion, what would make the day before yesterday’s Mac OS MAMP Timekeeping Web Application PHP Intranet Tutorial “Timekeeping Web Application” cooler would be to add to the intelligence of the screen capture images, ahead of other data related improvements to come.
We’ve spoken in the past about Exif in that respect but PHP has Iptc image metadata functions we can call on …
iptcembed to embed new metadata into an existant image from those associated “caption” textarea elements we offer
iptcparse to extract old metadata from an existant image into those associated “caption” textarea elements we offer
This metadata can be like a database source we use moving forward on this project, meaning the one image data entity can suffice for both visual and textual usage purposes.
Mac OS X MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Email Tutorial
The practicalities of yesterday’s (Mac OS X MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Primer Tutorial) timekeeping Mac OS X Web Application, left as they are, would leave you with a somewhat useful web application whose use is only for the here and now, but what if you want it to be more accountable? Well, that is when we, here, at RJM Programming, like to use that tried and trusted email form of communication.
Today’s email methods spurn the use of server-side intervention, at least for now. So what is available to us as tools, if we don’t include Ajax nor jQuery in that list? Well, we have, to our minds …
the body section of that email can have a clipboard image pasted into it, for which we can utilize HTML5 canvas element’s toDataURL() method, teamed up with a window.open popup window of the toDataURL image data, which can be selected and copied, optionally, by the user themselves, should they wish this to make their email more self explanatory
We rely on the crontab functionality, being as there is no server-side help, to create the image file, whose contents eventually go to make up the contents that can be selected and copied and pasted by the user into the body section of the email (and sent off to whosoever they feel like sending it too, as you have the full power of the email client available to you with the interaction you have with an actual email client program).
Here is the HTML and Javascript quarter_hour_timer.html which changed to cater for today’s email functionality in this way, and, as per the Stop Press from yesterday, we’ll also have a live run link here today.
Mac OS X MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Primer Tutorial
Sometimes when you program, especially for administrative type functionality, there are useful programs to write, that are able to become web applications, but in a limited set of platforms. So it is today with our timekeeping web application that relies on …
MAMP installed to, in our case, /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ (as is mentioned in the relevant crontab background task that snapshots the user’s screen every quarter hour) that maps to the MAMP web application URL http://localhost:8888/ … or …
crontab directory mention that corresponds to a URL call of our web application like for our Google Chrome example (where the directory below, used, could be a place of your choosing (that matches what is in your crontab task entry)) …
file:///Applications/MAMP/htdocs/quarter_hour_timer.html?localplace=
… or just, via the web browser’s File -> Open File menu …
file:///Applications/MAMP/htdocs/quarter_hour_timer.html
… pretty restrictive, huh? … but pretty useful for our quarter hour timekeeping purposes today.
We want to have a web application that is running at the user’s discretion, and when first fired up, looks for outputs from crontab tasks above …
… for the current day in question and if existant show …
a date and time stamp +
the snapshot of what you were doing at the quarter hour, that is clickable to make bigger for more in depth viewing +
an HTML textarea element in which you can optionally type in more specifics about that quarter hour
So, as much as we like to think of Mac OS X Terminal application’s BSD (a unix derivative) operating system, as being a lot like Linux, there are some commands and usage that …
adds Mac OS X specific command line functionality to a Linux or unix base set of functionality, like for today’s screencapture command … and we’ve included another such example, below, with the command say featuring in Mac OS X Text to English Speech Primer Tutorial as shown below
changes switches on Linux or unix commands
won’t have some Linux or unix commands that other platforms do
In the great tradition of behoving … we behove … we behove thee quarter_hour_timer.html if you like, my liege. On this occasion you’ll have gleaned that there is no live run link, because the RJM Programming web server is not Mac OS X … so command line screencapture has no meaning for a CentOS web server’s operating system command line. You’ll see in the code that rather than use “Client Pre-emptive Iframe” concepts to check for existence of crontab screen capture images, we, instead use the onerror event for HTML img elements to check for non-existance.
Stop Press
Just noticed that, perhaps, after all, a live run from the RJM Programming website can make sense if you have a Mac OS X laptop, for instance, that is running that suggested crontab entry as explained in tutorial above. That type of live run managed to latch on to our local crontab screencaptures on my MacBook Pro.
Text to English Speech via Mac OS X’s command line say command used by PHP via exec to make say.php (which is useful as a download to a Mac OS X laptop using MAMP) which, today, does not have a live run because the web server of domain rjmprogramming.com.au is a CentOS Linux server … Linux equivalent of Mac OS X’s say? … read here
Trying to present this brought up the usual movie production problem with iMovie overlaying the audio on top of the video (though you may want to try, and you could start reading with this link) versus QuickTime Player talent to catch both audio and video tracks (and that we ended up using), but not of the “screen goings on”, alas versus MPlayer OSX Extended which can play separately but not two tracks on top and doesn’t do any reconstituting … so …
Improved on our inhouse Video/Audio synchronizing efforts by allowing audio_video.html supervisor (changed in this way) be able to be called to press one of its preconceived synchronization buttons onload which we do with (the newly added) Macbeth Act 1 Scene 1 … in a small celebration of the Bard … who, am thinking (in that Falstaff way), would have got a huge chuckle out of “anonymous” instead of “anon” during the Three Witches scene … we had to do something to say Happy Birthday
Along the way we tried filming the MacBook Pro with the iPad to a YouTube …
… but weren’t happy with the audio quality, alas (too/two).
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Basically, we only offered cryptic (ie. address bar) ways the user could control the look of their web browser (but some, like Safari, do not support SVG content based) tab icon via …
codepoint number based emoji SVG icon content … and, as of today, also available to the user in the user input parts to the web application involves the optional use of a …
textarea … default “red hexagon” … based SVG that may work as suitable for a web browser tab icon (ie. not too big)
Is there anything as easy to arrange as the great HTML textarea element as far as “programming code as data” navigational purposes the way the static innerHTML …
… where you can plug just about anything, as is, into, at the onload event, and which can be magically converted into an appropriate textarea value attribute, the contents of which, is encodeURIComponent encrypted by the HTML form element hosting to arrive at the recipient in good condition?
favicon web browser tab icon … SVG type not accepted by all browsers and platforms …
dynamism … and today we start with another offshoot of thought regarding this, as well as …
document.title also showing in the web browser tab icon … universally accepted …
… ideas we wanted to get into by writing a pretty simple generic PHP helper emojiicon.php, we got a great heads up from regarding its logic, thanks, to dynamically create favicon.svg, currently looking like …
… in our nominated folder (so, so far not catering for a lot of online traffic … we’ll see) …
Well, we were re-researching the topic of Favicon (those images on the tabs of your web browser tabs) that we talked about when we presented Gimp Favicon via Logo Primer Tutorial, but we realize now, things have moved on with the web browsers supporting SVG svg+xml “favicons” so much better these days, that we’d better “get with the plan”, so to speak (though it might be better if I give that a rest for a minute).
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Okay, minutes up!
With increased usage of SVG svg+xml text element solutions for things around here lately, we wondered whether there was a dynamic way to start using these SVG favicons, in some way. Then we thought of our SVG Clock work. At first we thought a favicon that is a relevant timestamp, but realized the impost on the web server is too big for that, and so we set out to present a local start time of the SVG Clock for a user of this web application. The SVG favicon basis is so simple …
Stick the SVG file in Document Root folder, and replace “11:54” with the relevant timestamp and we’re away, right? Yes, sort of, but there is the little matter of the relevant favicon link statement existing as a non-dynamic call to that SVG in the head section of the webpage.
Bit onerous, huh? But, what did work for us was to have a static starting wrong favicon SVG link (in head) statement that now goes in the parental svg_clock.htmlSVG Network Clock …
… those Page Visibility API ideas you might equate to “minimize” concepts, that originated when GUIs were left to deal with how to present the representation of an application when it is no longer front and center in front of the user as an opened up window. We’d “minimize” back down to the desktop icon or toolbar view of the application. Web browsers can have tabs for this equivalent purpose, and we can improve the usefulness of a web application that can still be useful when “minimized” out of the top viewing tab. Date and time themed web applications can be your more obvious candidate for usefulness here. Just present a form of “digital clock readout” and your web applications like our SVG Network Clock can still be a source of information, even when “minimized”. We think that is an improvement?!
MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Desktop Application Tutorial
We figured that an improvement on the progress with our Timekeeping web application of the recent MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Audio Broadcast Tutorial would be to mention what macOS or Mac OS X Desktop Application is topmost when the screenshot is taken. When thinking about solutions for this, there was not much time before thinking turned to …
Apple Script, which has its GUI Apple “look” … but also …
Apple Script PHP shell_exec and (macOS Terminal) command line accessible osascript command line “look” too
… and excellent resources such as this excellent one to read that made us realize a PHP codeline such as …
<?php
$tma="";
if (!file_exists($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'script.jxa')) {
// Thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5292204/macosx-get-foremost-window-title
$scris="var seApp = Application(\"System Events\");
var oProcess = seApp.processes.whose({frontmost: true})[0];
var appName = oProcess.displayedName();
var url;
var title;
switch(appName) {
case \"Safari\":
url = Application(appName).documents[0].url();
title = Application(appName).documents[0].name();
break;
case \"Opera\":
url = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().url();
title = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().name();
break;
case \"Google Chrome\":
url = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().url();
title = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().name();
break;
case \"Google Chrome Canary\", \"Chromium\":
url = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().url();
title = Application(appName).windows[0].activeTab().name();
break;
default:
title = oProcess.
windows().
find(w => w.attributes.byName(\"AXMain\").value() === true).
attributes.
byName(\"AXTitle\").
value()
}
offer an optional audio broadcasting piece of functionality … presented via a new 📢 (📢) emoji button, that might accompany …
notifications
… when a screenshot is taken. As good as notifications are, it could be that the user is beavering away with their head down at work as the screenshot is taken, but welcome the audio queue that a Timekeeping screenshot has been taken. As well as that, with this new audio broadcasting, the *.aiff audio files created are available to share via email or SMS using the Web Share API interfacing code. This involved changes to …
MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Web Share Personalization Tutorial
Your words, helped out by some computer derived detail data, can help personalize your work using the Quarter Hour Timekeeping web application of yesterday’s MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Web Share API Tutorial which, at least with the Safari browser (and a whole lot of other macOS conditions), now integrates with the Web Share API to attach images to prepared emails with a “body blurb”. It is that prepared “body blurb” we are trying to refine, today, should the user attach any of those Timekeeper screenshot files created via macOS screencapture command.
This is because these screenshot file names, by our convention, are of the format …
screen-yyyymmdd-hhmi.jpg
… within the macOS MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] folder (though the path to the file is unavailable to File API File object programmers).
That, teamed with the fact that individual user comments linked to any one quarter hour screenshot image has an ID attribute of the form …
tatd_yyyymmdd_hhmi
… and you have modified Javascript helping the user to tailor better personalized and detail email or SMS communications using the changedmacos_say_record.js external Javascript via …
var wsadate=new Date();
var lfd=String.fromCharCode(10);
function getwsadate(dd, mm, yyyy, hh, mi) {
wsadate=new Date(yyyy, eval(-1 + eval('' + mm)), dd, hh, mi, 0, 0);
var outdstr=wsadate.toDateString() + ' ' + wsadate.toTimeString();
outdstr=outdstr.replace('Sun ', 'Sunday ').replace('Mon ', 'Monday ').replace('Tue ', 'Tuesday ').replace('Wed ', 'Wednesday ').replace('Thu ', 'Thursday ').replace('Fri ', 'Friday ').replace('Sat ', 'Saturday ');
outdstr=outdstr.replace(':00 ', ' ').replace(' Jan ', ' January ').replace(' Feb ', ' February ').replace(' Mar ', ' March ').replace(' Apr ', ' April ').replace(' Jun ', ' June ').replace(' Jul ', ' July ').replace(' Aug ', ' August ').replace(' Sep ', ' September ').replace(' Oct ', ' October ').replace(' Nov ', ' November ').replace(' Dec ', ' December ');
//console.log('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi);
if (document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi)) {
//console.log('yes tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi);
if (document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi).value.trim() != '') {
outdstr+=' ' + String.fromCharCode(10) + '"' + document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi).value + '"';
} else if (document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi).innerHTML.trim() != '') {
outdstr+=' ' + String.fromCharCode(10) + '"' + document.getElementById('tatd_' + yyyy + mm + dd + '_' + hh + mi).innerHTML + '"';
}
}
lfd='';
return outdstr + String.fromCharCode(10);
}
async function atclick() {
const files = document.getElementById('files').files;
var moressi='', ifl=0, lessssi='';
lessssi=moressi;
while (lessssi.indexOf(String.fromCharCode(10)) != -1) {
lessssi=lessssi.replace(String.fromCharCode(10), ' ');
}
// feature detecting navigator.canShare() also implies
// the same for the navigator.share()
if (!navigator.canShare) {
//if (document.URL.indexOf('localhost') != -1) { alert('Can not share'); }
document.getElementById('output').textContent = `Your browser doesn't support the Web Share API.`;
return;
//} else {
//if (document.URL.indexOf('localhost') != -1) { alert('Can Share'); }
}
if (navigator.canShare({ files })) {
try {
console.log('Can share');
await navigator.share({
files,
title: 'Timekeeping screenshots' + lessssi + ' or media or documents',
text: 'Timekeeping screenshots' + moressi + ' perhaps?! Take a look at media or documents below' + String.fromCharCode(10) + String.fromCharCode(10)
});
document.getElementById('output').textContent = 'Shared!';
} catch (error) {
document.getElementById('output').textContent = `Error: ${error.message}`;
}
} else {
//if (document.URL.indexOf('localhost') != -1) { alert('Cannot share'); }
document.getElementById('output').textContent = `Your system doesn't support sharing these files.`;
}
lfd=String.fromCharCode(10);
}
the changed HTML and Javascriptquarter_hour_timer.html (we still ask you to download to MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] “HTMLCSS” subfolder) Web Application supervisor …
<script type='text/javascript' src='//www.rjmprogramming.com.au/web_share_api_test.js?populate=as_necessary' defer></script>
… nicely
… but as we’ve warned before you may need all these for total success for the Timekeeping Quarter Hour Timer web application (that can screenshot, can create notification when screenshot taken, and have audio commentary, and share screenshot image(s) or Timekeeper URL) …
… sitting up at the Document Root of your public domain, that “?ongoing=” based $_GET[‘ongoing’] argument deliberate, effectively asking the code to look out for “on the fly” HTML elements created within an execution run of the webpage.
