I’m not sure how many of you will have heard of Gnome-DO — let alone the number that actually use it — but for those in the dark, let me illuminate. Gnome-DO is a program for GNU/Linux operating systems. It provides a close-at-hand interface that will attempt to match what you type to a command, then let you activate that command.

By default DO works as a handy launcher, but like many other FOSS programs, it uses a plugin system to add new functionality to the core program. There’s a whole whack of neat stuff in the plugins list, but we’re going to focus on the Rhythmbox plugin for now.

Rhythmbox is an iTunes-like music player and library manager, and it’s part of the GNOME project. It’s not the most featureful of its type, but it’s fairly light-weight, which is something I like since I tend to keep an instance of it open at all times.

The Rhythmbox plugin for DO gives you access to your library through DO and also gives a quick way to control what’s already playing. What it doesn’t do — and this is what I’ll focus on today, is provide a way to access the other handy features that Rhythmbox provides, like song ratings, library manipulation, and moving files to the trash without having to track them down. Well I wanted one of those; and impatient man that I am, I didn’t want to wait for someone else to add it, nor did I feel like figuring out how the Rhythmbox plugin worked to add the functionality myself.

Notification that a song was deleted.

With that in mind, I came up with this little hack to add the functionality I wanted.

The first step was to write a little script that would get the URI for the current song. Making use of Rhythmbox’s handy DBus interface this was easy enough. Unfortunately that interface doesn’t give much in the way of management functions, and doesn’t allow you to tell Rhythmbox to trash a song.

So from there I made use of the trash-cli package (installed from the Jaunty repositories) to add the ability to send a file to the Trash properly (according to the FreeDesktop.org specification). There was a little finagling needed to make sure that the path was in a useable format , but it was fairly straightforward.

I also wanted to make use of the new notification daemon in Jaunty, so I added in the ability to have it display a notification saying which file was trashed. For this, again, I went external and used the libnotify-bin package and its notify-send utility. Easy.

All of that, however, has nothing to do with DO. I could, of course, just put the script in a bin folder and just run the command manually, but that’s lame and not in the DO spirit. Instead I made use of the core DO functionality — launching applications — and created a .desktop file in one of its paths which ran my script with the desired components. Voila! After a quick restart of DO, I can now delete the superlame songs I’ve accumulated from various sources so they never plague my ears again!

DO's Docky showing us how to use my hack.

My python script for deleting songs and the desktop file I created are available (as PDFs, ’cause WordPress understandably doesn’t want source file uploaded to their servers). The desktop file is just in my ~/Desktop folder, but it’s been hidden using a .hidden file. I’ve done a lot of fiddling with my icon set, so stuff won’t necessarily work as-is, but I wrote it to be easy to change.

Welcome to Innanetiquette, folks! I’m gonna take the time out of my busy schedule to feed you fine specimens of humanity a spoonful of sugar to help the Innanets go down smooth.

Without further ado, here’s the first lesson: Hyperlinking Hyper-onus!

Something Found …

I want to think back to the last time you found something so super exciting that you just absolutely had to tell everyone you knew. It’s a good feeling, right? You just know you’re about to enrich the lives of all the thousands of your Facebook friends!

That’s where we hit our first problem: nobody cares about the shit you found in the blagosphere.

No one.

Sure, people enjoy stuff that’s funny or interesting, but they don’t care that you found it hi-larious or breathtaking. So when you pop up as a little bit of text, and maybe a picture, on someone’s screen telling them that they just have to see this new goat fetish site you found, they’re probably going to put bits of duct tape over that part of their screen and pretend that it’s always been there.

hay guys look wut i found in the innanetz!

So in this case, the onus is on you, Professor Goat Fetishist, to do all the leg work for that lazy S.O.B. you call a friend. Figure out exactly what you want the person to see and make it as easy for them to see it as possible, then send them the link to that fancy new fritter recipe. No googling, logging in, subscribing, dancing, or eldritch rituals should be required on Lazy S.O.B.’s part.

OMG Help! …

Ever noticed how awesome your friend Vincenzo is at being a giant douchebag? Ever wished that she would help you master such seemingly-unatainable levels of douche? So you decide to pee hero-worship into the wind and ask the lady how it’s done.

Vicenzo. You know its a girl cause o the pink shirt.

But then the words start coming, followed swiftly by the acronyms, and topped by Vinnie’s hefty grimace of distaste as your brain flails wildly at trying to absorb so much new information! However will you learn if you can’t understand what V-dawg-for-lizzle is spewing out her mouth-hole?! Clearly the only way to understand is to demand an explanation of each syllable.

No! Bad newbie!

When you find a word you don’t understand: google it! When you see a sequence of letters that just doesn’t add up to threeve: google it! When you just can’t stand not knowing the glory that is tubgirl: DO NOT GOOGLE IT! It’s a trap!

Only after you’ve made an attempt to find the information yourself, and failed miserably, should you ask your guru about jargon! Unless they’ve tricked you into paying somehow, they’re doing this as a favour (because you blackmailed them using tubgirl), so don’t make them cover information you can easily look up yourself.

I picked up a copy of Left 4 Dead. Anyone looking for a review will find plenty all over the Interblags. Here, instead, I’m posting a gripe: pay attention to the Director!

For those not in the know, the AI Director is responsible for nearly everything in the game: mob placement, pacing, resources, the works. Its job is to make the game interesting and a little scary, but not so much that you want to put it down. It looks for queues and uses them to determine where and when best to place things, and it doesn’t like it when you just sit around. I have a theory that it hurts the Directors feelings, since you don’t want to move on and see what new surprises it’s left for you. Its response is to bring the surprises to you.

I played an online campaign recently with a group of players that were too new or too stupid to have figured out the Director. They found a door which politely warned them that opening it would trigger a horde of ravenous undead so hungry that they wouldn’t even wait for your flesh to be decently cooked. How rude! So my compatriots wandered around — ambled, even! — stocking up on everything they could, only to get mauled by the following horde each time.

On about the fifth or sixth time through, I decided to take action. Once the door was reached, I took just enough time to restock my ammo, and then opened the door. The Director, naturally sensing my eagerness to continue, sent in a quick horde to fulfill its promise, then let us continue on our merry way. Not one casualty.

So folks, please remember: heed the Director.

Generation gaps are fun. That’s something that, at some point, I managed to figure out — I’m pretty sure it took all of my cunning. Here’s one of my world famous stories which will unequivocably provicate my stateminiums.

Riding in the car with my parents. They’ve been divorced nearly 20 years, but they’re great at not letting that make things awkward. My dad’s famous for locating and deciphering customized license plates, and he’s managed to rope my mom in this time on a particularly challenging plate. What can this be? Lottery forever, Lot R forever; maybe he really likes parking lots?

They’ve been discussing it for nearly 5 minutes straight while I happily mine for fish in Animal Crossing. Curious at what’s going on, I surface briefly to take a look at their subject of choice: “LOTR4EVER.” Nerd that I am, I pop in a quick, “Lord of the Rings forever, guys,” and go back to my fishmongering. They mused over it for another solid 5 minutes after that.

I know they plan to steal my soul someday, somehow, but sometimes I just can’t help but love Google.

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