Everything In Between

• @MiriamP My belief in free will is what made it so hard for me to understand why the grown ups didn’t trust my choice to drop out of school. #
• Checking out @davidseth’s #WDS08 preso at http://tinyurl.com/4amk7a I missed his talk but was glad to connect w/ him during the after party. #
• Most unexpected thing learned via @davidseth’s #WDS08 slides http://chickipedia.com/ Wiki of Hot Women; 364k Google hits, “MeniPedia” 5 hits #
• Off to eye doctor and then to the office for a looong meeting. I’m not sure which I’m looking forward to less…I really dislike optometrists. #
• We’re trying out http://Yammer.com/ at work. Trying to get its IM integration working = FAIL. Also, whatever happened to Twitter’s IM bot? #
• Ow, my head. Stupid me. 3:28 PM is clearly too late for breakfast when I knew I would be in a meeting all afternoon. Hate on long meetings. #
• @ferric Agreed, they did a lot of interaction design things right this time. I’m on an iPhone app d/l spree! Trying out Twinkle & I like it! #
• @ferric I like Twinkle for the location-based added value. I don’t use many apps cuz I want to KISS it, don’t want to install lots on device #
• @ferric Ah, but see I got attracted to Twinkle specifically because of all the cool tweeps I met at #WDS08. LBS cool people = SO MUCH WIN! #
• Email from my 401k investor begins: “During periods of volatility, it’s best not to make decisions based on short-term trends or emotions.” #
• @BondageFreaky G’luck w/ chastity device search! Check out http://tinyurl.com/4nv3bh for some insights. Not perfect but very decent article. #
• I learn cool (if random) things while reading the Apple Developer docs. Use the `sw_vers` CLI command to get Mac OS X version info quickly. #
• Creating launchd.plist jobs is surprisingly easy once, like all things Apple, you realize you should try the simplest thing first. KISS FTW! #
• Ha! Coding new liquid layout, I blanked on CSS filter to hide rules from IE 7 so I looked it up in my own book! http://tinyurl.com/mywebbook #
• @mattymcg Same happened to me. @BloodyLaughter has me watching old seasons of America’s Next Top Model with her. Be afraid. Be very afraid…. #
• @BloodyLaughter’s response to her Mac’s desktop background picture change to an image of Angelina Jolie: “Aww, she’s covered in porn.” LMAO! #
• @BondageFreaky Hope it helps. It’s geared to inexperienced female keyholders but has some good points. Will this be your first chaste boy? #
• @maidchaste E-stim toys have always been one of those things I’d love to try ESPECIALLY for milking purposes but never have. I’m a BIG moth! #

• @suziam I live in Sydney so the return trip from #wds08 was just a long walk. Decent but difficult after all that booze courtesy @99designs! #
• I’ve been watching unread counts in my work inbox grow since #WDS08 weekend. Now I have to go and action them all. GTD, don’t fail me now! #
• @suziam There’s no such thing as too many drink cards. That said, with fewer cards there might have been fewer sexual innuendos that night…. #
• Many emails completed, 4 IT tickets closed. Yeah, I think it’s time for breakfast. Don’t want to update VMware Server 2 on an empty stomach! #
• @mollydotcom ALA post is VERY interesting after witnessing some opinionated W3C/WHATWG/Crockford tension at #WDS08 http://tinyurl.com/3wsmtn #
• @hci I “back up” my Twitter acct to my WP-powered blog using Alex King’s excellent Twitter Tools plugin. It makes a “digest” post of tweets. #
• @miriamp That’s classic American psychology right there! “Can I get a super-sized value meal, and a diet coke? I’m watching my weight.” Pft! #
• @hci @wendyblackheart I used to drink sodas until I realized that I’d stop feeling like I had PMS all the time. I replaced it with coffee :) #
• Biggest reason to ditch VMware Server 2 & go w/ Xen: no freakin’ license key hassles. Why do they make it a PITA to register a FREE product? #
• Short break from work to read @mattymcg on #WDS08 at http://tinyurl.com/4ua55j Got me a SitePoint account now too: http://tinyurl.com/4dr6k3 #
• @mattymcg Thank god I’m not the only one who thinks that when someone mentions DOM scripting. Topping from the bottom is so target=”_blank”. #
• I am in awe of the patience and calm that @BloodyLaughter has when dealing with paperwork. I can do a lot of things, but not that. Not that. #

