1Password and Freshbooks Not on Speaking Terms | Tamper Monkey to the Rescue

Months ago Freshbooks and 1Password decided to stop working together. I use Freshbooks to track my time for my business and I use 1Password for easy login to sites in general. For some reason, 1Password's auto-fill function stopped functioning on the Freshbooks login page.

I reached out to 1Password was pleased with their response: they acknowledged the issue and they even went into technical detail as to what was causing the problem (a stray iframe on the page to was to blame). I figured I'd let the developers over at 1Password solve this issue. However, after a few more weeks of manually copying and pasting my password I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands.

I had a vague notion that Firefox's Grease Monkey addon was designed to hack pages on your behalf. However, I'd never used it. And these days, I'm using Chrome as my primary browser. A bit of Googling confirmed that my thinking was in the right direction: Chrome offers a plugin named Tamper Monkey and it does the on the fly page hacking I believed I needed.

I installed Tamper Monkey, and worked up the following script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Freshbooks + 1password fixer
// @namespace    http://code.benjisimon.com
// @version      0.1
// @description  Freshbooks and 1password aren't working together, so I'm writing some code to make them work together.
// @author       Ben Simon
// @match        https://my.freshbooks.com/
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    var trouble = document.getElementById("zendesk-widget-iframe");
    if(trouble) {
        trouble.parentNode.removeChild(trouble);
    }
})();

The script worked like a charm! With the errant iframe removed, 1Password was back to working. And best of all, I've added Tamper Monkey as a new tool to my toolbox.

Flight of the Bumblebee - In Super Slow Motion

What happens when you combine the Galaxy S9+'s super slow motion mode with a $4.00 mobile phone monocular?

Some surprisingly interesting footage:

This isn't breaking new ground, but it's still a fresh way for me to shoot something like a bumblebee. At least, I think this guy is a bumblebee.

Most of the videos I captured of this guy flitting arond weren't useful. But I did manage to catch 4 that were worth sharing. I combined the 4 videos using ffmpeg:

 (ls 2019*.mp4 | while read x ; do echo "file $x"; done ) > inputs.txt ; \
 ffmpeg -f concat -i inputs.txt -c copy all.mp4

It never ceases to amaze me at how amazing cell phone cameras are. Not that many years ago, the above video would have taken specialized hardware and techniques; today it's as easy as snapping landscape pic.

Fluffy

The above is a pic of the vastly underappreciated dandelion:

Somewhere in the 20th century perspectives on the value of the dandelion changed. Tables turned on this bright yellow beauty, yet despite the attempts by lawn perfectionists to eradicate this valuable plant, it is a survivor, it is persistent. Since it is highly unlikely it will bend to the will of its enemies, perhaps it’s time perspectives be altered. Maybe this perennial returns year after year hoping that we may finally get the message, “I am valuable, take a deeper look.” If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then we should ask ourselves what is beautiful? I find the constellations in the night sky very beautiful. The dandelion, as it emerges in the spring reflects this visual above as it dots our landscape with shining yellow flowers too bright to ignore.

It's food, medicine, beauty and metaphor. It demands nothing but your attention. What more could you possible ask from a living being?

Yo Phone, Where You At? | A Simple SMS Based Find-My-Phone Solution

Weeks ago we were at dinner and I reached for my phone only to realize it wasn't in my bag. I had the usual stream of thoughts: it's probably at home. But what if it's not at home? What if it's lying in the parking lot, or otherwise lost? I could have logged into my Google Account on Shira's phone and used its find my phone feature to track down the device. But that would have been a significant disruption to dinner. I made a mental note to solve this problem later and hoped the device would be waiting for me when I got home. Fortunately, it was.

Then, a couple weeks later on on Reddit's /r/tasker I came across this post: Is there any way to text my location? Someone left a comment linking to a Where Are You task. Curious, I installed this task and was impressed: with one click I had installed an action that translated my current location into human readable form.