<script type='text/javascript'>
var commentary_array=['textarea', 'You can enter comments about this screenshot here %value%outerHTML%@yyyymmdd%hhmm%.', 'img', 'Timekeeper screenshot here %id%@yyyymmdd%hhmm%.'];
</script>
… where the first field describes an HTML element attribute to first look at, the optional second is a stand by attribute, followed by “date extraction” fields to match with numerical data found so as to substitute the blue parts with a “date and timestamp” string.
not necessarily frontmost … but benefitting from any …
notification reminders separate from web activities and webpage focus issues can help tell the user when they might want to turn back attention to the timekeeping screenshot recording
This needs PHP to work and it needs real access via PHP exec function to underlying operating system commands. When this happens, we still try to offer a public RJM Programming interface but this interface is far less useful if you have not downloaded to your local Apache/PHP/MySql local web server (such as a MAMP one) as per …
settle for mobile platforms never being able to screenshot, on this round of looking, and redirecting to the “Monthly Chronicler” web application (of (the unchanged) monthly_chronicler.html we ask you to download to MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] “HTMLCSS” subfolder) …
<script>
if (navigator.userAgent.match(/Android|BlackBerry|iPhone|iPod|iPad|Opera Mini|IEMobile/i)) {
document.write("<scri" + "pt> location.href='./monthly_chronicler.html'; </scr" + "ipt> <style> a.adate { border:1px solid green; background-color:#f0f0f0; border-radius:50px; } </style> <table id=mtable style=display:none;width:95%;><tr><th><input style=width:450px; placeholder='' id=iask type=text value=''></input><</th><th><input onclick=\" document.getElementById('mtable').style.display='none'; document.getElementById('mybod').style.opacity='1.0'; postask(document.getElementById('iask'));\" type=button value=OK></input></th><th><input onclick=\"document.getElementById('iask').value=''; document.getElementById('mtable').style.display='none'; document.getElementById('mybod').style.opacity='1.0'; \" type=button value=Cancel></input></th></tr></table>");
}
</script>
… dumbing down, but working more reliably, using “Javascript writes Javascript” methodology
Again, feel free to try the changedquarter_hour_timer.html (we ask you to download to MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] “HTMLCSS” subfolder) Timekeeping Web Application suited to macOS (or Mac OS X) “screencapture” command line usage, is helped out by a “mobile platform check” changedquarter_hour_timer.php PHP (we ask you to download to MAMP‘s $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] “HTMLCSS” subfolder) for you to try out on your MAMP macOS environment, or all showing up at an RJM Programming public domain webpage, in an iframe element, visible now.
… which you may glean has a Windows “fallback” position (with that “copy” codeline). Why? Well, we found a .Net framework “exe creation via bat” using ScreenCapture.bat (thanks to this useful link) created black screen shots. Probably a privilege thing or PHP exec thing, but we’ve opted for the workaround, which is just “Windows talk” …
write Windows batch scapcontinuous.bat as a continuous fifteen minute user of the .Net Framework (ScreenCapture.exe) derived from above
set up a task via “Task Schedular” (please ignore the warts ‘n all “garden path” schtask ideas in the video below) that has an action “C:\MAMP\htdocs\scapcontinuous.bat” and starts when the Windows user logs in and takes (successful) screen shots at 14 and 29 and 44 and 59 minutes (in the hour) times
Take a more detailed look at “warts ‘n all” crab progression towards the Windows (client) solution, below …
This bit of functionality works (interfacing) both with MAMP and with the public RJM Programming domain incarnation of the Timekeeping web application, so that could be interesting. It can interface via …
… modes of use. In action, should you create an iCal file this way, the web application will download the resultant .ics file into your Downloads folder and to interface into your default online Calendar application double click that Downloads folder file to complete the Calendar integration …
function icalpostit(tl, tg) {
var today = new Date();
var dd = today.getDate();
var mm = today.getMonth()+1; //January is 0!
var yyyy = today.getFullYear();
var hh = today.getHours();
var minm = today.getMinutes(); //January is 0!
//if (icalavailable) { alert('is ' + ('' + yyyy + ('00' + mm).slice(-2) + ('00' + dd).slice(-2) ) + ' >= ' + tl.substring(1)); }
if ((document.getElementById('yics').value.indexOf('all') != -1 || tl.substring(1) >= ('' + yyyy + ('00' + mm).slice(-2) + ('00' + dd).slice(-2) )) && icalavailable && document.getElementById('yics').value != '') {
if (document.getElementById('yics').value.indexOf('nw') != -1) {
icald=tl.substring(1) + ':' + ('00' + hh).slice(-2) + ('00' + minm).slice(-2) + '59';
icalg=tg;
if (icalwo != null) { icalwo.close(); icalwo=null; }
icalwo=window.open('../PHP/ics_attachment.php','_blank','top=100,left=100,width=740,height=800');
if (1 == 1) {
setTimeout(icalw, 3000);
} else {
icalwo.document.getElementById('datestart').value=icald;
icalwo.document.getElementById('dateend').value=icald;
icalwo.document.getElementById('eventwords').value=icalg.replace(/\<br\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\<Br\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\<BR\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10));
if (document.URL.indexOf('localhost') != -1) {
var jcald=icalg.replace(/\<br\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\<Br\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\<BR\>/g, String.fromCharCode(10)).replace(/\ \;>/g, ' ');
while (jcald.indexOf(String.fromCharCode(10)) != -1) { jcald=jcald.replace(String.fromCharCode(10),' '); }
icalwo.document.getElementById('title').value=jcald;
} else {
icalwo.document.getElementById('title').value='Calendar event at ' + icald;
}
icalwo.document.getElementById('description').value='Calendar event at ' + icald;
icalwo.document.getElementById('address').value=document.URL.split('?')[0].split('#')[0];
icalwo.document.getElementById('mmdatestart').value=icald.substring(4,6);
icalwo.document.getElementById('mmdateend').value=icald.substring(4,6);
icalwo.document.getElementById('dddatestart').value=icald.substring(6,8);
icalwo.document.getElementById('dddateend').value=icald.substring(6,8);
icalwo.document.getElementById('ssdatestart').value='59';
icalwo.document.getElementById('ssdateend').value='59';
icalwo.document.getElementById('yyyydatestart').value=icald.substring(0,4);
icalwo.document.getElementById('yyyydateend').value=icald.substring(0,4);
if ( ('' + today.getTimezoneOffset()).replace('null','').replace('undefined','') != '' ) {
//alert(('' + eval(eval('' + qd.getTimezoneOffset()) / 60.0)).replace('.00','').replace('.0',''));
icalwo.document.getElementById('tz').value=('' + eval(eval('' + today.getTimezoneOffset()) / 60.0)).replace('.00','').replace('.0','');
}
//icalwo.document.getElementById('pform').onsubmit=function() { window.opener.document.getElementById('icalstatus').innerHTML=' '; return true; };
Mac OS MAMP Timekeeping Web Application PHP Calendar Contenteditable Tutorial
We’ve spoken quite a bit in the past about the joys of involving the “contenteditable=true” attribute for HTML elements that have an “innerHTML” (ie. they have a formalized end tag arrangement eg. div, span, p, td, th etcetera) and with today’s work which extends that started with yesterday’s Mac OS MAMP Timekeeping Web Application PHP Calendar Past Tutorial it is the turn of a set of “p” elements it helps out today.
The scenario is that yesterday’s work did not allow for “orphaned screenshots” of the past be allowed to be brought back into play to “annotate them” and in so doing “give them a home”. This led us to …
allow for a new “Infill Earlier Days All Screenshots” button augment yesterday‘s “Infill Earlier Days Just Annotated Screenshots” button …
the pressing of that new “Infill Earlier Days All Screenshots” button causes all screenshot 15 minute entries relevant to the current year be displayed in the calendar … but then it occurred to us users might want to “annotate them” … but how? …
?>
… to, when an “orphaned” screen shot image is happened upon, allows …
contenteditable=true “does its stuff” turning might might have been a pretty unintelligent HTML element into a “textarea” type collector of user input, and then that onblur event logic’s “midair feeling” Ajax/FormData “recursive feeling” methodology …
function repostit(ih) {
var ihis=(ih.innerText || ih.contentWindow || ih.contentDocument);
var pathpart=ih.id;
if (ihis != '') {
var xzhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
var xform=new FormData();
xform.append('myta',ihis);
xform.append(pathpart.split('.')[0].replace('ip_','screen-').replace('_','-'),'');
xzhr.open('post','./quarter_hour_timer.php',true);
xzhr.send(xform);
}
}
… which can cement that (newly user entered) annotation into future permanency in the “Yearly Report Calendar” section
… feel to it all. Today, we improve on the latter “restrictiveness” issue, within yesterday’s “Yearly Report Calendar” new functionality, by looking back into the current calendar year’s “past” with respect to the date of using the web application, whether that be …
screen captures from days in the current calendar year’s “past”
text entries made and remembered (in window.localStorage) in the current calendar year’s “past”
if ($bcontis != "''" && $bcontis != "") {
if ($htmlis == '') {
$htmlis="<html><head><script type=text/javascript> var imois=null, iwo=null; function wopen(event,overvsout) { if (!overvsout) { if (imois == event.target) { imois=null; } return; } imois=event.target; setTimeout(postwopen, 2000); } function postwopen() { var pois=imois; if (pois.outerHTML.indexOf('URL(') != -1) { window.open(pois.outerHTML.split('URL(')[1].split(')')[0].replace(String.fromCharCode(34),'').replace(String.fromCharCode(34),''),'_blank','top=50,left=50,width=600,height=600'); } }</script></head><body onload=\" var huhg=''; if (parent.document.getElementById('" . $idcali . "')) { huhg='" . $ccpre . $bcontis . $ccpost . "'; while (huhg.indexOf(String.fromCharCode(10)) != -1) { huhg=huhg.replace(String.fromCharCode(10),'<br>'); } parent.document.getElementById('" . $idcali . "').innerHTML+=huhg; } \"></body></html>";
} else if (strpos($htmlis, $bcontis) === false) {
$htmlis=str_replace("+=huhg; }", "+=huhg; huhg='" . $ccpre . $bcontis . $ccpost . "'; while (huhg.indexOf(String.fromCharCode(10)) != -1) { huhg=huhg.replace(String.fromCharCode(10),'<br>'); } parent.document.getElementById('" . $idcali . "').innerHTML+=huhg; }", $htmlis);
}
}
}
}
if ($htmlis != "") { echo $htmlis; }
}
}
}
}
}
}
// blah else if blah else if blah
?>
… which you may notice implements a “long hover” window.open scenario (using non-mobile platforms) for screenshot images on the calendar by combining the use of …
global variables …
var imois=null;
var iwo=null;
onmouseover event logic …
Call
onmouseover=wopen(event,true);
setTimeout delays …
Called
function wopen(event,overvsout) {
if (!overvsout) {
if (imois == event.target) {
imois=null;
}
return;
}
imois=event.target;
setTimeout(postwopen, 2000);
}
function postwopen() { //pois) {
if (imois) {
var pois=imois;
if (pois.outerHTML.indexOf('URL(') != -1) {
if (iwo) { iwo.close(); iwo=null; }
iwo = window.open(pois.outerHTML.split('URL(')[1].split(')')[0].replace(String.fromCharCode(34), '').replace(String.fromCharCode(34), ''), '_blank', 'top=50,left=50,width=600,height=600');
}
}
}
onmouseout event logic …
Call
onmouseout=wopen(event,false);
… so that this logic is not responsible for clobbering the default “hover” shows of the “p” element “title” attribute with the onmouseover event for non-mobile platforms.
Mac OS MAMP Timekeeping Web Application PHP Image Metadata Tutorial
In our opinion, what would make the day before yesterday’s Mac OS MAMP Timekeeping Web Application PHP Intranet Tutorial “Timekeeping Web Application” cooler would be to add to the intelligence of the screen capture images, ahead of other data related improvements to come.
We’ve spoken in the past about Exif in that respect but PHP has Iptc image metadata functions we can call on …
iptcembed to embed new metadata into an existant image from those associated “caption” textarea elements we offer
iptcparse to extract old metadata from an existant image into those associated “caption” textarea elements we offer
This metadata can be like a database source we use moving forward on this project, meaning the one image data entity can suffice for both visual and textual usage purposes.
Mac OS X MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Email Tutorial
The practicalities of yesterday’s (Mac OS X MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Primer Tutorial) timekeeping Mac OS X Web Application, left as they are, would leave you with a somewhat useful web application whose use is only for the here and now, but what if you want it to be more accountable? Well, that is when we, here, at RJM Programming, like to use that tried and trusted email form of communication.