• Catching up as best I can on tweets from #Arse. I would have loved to go there if #WDS08 wasn’t on at the same time. Next yr I’ll be torn. #
• @mrpatto Haha! @mattymcg & I turned out to be more than hair brothers. We also are both into technical writing, though he’s the elder of us. #
• @ProblmLikeMaria I want to hang out with you! Damn this other-side-of-the-planet thing sometimes. I hope you ended up having a good day. <3 #
• The office in bldg behind my apt is no longer occupied. I suspect my lack of curtain use + me not wearing clothes had something to do w/ it. #
• @mattymcg Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. ;) FWIW some studies say that redheads have more sex than blonds…then it’s REALLY subjective #
• Enjoyed wonderfully lazy morning, caught up with happenings @ConversioVirium, got some nice comments on old posts on my blog. Now breakfast! #
• @wendyblackheart True, ogling naked me != productive, but OTOH they might’ve stayed. Perhaps they were scared by the #cb3k or my other toys! #
• Oh shit. Just watched my $300 glasses die a horrible death as an incredible gust of wind blew them into traffic. Fucking good story tho. #
• @echomikeromeo That doesn’t sound pathetic, it sounds like fun! I’m thinking “Sex 2.0″ site where you can send an SMS to a performer’s vibe! #
• Trying to reconnect with all the great people I met at #WDS08. Currently emailing @sushimonster, trying to find others on Twitter, LinkedIn… #
• Ahh!! Amazon FINALLY fixed their “About the Author” section for http://tinyurl.com/mywebbook with @sanbeiji and @lanej0. Only took 2 months! #
• Sweet, my Apple WikiServer pages-to-CSV script was put on MacOSXHints.com: http://tinyurl.com/3vedcx On blog, too: http://tinyurl.com/5xl7vh #
• http://VoteForChange.com - 2 mins to check if you’re registered to vote properly sent me to http://longdistancevoter.org/ which uses @Drupal #
• @memphysema That’s a great sentiment! Employers who don’t let you do great work are not worth working for. Viva la revolucion! It’s time. :) #
• Okay srsly. I love the Internet but sometimes it is just too fucking weird. Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling Yeeeeah… #
• Watching latest Daily Show episodes. Full videos are AWESOME. http://tinyurl.com/6ln25j I so heart Jon Stewart. SO heart!!! #
• @suziam Hope your trip back home was decent. Reality on this side of the screen is a little less exciting today, too. Gotta wake up somehow. #

• @BloodyLaughter is drooling over pottery on our stroll through the Sydney CBD. My head is still in #wds08 and elsewhere from yesterday. #
• VMware Server 2 finally left BETA, is now available as free Linux or Windows download. After noting one bug fixed from RC1 to RC2, me want! #
• I seem to have picked up…a LOT of Tweeps following me after #wds08. Hello everyone! Word of warning: my tweets are NOT always safe for work! #