All that was left to do was to wire this task into an Event: Received Text Profile and I had a simple find-my-phone solution that would have put me at ease in the restaurant. For my first attempt at capturing Received Texts I made use of a Flash alert. This didn't work. Opting to write to a file instead of flashing text on the screen did work, as did my auto-text reply. I'm not sure why flashing text on the screen on this particular event fails, but I ultimately didn't need this for my solution.

The last piece of the puzzle is the credit card size backup phone I carry in my man-bag. The phone has basic text and call abilities and not much more.

Next time I find myself wondering where my phone is, I can bust out my backup phone and text myself LOC. If all goes well, a few seconds later I'll get a response from my phone with its current location. As a bonus, I've added Shira's phone number to the list of allowed numbers. So if she's sitting next to me, I don't even need to dig out my backup phone but can text from her device.

You can grab the code for this solution here, or recreate it using the screenshots below.

My Passover 2019 Reading List

We attended and hosted wonderful seders this year! Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for hosting the first night and for giving me so much to (a) think about, and (b) to eat!

Below are a list of links I collected up as Passover approached. The usual happened: whenever I thought I'd read the last word on a topic I realized there was more to learn and a fresh perspective to be gained.

---

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/rabbinic-development-of-passover/
A fascinating timeline showing what parts of the seder come from what eras.

https://www.aish.com/h/pes/h/Bnei-Brak-Wise-Men.html
Thoughts on the B'nei Brak Seder

https://learn.conservativeyeshiva.org/berakhot-chapter-one-mishnah-five/
Source discussion of Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah's comments about reciting the Exodus at night.

http://templebnaitikvah.org/wp-content/uploads/seder-companion.pdf
Transliteration of Red and Gold haggadah

https://www.sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.26.5?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
Source from the Torah of story section of the haggadah

https://www.movingtraditions.org/passover-metoo-and-a-mirror-on-your-seder-plate/
Suggestion: add a mirror to your seder plate for the Me Too movement.

https://elmad.pardes.org/2017/03/why-did-you-spill-the-wine/
Why do we spill drops of wine for the plagues?

https://books.google.com/books?id=iC1yObE8RSYC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=why+do+we+spill+drops+at+blood+fire+pillars+of+smoke&source=bl&ots=qjgTrgCYrR&sig=ACfU3U2LfMYgaYByqlxvXFQ_uKhuSRKJxQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6646b96LhAhXCTd8KHVv4AEoQ6AEwBHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=why%20do%20we%20spill%20drops%20at%20blood%20fire%20pillars%20of%20smoke&f=false
Commentary that connects the book of Joel with the 10 plagues

https://www.sefaria.org/Joel.3?lang=bi
Source from the book of Joel for linking the 10 plagues by text analysis.

https://www.sefaria.org/Kimcha_Davshuna_on_Pesach_Haggadah%2C_Magid%2C_The_Ten_Plagues.17.1?lang=bi
Why do we include Rabbi's Judah's abbreviation?

https://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/metzora/avi.html
Why aren't there more mentions of Moses in the haggadah?

https://www.aish.com/h/pes/h/Dayenu-Many-Plagues.html
Thoughts on Dayenu and so many plagues.

http://www.jewishmag.com/151mag/yose_hagalili/yose_hagalili.htm
All about Rabbi

https://www.torahmusings.com/2012/04/the-seder-and-the-symposium/
Is the seder a symposium?

https://www.aish.com/atr/Why_First-borns_Killed.html?s=trh
Why were the first born killed?

https://thetorah.com/biblical-perspectives-on-the-haggadah/
Fresh perspective on a number of haggadah sections

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/rabbis-without-borders/what-does-dayenu-mean-today/
Thoughts on Dayenu

https://www.sefaria.org/Pesachim.116a?lang=bi
Source text for Rabbi Gamliel's statements

https://www.reparashathashavuah.org/blog-rabbi-david-etengoff-parashat-hashavuah/rabbi-soloveitchik-encounters-rabban-gamliel-two-questions
Thoughts on Rabbi Gamliel's statements

http://tenminutesoftalmud.blogspot.com/2017/04/mishnah-116a-rabban-gamliel-used-to-say.html
Are blind people exempt from recounting the story of the haggdah?