Today’s email methods spurn the use of server-side intervention, at least for now. So what is available to us as tools, if we don’t include Ajax nor jQuery in that list? Well, we have, to our minds …
the body section of that email can have a clipboard image pasted into it, for which we can utilize HTML5 canvas element’s toDataURL() method, teamed up with a window.open popup window of the toDataURL image data, which can be selected and copied, optionally, by the user themselves, should they wish this to make their email more self explanatory
We rely on the crontab functionality, being as there is no server-side help, to create the image file, whose contents eventually go to make up the contents that can be selected and copied and pasted by the user into the body section of the email (and sent off to whosoever they feel like sending it too, as you have the full power of the email client available to you with the interaction you have with an actual email client program).
Here is the HTML and Javascript quarter_hour_timer.html which changed to cater for today’s email functionality in this way, and, as per the Stop Press from yesterday, we’ll also have a live run link here today.
Mac OS X MAMP Timekeeping Web Application Primer Tutorial
Sometimes when you program, especially for administrative type functionality, there are useful programs to write, that are able to become web applications, but in a limited set of platforms. So it is today with our timekeeping web application that relies on …
MAMP installed to, in our case, /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/ (as is mentioned in the relevant crontab background task that snapshots the user’s screen every quarter hour) that maps to the MAMP web application URL http://localhost:8888/ … or …
crontab directory mention that corresponds to a URL call of our web application like for our Google Chrome example (where the directory below, used, could be a place of your choosing (that matches what is in your crontab task entry)) …
file:///Applications/MAMP/htdocs/quarter_hour_timer.html?localplace=
… or just, via the web browser’s File -> Open File menu …
file:///Applications/MAMP/htdocs/quarter_hour_timer.html
… pretty restrictive, huh? … but pretty useful for our quarter hour timekeeping purposes today.
We want to have a web application that is running at the user’s discretion, and when first fired up, looks for outputs from crontab tasks above …
… for the current day in question and if existant show …
a date and time stamp +
the snapshot of what you were doing at the quarter hour, that is clickable to make bigger for more in depth viewing +
an HTML textarea element in which you can optionally type in more specifics about that quarter hour
So, as much as we like to think of Mac OS X Terminal application’s BSD (a unix derivative) operating system, as being a lot like Linux, there are some commands and usage that …
adds Mac OS X specific command line functionality to a Linux or unix base set of functionality, like for today’s screencapture command … and we’ve included another such example, below, with the command say featuring in Mac OS X Text to English Speech Primer Tutorial as shown below
changes switches on Linux or unix commands
won’t have some Linux or unix commands that other platforms do
In the great tradition of behoving … we behove … we behove thee quarter_hour_timer.html if you like, my liege. On this occasion you’ll have gleaned that there is no live run link, because the RJM Programming web server is not Mac OS X … so command line screencapture has no meaning for a CentOS web server’s operating system command line. You’ll see in the code that rather than use “Client Pre-emptive Iframe” concepts to check for existence of crontab screen capture images, we, instead use the onerror event for HTML img elements to check for non-existance.
Stop Press
Just noticed that, perhaps, after all, a live run from the RJM Programming website can make sense if you have a Mac OS X laptop, for instance, that is running that suggested crontab entry as explained in tutorial above. That type of live run managed to latch on to our local crontab screencaptures on my MacBook Pro.
Text to English Speech via Mac OS X’s command line say command used by PHP via exec to make say.php (which is useful as a download to a Mac OS X laptop using MAMP) which, today, does not have a live run because the web server of domain rjmprogramming.com.au is a CentOS Linux server … Linux equivalent of Mac OS X’s say? … read here
Trying to present this brought up the usual movie production problem with iMovie overlaying the audio on top of the video (though you may want to try, and you could start reading with this link) versus QuickTime Player talent to catch both audio and video tracks (and that we ended up using), but not of the “screen goings on”, alas versus MPlayer OSX Extended which can play separately but not two tracks on top and doesn’t do any reconstituting … so …
Improved on our inhouse Video/Audio synchronizing efforts by allowing audio_video.html supervisor (changed in this way) be able to be called to press one of its preconceived synchronization buttons onload which we do with (the newly added) Macbeth Act 1 Scene 1 … in a small celebration of the Bard … who, am thinking (in that Falstaff way), would have got a huge chuckle out of “anonymous” instead of “anon” during the Three Witches scene … we had to do something to say Happy Birthday
Along the way we tried filming the MacBook Pro with the iPad to a YouTube …
… but weren’t happy with the audio quality, alas (too/two).
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And in those terms, we can illustrate what we mean below, by you leaving checked the checkbox ignoring the # hashtagging (ie. opening up the possibility of both 404 errors and introducing 414 (request too long) errors we can’t do much about (except to suggest positioning # hashtagging after your established RJM Programming website URL and ahead of the data URI may help) and likely when using data URI incarnations copied to the web browser address bar URL and not including the # hashtagging) regarding some web browser address bar URL “imaginings” a user may append (probably via copy and paste (perhaps via a Google image search’s right click menu’s Copy Image Address option, most likely after a # (bearing in mind the cache may annoy without a new ? argument on previously used web browser tabs) methodologies) onto established RJM Programming website URLs probably there already to the left of the web browser‘s relevant tab’s address bar …
… is using a custom error page called 404.php featuring PHP writes Javascript changes …
<script type="text/javascript">
// focus on search field after it has loaded
document.getElementById('s') && document.getElementById('s').focus();
<?php echo $wobitis . "
Also, today, we allow image editing regarding the downloadablelatest draftrecording_ideas.php placed into it’s Document Root, and so be accessible via URL http://localhost/recording_ideas.php (Windows) or http://localhost:8888/recording_ideas.php (macOS) on a MAMP local Apache web server to make all this be possible.
… being that, within the purview of the RJM Programming domain these two represent two different websites and so use their own different custom error document or custom error page Apache web server arrangements.
Today, we consider RJM Programming domain’s Apache web server’s Landing Page (et al) website “Not Found” (ie. HTTP error code 404) scenario.
And in those terms, we can illustrate what we mean below, by you leaving checked the checkbox ignoring the # hashtagging (ie. opening up the possibility of both 404 errors and introducing 414 (request too long) errors we can’t do much about (except to suggest positioning # hashtagging after your established RJM Programming website URL and ahead of the data URI may help) and likely when using data URI incarnations copied to the web browser address bar URL and not including the # hashtagging) regarding some web browser address bar URL “imaginings” a user may append (probably via copy and paste (perhaps via a Google image search’s right click menu’s Copy Image Address option, most likely after a # (bearing in mind the cache may annoy without a new ? argument on previously used web browser tabs) methodologies) onto established RJM Programming website URLs probably there already to the left of the web browser‘s relevant tab’s address bar …
Non-Hashtag Tests … optional or
Hashtag
Non-Hashtag
From where, for the RJM Programming’s Landing Page website’s purposes, is the logic for these HTTP error code 404 redirections, springing?
The 404.shtml custom error page file is doing this job, and has new Javascript code snippets as per …
var locwo=null;
var jnuidea='';
var usuff=(document.URL.indexOf('/ITblog') != -1 ? 'ITblog/' : '');
var plusd='+';
if (('' + decodeURIComponent(('' + document.URL))).indexOf('data:') != -1 && ('' + ('' + document.URL)).indexOf('%20') != -1) { plusd=' '; }
Landing Page “hashtag containing” data URI and absolute URL redirection logics … helps, as a one to one block of Javascript code usefulness to …
WordPress Blog “hashtag containing” data URI and absolute URL redirection logics
… being that, within the purview of the RJM Programming domain these two represent two different websites and so use their own different custom error document or custom error page Apache web server arrangements.
Our logic here involves hashtag concerns, and hashtag data does not even register at the serverside end of the “delivery of online HTML webpage display” workflow, and so is a Javascript, purely clientside part of the scope of work. So, regarding a PHP written WordPress Blog, what we need for interventional purposes here is to locate where the document.body element is coded for. Luckily, we do a lot of tweaks to the PHP code where the “onload” event is defined in good ol’ header.php WordPress TwentyTen theme codex PHP file. And we pick the first of our document.body “onload” event “inhouse functions” called chkinodo to plug the slightly modified from yesterday …
… mainly regarding working the logic for svg+xml utf8 data URI where the blank character encoding %20 can come into play …
… and we output raw SVG HTML in this webpage display mode of application, allowing address bar RJM Programming’s Landing Page intended hashtag URLs such as …
… “to also press towards” … chortle, chortle … a happier place. More aspects to redirection ideas regarding this will be happening over a couple more days.
Have you ever noticed how good humans are at one-to-one mapping? Okay, okay, K9s too … sheeeeessssshhhhh!
This thinking suits substitutional programmatical thinking. In other words you’re presented with something to tweak … perhaps in private … and one of the favourite ways we can think of to quickly get somewhere changing it, hopefully for the better, could be to …
recognize a hard-coding or phrase or word … that in an initial draft is kind of static by nature … and go ahead and code for it to be substituted or mapped or you might want to say “redirected” to …
some dynamic HTML and Javascript code, such as a dropdown (ie. select) element, for instance
data URI (possibly media) generic definition of what is otherwise some web server (possibly media) file’s contents, in amongst the Landing Page hashtag URL component … or …
absolute URL, in amongst the Landing Page hashtag URL component
… we’re starting down this “redirection path”, today, adjusting RJM Programming’s Landing Page PHP code, as per …
… email body media attachment logics “less than optimal” … putting it kindly. Today, though, for your shorter audio or video media instances, within that email body content we can offer a new hashtagging URL paradigm that goes …
… style of link now created, and in the case of macOS, perhaps automated, into the email body, not as an attachment, but as a link the email recipient can click to see that media content display … for your smaller media content usages.
The keen eyed will see that recording_ideas.php has gone through extensive changes to “shapen up or fly right” regarding other ambitions we have for it, which Luna has told me is …
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
… as anything that can explain the overnight disappearances of code you’ve worked on, and is not “hacking activity”, tends to be “a relief to one’s system” and “double the relief to a set of twins” (as Nala wanted to point out).
But, it is only occasionally you get this type of problem happening and the scheduled ways of crontab are just so useful, we’re proceeding with the file tidying ways of crontab, but shoring up the wildcarding we apply so that the entry …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… becomes …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*[0-9]*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… to solve our current project’s constant need for resurrection surrounding it’s media_via_pb.* naming ways.
<?php
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$afters='';
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
} else {
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo . "\n" . "osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class optd»)'");
exec("echo " . $pbit . $thingo . " | pbcopy");
$afters=("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\"
set thesong to \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\" as string
end tell
tell application \"QuickTime Player\"
activate
open thesong
play document 1
end tell'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
if ($afters != '') { sleep(5); exec($afters); $afters=''; }
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
to a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadedchangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application …
so that up at the public domain webpage when local media browsing …
with email address defined …
the “Intranet feeling” window.open(MAMP-get-style-url.php, iframe-name, ‘top=?,width=?,left=?,height=?’) can work it’s magic in amongst, in order …
public domain does window.open as above
public domain webpage does “a” mailto: link click to open email client
MAMP-get-style-url.php in macOS or Windows copies image into Clipboard as graphics
if macOS can go on to paste that Clipboard image into that email body as an attachment
… but only if, as we’ve verified again today and only for sure on macOS Google Chrome web browser so far, otherwise CORS restrictions come into it, MAMP-get-style-url.php only performs PHP stuff and does not try to write out a webpage of any sort. We can arrange it that way in this project but can easily imagine other projects where this can not be wrangled using a public domain webpage incarnation this “Intranet feeling” way.
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
Bit sad, but a new opportunity too?!
And so, with that opportunity, we can apply some recent work knowledge, especially regarding a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadablechangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application.
… command to “provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line” (quoting from “man pbcopy”).
And where there is a “copy” there’s a … anyone, anyone? … yes, Smithers, a “paste”. And so, new to today’s work, we start combining that pbpaste with the brilliant passthru …
… to position at the place to “plonk” media data into a webpage, often, and let it display.
You’ll notice in today’s PHP (only really suits localhost local web server hosting code, such as MAMP) “Media via pbcopy and pbpaste” web application’s http://localhost:8888/media_via_pb.php code that we code an exec style …
Mac OS X Clipboard to File to Datauri Primer Tutorial
Today’s tutorial is a lot about the image two below the one above. It looks pretty much like any other image on this web page, I’m sure, at first glance, you’d say?! But the fact is, this image does not involve a web server image file of any sort, though its storage does involve a web server database, because all these blog postings exist in a table of a MySql database that WordPress uses to store information. Has this let you down? Hope not, because this is still a pretty big concept, getting bigger and bigger as time goes on, and spurred on by the mobile device revolution, and that is the rise and rise of the use of datauri based media. Let’s see what Wikipedia says …
The data URI scheme is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme that provides a way to include data in-line in web pages as if they were external resources. It is a form of file literal or here document. This technique allows normally separate elements such as images and style sheets to be fetched in a single Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, which may be more efficient than multiple HTTP requests.[1] Data URIs are sometimes referred to incorrectly as “data URLs”.[citation needed] As of 2015, data URIs are fully supported by most major browsers, and partially supported in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge.[2]
With this image, two down, we didn’t feel like plonking this as a file on our web server, basically because it was that bit smaller than the usual, and so the basic steps of how we constructed it was …
we’d Prnt-Scrn buttoned this part of a screen snapshot on Windows 10 … and then …
we emailed it to ourselves, but logged onto our MacBook Pro laptop … and so we …
downloaded that email attachment into the Preview desktop application … where we …
drew a rectangle around the dialog of interest and used Edit -> Copy to get it into a Mac OS X clipboard … and though we didn’t do this right here and now, we did do before the final step, copy the clipboard into an image file called huh.png (via File -> Save As…) via Paintbrush desktop application’s File -> New from clipboard option … and so then …
looked up Google in this way … and the second link in the list got me to …
see some incredibly useful Mac OS X Terminal application command line usage … to aim for … and we adapted to, namely … openssl base64 < ./huh.png | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy
… which got into a Mac OS X clipboard the suffix (called [suffix] that gets appended to the prefix [prefix] we’ll talk about in the next step) of an HTML image element of the form <img title=’Datauri image’ src=’[prefix][suffix]‘></img> … leaving us to work out for the png image type we desired the prefix [prefix] could be …
found a typical datauri prefix for a base64 encode png image at this really useful link so that prefix [prefix] above could be data:image/png;base64, … the missing piece of being able to HTML code the datauri image two below the one above … and not requiring a web server image file to exist, as the image data exists in this blog posting … brought to you by the wonders of CMS (Content Management Systems).