• Veen hits generation gap point, mentions that new generation assumes public unless explicitly held private exact opposite of past #wds08 #
• At end of day, go get Jeffrey Veen’s #wds08 presentation at http://Veen.com/wds08.pdf It was truly fantastic, with some great insights! #
• At Jina Bolton’s #wds08 Sexy CSS preso, researching for my new book. She seems a little nervous but is speaking from obvious experience. #
• Jina’s #wds08 talk is mostly a preview of CSS3. Could read docs myself but would definately like to network w/her, get to know W3C folks #
• Asked a lot of questions at Jina’s #wds08 preso, might have come off a little haughty, didn’t mean to, I promise! Just have lots of Q’s. #
• Mike’s #wds08 presentation uses the quote: “HTML is the assembly language of the web.” There’re lots of politics in this HTML5 debate. #
• Damn sub-par Wi-Fi at #wds08. I want to check Twitter replies but can’t. If you’re @ replying to me please know I just can’t see it now. #
• What does Mike mean HTML is not SGML? I know SGML is distinct but isn’t it an ancestor of HTML? Am I missing something obvious? #wds08 #
• @karlw3c Cool, thanks for the clarification re HTML implementation details. #
• Hoping we get past OpenID 101 in Myles’s #wds08 preso since I’ve learned most of this already & it was covered on http://grc.com/securitynow #
• Gonna hit up I18N session now that #wds08 OpenID one is trying to debunk security myths. My bad for misreading the description of the preso #
• Learned something new in other Myles’s I18N #wds08 preso: the internationally recognized symbol for currency is not recognized on iPhone kb. #
• Another good tip from I18N #wds08 preso: extra work needed to do internationalization can be a competitive advantage cuz you can’t be sloppy #
• Miles Byrne told me he’ll try to put his I18N presentation up on the #wds08 site. Now on to Doug Crockford’s Ajax Security. So excited! #
• Crockford already has a great #wds08 quote: “Programming is the management of complexity.” #
• I find Crockford’s whole approach to standards as simple, small, minimalistic and precise much more attractive than bigger standards #wds08 #
• Crockford sees start of browser war 3 but calls for it to be at mercy of devs, not browser makers, sees 2yrs remaining on JS lifespan #wds08 #
• @sanbeiji just spoke with Mike Smith about XPath vs CSS3 Selectors at #wds08, thinks we should put it in the book. Let’s jam on that! #
• People managing themselves is a fundamental topic of @mpesce’s #wds08 keynote. Is that the holy Grail of egalitarianism? Social justice? #
• @mpesce uses the education in school is dead example to showcase hyper-networked world. Children already know this, I dropped out 8yrs ago! #
• Want to go get drinks w/ #wds08 folks but have a bad headache. Considering getting some food first tho from where? Might wander a bit. #
• Cameron Adams is blasting Eurythmics’s Sweet Dreams at the #wds08 after party. Lights dim and I’m growing weary but networking is great! #
• I can’t actually believe I’m still at #wds08 party. Spoke to Daniel Burka, David Peterson, Jeff Veen, others. AWESOME, but now SO tired. #
• @johnallsopp THANK YOU for #wds08! I’m finally leaving for home but the experience & memories of my 1st conference will stay forever! #

• @milesb I just wrote a book, too, about webdev no less! Books are not dead, Lynne just says they need to be downloadable. Mine is! #wds08 #
• Awesome to learn that support for SVG exists in Mobile Safari too! Dmitry’s #wds08 preso is very cool. Can’t wait to brush up on my SVG. #
• SVG and Canvas support make front end devs like me scary for Flash developers cuz we can do graphics like them. Thanks #wds08 for that! #
• Just asked about accessibility of SVG but sadly the answer is still no. Accessible SVG would be AMAZING for search engines, too. #wds08 #
• @ProblmLikeMaria #wds08 is the @hashtags code for the @webdirections @WebDirectSth08 conference I’m attending today. It’s a geek fest. <3! #
• Teale Shapcott’s #wds08 talk on usability is really a Scrum 101 talk. Noone else here does it yet?! Only Penny & I raised hands when asked! #
• Best from #wds08 Teale’s talk 1 Buy design time with complex tech stories 2 Use the UI prototype as the design spec. 3 Do parallel track dev #
• Talked and swapped business cards during #wds08 lunch. People love the "Styling XML with CSS" idea for my upcoming dev book with @sanbeiji. #
• Great foundation on HCI in Gabriel’s #wds08 talk. Great phrase: explicit declarative vs implicit gestural, physical world as system UI. #
• Excellent point Gabriel just made: humans = good social sensors so often software should inform & leave the choice of action to users #wds08 #
• Gabriel answers my #wds08 question "Is it more XMPP-like standards we need? What’s the blockade?" Answer: Power play in the mobile industry. #
• Douglas Crockford is slumping in his seat during Jeff Croft’s #wds08 preso. I wonder if celebs are bored at cons like this due to redundancy #
• Must get Robert Bringhurst’s book The Elements of Typographic Style. Typography is beautiful like music, even shares the same terminolog … #
• @TjoosDude I’m at #wds08 on my employer’s budget, I didn’t pay & I’m currently local to Sydney. Employer was happy to let me network here. #
• Watching a clip of Seinfeld at the #wds08 closing keynote tonight. This is awesome! The Opposite, a great clip and very poignant! And funny! #
• Did anyone else notice the terrible kerning in August’s super principles slide headlines? That said, #wds08 preso is FANTASTIC & educational #
• The whole NUI idea takes the direct manipulation interaction design pattern to a new level. Very cool but SO academic, even for #wds08. #
• Enjoyed networking at the after party and now at a bar for the TUB meeting talking about social media business strategy after #wds08. #
• Totally geeked out about OOP programming and microchip design w/ a young, awesome Geek Girl, @miriamp. Now home to prep for #wds08 day 2 #
• An awesome #wds08 day. Saw great presentations & made connections w/some awesome Melbourne folks: @suziam, @mspecht, @miriamp. Bedtime soon! #
• @milesb Thanks for your kind words on http://tinyurl.com/mywebbook I’ll definitely be at #wds08 tomorrow, so (everyone) please do say hello! #
• Struggling to wake up to make it to my second day of #wds08. I am SO not a morning person. Why can’t these things start at 10 instead of 9? #
• It occurs to me now how rusty my New York speed walk is while trying to do it to get to #wds08 on time this morning. Punctuality FAIL. #
• Yes, this is funny, but honestly I feel so bad for the tech person who has to deal with this #wds08 keynote projector failure. #
• Veen’s great point at #wds08 keynote applicable to so much in life: information design is about helping people make meaning out of data. #