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/149717/origin-of-passovers-four-questions
Fresh perspective on a number of haggadah sections

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/important-judaica-n09687/lot.132.html
Details about a 15th century haggdah

https://images.shulcloud.com/95/uploads/The-Haggadah%E2%80%99s-Hidden-Hero-It%E2%80%99s-Not-Who-You-Think-Written-Shabbos-HaGadol-Derasha-57782.pdf
The hidden hero in the haggadah

http://rabbisacks.org/new-concept-freedom/
Rabbi Sachs on Freedom

https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.21.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
Torah laws on slavery

http://www.jewishmag.com/112mag/frogsdogs/frogsdogs.htm
Frogs and Dogs

https://www.chabadwestside.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/2445298
What do dogs have to do with Passover?

Imaginary News - A Failed Media Experiment

My sense is that everyday the political news gets more outlandish. Occasionally we hit what surely must be a high-water mark (say, Trump siding with Putin over his own intel community), but a few days later there's something new to be stunned about.

But is my sense correct? Or, is this merely me revealing my bias against the Trump administration?

I tried to imagine a concrete way of answering this question. One solution I came up with: pick a day of the presidency, say #97. Now, compare headlines and tweets from past administrations and Trump side-by-side. Ideally, you'd do this a number of times and a pattern should reveal itself.

Alas, I couldn't find a free news API that provided data going back more than a month. CNN, AP and Twitter all offer APIs, but none give access to the historic data I'd need to bring my idea to life.

I settled instead on Plan B. I used the conveniently named newsapi.org to build an Imaginary News site. That is, it picks a random day within the last 30 and searches the Washington Post and the Washington Times for Trump headlines. It then then generates a page substituting 'Hillary' and 'Clinton' for 'Donald' and 'Trump.'

You can try this for yourself here.

As a tool for detecting bias Imaginary News is a flop. It's little more than a political Rorschach test. If you think Trump is treated unfairly by the media, this tool proves the point. If you think this administration is generating scandals at an alarming rate, you'll see that too.

As a programming exercise, however, it was a worthy one. The newsapi.org API is easy to use and Just Works. There's no complicated setup or authentication, just signup and start making curl calls. You can see my code here.

A Handy Companion for the Classic Red and Gold Haggadah

With Passover quickly approaching, I've been on the lookout for interesting materials to share at our seder. One such discovery: a transliteration of the classic Red and Gold Rabbi Nathan Goldberg Haggadah that we use at our seder. I think this is a clever way to let those who don't read Hebrew participate in the festivities. For example, here's the transliteration of the 10 plagues:

The pages even match up to the 1963 edition of the Haggadah I grabbed off our shelf.

The publisher of Rabbi Goldberg's haggadah describe it so:

The definitive and most recognizable Haggadah in English. This has become the standard for most synagogues, schools, and homes.

Rabbi Nathan Goldberg's Passover Haggadah comes with an accessible English translation, clear instructions, and numbered lines so everyone can follow along in Hebrew or in English.

And from my perspective, this is true: it is the standard. It's the one I've been using my whole life. And yet, I can find no notable history of the haggadah on the web. Compare that to the similarly compact and universal text: the Maxwell House Haggadah. There's a colorful history associated with that text. Yet, the web is silent on old Red and Gold. How could this be? Could the Goldberg story really just be simple: it's an affordable, relatively easy to follow, simple text?

In a holiday so rich with meaning and minutia, surely we can't leave it at that. Can we?

The Embarrassingly Simple Source for An Up To Date Windows Version of emacs

I recently replaced my no-name mini PC with a might-as-well-be-no-name Kingdel NC860 mini PC. These fanless desktop computers have a great form factor, dual monitor support, plenty of USB ports and a bare-bones feel that I love. Credit goes to Coding Horror for inspiring my first purchase of this type of device.

I've recently switched from Firefox to Chrome as my primary browser of choice, and 1password as my password manager. The result: installing Chrome and logging in using both my Work and Personal e-mail meant that my web-based life was essentially setup. Installing Cygwin, Gimp and AutoHotKey meant that I had a nearly complete dev environment. All that was left to do was to install emacs.

