Category Archives: Projects

CSS Compactor – Reduces CSS File Size

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This is a script I wrote back 2006 that reduces the file size for CSS files by removing unnecessary whitespace and comments. It’s also capable of taking such compacted CSS file, and re-indent it to make it readable. For example it would take the following CSS:

/* sample css */
* {
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
}

/* define style for the logo */
#header .logo {
    float: left;
    /* another comment */
}

and turn it into:

*{ margin:0px; padding:0px;}#header .logo{ float:left;}

which is an equivalent but much shorter CSS code. It can also reindent it back to:

*{
	 margin: 0px;
	 padding: 0px;
}
#header .logo{
	 float: left;
}

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Building CookieJar out of Firefox’s cookies.sqlite

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Firefox 3 started to store it’s cookies in a SQLite database instead of the old plain-text cookie.txt. While Python’s cookielib module could read the old cookie.txt file, it doesn’t handle the new format. The following python snippet takes a CookieJar object and the path to Firefox cookies.sqlite (or a copy of it) and fills the CookieJar with the cookies from cookies.sqlite.

import sqlite3
import cookielib

def get_cookies(cj, ff_cookies):
    con = sqlite3.connect(ff_cookies)
    cur = con.cursor()
    cur.execute("SELECT host, path, isSecure, expiry, name, value FROM moz_cookies")
    for item in cur.fetchall():
        c = cookielib.Cookie(0, item[4], item[5],
            None, False,
            item[0], item[0].startswith('.'), item[0].startswith('.'),
            item[1], False,
            item[2],
            item[3], item[3]=="",
            None, None, {})
        print c
        cj.set_cookie(c)

It works well for me, except that apperantly Firefox doesn’t save session cookies to the disk at all.

spass-2.0 – Secure Password Generator

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This is a complete rewrite of my secure password generator. The new version uses my a true random number generator (and here).

The major change was using the new true random number generator in order to ensure strong passwords. Less significant changes include an easy way to specify password’s strips, and some calling convention changes.

Usage examples:

$ ./spass
E5pT35Fg
$ ./spass -l 14
R$tfOm4g_yRQ2J
$ ./spass -s 0-9a-f -l 32
8b5f14a1eeaabe58c2878ab5416a9ebb

Download the tarball spass-2.0.tar.bz2. The program depends on Boost‘s program_options (it was tested against version 1.37 and 1.42 and should work with other versions too).

Statistical Tests for My Audio Based Random Number Generator

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In May I’ve written about a way to generate random number from audio noise. Basically it went like this:

  1. Get audio sample from the microphone.
  2. Push the least significant bit to a buffer.
  3. Repeat steps 1-2 until the buffer is full (buffer size == block size for the hash function).
  4. Apply the hash function on the buffer.
  5. Get random bits from the digest.

In order to continue developing this random number generator (RNG), I’ve written a C++ class that simplifies working with it.
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Audio Based True Random Number Generator POC

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Few days ago I came up with an idea to create a true random number generator based on noise gathered from a cheap microphone attached to my computer. Tests showed that when sampling the microphone, the least significant bit behaves pretty randomly. This lead me to think it might be good source for gathering entropy for a true random number generator.
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Hash Puppy 0.2

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This is an update for my simple easy-to-use checksum calculator. It supports md4, md5, and sha1 hash functions. I wrote the project as a way to experience and learn Qt.

Changes since the previous version (Hash Puppy 0.1) include ability to abort a checksum calculation and improved GUI responsiveness. Also there were other minor tweaks to make Hash Puppy easier to use.
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Improved FTP Backup for WordPress

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This script backups both the database and files of a WordPress blog into a remote FTP server (while keeping a local copy). It’s an update of my WordPress Backup to FTP script. The main changes are auto-detecting database settings and better support for caching plugins (specifically WP-Cache). The new version makes it easier to backup multiple WordPress blogs to the same FTP server.
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An Early Release of the New cssrtl.py-2.0

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It has been three years since I’ve released the original version of cssrtl.py (and two since it’s re-release). The old version did a nice job, but experience gained during that time led me to write from scratch a new version. I’ve detailed more than a month ago, the basic principles and ideas that guided me to design a better tool to help adapting CSS files from left-to-right to right-to-left.

The guidelines weren’t just empty words, they were written while working on the Hebrew adaptation to the Fusion theme and in the same time writing a new proof-of-concept version of cssrtl.py. The original intent was to release a more mature version of that code when it will be completed. However, due to the apparent shortage of time in the present and foreseeable future, I can’t see myself complete the project any time soon. So following the “release early” mantra, I’ve decided to release the code as-is. As I said, the code is in working state, but not polished, so it may be of benefit but may contain bugs. If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, I would be glad to hear.
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Designing a Better a CSS RTL Convertor

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About a year and a half ago I’ve released cssrtl.py, a script that translates CSS code to RTL. The script was designed to be fully autonomous, however translating CSS code is a complex task, as not all the information needed to make the translation is available in the CSS files. While cssrtl.py did a very good job on some tasks it lacks on several issues:

  1. When a design update is released, one cannot use previous translation work.
  2. When things don’t go smooth, it’s hard to find out why.
  3. Complex CSS can’t be translated automatically, as it requires understanding of the structure of the corresponding html files and how the CSS will be used by future code.

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