• Groggilly rising & catching up on retweets by @WebDirectSth08 makes me wish for tmrw & reminds me I’ll have to be up earlier to … #
• SO looking forward to #wds08 tmrw! Despite doing webdev for ~8yrs it’ll be my 1st time at a conference, so I’m letting myself be nervous. =) #
• During (sadly infrequent downtime) I like to read maillist for tech I use. It’s a great way to learn lots for free maybe even help others. #
• @stefsull Retweet to boost signal http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/ "Feminism is not about achieving power typically held … #
• Testing my apps w/excellent FF security add-ons XSS Me & SQL Inject me. http://tinyurl.com/49bele http://SecurityCompass.com/exploit … #
• Hardened pet webapp against XSS attacks tonight, learned about #CakePHP layouts and theme support, now it’s bedtime. #wds08 when I wake up! #
• On the train towards #wds08, my first conference ever. Of course I’m already a bit behind schedule. #
• 2 #wds08 lessons in first 5 minutes: 1 Bring a small bag, they’ll give you another. 2 Careful what you tweet, it shows up on the big board! #
• Total fanboy moment warning: Douglas Crockford is sitting right in front of me at the #wds08 keynote! Ok, I can be a grown up again now. #
• Lynn Johnson talking about struggling publishing industry at #wds08 with the conclusion that publishers MUST publish on mobile or die. #

• Using GParted to completely reorganize Debian partitions on a test box’s virtual disk. Hardest part was the upgrade to VMware Server 2 RC2. #
• WTF? iiNet’s DNS servers lost A records—Google, Twitter, more were down—I reconfigured office DNS to query Verizon. Any Aussies notice this? #
• That DNS outage was about the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me as a Network Administator. They think I “fixed” the Internet :) #
• Augh. Unproductive day and a frustrating evening make for a really annoyed me. Wanted to get stuff done tonight but I’m just too grr to. #

• Note to self: don’t leave laundry in washer overnight, especially when plagued by insomnia. It’s bad for the clothes & your punctuality. #
• The value of having >1 communications channel is the same as having >1 one sexual orientation. Diversity is powerful iff it’s not … #
• Magnetic poetry I crafted: 1 “Heave a knife near a storm and scream worship together.” 2 “Beneath the diamond symphony is her apparatus.” ;) #
• @SERAPHIN13 I combined my web presence despite the x-over btw work & personal, & seems it’s actually harder for everyone else. Filters help. #
• Been futzing with various server configurations with Trac tonight. Man, Python’s distutils framework really needs a serious makeover. Augh…! #
• Prepping for hopefully-soon-to-be http://OrgasmLogger.com/ site - a rewrite for fun and education. Wanna help? http://trac.orgasmlogger.com/ #

An interesting request came in today from a coworker. She wanted to create a spreadsheet that contained all of our intranet’s wiki pages (which uses the Apple WikiServer), presumably because Apple doesn’t provide an easy way to “list all pages” in the wiki itself. Along with the page title, she also wanted to extract its internal ID, its URL, and the time the page was created as well as the time it was last modified.