At this point, I usually Google around to find the latest version of Windows friendly emacs, often ending up on this sourceforge site. On a whim, however, I thought I'd try something different: I installed emacs via cygwin.

My expectation was that I'd get a console only emacs. And my assumption was totally wrong. I ended up with the same Windows friendly emacs I'm used to, except a whole slew of issues had been resolved. I'm used to emacs operating in terms of Windows drive paths, while cygwin works in terms of a unix'y path mapping. By using a cygwin based emacs, the two environments are now in sync.

A number of issues with eshell were magically fixed, too. #! detection and signal handling (hitting Control-c) in eshell wasn't reliable in my old Windows emacs setup, whereas it's working well under cygwin based emacs.

Finally, the cygwin version of emacs is as up to date as the GNU site offers: version 26.1.

Why didn't I try this years ago?

It blows my mind that I can go from new PC to working dev environment in 15 minutes and zero dollars spent on software.

Dusting off my Microsoft Word Programming Skills

When it comes to programmatically working with documents, I'm all about Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. But I recently found myself needing to step over to the Dark Side and write some code to interact with Microsoft Word. After a quick Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) refresher, I managed to eek out the code I needed. Surprisingly, I found myself impressed by the capabilities VBA offers. The API is massive and appears to let you automate nearly everything related to Word Docs. I suppose being an ancient and archaic incredibly mature product has its benefits.

In the interest of leaving breadcrumbs for myself, or for helping some other soul who finds themselves needing to write some Word VBA code, I'm publishing a bit of test code I wrote while tackling my project. It's CS 101 level stuff: iterate through the currently selected table and display the max and min numeric values found. But given how rusty my VBA skills are, working through this example was quite helpful.

Here's the code:

Sub TableInfo()
    minVal = 0
    maxValue = 0
    
    Dim t As Table
    If Selection.Tables.Count > 0 Then
        Set t = Selection.Tables(1)
        t.Range.Copy
        For Each r In t.Rows

            For Each c In r.Cells
                v = Left$(c, Len(c) - 2)
                v = Replace(v, "$", "")
                v = Replace(v, ",", "")
                If IsNumeric(v) Then
                    If Val(v) > maxValue Then
                        maxValue = Val(v)
                    End If
                    If minValue = 0 Or Val(v) < minValue Then
                        minValue = Val(v)
                    End If
                End If
                    
            Next
        Next
        MsgBox "Min: $" & Format(minValue, "##,##") & ", Max: $" & Format(maxValue, "##,##")
    Else
        MsgBox "You're not currently on a table."
    End If
End Sub

And here's a screenshot, note the new toolbar item I added:

You can download the Word file containing the code here. Happy Hacking!

One Big Gun, and Other Surprises Along DC's Waterfront

Everytime I think I've exhausted DC's esoterica, I'm reminded just how packed with random stuff this city is. Next time you're at a Nats Game, consider taking a less than a mile stroll along the pristine Anacostia Riverwalk Trail to 38.871800,-76.994906. Standing at these coordinates you'll be able to glimpse some truly remarkable Military hardware.

There's a Vietnam era Swift Boat you can approach and inspect:

Swift Boats have an unlikely origin story and played a critical role in Vietnam:

The U.S. Navy found what they were looking for in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil rig workers off the coast of Louisiana and Texas were shuttled to and from the rigs in strong aluminum boats built by Seward Seacraft Company of Louisiana. The taxi boats were sturdy, quiet and with a draft of 3 ½ feet, powered by two diesel engines with twin screws and speeds up to 28 knots. With the addition of weapons and living amenities, they were the perfect craft for patrolling the waterways of Vietnam.
...
Swift boats patrolled the waterways, interrupted enemy supply lines, and participated in complex insertion and extraction operations, while enduring monsoons, riverbank ambushes, mines laid by the Viet Cong, and difficult nighttime operations. Swift boat Sailors brought the naval fight inland and had a decisive role in the fight against the Viet Cong.