Hope this interests you, and perhaps that you try out one of these datauri HTML img elements for yourself.
In the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, perhaps the best known concept to we “mere mortals” is “voice recognition”. Perhaps because research into it goes back to 1932, before the Second World War … and 66 years before the “Worm Farm Incident of Simmons Street Disaster” … but we digress … and no … “I’m not ready to open up about this at this delicate stage of my life, yet, Brad.”.
Voice recognition has come a long way from those earliest endeavours when the speech recognition relied on training software for an individual voice. This became apparent to me trying out Cortana in Windows 10. Once working, it didn’t seem to matter who in our house asked the same question of Cortana, the speech recognition software recognized and translated the speech into the same text for all of us. Actually, Microsoft describes Cortana this way …
Cortana is your clever new personal assistant.
Cortana will help you find things on your PC, manage your calendar, track packages, find files, chat with you, and tell jokes. The more you use Cortana, the more personalized your experience will be.
To get started, type a question in the search box on the taskbar. Or select the microphone icon and talk to Cortana. (Typing works for all types of PCs, but you need a mic to talk.)
… and I see what they mean by this, because you can work Cortana without the voice recognition part, if you like, or if you have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone). Perhaps Cortana should have a special “Darkroom Edition” for people who …
have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone) … and who …
have a hobby developing and printing photographs
Anyway, we agree with Microsoft that Cortana is clever, and it’s nice for us to find another use for the microphone (brand called MXL Tempo) we used with WebEx work we talked about with WebEx Presentation with Microphone Tutorial below.
There is not much to setting up Cortana, except, perhaps, for the microphone bit, which we’ll talk more about later. Cortana’s “personal assistant” and interface down next to the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen guides you well through what you have to do.
We got stuck a bit, regarding setting up the microphone, with a cycle of it presenting this voice recognition test always resulting in a message wondering whether we had the microphone set to “mute on”, which wasn’t the case. But what was the case, and remedied this problem was to use a USB 2 port rather than a USB 3 port … in case this happens to you.
Other than that, Cortana is pretty cute, and could be a good enough reason on its own to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 9 operating systems before Friday, 29th July 2016 which is the cut off day for free upgrades. Our experience of the upgrade was talked about at Windows 10 Upgrade Primer Tutorial (and backups were discussed at Windows File History Backup Primer Tutorial).
We’ve been doing some more WebEx (by Cisco) lately, and realised, at least with using a MacBook Pro laptop, we needed to invest in a microphone, to be heard, as the inbuilt microphone systems were not up to it.
We opted for a USB connected microphone brand called MXL Tempo, sold here in Australia, and have found it to be good, especially mounted on the stand provided … well, no complaints, anyway?! Where it has a 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack we plugged in our own speakers, though you could use headphones here as well.
Of course we’ll also be constructing a garage, and buying a guitar, and calling on “tree fellers”karaoke backing track of Peter, Paul and Mary to complete the picture of this week’s project … getting the new microphone to make breakfast in the morning before you even knew you needed breakfast get me on The Voices.
In the WebEx “Audio Connection” menu via “Call Using Computer” option have both input and output audio be handled by “USB audio CODEC” (if they are options … if not, there is a hardware (perhaps configuration) problem with your audio and microphone connection) as you can see at today’s tutorial picture. So long as you succeed and have the USB connected, the audio connection will default to this arrangement for the next time. Cute, huh?!
To make it permanent that the MXL Tempo microphone arrangement is the default device for recordings …
click on System Preferences off the Apple menu
click the Sound option
click the Output tab
pick USB audio CODEC
if you intend using speakers or headphones connected off this microphone from its 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack, click the Input tab
… regarding video conferencing products we’ve tried at this blog.
Have to say, WebEx is great, even with respect to the “wide eyed and bushy tailed” reaction “this little black duck” has to all these networky communicaty ideas on the net (at least we spelt “net” correctly).
Have to thank my wife, Maree, for her expertise and the facilities her company, Thomson Reuters, supplies for the serving of WebEx recordings … thanks everyone. Have been assured they are periodically deleted, and my lame impersonations of the old “ducks on the wall” can rest in peace shortly.
And so, we have a slideshow starting with a WebEx email link to join a meeting, and we pan down the email to show you other WebEx functionalities, such as adding a Calendar reference to the meeting time, and though we haven’t shown you detail here, rest assured it handles timezone scenarios very well, unless you lie about living in Antarctica, that is … sorry, scientists in Antarctica reading this blog posting … all 237 of you.
During this “earlier than today exploration of WebEx” session the necessary software installs just happened for this MacBook Pro Mac OS X laptop as if we were shelling peas … it’s always good to have some handy when installing any software. So we won’t show you this unless we deem it essential at a later date. You can perhaps do as I did, and ask a real WebEx user invite you to a meeting, to set yourself up. In fact, today’s session meeting creation time you may notice is well in the past from that earlier introductory learning session Maree and I had, and you can bring back up that old email, and resurrect that meeting again and again, if you like … am not sure if there is an expiry date on this too, like with server stored WebEx prerecordings.
So also rest assured, WebEx handles …
video via webcam on your device
audio via microphone on your device (“Use Computer”) or via a phone line
the synchronization of the two above
mobile devices
Did you know?
A .ics extension file, as you can see being used as an email attachment file extension in is, as explained in this link‘s sublink …
ICS is a global format for calendar files widely being utilized by various calendar and email programs including Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook. These files enable users to share and publish information directly from their calendars over email or via uploading it to the world wide web.
… as helping interface meetings to online calendar appointments. Cute, huh?!
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… being that, within the purview of the RJM Programming domain these two represent two different websites and so use their own different custom error document or custom error page Apache web server arrangements.
Today, we consider RJM Programming domain’s Apache web server’s Landing Page (et al) website “Not Found” (ie. HTTP error code 404) scenario.
And in those terms, we can illustrate what we mean below, by you leaving checked the checkbox ignoring the # hashtagging (ie. opening up the possibility of both 404 errors and introducing 414 (request too long) errors we can’t do much about (except to suggest positioning # hashtagging after your established RJM Programming website URL and ahead of the data URI may help) and likely when using data URI incarnations copied to the web browser address bar URL and not including the # hashtagging) regarding some web browser address bar URL “imaginings” a user may append (probably via copy and paste (perhaps via a Google image search’s right click menu’s Copy Image Address option, most likely after a # (bearing in mind the cache may annoy without a new ? argument on previously used web browser tabs) methodologies) onto established RJM Programming website URLs probably there already to the left of the web browser‘s relevant tab’s address bar …
Non-Hashtag Tests … optional or
Hashtag
Non-Hashtag
From where, for the RJM Programming’s Landing Page website’s purposes, is the logic for these HTTP error code 404 redirections, springing?
The 404.shtml custom error page file is doing this job, and has new Javascript code snippets as per …
var locwo=null;
var jnuidea='';
var usuff=(document.URL.indexOf('/ITblog') != -1 ? 'ITblog/' : '');
var plusd='+';
if (('' + decodeURIComponent(('' + document.URL))).indexOf('data:') != -1 && ('' + ('' + document.URL)).indexOf('%20') != -1) { plusd=' '; }
Landing Page “hashtag containing” data URI and absolute URL redirection logics … helps, as a one to one block of Javascript code usefulness to …
WordPress Blog “hashtag containing” data URI and absolute URL redirection logics
… being that, within the purview of the RJM Programming domain these two represent two different websites and so use their own different custom error document or custom error page Apache web server arrangements.
Our logic here involves hashtag concerns, and hashtag data does not even register at the serverside end of the “delivery of online HTML webpage display” workflow, and so is a Javascript, purely clientside part of the scope of work. So, regarding a PHP written WordPress Blog, what we need for interventional purposes here is to locate where the document.body element is coded for. Luckily, we do a lot of tweaks to the PHP code where the “onload” event is defined in good ol’ header.php WordPress TwentyTen theme codex PHP file. And we pick the first of our document.body “onload” event “inhouse functions” called chkinodo to plug the slightly modified from yesterday …
… mainly regarding working the logic for svg+xml utf8 data URI where the blank character encoding %20 can come into play …
… and we output raw SVG HTML in this webpage display mode of application, allowing address bar RJM Programming’s Landing Page intended hashtag URLs such as …
… “to also press towards” … chortle, chortle … a happier place. More aspects to redirection ideas regarding this will be happening over a couple more days.
Have you ever noticed how good humans are at one-to-one mapping? Okay, okay, K9s too … sheeeeessssshhhhh!
This thinking suits substitutional programmatical thinking. In other words you’re presented with something to tweak … perhaps in private … and one of the favourite ways we can think of to quickly get somewhere changing it, hopefully for the better, could be to …
recognize a hard-coding or phrase or word … that in an initial draft is kind of static by nature … and go ahead and code for it to be substituted or mapped or you might want to say “redirected” to …
some dynamic HTML and Javascript code, such as a dropdown (ie. select) element, for instance
data URI (possibly media) generic definition of what is otherwise some web server (possibly media) file’s contents, in amongst the Landing Page hashtag URL component … or …
absolute URL, in amongst the Landing Page hashtag URL component
… we’re starting down this “redirection path”, today, adjusting RJM Programming’s Landing Page PHP code, as per …
… email body media attachment logics “less than optimal” … putting it kindly. Today, though, for your shorter audio or video media instances, within that email body content we can offer a new hashtagging URL paradigm that goes …
… style of link now created, and in the case of macOS, perhaps automated, into the email body, not as an attachment, but as a link the email recipient can click to see that media content display … for your smaller media content usages.
The keen eyed will see that recording_ideas.php has gone through extensive changes to “shapen up or fly right” regarding other ambitions we have for it, which Luna has told me is …
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
… as anything that can explain the overnight disappearances of code you’ve worked on, and is not “hacking activity”, tends to be “a relief to one’s system” and “double the relief to a set of twins” (as Nala wanted to point out).
But, it is only occasionally you get this type of problem happening and the scheduled ways of crontab are just so useful, we’re proceeding with the file tidying ways of crontab, but shoring up the wildcarding we apply so that the entry …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… becomes …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*[0-9]*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… to solve our current project’s constant need for resurrection surrounding it’s media_via_pb.* naming ways.
<?php
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$afters='';
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
} else {
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo . "\n" . "osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class optd»)'");
exec("echo " . $pbit . $thingo . " | pbcopy");
$afters=("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\"
set thesong to \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\" as string
end tell
tell application \"QuickTime Player\"
activate
open thesong
play document 1
end tell'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
if ($afters != '') { sleep(5); exec($afters); $afters=''; }
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
to a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadedchangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application …
so that up at the public domain webpage when local media browsing …
with email address defined …
the “Intranet feeling” window.open(MAMP-get-style-url.php, iframe-name, ‘top=?,width=?,left=?,height=?’) can work it’s magic in amongst, in order …
public domain does window.open as above
public domain webpage does “a” mailto: link click to open email client
MAMP-get-style-url.php in macOS or Windows copies image into Clipboard as graphics
if macOS can go on to paste that Clipboard image into that email body as an attachment
… but only if, as we’ve verified again today and only for sure on macOS Google Chrome web browser so far, otherwise CORS restrictions come into it, MAMP-get-style-url.php only performs PHP stuff and does not try to write out a webpage of any sort. We can arrange it that way in this project but can easily imagine other projects where this can not be wrangled using a public domain webpage incarnation this “Intranet feeling” way.
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
Bit sad, but a new opportunity too?!
And so, with that opportunity, we can apply some recent work knowledge, especially regarding a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadablechangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application.
… command to “provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line” (quoting from “man pbcopy”).
And where there is a “copy” there’s a … anyone, anyone? … yes, Smithers, a “paste”. And so, new to today’s work, we start combining that pbpaste with the brilliant passthru …
… to position at the place to “plonk” media data into a webpage, often, and let it display.
You’ll notice in today’s PHP (only really suits localhost local web server hosting code, such as MAMP) “Media via pbcopy and pbpaste” web application’s http://localhost:8888/media_via_pb.php code that we code an exec style …
Mac OS X Clipboard to File to Datauri Primer Tutorial
Today’s tutorial is a lot about the image two below the one above. It looks pretty much like any other image on this web page, I’m sure, at first glance, you’d say?! But the fact is, this image does not involve a web server image file of any sort, though its storage does involve a web server database, because all these blog postings exist in a table of a MySql database that WordPress uses to store information. Has this let you down? Hope not, because this is still a pretty big concept, getting bigger and bigger as time goes on, and spurred on by the mobile device revolution, and that is the rise and rise of the use of datauri based media. Let’s see what Wikipedia says …
The data URI scheme is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme that provides a way to include data in-line in web pages as if they were external resources. It is a form of file literal or here document. This technique allows normally separate elements such as images and style sheets to be fetched in a single Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, which may be more efficient than multiple HTTP requests.[1] Data URIs are sometimes referred to incorrectly as “data URLs”.[citation needed] As of 2015, data URIs are fully supported by most major browsers, and partially supported in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge.[2]
With this image, two down, we didn’t feel like plonking this as a file on our web server, basically because it was that bit smaller than the usual, and so the basic steps of how we constructed it was …
we’d Prnt-Scrn buttoned this part of a screen snapshot on Windows 10 … and then …
we emailed it to ourselves, but logged onto our MacBook Pro laptop … and so we …
downloaded that email attachment into the Preview desktop application … where we …
drew a rectangle around the dialog of interest and used Edit -> Copy to get it into a Mac OS X clipboard … and though we didn’t do this right here and now, we did do before the final step, copy the clipboard into an image file called huh.png (via File -> Save As…) via Paintbrush desktop application’s File -> New from clipboard option … and so then …
looked up Google in this way … and the second link in the list got me to …
see some incredibly useful Mac OS X Terminal application command line usage … to aim for … and we adapted to, namely … openssl base64 < ./huh.png | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy
… which got into a Mac OS X clipboard the suffix (called [suffix] that gets appended to the prefix [prefix] we’ll talk about in the next step) of an HTML image element of the form <img title=’Datauri image’ src=’[prefix][suffix]‘></img> … leaving us to work out for the png image type we desired the prefix [prefix] could be …
found a typical datauri prefix for a base64 encode png image at this really useful link so that prefix [prefix] above could be data:image/png;base64, … the missing piece of being able to HTML code the datauri image two below the one above … and not requiring a web server image file to exist, as the image data exists in this blog posting … brought to you by the wonders of CMS (Content Management Systems).