I spent about an hour looking into this this afternoon and it turns out that much of this information is readily available on the filesystem in the Apple WikiServer’s data store. I whipped up the following shell script to extract this information in CSV format, exactly as requested.

I’m posting this script here in case someone else wants similar “export a list of WikiServer pages to a comma-separated values (CSV) file” functionality but isn’t sure how to go about getting it. To use this, just edit the line that reads http://my-server.example.com/groups/wiki/ so that it refers to the wiki base URI of your own server.

Update: The latest version of this script is now available at its Github-hosted repository. You should probably use that instead of the script below.

#!/bin/sh -
#
# Script to extract data from an Apple WikiServer's data store by querying the
# filesystem itself. Creates a 'wikipages.csv' file that's readable by any
# spreadsheeting application, such as Numbers.app or Microsoft Excel.app.
#
# USAGE:   To use this script, change to the WikiServer's pages directory, then
#          just run this script. A file named wikipages.csv will be created in
#          your current directory. For instance:
#
#              cd /Library/Collaboration/Groups/mygroup/wiki  # dir to work in
#              wikipages2csv.sh                               # run the script
#              cp wikipages.csv ~/Desktop                     # save output
#
# WARNING: Since the WikiServer's files are only accessible as root, this script
#          must be run as root to function. Additionally, this is not extremely
#          well tested, so use at your own risk.
#
# Author:  Meitar Moscovitz
# Date:    Mon Sep 22 15:03:54 EST 2008

##### CONFIGURE HERE ########

# The prefix to append to generated links. NO SPACES!
WS_URI_PREFIX=http://my-server.example.com/groups/wiki/

##### END CONFIGURATION #####
# DO NOT EDIT PAST THIS LINE
#############################

WS_CSV_OUTFILE=wikipages.csv
WS_PAGE_IDS_FILE=`mktemp ws-ids.tmp.XXXXXX`

function extractPlistValueByKey () {
    head -n \
      $(expr 1 + `grep -n "<key>$1</key>" page.plist | cut -d ':' -f 1`) page.plist | \
        tail -n 1 | cut -d '>' -f 2 | cut -d '<' -f 1
}

function linkifyWikiServerTitle () {
    echo $1 | sed -e 's/ /_/g' -e 's/&amp;/_/g' -e 's/&gt;/_/g' -e 's/&lt;/_/g' -e 's/\?//g'
}

function formatISO8601date () {
    echo $1 | sed -e 's/T/ /' -e 's/Z$//'
}

function csvQuote () {
    echo $1 | grep -q ',' >/dev/null
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
        echo '"'$1'"'
    else
        echo $1
    fi
}

ls -d [^w]*.page | \
  sed -e 's/^\([a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]\)\.page$/\1/' > $WS_PAGE_IDS_FILE

echo "Title,ID,Date Created,Last Modified,URI" > $WS_CSV_OUTFILE
while read id; do
    cd $id.page
    title=$(extractPlistValueByKey title)
    created_date="$(formatISO8601date $(extractPlistValueByKey createdDate))"
    modified_date="$(formatISO8601date $(extractPlistValueByKey modifiedDate))"
    link=$WS_URI_PREFIX"$id"/`linkifyWikiServerTitle "$title"`.html
    cd ..
    echo `csvQuote "$title"`,$id,$created_date,$modified_date,`csvQuote "$link"` >> $WS_CSV_OUTFILE
done < $WS_PAGE_IDS_FILE
rm $WS_PAGE_IDS_FILE

For those new to the Wiki Server, this introduction to the Apple WikiServer for web developers may be of interest.