There's also the conning tower of the USS Balao, a WWII submarine. Despite earning 9 battle stars while operating during WWII, the sub's claim to fame is related to its movie, not military, career.

It’s real claim to fame came when Balao starred in the popular war comedy Operation Petticoat alongside Cary Grant.

The role itself was a little self-effacing. In the movie a Japanese bomber damages Balao and the submariners repairing it find they have nothing but red and white anti-corrosive paint. When they patch the sub up the gleaming new paint job is hot pink.

Audiences in 1959 screamed with delight at the prospect. The battle-hardened old sea salts of the U.S. Navy in pink? It was unthinkable. “We blushed when we asked for it and almost fainted when the Navy said okay,” the films producer explained in 1959.

Perhaps the most remarkable benefit of taking this walk is the opportunity to see "one of the largest artillery pieces in the world." That's right, parked among other employee vehicles is one of the few surviving World War I Railroad Guns. The 14"/50 caliber gun was originally deployed on battleships, but was mounted on a railroad car to help the Allies compete with German artillery superiority.

Mounting a big 'ol gun on a railroad car wasn't a WWI invention. This approach to fire superiority was conjured up during the Civil War:

The “railroad battery” was first used in Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Peninsula campaign in 1862. Confederates bolted a 32-pounder Brooke naval rifle to a flatcar protected by an iron casemate, the finished car looking much like a land version of the ironclad CSS Virginia. It engaged in artillery duels before the Battle of Fair Oaks.

The Union used similar railroad mountings during the 1864 siege of Petersburg. The most famous of these was Dictator, a thirteen-inch seacoast mortar on an eight-wheeled flatcar. Lobbing 218-pound shells as far as forty-two hundred yards, this behemoth bombarded Southern batteries and bombproofs with telling effect.

While the lifespan of Railway Guns was relatively brief, for a time they were a dominant force:

Before the rise of bombers, missiles, and precision munitions, investments in railroad guns were perhaps justified. In World War I, the guns frequently proved to be fort-cracking artillery par excellence, and superb for long-range bombardment. By the 1930s, their days were numbered: armed forces turned to air power to shatter fortresses (and the guns themselves); to drop paratroops behind fortified lines; and to sever rail links, the guns’ umbilical cord. Ponderous size, camouflage difficulties, and logistical constraints all made the guns vulnerable to air attack. While a viable role remained for cannon artillery on many battlefields into the early twenty-first century, World War II’s end rang the death knell for super-heavy artillery, of which the railroad gun marked the apotheosis.

So did I find it, DC's most unusual site? Knowing this city, not by a longshot.

Grabbing an Ionic APK for the Truly Lazy

One of the micro annoyances I encounter with Ionic is the process of sharing an Android debug APK. After running ionic cordova build android I'm left with app-debug.apk under the android platform directory. Copying this file to the correctly named location isn't hard, but it always takes me a few extra heartbeats to do it right. Where's does the APK live again? Should I use _'s or -'s in the final name? What's the version of this app? and so on. Not hard, not even tedious, but always annoying.

I've done this enough that it was time to write a script to do the job. My strategy assumes that the location of the APK is constant and that the destination file name and version can be found in config.xml. Here's the script to grab the APK:

#!/bin/bash

##
## Script to help with ionic dev
##

action=$1

case "$action" in
  grab-apk)
    name=$(xmlstarlet sel -N x=http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets  -t -v '/x:widget/x:name' config.xml)
    version=$(xmlstarlet sel -N x=http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets  -t -v '/x:widget/@version' config.xml)
    cp -v platforms/android/app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk ~/dl/$name-$version.apk
    ;;

  *)
    echo "Usage: {grab-apk}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

And here's what it looks like while running:

$ ionicassist grab-apk
`platforms/android/app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk' -> `/home/ben/dl/Foo-3.16.1.apk'

xmlstarlet is the obvious tool to use to grab info from config.xml. I'm always tripped up by the use of namespaces in the XML and XSLT, which meant writing the above script took a bit of extra debugging time. If nothing else, the above code is a helpful reminder to me as to how to navigate a document with namespaces.

Use and enjoy!