Hope this interests you, and perhaps that you try out one of these datauri HTML img elements for yourself.
In the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, perhaps the best known concept to we “mere mortals” is “voice recognition”. Perhaps because research into it goes back to 1932, before the Second World War … and 66 years before the “Worm Farm Incident of Simmons Street Disaster” … but we digress … and no … “I’m not ready to open up about this at this delicate stage of my life, yet, Brad.”.
Voice recognition has come a long way from those earliest endeavours when the speech recognition relied on training software for an individual voice. This became apparent to me trying out Cortana in Windows 10. Once working, it didn’t seem to matter who in our house asked the same question of Cortana, the speech recognition software recognized and translated the speech into the same text for all of us. Actually, Microsoft describes Cortana this way …
Cortana is your clever new personal assistant.
Cortana will help you find things on your PC, manage your calendar, track packages, find files, chat with you, and tell jokes. The more you use Cortana, the more personalized your experience will be.
To get started, type a question in the search box on the taskbar. Or select the microphone icon and talk to Cortana. (Typing works for all types of PCs, but you need a mic to talk.)
… and I see what they mean by this, because you can work Cortana without the voice recognition part, if you like, or if you have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone). Perhaps Cortana should have a special “Darkroom Edition” for people who …
have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone) … and who …
have a hobby developing and printing photographs
Anyway, we agree with Microsoft that Cortana is clever, and it’s nice for us to find another use for the microphone (brand called MXL Tempo) we used with WebEx work we talked about with WebEx Presentation with Microphone Tutorial below.
There is not much to setting up Cortana, except, perhaps, for the microphone bit, which we’ll talk more about later. Cortana’s “personal assistant” and interface down next to the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen guides you well through what you have to do.
We got stuck a bit, regarding setting up the microphone, with a cycle of it presenting this voice recognition test always resulting in a message wondering whether we had the microphone set to “mute on”, which wasn’t the case. But what was the case, and remedied this problem was to use a USB 2 port rather than a USB 3 port … in case this happens to you.
Other than that, Cortana is pretty cute, and could be a good enough reason on its own to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 9 operating systems before Friday, 29th July 2016 which is the cut off day for free upgrades. Our experience of the upgrade was talked about at Windows 10 Upgrade Primer Tutorial (and backups were discussed at Windows File History Backup Primer Tutorial).
We’ve been doing some more WebEx (by Cisco) lately, and realised, at least with using a MacBook Pro laptop, we needed to invest in a microphone, to be heard, as the inbuilt microphone systems were not up to it.
We opted for a USB connected microphone brand called MXL Tempo, sold here in Australia, and have found it to be good, especially mounted on the stand provided … well, no complaints, anyway?! Where it has a 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack we plugged in our own speakers, though you could use headphones here as well.
Of course we’ll also be constructing a garage, and buying a guitar, and calling on “tree fellers”karaoke backing track of Peter, Paul and Mary to complete the picture of this week’s project … getting the new microphone to make breakfast in the morning before you even knew you needed breakfast get me on The Voices.
In the WebEx “Audio Connection” menu via “Call Using Computer” option have both input and output audio be handled by “USB audio CODEC” (if they are options … if not, there is a hardware (perhaps configuration) problem with your audio and microphone connection) as you can see at today’s tutorial picture. So long as you succeed and have the USB connected, the audio connection will default to this arrangement for the next time. Cute, huh?!
To make it permanent that the MXL Tempo microphone arrangement is the default device for recordings …
click on System Preferences off the Apple menu
click the Sound option
click the Output tab
pick USB audio CODEC
if you intend using speakers or headphones connected off this microphone from its 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack, click the Input tab
… regarding video conferencing products we’ve tried at this blog.
Have to say, WebEx is great, even with respect to the “wide eyed and bushy tailed” reaction “this little black duck” has to all these networky communicaty ideas on the net (at least we spelt “net” correctly).
Have to thank my wife, Maree, for her expertise and the facilities her company, Thomson Reuters, supplies for the serving of WebEx recordings … thanks everyone. Have been assured they are periodically deleted, and my lame impersonations of the old “ducks on the wall” can rest in peace shortly.
And so, we have a slideshow starting with a WebEx email link to join a meeting, and we pan down the email to show you other WebEx functionalities, such as adding a Calendar reference to the meeting time, and though we haven’t shown you detail here, rest assured it handles timezone scenarios very well, unless you lie about living in Antarctica, that is … sorry, scientists in Antarctica reading this blog posting … all 237 of you.
During this “earlier than today exploration of WebEx” session the necessary software installs just happened for this MacBook Pro Mac OS X laptop as if we were shelling peas … it’s always good to have some handy when installing any software. So we won’t show you this unless we deem it essential at a later date. You can perhaps do as I did, and ask a real WebEx user invite you to a meeting, to set yourself up. In fact, today’s session meeting creation time you may notice is well in the past from that earlier introductory learning session Maree and I had, and you can bring back up that old email, and resurrect that meeting again and again, if you like … am not sure if there is an expiry date on this too, like with server stored WebEx prerecordings.
So also rest assured, WebEx handles …
video via webcam on your device
audio via microphone on your device (“Use Computer”) or via a phone line
the synchronization of the two above
mobile devices
Did you know?
A .ics extension file, as you can see being used as an email attachment file extension in is, as explained in this link‘s sublink …
ICS is a global format for calendar files widely being utilized by various calendar and email programs including Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook. These files enable users to share and publish information directly from their calendars over email or via uploading it to the world wide web.
… as helping interface meetings to online calendar appointments. Cute, huh?!
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a
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Landing Page “hashtag containing” data URI and absolute URL redirection logics … helps, as a one to one block of Javascript code usefulness to …
WordPress Blog “hashtag containing” data URI and absolute URL redirection logics
… being that, within the purview of the RJM Programming domain these two represent two different websites and so use their own different custom error document or custom error page Apache web server arrangements.
Our logic here involves hashtag concerns, and hashtag data does not even register at the serverside end of the “delivery of online HTML webpage display” workflow, and so is a Javascript, purely clientside part of the scope of work. So, regarding a PHP written WordPress Blog, what we need for interventional purposes here is to locate where the document.body element is coded for. Luckily, we do a lot of tweaks to the PHP code where the “onload” event is defined in good ol’ header.php WordPress TwentyTen theme codex PHP file. And we pick the first of our document.body “onload” event “inhouse functions” called chkinodo to plug the slightly modified from yesterday …
… mainly regarding working the logic for svg+xml utf8 data URI where the blank character encoding %20 can come into play …
… and we output raw SVG HTML in this webpage display mode of application, allowing address bar RJM Programming’s Landing Page intended hashtag URLs such as …
… “to also press towards” … chortle, chortle … a happier place. More aspects to redirection ideas regarding this will be happening over a couple more days.
Have you ever noticed how good humans are at one-to-one mapping? Okay, okay, K9s too … sheeeeessssshhhhh!
This thinking suits substitutional programmatical thinking. In other words you’re presented with something to tweak … perhaps in private … and one of the favourite ways we can think of to quickly get somewhere changing it, hopefully for the better, could be to …
recognize a hard-coding or phrase or word … that in an initial draft is kind of static by nature … and go ahead and code for it to be substituted or mapped or you might want to say “redirected” to …
some dynamic HTML and Javascript code, such as a dropdown (ie. select) element, for instance
data URI (possibly media) generic definition of what is otherwise some web server (possibly media) file’s contents, in amongst the Landing Page hashtag URL component … or …
absolute URL, in amongst the Landing Page hashtag URL component
… we’re starting down this “redirection path”, today, adjusting RJM Programming’s Landing Page PHP code, as per …
… email body media attachment logics “less than optimal” … putting it kindly. Today, though, for your shorter audio or video media instances, within that email body content we can offer a new hashtagging URL paradigm that goes …
… style of link now created, and in the case of macOS, perhaps automated, into the email body, not as an attachment, but as a link the email recipient can click to see that media content display … for your smaller media content usages.
The keen eyed will see that recording_ideas.php has gone through extensive changes to “shapen up or fly right” regarding other ambitions we have for it, which Luna has told me is …
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
… as anything that can explain the overnight disappearances of code you’ve worked on, and is not “hacking activity”, tends to be “a relief to one’s system” and “double the relief to a set of twins” (as Nala wanted to point out).
But, it is only occasionally you get this type of problem happening and the scheduled ways of crontab are just so useful, we’re proceeding with the file tidying ways of crontab, but shoring up the wildcarding we apply so that the entry …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… becomes …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*[0-9]*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… to solve our current project’s constant need for resurrection surrounding it’s media_via_pb.* naming ways.
<?php
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$afters='';
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
} else {
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo . "\n" . "osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class optd»)'");
exec("echo " . $pbit . $thingo . " | pbcopy");
$afters=("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\"
set thesong to \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\" as string
end tell
tell application \"QuickTime Player\"
activate
open thesong
play document 1
end tell'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
if ($afters != '') { sleep(5); exec($afters); $afters=''; }
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
to a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadedchangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application …
so that up at the public domain webpage when local media browsing …
with email address defined …
the “Intranet feeling” window.open(MAMP-get-style-url.php, iframe-name, ‘top=?,width=?,left=?,height=?’) can work it’s magic in amongst, in order …
public domain does window.open as above
public domain webpage does “a” mailto: link click to open email client
MAMP-get-style-url.php in macOS or Windows copies image into Clipboard as graphics
if macOS can go on to paste that Clipboard image into that email body as an attachment
… but only if, as we’ve verified again today and only for sure on macOS Google Chrome web browser so far, otherwise CORS restrictions come into it, MAMP-get-style-url.php only performs PHP stuff and does not try to write out a webpage of any sort. We can arrange it that way in this project but can easily imagine other projects where this can not be wrangled using a public domain webpage incarnation this “Intranet feeling” way.
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
Bit sad, but a new opportunity too?!
And so, with that opportunity, we can apply some recent work knowledge, especially regarding a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadablechangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application.
… command to “provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line” (quoting from “man pbcopy”).
And where there is a “copy” there’s a … anyone, anyone? … yes, Smithers, a “paste”. And so, new to today’s work, we start combining that pbpaste with the brilliant passthru …
… to position at the place to “plonk” media data into a webpage, often, and let it display.
You’ll notice in today’s PHP (only really suits localhost local web server hosting code, such as MAMP) “Media via pbcopy and pbpaste” web application’s http://localhost:8888/media_via_pb.php code that we code an exec style …
Mac OS X Clipboard to File to Datauri Primer Tutorial
Today’s tutorial is a lot about the image two below the one above. It looks pretty much like any other image on this web page, I’m sure, at first glance, you’d say?! But the fact is, this image does not involve a web server image file of any sort, though its storage does involve a web server database, because all these blog postings exist in a table of a MySql database that WordPress uses to store information. Has this let you down? Hope not, because this is still a pretty big concept, getting bigger and bigger as time goes on, and spurred on by the mobile device revolution, and that is the rise and rise of the use of datauri based media. Let’s see what Wikipedia says …
The data URI scheme is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme that provides a way to include data in-line in web pages as if they were external resources. It is a form of file literal or here document. This technique allows normally separate elements such as images and style sheets to be fetched in a single Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, which may be more efficient than multiple HTTP requests.[1] Data URIs are sometimes referred to incorrectly as “data URLs”.[citation needed] As of 2015, data URIs are fully supported by most major browsers, and partially supported in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge.[2]
With this image, two down, we didn’t feel like plonking this as a file on our web server, basically because it was that bit smaller than the usual, and so the basic steps of how we constructed it was …
we’d Prnt-Scrn buttoned this part of a screen snapshot on Windows 10 … and then …
we emailed it to ourselves, but logged onto our MacBook Pro laptop … and so we …
downloaded that email attachment into the Preview desktop application … where we …
drew a rectangle around the dialog of interest and used Edit -> Copy to get it into a Mac OS X clipboard … and though we didn’t do this right here and now, we did do before the final step, copy the clipboard into an image file called huh.png (via File -> Save As…) via Paintbrush desktop application’s File -> New from clipboard option … and so then …
looked up Google in this way … and the second link in the list got me to …
see some incredibly useful Mac OS X Terminal application command line usage … to aim for … and we adapted to, namely … openssl base64 < ./huh.png | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy
… which got into a Mac OS X clipboard the suffix (called [suffix] that gets appended to the prefix [prefix] we’ll talk about in the next step) of an HTML image element of the form <img title=’Datauri image’ src=’[prefix][suffix]‘></img> … leaving us to work out for the png image type we desired the prefix [prefix] could be …
found a typical datauri prefix for a base64 encode png image at this really useful link so that prefix [prefix] above could be data:image/png;base64, … the missing piece of being able to HTML code the datauri image two below the one above … and not requiring a web server image file to exist, as the image data exists in this blog posting … brought to you by the wonders of CMS (Content Management Systems).
