I like iTunes, it’s a good media player. But I got some MP3s that are not part of my iTunes library, an old backup. I don’t want ALL of them to be automatically imported into my iTunes library just so I can listen to them. And There is a lot, over 1000. I wanted to select the directory, and hit play and have it go through so I can listen. If any that caught my attention and were not already in my library I could import it. On Windows, I would just use WINAMP. But I could not find a Mac version of WINAMP. I wanted something light, simple, just to play a directory of MP3s.

A few years ago, my first Adobe AIR project was an MP3 player. It was pretty much full featured: volume control, track progress, skinning, etc. I wanted something a little simpler, cleaner. I had a free Saturday, and I made a new one. Based it off of the Apple iPod Shuffle, 2nd generation. It is very simple to use. When it opens, select a directory of MP3s (it only plays MP3s), and be patient if its a directory with thousands of MP3s it will take a moment to load. A window will come up with a list of all the MP3s, double click one to play, or hit the play button, or next. You can close the windows and just have the player up, it shows the name of the song if ID3 tags are available. The reason I call it “MP3 Shaker”: if you shake it (drag it left and right really fast) it will shuffle to another song (just like the new iPods). Click the green light on the top right to close.

As always, its open source. Right click anywhere on the player and select view source. Enjoy!

There are lots of automatic Wordpress upgrade plugins, but do to some server restrictions I couldn’t get them to work correctly. So I made a simple bash file to upgrade this Wordpress site for me. The script only backs up the current web site directory, and does not do any DB backups. I used this script to upgrade from 2.7.1 to 2.8 and just today from 2.8 to 2.8.1 and the blog is still up, so I guess it works OK!

Variable definitions:

• WORDPRESS_DOWNLOAD_URL – the URL of the latest Wordpress version to download
• WORDPRESS_LATEST – the file name of the downloaded Wordpress version
• WORDPRESS_EXTRACT – the directory the Wordpress files are extracted when the download file is uncompressed
• WORDPRESS_DIR – the web root directory where the Wordpress files will be copied to, and where your wp-config and wp-content files will be copied to (your blogs web root)

To use, create a new file, say wordpress_upgrade.txt, copy and paste the code below, and make wordpress_upgrade.txt executable (chmod 755 wordpress_upgrade.txt). Run via ./wordpress_upgrade.txt and when its done, sign into your blog to run any DB upgrades. I run this script from my home directory, and “public_html” is where my Wordpress files reside. This script can be run from any location, as long as the paths are setup correctly and accessible.

Note: this script does not perform a database backup!

#!/bin/bash
# Upgrading Wordpress steps
# From home directory

WORDPRESS_DOWNLOAD_URL="http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz"
WORDPRESS_LATEST="latest.tar.gz"
WORDPRESS_EXTRACT="wordpress"
WORDPRESS_DIR="public_html"

echo "Removing current latest.tar.gz"
rm latest.tar.gz

echo "Backing up current Wordpress"
tar -cf wordpress-backup.tar $WORDPRESS_DIR
#get wp-config.php and wp-content/ out of wordrpess directory
echo "Grabbing wp-config.php and wp-content/ and putting them in ~/mywordpressfi
les."
cp $WORDPRESS_DIR/wp-config.php mywordpressfiles
cp -r $WORDPRESS_DIR/wp-content/ mywordpressfiles
echo "Downloading latest Wordpress form $WORDPRESS_DOWNLOAD_URL"
wget $WORDPRESS_DOWNLOAD_URL
echo "Extracting $WORDPRESS_LATEST..."
tar -zxf $WORDPRESS_LATEST
echo "Copying $WORDPRESS_EXTRACT to $WORDPRESS_DIR."
cp -r $WORDPRESS_EXTRACT/* $WORDPRESS_DIR
echo "Copying wp-config.php and wp-content/ files back to $WORDPRESS_DIR."
cp mywordpressfiles/wp-config.php $WORDPRESS_DIR
cp -r $WORDPRESS_EXTRACT/wp-content/* $WORDPRESS_DIR/wp-content
echo "Should be done, now go to Wordpress Admin to upgrade!"

I made some major updates to BreakTimer. It now minimizes to the dock/system tray, with a nice icon that counts down. Also has icon menu options so BreakTimer can be started, or stopped from the dock/system tray, and well as toggle the repeat. O, I added a stop feature so you can stop the timer rather than close the application. I don’t see a point in pause, since if you pause it, you are most likely taking a break so just restart it.

Also fixed a few bugs with the break window not grabbing focus and moving to the front on a Mac. Also a little instruction slides down to let you know Escape closes the break window. Hope you enjoy!

Download at the BreaTimer Page.

My current career path has me sittign on my ass infront of a computer for most of the daylight hours. I have back issues, and sometimes I get too involved in my work and forget to move.  Combine that with years of volleyball and tight muscles I got a herniated disc.  So I made a simple AIR application that will block out the screen and tell you to take a break after a proscribed period of time (30 minutes).  This can be set from 0 to 180 minutes (no person should be sitting for 180 minutes straight though!).  If you have multiple monitores it will block all your monitors.

The source is there for you to tweak, right click on the app and view source.