YATC, mb(1) “microbe” updated

Posted by Josh – April 23, 2011

I updated the simple Plan 9 microblogging scripts, mb(1), not often but sometimes also called “microbe”, and almost never known as “meekroh-Bee”.

All file and environment variable names have changed since the last release (c.2009, AD), replacing the “special” character micro (HTML’s µ, µ, µ) with a plain m.

The awk|sed filter pipeline at the center of any useful improvement was taken from Stanley Lieber’s tw Twitter script.

Mb/read changes

  1. Uses XML API
  2. Changed output order: now oldest-first. A feature, especially in acme(1). Get the old school, newest-first ordering by appending, e.g., | sed 'x;1!H;$!d;x'
  3. No timestamps shown
  4. No “from client” source tag shown
  5. Directory moved
    • /rc/bin/µb/ => /rc/bin/mb/
  6. Environment variables renamed
    • µblog => mbapiurl
    • µsr => mbuser

Mb/write changes

Trivial. Write always spoke API, so the the changes were limited, syncing env names, etc.

Example: Twitter

A side effect of proper API use gives mb/read ready access to Twitter timelines through services like the Supertweet API proxy.

To use the Supertweet service, visit their site to OAuth‘orize a Supertweet account to your Twitter account. You must then assign a password to your Supertweet account that will be used for HTTP Basic auth to the API proxy. You can then mb/read and mb/write Twitter:

Say it:

% mb/write -h http://api.supertweet.net/1 Hello World.

See it:

% mb/read -h http://api.supertweet.net/1

You’ll be asked for the proxy name and password you created at Supertweet unless it is available from factotum(4).

Download and (more!?) details

Self-Determination

Posted by Josh – March 19, 2011

It is perhaps instructive to plagiarize Wills:

[Hollis wrote:] “An election was held in October. But its results, being favorable to General Huerta, were, Wilson decided, not a genuine expression of the will of the people… In his complaint that the elections were “irregularly conducted” he was right, but it only showed his ignorance of Mexico that he would have troubled to make such a complaint. The electoral machinery was treated by both sides as a tired and flagging joke and was kept in existence only out of a puzzled good nature because, for some reason quite incomprehensible, it seemed to give pleasure to the President of the United States.”

But Wilson was not sufficently pleased with such elections; backing various opponents of Huerta, he was drawn into two military raids on the country: “We have gone into Mexico to serve mankind…” In a series of moves, threats, blunders, Wilson found himself first supporting Villa, then attacking him, calling for elections, then challenging them. Soon he was mobilizing for all-out war on the country. As John Morton Blum says,  ”Confused as he was by his own uninformed intentions, while he championed peace and justice in Mexico, he seemed, like the jingoes, ready ‘to blow up the whole place.’” Wilson had arrived at that fatal recurring moment in our country’s diplomatic benefactions, the moment when it makes sense to start shooting people philanthropically. He was as ready to do Mexicans this service as we have proved, year after discouraging year, with Vietnamese, preaching democracy with well-meant napalm, instructing (as we obliterate) children with our bombs. We believe we can literally “kill them with kindness,” moving our guns forward in a seizure of demented charity. It is when America is in her most altruistic mood that other nations better get behind their bunkers.

- Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes

An Advantage of Angles

Posted by Josh – February 14, 2011

Kansas City/Paros. November 2005.

Not every night is different
most begin with much the same choreography
a geometry of sky folding closed and Sound
thrown out of a day’s dance with the wind
when Silence cuts in.

Stars pick out jasmine’s shadow negative against
their black matting, their paper backing, where
tonight it seems Orion aims his dart on a course
straight through the red heart of Mars and into
the moon’s sickly face for a trick shot.

As that pierced moon you have moved through
vast darkrooms bigger than this ocean-mirror sky
carrying photographs to be finished
on the process you invented in the bath one night
that the Kodak folks finally shook you down for. Tonight’s
moon would not brighten these gaping vault closets with
futile red lights and no poster on the bulwark walls
of this shadowbox could reduce the dimensions.

Rooms too big and black for living or falling asleep in,
walls too high for leaping, but you have a chance
to throw your hat over and you see that
the guests walk with the stiff steps of the uninvited
before you realize you arrived right on time
fit the dress code on the placard to a tee
but when trying to leave looked for nickels or dimes lost
in the funnel to the sewer line beneath the carpet
laid by man for dogs and nuns treading separately
past the case that locks the dirty negatives and
the chemicals. (You should not breathe these.)

You thought your lab partner stood near the other end’s exit
to pull on the string with the clothespins and things
that aren’t pictures yet hanging. “Why won’t you pull
the line away from me? I can’t push it.
Are you reeling now?
Can you hear me? Is it so dark that you’re deaf?
If so you won’t have noticed the noise that hides you.
Or are you raiding some other pantry?” (that will be
such broad blackness just like this one
with all the same mundane dunking, dousing,
pressing, printing, hanging, cutting machines.)

The door you must find by feeling and no
lightswitch sits near the jamb it’s in
But finally you get out as you got in, but thinking
as you push your head through the exit that
These marbles are plaster made forgetful
massaged with chisels until depicting
just the one thing but with the advantage of angles
in the light tonight’s moon shines they define subtlety.

Inked (Don’t You Call Me (two (too) Haikus))

Posted by Josh – February 14, 2011

Kansas City. November 2005.

triple ribbon is
efficient because it
abandoned hue

any color you
want so long as it is black
like Henry Ford said

Courtyard

Posted by Josh – February 14, 2011

Paros. October 2006.

I stood on the rail and looked over the stone wall of the courtyard
Through the crosshairs of the crucifix atop the blue dome of the church
I saw people moving in the house-lights on the hillside
They seemed like signals

Paradis Perdue

Posted by Josh – February 10, 2011

Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin:
and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. – James 1:15

At last this odious offspring whom thou seest
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way
Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew
Transform’d: But he my inbred enemy
Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart
Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out, Death;
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh’d
From all her caves, and back resounded, Death.