Hope this interests you, and perhaps that you try out one of these datauri HTML img elements for yourself.
In the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, perhaps the best known concept to we “mere mortals” is “voice recognition”. Perhaps because research into it goes back to 1932, before the Second World War … and 66 years before the “Worm Farm Incident of Simmons Street Disaster” … but we digress … and no … “I’m not ready to open up about this at this delicate stage of my life, yet, Brad.”.
Voice recognition has come a long way from those earliest endeavours when the speech recognition relied on training software for an individual voice. This became apparent to me trying out Cortana in Windows 10. Once working, it didn’t seem to matter who in our house asked the same question of Cortana, the speech recognition software recognized and translated the speech into the same text for all of us. Actually, Microsoft describes Cortana this way …
Cortana is your clever new personal assistant.
Cortana will help you find things on your PC, manage your calendar, track packages, find files, chat with you, and tell jokes. The more you use Cortana, the more personalized your experience will be.
To get started, type a question in the search box on the taskbar. Or select the microphone icon and talk to Cortana. (Typing works for all types of PCs, but you need a mic to talk.)
… and I see what they mean by this, because you can work Cortana without the voice recognition part, if you like, or if you have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone). Perhaps Cortana should have a special “Darkroom Edition” for people who …
have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone) … and who …
have a hobby developing and printing photographs
Anyway, we agree with Microsoft that Cortana is clever, and it’s nice for us to find another use for the microphone (brand called MXL Tempo) we used with WebEx work we talked about with WebEx Presentation with Microphone Tutorial below.
There is not much to setting up Cortana, except, perhaps, for the microphone bit, which we’ll talk more about later. Cortana’s “personal assistant” and interface down next to the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen guides you well through what you have to do.
We got stuck a bit, regarding setting up the microphone, with a cycle of it presenting this voice recognition test always resulting in a message wondering whether we had the microphone set to “mute on”, which wasn’t the case. But what was the case, and remedied this problem was to use a USB 2 port rather than a USB 3 port … in case this happens to you.
Other than that, Cortana is pretty cute, and could be a good enough reason on its own to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 9 operating systems before Friday, 29th July 2016 which is the cut off day for free upgrades. Our experience of the upgrade was talked about at Windows 10 Upgrade Primer Tutorial (and backups were discussed at Windows File History Backup Primer Tutorial).
We’ve been doing some more WebEx (by Cisco) lately, and realised, at least with using a MacBook Pro laptop, we needed to invest in a microphone, to be heard, as the inbuilt microphone systems were not up to it.
We opted for a USB connected microphone brand called MXL Tempo, sold here in Australia, and have found it to be good, especially mounted on the stand provided … well, no complaints, anyway?! Where it has a 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack we plugged in our own speakers, though you could use headphones here as well.
Of course we’ll also be constructing a garage, and buying a guitar, and calling on “tree fellers”karaoke backing track of Peter, Paul and Mary to complete the picture of this week’s project … getting the new microphone to make breakfast in the morning before you even knew you needed breakfast get me on The Voices.
In the WebEx “Audio Connection” menu via “Call Using Computer” option have both input and output audio be handled by “USB audio CODEC” (if they are options … if not, there is a hardware (perhaps configuration) problem with your audio and microphone connection) as you can see at today’s tutorial picture. So long as you succeed and have the USB connected, the audio connection will default to this arrangement for the next time. Cute, huh?!
To make it permanent that the MXL Tempo microphone arrangement is the default device for recordings …
click on System Preferences off the Apple menu
click the Sound option
click the Output tab
pick USB audio CODEC
if you intend using speakers or headphones connected off this microphone from its 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack, click the Input tab
… regarding video conferencing products we’ve tried at this blog.
Have to say, WebEx is great, even with respect to the “wide eyed and bushy tailed” reaction “this little black duck” has to all these networky communicaty ideas on the net (at least we spelt “net” correctly).
Have to thank my wife, Maree, for her expertise and the facilities her company, Thomson Reuters, supplies for the serving of WebEx recordings … thanks everyone. Have been assured they are periodically deleted, and my lame impersonations of the old “ducks on the wall” can rest in peace shortly.
And so, we have a slideshow starting with a WebEx email link to join a meeting, and we pan down the email to show you other WebEx functionalities, such as adding a Calendar reference to the meeting time, and though we haven’t shown you detail here, rest assured it handles timezone scenarios very well, unless you lie about living in Antarctica, that is … sorry, scientists in Antarctica reading this blog posting … all 237 of you.
During this “earlier than today exploration of WebEx” session the necessary software installs just happened for this MacBook Pro Mac OS X laptop as if we were shelling peas … it’s always good to have some handy when installing any software. So we won’t show you this unless we deem it essential at a later date. You can perhaps do as I did, and ask a real WebEx user invite you to a meeting, to set yourself up. In fact, today’s session meeting creation time you may notice is well in the past from that earlier introductory learning session Maree and I had, and you can bring back up that old email, and resurrect that meeting again and again, if you like … am not sure if there is an expiry date on this too, like with server stored WebEx prerecordings.
So also rest assured, WebEx handles …
video via webcam on your device
audio via microphone on your device (“Use Computer”) or via a phone line
the synchronization of the two above
mobile devices
Did you know?
A .ics extension file, as you can see being used as an email attachment file extension in is, as explained in this link‘s sublink …
ICS is a global format for calendar files widely being utilized by various calendar and email programs including Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook. These files enable users to share and publish information directly from their calendars over email or via uploading it to the world wide web.
… as helping interface meetings to online calendar appointments. Cute, huh?!
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
a
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.
Have you ever noticed how good humans are at one-to-one mapping? Okay, okay, K9s too … sheeeeessssshhhhh!
This thinking suits substitutional programmatical thinking. In other words you’re presented with something to tweak … perhaps in private … and one of the favourite ways we can think of to quickly get somewhere changing it, hopefully for the better, could be to …
recognize a hard-coding or phrase or word … that in an initial draft is kind of static by nature … and go ahead and code for it to be substituted or mapped or you might want to say “redirected” to …
some dynamic HTML and Javascript code, such as a dropdown (ie. select) element, for instance
data URI (possibly media) generic definition of what is otherwise some web server (possibly media) file’s contents, in amongst the Landing Page hashtag URL component … or …
absolute URL, in amongst the Landing Page hashtag URL component
… we’re starting down this “redirection path”, today, adjusting RJM Programming’s Landing Page PHP code, as per …
… email body media attachment logics “less than optimal” … putting it kindly. Today, though, for your shorter audio or video media instances, within that email body content we can offer a new hashtagging URL paradigm that goes …
… style of link now created, and in the case of macOS, perhaps automated, into the email body, not as an attachment, but as a link the email recipient can click to see that media content display … for your smaller media content usages.
The keen eyed will see that recording_ideas.php has gone through extensive changes to “shapen up or fly right” regarding other ambitions we have for it, which Luna has told me is …
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
… as anything that can explain the overnight disappearances of code you’ve worked on, and is not “hacking activity”, tends to be “a relief to one’s system” and “double the relief to a set of twins” (as Nala wanted to point out).
But, it is only occasionally you get this type of problem happening and the scheduled ways of crontab are just so useful, we’re proceeding with the file tidying ways of crontab, but shoring up the wildcarding we apply so that the entry …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… becomes …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*[0-9]*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… to solve our current project’s constant need for resurrection surrounding it’s media_via_pb.* naming ways.
<?php
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$afters='';
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
} else {
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo . "\n" . "osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class optd»)'");
exec("echo " . $pbit . $thingo . " | pbcopy");
$afters=("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\"
set thesong to \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\" as string
end tell
tell application \"QuickTime Player\"
activate
open thesong
play document 1
end tell'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
if ($afters != '') { sleep(5); exec($afters); $afters=''; }
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
to a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadedchangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application …
so that up at the public domain webpage when local media browsing …
with email address defined …
the “Intranet feeling” window.open(MAMP-get-style-url.php, iframe-name, ‘top=?,width=?,left=?,height=?’) can work it’s magic in amongst, in order …
public domain does window.open as above
public domain webpage does “a” mailto: link click to open email client
MAMP-get-style-url.php in macOS or Windows copies image into Clipboard as graphics
if macOS can go on to paste that Clipboard image into that email body as an attachment
… but only if, as we’ve verified again today and only for sure on macOS Google Chrome web browser so far, otherwise CORS restrictions come into it, MAMP-get-style-url.php only performs PHP stuff and does not try to write out a webpage of any sort. We can arrange it that way in this project but can easily imagine other projects where this can not be wrangled using a public domain webpage incarnation this “Intranet feeling” way.
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
Bit sad, but a new opportunity too?!
And so, with that opportunity, we can apply some recent work knowledge, especially regarding a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadablechangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application.
… command to “provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line” (quoting from “man pbcopy”).
And where there is a “copy” there’s a … anyone, anyone? … yes, Smithers, a “paste”. And so, new to today’s work, we start combining that pbpaste with the brilliant passthru …
… to position at the place to “plonk” media data into a webpage, often, and let it display.
You’ll notice in today’s PHP (only really suits localhost local web server hosting code, such as MAMP) “Media via pbcopy and pbpaste” web application’s http://localhost:8888/media_via_pb.php code that we code an exec style …
Mac OS X Clipboard to File to Datauri Primer Tutorial
Today’s tutorial is a lot about the image two below the one above. It looks pretty much like any other image on this web page, I’m sure, at first glance, you’d say?! But the fact is, this image does not involve a web server image file of any sort, though its storage does involve a web server database, because all these blog postings exist in a table of a MySql database that WordPress uses to store information. Has this let you down? Hope not, because this is still a pretty big concept, getting bigger and bigger as time goes on, and spurred on by the mobile device revolution, and that is the rise and rise of the use of datauri based media. Let’s see what Wikipedia says …
The data URI scheme is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme that provides a way to include data in-line in web pages as if they were external resources. It is a form of file literal or here document. This technique allows normally separate elements such as images and style sheets to be fetched in a single Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, which may be more efficient than multiple HTTP requests.[1] Data URIs are sometimes referred to incorrectly as “data URLs”.[citation needed] As of 2015, data URIs are fully supported by most major browsers, and partially supported in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge.[2]
With this image, two down, we didn’t feel like plonking this as a file on our web server, basically because it was that bit smaller than the usual, and so the basic steps of how we constructed it was …
we’d Prnt-Scrn buttoned this part of a screen snapshot on Windows 10 … and then …
we emailed it to ourselves, but logged onto our MacBook Pro laptop … and so we …
downloaded that email attachment into the Preview desktop application … where we …
drew a rectangle around the dialog of interest and used Edit -> Copy to get it into a Mac OS X clipboard … and though we didn’t do this right here and now, we did do before the final step, copy the clipboard into an image file called huh.png (via File -> Save As…) via Paintbrush desktop application’s File -> New from clipboard option … and so then …
looked up Google in this way … and the second link in the list got me to …
see some incredibly useful Mac OS X Terminal application command line usage … to aim for … and we adapted to, namely … openssl base64 < ./huh.png | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy
… which got into a Mac OS X clipboard the suffix (called [suffix] that gets appended to the prefix [prefix] we’ll talk about in the next step) of an HTML image element of the form <img title=’Datauri image’ src=’[prefix][suffix]‘></img> … leaving us to work out for the png image type we desired the prefix [prefix] could be …
found a typical datauri prefix for a base64 encode png image at this really useful link so that prefix [prefix] above could be data:image/png;base64, … the missing piece of being able to HTML code the datauri image two below the one above … and not requiring a web server image file to exist, as the image data exists in this blog posting … brought to you by the wonders of CMS (Content Management Systems).
Hope this interests you, and perhaps that you try out one of these datauri HTML img elements for yourself.
In the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, perhaps the best known concept to we “mere mortals” is “voice recognition”. Perhaps because research into it goes back to 1932, before the Second World War … and 66 years before the “Worm Farm Incident of Simmons Street Disaster” … but we digress … and no … “I’m not ready to open up about this at this delicate stage of my life, yet, Brad.”.
Voice recognition has come a long way from those earliest endeavours when the speech recognition relied on training software for an individual voice. This became apparent to me trying out Cortana in Windows 10. Once working, it didn’t seem to matter who in our house asked the same question of Cortana, the speech recognition software recognized and translated the speech into the same text for all of us. Actually, Microsoft describes Cortana this way …
Cortana is your clever new personal assistant.
Cortana will help you find things on your PC, manage your calendar, track packages, find files, chat with you, and tell jokes. The more you use Cortana, the more personalized your experience will be.
To get started, type a question in the search box on the taskbar. Or select the microphone icon and talk to Cortana. (Typing works for all types of PCs, but you need a mic to talk.)
… and I see what they mean by this, because you can work Cortana without the voice recognition part, if you like, or if you have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone). Perhaps Cortana should have a special “Darkroom Edition” for people who …
have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone) … and who …
have a hobby developing and printing photographs
Anyway, we agree with Microsoft that Cortana is clever, and it’s nice for us to find another use for the microphone (brand called MXL Tempo) we used with WebEx work we talked about with WebEx Presentation with Microphone Tutorial below.
There is not much to setting up Cortana, except, perhaps, for the microphone bit, which we’ll talk more about later. Cortana’s “personal assistant” and interface down next to the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen guides you well through what you have to do.
We got stuck a bit, regarding setting up the microphone, with a cycle of it presenting this voice recognition test always resulting in a message wondering whether we had the microphone set to “mute on”, which wasn’t the case. But what was the case, and remedied this problem was to use a USB 2 port rather than a USB 3 port … in case this happens to you.
Other than that, Cortana is pretty cute, and could be a good enough reason on its own to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 9 operating systems before Friday, 29th July 2016 which is the cut off day for free upgrades. Our experience of the upgrade was talked about at Windows 10 Upgrade Primer Tutorial (and backups were discussed at Windows File History Backup Primer Tutorial).
We’ve been doing some more WebEx (by Cisco) lately, and realised, at least with using a MacBook Pro laptop, we needed to invest in a microphone, to be heard, as the inbuilt microphone systems were not up to it.
We opted for a USB connected microphone brand called MXL Tempo, sold here in Australia, and have found it to be good, especially mounted on the stand provided … well, no complaints, anyway?! Where it has a 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack we plugged in our own speakers, though you could use headphones here as well.
Of course we’ll also be constructing a garage, and buying a guitar, and calling on “tree fellers”karaoke backing track of Peter, Paul and Mary to complete the picture of this week’s project … getting the new microphone to make breakfast in the morning before you even knew you needed breakfast get me on The Voices.
In the WebEx “Audio Connection” menu via “Call Using Computer” option have both input and output audio be handled by “USB audio CODEC” (if they are options … if not, there is a hardware (perhaps configuration) problem with your audio and microphone connection) as you can see at today’s tutorial picture. So long as you succeed and have the USB connected, the audio connection will default to this arrangement for the next time. Cute, huh?!
To make it permanent that the MXL Tempo microphone arrangement is the default device for recordings …
click on System Preferences off the Apple menu
click the Sound option
click the Output tab
pick USB audio CODEC
if you intend using speakers or headphones connected off this microphone from its 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack, click the Input tab
… regarding video conferencing products we’ve tried at this blog.
Have to say, WebEx is great, even with respect to the “wide eyed and bushy tailed” reaction “this little black duck” has to all these networky communicaty ideas on the net (at least we spelt “net” correctly).
Have to thank my wife, Maree, for her expertise and the facilities her company, Thomson Reuters, supplies for the serving of WebEx recordings … thanks everyone. Have been assured they are periodically deleted, and my lame impersonations of the old “ducks on the wall” can rest in peace shortly.
And so, we have a slideshow starting with a WebEx email link to join a meeting, and we pan down the email to show you other WebEx functionalities, such as adding a Calendar reference to the meeting time, and though we haven’t shown you detail here, rest assured it handles timezone scenarios very well, unless you lie about living in Antarctica, that is … sorry, scientists in Antarctica reading this blog posting … all 237 of you.
During this “earlier than today exploration of WebEx” session the necessary software installs just happened for this MacBook Pro Mac OS X laptop as if we were shelling peas … it’s always good to have some handy when installing any software. So we won’t show you this unless we deem it essential at a later date. You can perhaps do as I did, and ask a real WebEx user invite you to a meeting, to set yourself up. In fact, today’s session meeting creation time you may notice is well in the past from that earlier introductory learning session Maree and I had, and you can bring back up that old email, and resurrect that meeting again and again, if you like … am not sure if there is an expiry date on this too, like with server stored WebEx prerecordings.
So also rest assured, WebEx handles …
video via webcam on your device
audio via microphone on your device (“Use Computer”) or via a phone line
the synchronization of the two above
mobile devices
Did you know?
A .ics extension file, as you can see being used as an email attachment file extension in is, as explained in this link‘s sublink …
ICS is a global format for calendar files widely being utilized by various calendar and email programs including Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook. These files enable users to share and publish information directly from their calendars over email or via uploading it to the world wide web.
… as helping interface meetings to online calendar appointments. Cute, huh?!
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… email body media attachment logics “less than optimal” … putting it kindly. Today, though, for your shorter audio or video media instances, within that email body content we can offer a new hashtagging URL paradigm that goes …
… style of link now created, and in the case of macOS, perhaps automated, into the email body, not as an attachment, but as a link the email recipient can click to see that media content display … for your smaller media content usages.
The keen eyed will see that recording_ideas.php has gone through extensive changes to “shapen up or fly right” regarding other ambitions we have for it, which Luna has told me is …
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
… as anything that can explain the overnight disappearances of code you’ve worked on, and is not “hacking activity”, tends to be “a relief to one’s system” and “double the relief to a set of twins” (as Nala wanted to point out).
But, it is only occasionally you get this type of problem happening and the scheduled ways of crontab are just so useful, we’re proceeding with the file tidying ways of crontab, but shoring up the wildcarding we apply so that the entry …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… becomes …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*[0-9]*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… to solve our current project’s constant need for resurrection surrounding it’s media_via_pb.* naming ways.
<?php
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$afters='';
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
} else {
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo . "\n" . "osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class optd»)'");
exec("echo " . $pbit . $thingo . " | pbcopy");
$afters=("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\"
set thesong to \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\" as string
end tell
tell application \"QuickTime Player\"
activate
open thesong
play document 1
end tell'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
if ($afters != '') { sleep(5); exec($afters); $afters=''; }
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
to a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadedchangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application …
so that up at the public domain webpage when local media browsing …
with email address defined …
the “Intranet feeling” window.open(MAMP-get-style-url.php, iframe-name, ‘top=?,width=?,left=?,height=?’) can work it’s magic in amongst, in order …
public domain does window.open as above
public domain webpage does “a” mailto: link click to open email client
MAMP-get-style-url.php in macOS or Windows copies image into Clipboard as graphics
if macOS can go on to paste that Clipboard image into that email body as an attachment
… but only if, as we’ve verified again today and only for sure on macOS Google Chrome web browser so far, otherwise CORS restrictions come into it, MAMP-get-style-url.php only performs PHP stuff and does not try to write out a webpage of any sort. We can arrange it that way in this project but can easily imagine other projects where this can not be wrangled using a public domain webpage incarnation this “Intranet feeling” way.
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
Bit sad, but a new opportunity too?!
And so, with that opportunity, we can apply some recent work knowledge, especially regarding a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadablechangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application.
… command to “provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line” (quoting from “man pbcopy”).
And where there is a “copy” there’s a … anyone, anyone? … yes, Smithers, a “paste”. And so, new to today’s work, we start combining that pbpaste with the brilliant passthru …
… to position at the place to “plonk” media data into a webpage, often, and let it display.
You’ll notice in today’s PHP (only really suits localhost local web server hosting code, such as MAMP) “Media via pbcopy and pbpaste” web application’s http://localhost:8888/media_via_pb.php code that we code an exec style …
Mac OS X Clipboard to File to Datauri Primer Tutorial
Today’s tutorial is a lot about the image two below the one above. It looks pretty much like any other image on this web page, I’m sure, at first glance, you’d say?! But the fact is, this image does not involve a web server image file of any sort, though its storage does involve a web server database, because all these blog postings exist in a table of a MySql database that WordPress uses to store information. Has this let you down? Hope not, because this is still a pretty big concept, getting bigger and bigger as time goes on, and spurred on by the mobile device revolution, and that is the rise and rise of the use of datauri based media. Let’s see what Wikipedia says …
The data URI scheme is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme that provides a way to include data in-line in web pages as if they were external resources. It is a form of file literal or here document. This technique allows normally separate elements such as images and style sheets to be fetched in a single Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, which may be more efficient than multiple HTTP requests.[1] Data URIs are sometimes referred to incorrectly as “data URLs”.[citation needed] As of 2015, data URIs are fully supported by most major browsers, and partially supported in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge.[2]
With this image, two down, we didn’t feel like plonking this as a file on our web server, basically because it was that bit smaller than the usual, and so the basic steps of how we constructed it was …
we’d Prnt-Scrn buttoned this part of a screen snapshot on Windows 10 … and then …
we emailed it to ourselves, but logged onto our MacBook Pro laptop … and so we …
downloaded that email attachment into the Preview desktop application … where we …
drew a rectangle around the dialog of interest and used Edit -> Copy to get it into a Mac OS X clipboard … and though we didn’t do this right here and now, we did do before the final step, copy the clipboard into an image file called huh.png (via File -> Save As…) via Paintbrush desktop application’s File -> New from clipboard option … and so then …
looked up Google in this way … and the second link in the list got me to …
see some incredibly useful Mac OS X Terminal application command line usage … to aim for … and we adapted to, namely … openssl base64 < ./huh.png | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy
… which got into a Mac OS X clipboard the suffix (called [suffix] that gets appended to the prefix [prefix] we’ll talk about in the next step) of an HTML image element of the form <img title=’Datauri image’ src=’[prefix][suffix]‘></img> … leaving us to work out for the png image type we desired the prefix [prefix] could be …
found a typical datauri prefix for a base64 encode png image at this really useful link so that prefix [prefix] above could be data:image/png;base64, … the missing piece of being able to HTML code the datauri image two below the one above … and not requiring a web server image file to exist, as the image data exists in this blog posting … brought to you by the wonders of CMS (Content Management Systems).
Hope this interests you, and perhaps that you try out one of these datauri HTML img elements for yourself.
In the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, perhaps the best known concept to we “mere mortals” is “voice recognition”. Perhaps because research into it goes back to 1932, before the Second World War … and 66 years before the “Worm Farm Incident of Simmons Street Disaster” … but we digress … and no … “I’m not ready to open up about this at this delicate stage of my life, yet, Brad.”.
Voice recognition has come a long way from those earliest endeavours when the speech recognition relied on training software for an individual voice. This became apparent to me trying out Cortana in Windows 10. Once working, it didn’t seem to matter who in our house asked the same question of Cortana, the speech recognition software recognized and translated the speech into the same text for all of us. Actually, Microsoft describes Cortana this way …
Cortana is your clever new personal assistant.
Cortana will help you find things on your PC, manage your calendar, track packages, find files, chat with you, and tell jokes. The more you use Cortana, the more personalized your experience will be.
To get started, type a question in the search box on the taskbar. Or select the microphone icon and talk to Cortana. (Typing works for all types of PCs, but you need a mic to talk.)
… and I see what they mean by this, because you can work Cortana without the voice recognition part, if you like, or if you have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone). Perhaps Cortana should have a special “Darkroom Edition” for people who …
have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone) … and who …
have a hobby developing and printing photographs
Anyway, we agree with Microsoft that Cortana is clever, and it’s nice for us to find another use for the microphone (brand called MXL Tempo) we used with WebEx work we talked about with WebEx Presentation with Microphone Tutorial below.
There is not much to setting up Cortana, except, perhaps, for the microphone bit, which we’ll talk more about later. Cortana’s “personal assistant” and interface down next to the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen guides you well through what you have to do.
We got stuck a bit, regarding setting up the microphone, with a cycle of it presenting this voice recognition test always resulting in a message wondering whether we had the microphone set to “mute on”, which wasn’t the case. But what was the case, and remedied this problem was to use a USB 2 port rather than a USB 3 port … in case this happens to you.
Other than that, Cortana is pretty cute, and could be a good enough reason on its own to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 9 operating systems before Friday, 29th July 2016 which is the cut off day for free upgrades. Our experience of the upgrade was talked about at Windows 10 Upgrade Primer Tutorial (and backups were discussed at Windows File History Backup Primer Tutorial).
We’ve been doing some more WebEx (by Cisco) lately, and realised, at least with using a MacBook Pro laptop, we needed to invest in a microphone, to be heard, as the inbuilt microphone systems were not up to it.
We opted for a USB connected microphone brand called MXL Tempo, sold here in Australia, and have found it to be good, especially mounted on the stand provided … well, no complaints, anyway?! Where it has a 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack we plugged in our own speakers, though you could use headphones here as well.
Of course we’ll also be constructing a garage, and buying a guitar, and calling on “tree fellers”karaoke backing track of Peter, Paul and Mary to complete the picture of this week’s project … getting the new microphone to make breakfast in the morning before you even knew you needed breakfast get me on The Voices.
In the WebEx “Audio Connection” menu via “Call Using Computer” option have both input and output audio be handled by “USB audio CODEC” (if they are options … if not, there is a hardware (perhaps configuration) problem with your audio and microphone connection) as you can see at today’s tutorial picture. So long as you succeed and have the USB connected, the audio connection will default to this arrangement for the next time. Cute, huh?!
To make it permanent that the MXL Tempo microphone arrangement is the default device for recordings …
click on System Preferences off the Apple menu
click the Sound option
click the Output tab
pick USB audio CODEC
if you intend using speakers or headphones connected off this microphone from its 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack, click the Input tab
… regarding video conferencing products we’ve tried at this blog.
Have to say, WebEx is great, even with respect to the “wide eyed and bushy tailed” reaction “this little black duck” has to all these networky communicaty ideas on the net (at least we spelt “net” correctly).
Have to thank my wife, Maree, for her expertise and the facilities her company, Thomson Reuters, supplies for the serving of WebEx recordings … thanks everyone. Have been assured they are periodically deleted, and my lame impersonations of the old “ducks on the wall” can rest in peace shortly.
And so, we have a slideshow starting with a WebEx email link to join a meeting, and we pan down the email to show you other WebEx functionalities, such as adding a Calendar reference to the meeting time, and though we haven’t shown you detail here, rest assured it handles timezone scenarios very well, unless you lie about living in Antarctica, that is … sorry, scientists in Antarctica reading this blog posting … all 237 of you.
During this “earlier than today exploration of WebEx” session the necessary software installs just happened for this MacBook Pro Mac OS X laptop as if we were shelling peas … it’s always good to have some handy when installing any software. So we won’t show you this unless we deem it essential at a later date. You can perhaps do as I did, and ask a real WebEx user invite you to a meeting, to set yourself up. In fact, today’s session meeting creation time you may notice is well in the past from that earlier introductory learning session Maree and I had, and you can bring back up that old email, and resurrect that meeting again and again, if you like … am not sure if there is an expiry date on this too, like with server stored WebEx prerecordings.
So also rest assured, WebEx handles …
video via webcam on your device
audio via microphone on your device (“Use Computer”) or via a phone line
the synchronization of the two above
mobile devices
Did you know?
A .ics extension file, as you can see being used as an email attachment file extension in is, as explained in this link‘s sublink …
ICS is a global format for calendar files widely being utilized by various calendar and email programs including Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook. These files enable users to share and publish information directly from their calendars over email or via uploading it to the world wide web.
… as helping interface meetings to online calendar appointments. Cute, huh?!
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Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
… as anything that can explain the overnight disappearances of code you’ve worked on, and is not “hacking activity”, tends to be “a relief to one’s system” and “double the relief to a set of twins” (as Nala wanted to point out).
But, it is only occasionally you get this type of problem happening and the scheduled ways of crontab are just so useful, we’re proceeding with the file tidying ways of crontab, but shoring up the wildcarding we apply so that the entry …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… becomes …
45 4 * * * ksh -c 'for i in `find /home/rjmprogr/ -name "media_*[0-9]*" -cmin +720`; do rm -f $i; done'
… to solve our current project’s constant need for resurrection surrounding it’s media_via_pb.* naming ways.
<?php
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$afters='';
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
} else {
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo . "\n" . "osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class optd»)'");
exec("echo " . $pbit . $thingo . " | pbcopy");
$afters=("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\"
set thesong to \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\" as string
end tell
tell application \"QuickTime Player\"
activate
open thesong
play document 1
end tell'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
if ($afters != '') { sleep(5); exec($afters); $afters=''; }
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
function andthenlater($andmore) {
global $incopy, $pathbit, $basebit, $mampfilelist, $mampfs;
$thingos=[''];
$rel='x';
if (PHP_OS == 'Darwin') {
if (strlen($andmore) > 1) {
$thingos=explode(',', $andmore);
}
for ($iwe=0; $iwe<sizeof($thingos); $iwe++) {
$thingo=$thingos[$iwe];
$pbit='';
if (basename($thingo) == $thingo && $pathbit != '') {
$pbit=$pathbit;
}
//file_put_contents('x.xx', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $thingo);
if (strlen($thingo) > 1) {
if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.png') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class PNGf»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.jp') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class JPEG»)'");
} else if (strpos(strtolower($thingo), '.gif') !== false) {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Finder\" to set the clipboard to (read (POSIX file \"" . $pbit . $thingo . "\") as «class GIF»)'");
}
sleep(5);
}
// Thanks to https://www.google.com/search?q=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&rlz=1C5OZZY_en&oq=macos+osascript+paste+from+clipboard+where+the+cursor+is+in+whatever+window&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTQ3NDg4ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
$retis=shell_exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"System Events\"
# Get the name of the current application (which is likely the Script Editor or Automator)
set currentApp to name of current application
# Check if the current app is one of the script runners and hide it to allow the target app to become frontmost
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to false
# Wait a moment for the target app to become active
delay 0.1
end if
# Simulate the Command+V keystroke in the now frontmost application
keystroke \"v\" using command down
# (Optional) Unhide the script application afterward
if currentApp is in {\"Script Editor\", \"Automator\", \"Script Debugger\"} then
set visible of process currentApp to true
end if
end tell
'");
}
if (strlen($andmore) > 1 && $incopy != '') {
return exec($incopy);
}
}
if (strlen($andmore) <= 1 && sizeof($mampfs) > 1 && $basebit != '' && $rel != '') {
$newc='';
for ($ijk=0; $ijk<sizeof($mampfs); $ijk++) {
if (strpos(explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0], $basebit) === false) {
if ($newc == '') {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0];
} else {
$newc=explode('##',$mampfs[$ijk])[0] . ',' . $newc;
}
}
}
sleep(5);
//file_put_contents('x.x', $pathbit . "\n" . $basebit . "\n" . $newc);
andthenlater($newc);
}
return '';
}
to a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadedchangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application …
so that up at the public domain webpage when local media browsing …
with email address defined …
the “Intranet feeling” window.open(MAMP-get-style-url.php, iframe-name, ‘top=?,width=?,left=?,height=?’) can work it’s magic in amongst, in order …
public domain does window.open as above
public domain webpage does “a” mailto: link click to open email client
MAMP-get-style-url.php in macOS or Windows copies image into Clipboard as graphics
if macOS can go on to paste that Clipboard image into that email body as an attachment
… but only if, as we’ve verified again today and only for sure on macOS Google Chrome web browser so far, otherwise CORS restrictions come into it, MAMP-get-style-url.php only performs PHP stuff and does not try to write out a webpage of any sort. We can arrange it that way in this project but can easily imagine other projects where this can not be wrangled using a public domain webpage incarnation this “Intranet feeling” way.
Here in December, 2025 we have lost touch with the original media_via_pb.php code from back in November 2018 and we are in the process of repiecing a similar but different set of logics in a similar vein. Please stay tuned for interplay with macOS pbcopy and pbpaste and Windows clip commands or some other methodology involvement not existing in this reconstituted first draft.
Bit sad, but a new opportunity too?!
And so, with that opportunity, we can apply some recent work knowledge, especially regarding a local web server (such as MAMP) underlying operating system environments, to the point that an email attachment piece of automation can be worked from a downloadablechangedmedia_via_pb.phpmedia_via_pb.php web application.
… command to “provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line” (quoting from “man pbcopy”).
And where there is a “copy” there’s a … anyone, anyone? … yes, Smithers, a “paste”. And so, new to today’s work, we start combining that pbpaste with the brilliant passthru …
… to position at the place to “plonk” media data into a webpage, often, and let it display.
You’ll notice in today’s PHP (only really suits localhost local web server hosting code, such as MAMP) “Media via pbcopy and pbpaste” web application’s http://localhost:8888/media_via_pb.php code that we code an exec style …
Mac OS X Clipboard to File to Datauri Primer Tutorial
Today’s tutorial is a lot about the image two below the one above. It looks pretty much like any other image on this web page, I’m sure, at first glance, you’d say?! But the fact is, this image does not involve a web server image file of any sort, though its storage does involve a web server database, because all these blog postings exist in a table of a MySql database that WordPress uses to store information. Has this let you down? Hope not, because this is still a pretty big concept, getting bigger and bigger as time goes on, and spurred on by the mobile device revolution, and that is the rise and rise of the use of datauri based media. Let’s see what Wikipedia says …
The data URI scheme is a uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme that provides a way to include data in-line in web pages as if they were external resources. It is a form of file literal or here document. This technique allows normally separate elements such as images and style sheets to be fetched in a single Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, which may be more efficient than multiple HTTP requests.[1] Data URIs are sometimes referred to incorrectly as “data URLs”.[citation needed] As of 2015, data URIs are fully supported by most major browsers, and partially supported in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge.[2]
With this image, two down, we didn’t feel like plonking this as a file on our web server, basically because it was that bit smaller than the usual, and so the basic steps of how we constructed it was …
we’d Prnt-Scrn buttoned this part of a screen snapshot on Windows 10 … and then …
we emailed it to ourselves, but logged onto our MacBook Pro laptop … and so we …
downloaded that email attachment into the Preview desktop application … where we …
drew a rectangle around the dialog of interest and used Edit -> Copy to get it into a Mac OS X clipboard … and though we didn’t do this right here and now, we did do before the final step, copy the clipboard into an image file called huh.png (via File -> Save As…) via Paintbrush desktop application’s File -> New from clipboard option … and so then …
looked up Google in this way … and the second link in the list got me to …
see some incredibly useful Mac OS X Terminal application command line usage … to aim for … and we adapted to, namely … openssl base64 < ./huh.png | tr -d '\n' | pbcopy
… which got into a Mac OS X clipboard the suffix (called [suffix] that gets appended to the prefix [prefix] we’ll talk about in the next step) of an HTML image element of the form <img title=’Datauri image’ src=’[prefix][suffix]‘></img> … leaving us to work out for the png image type we desired the prefix [prefix] could be …
found a typical datauri prefix for a base64 encode png image at this really useful link so that prefix [prefix] above could be data:image/png;base64, … the missing piece of being able to HTML code the datauri image two below the one above … and not requiring a web server image file to exist, as the image data exists in this blog posting … brought to you by the wonders of CMS (Content Management Systems).
Hope this interests you, and perhaps that you try out one of these datauri HTML img elements for yourself.
In the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, perhaps the best known concept to we “mere mortals” is “voice recognition”. Perhaps because research into it goes back to 1932, before the Second World War … and 66 years before the “Worm Farm Incident of Simmons Street Disaster” … but we digress … and no … “I’m not ready to open up about this at this delicate stage of my life, yet, Brad.”.
Voice recognition has come a long way from those earliest endeavours when the speech recognition relied on training software for an individual voice. This became apparent to me trying out Cortana in Windows 10. Once working, it didn’t seem to matter who in our house asked the same question of Cortana, the speech recognition software recognized and translated the speech into the same text for all of us. Actually, Microsoft describes Cortana this way …
Cortana is your clever new personal assistant.
Cortana will help you find things on your PC, manage your calendar, track packages, find files, chat with you, and tell jokes. The more you use Cortana, the more personalized your experience will be.
To get started, type a question in the search box on the taskbar. Or select the microphone icon and talk to Cortana. (Typing works for all types of PCs, but you need a mic to talk.)
… and I see what they mean by this, because you can work Cortana without the voice recognition part, if you like, or if you have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone). Perhaps Cortana should have a special “Darkroom Edition” for people who …
have the urge to run for the nearest cupboard before being caught talking into a computer (microphone) … and who …
have a hobby developing and printing photographs
Anyway, we agree with Microsoft that Cortana is clever, and it’s nice for us to find another use for the microphone (brand called MXL Tempo) we used with WebEx work we talked about with WebEx Presentation with Microphone Tutorial below.
There is not much to setting up Cortana, except, perhaps, for the microphone bit, which we’ll talk more about later. Cortana’s “personal assistant” and interface down next to the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen guides you well through what you have to do.
We got stuck a bit, regarding setting up the microphone, with a cycle of it presenting this voice recognition test always resulting in a message wondering whether we had the microphone set to “mute on”, which wasn’t the case. But what was the case, and remedied this problem was to use a USB 2 port rather than a USB 3 port … in case this happens to you.
Other than that, Cortana is pretty cute, and could be a good enough reason on its own to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 or Windows 9 operating systems before Friday, 29th July 2016 which is the cut off day for free upgrades. Our experience of the upgrade was talked about at Windows 10 Upgrade Primer Tutorial (and backups were discussed at Windows File History Backup Primer Tutorial).
We’ve been doing some more WebEx (by Cisco) lately, and realised, at least with using a MacBook Pro laptop, we needed to invest in a microphone, to be heard, as the inbuilt microphone systems were not up to it.
We opted for a USB connected microphone brand called MXL Tempo, sold here in Australia, and have found it to be good, especially mounted on the stand provided … well, no complaints, anyway?! Where it has a 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack we plugged in our own speakers, though you could use headphones here as well.
Of course we’ll also be constructing a garage, and buying a guitar, and calling on “tree fellers”karaoke backing track of Peter, Paul and Mary to complete the picture of this week’s project … getting the new microphone to make breakfast in the morning before you even knew you needed breakfast get me on The Voices.
In the WebEx “Audio Connection” menu via “Call Using Computer” option have both input and output audio be handled by “USB audio CODEC” (if they are options … if not, there is a hardware (perhaps configuration) problem with your audio and microphone connection) as you can see at today’s tutorial picture. So long as you succeed and have the USB connected, the audio connection will default to this arrangement for the next time. Cute, huh?!
To make it permanent that the MXL Tempo microphone arrangement is the default device for recordings …
click on System Preferences off the Apple menu
click the Sound option
click the Output tab
pick USB audio CODEC
if you intend using speakers or headphones connected off this microphone from its 1/8″ (3.5mm) Headphone Jack, click the Input tab
… regarding video conferencing products we’ve tried at this blog.
Have to say, WebEx is great, even with respect to the “wide eyed and bushy tailed” reaction “this little black duck” has to all these networky communicaty ideas on the net (at least we spelt “net” correctly).
Have to thank my wife, Maree, for her expertise and the facilities her company, Thomson Reuters, supplies for the serving of WebEx recordings … thanks everyone. Have been assured they are periodically deleted, and my lame impersonations of the old “ducks on the wall” can rest in peace shortly.
And so, we have a slideshow starting with a WebEx email link to join a meeting, and we pan down the email to show you other WebEx functionalities, such as adding a Calendar reference to the meeting time, and though we haven’t shown you detail here, rest assured it handles timezone scenarios very well, unless you lie about living in Antarctica, that is … sorry, scientists in Antarctica reading this blog posting … all 237 of you.
During this “earlier than today exploration of WebEx” session the necessary software installs just happened for this MacBook Pro Mac OS X laptop as if we were shelling peas … it’s always good to have some handy when installing any software. So we won’t show you this unless we deem it essential at a later date. You can perhaps do as I did, and ask a real WebEx user invite you to a meeting, to set yourself up. In fact, today’s session meeting creation time you may notice is well in the past from that earlier introductory learning session Maree and I had, and you can bring back up that old email, and resurrect that meeting again and again, if you like … am not sure if there is an expiry date on this too, like with server stored WebEx prerecordings.
So also rest assured, WebEx handles …
video via webcam on your device
audio via microphone on your device (“Use Computer”) or via a phone line
the synchronization of the two above
mobile devices
Did you know?
A .ics extension file, as you can see being used as an email attachment file extension in is, as explained in this link‘s sublink …
ICS is a global format for calendar files widely being utilized by various calendar and email programs including Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook. These files enable users to share and publish information directly from their calendars over email or via uploading it to the world wide web.
… as helping interface meetings to online calendar appointments. Cute, huh?!
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