Misc

A section dedicated to other applications and tools worth getting to know.

`keka`

Keka is an amazing application, that was suggested to me by one of my IT professors at USC.

Getting Started
```
brew cask install keka kekadefaultapp
```

Then, open keka, configure your preferences, and set keka to be your default app. Now you can compress and decompress any file on your computer by pressing ⌃ ⇧ K

keka will automatically know which action to perform based on the file it received as input. It will use the configurations you specified in the app. I recommend GNU's .gzip files because they use an algorithm that is superior in compression to the one used in Microsoft's .zip filetype. Also, because tar uses gzip so it's a good idea to get started.

`figlet`

`figlet` I/O

You can use figlet to convert any string into a lovely piece of ASCII art.

figlet 'Hello World'

_ _ _ _ _ | |__ ___| | | ___ __ _____ _ __| | __| | | '_ \ / _ \ | |/ _ \ \ \ /\ / / _ \| '__| |/ _` | | | | | __/ | | (_) | \ V V / (_) | | | | (_| | |_| |_|\___|_|_|\___/ \_/\_/ \___/|_| |_|\__,_|

Window Management Applications

This is a great app that my friend Russel Wakugawa showed me. If you work on a laptop, managing your screen space is important. Unfortunately there aren't many built-in keybindings to resize and maximize applications. Although the gesture-based resizing is graceful and pretty, they aren't very useful because the animations are so slow.

An important update: Spectacle is no longer maintained. I encourage you to use Moom as an alternative instead. I've found it to be even better than Spectacle

`lsyncd`

The lsyncd program allows bi-directional syncing of files between a local and remote host. If you have a folder that you make changes to often, it would be useful to just change once, update everywhere.

Installing lsyncd

# macOS
brew install lsyncd
# Debian distro
apt install lsyncd

Mutt

Installing mutt

# Using Mutt
brew install mutt
# Using NeoMutt
brew install neomutt

Example configuration file

set realname = "Tommy Trojan"
set smtp_url = "smtp://tommytrojan@smtp.mail.me.com:587/"
set smtp_pass = "1234-abcd-1234-abcd"
set smtp_authenticators = 'gssapi:login'
set imap_user = "tommytrojan"
set imap_pass = "1234-abcd-1234-abcd"
set from = "tommytrojan@icloud.com"
set folder = "imaps://tommytrojan@imap.mail.me.com:993"
set spoolfile = "+INBOX"
set postponed = "+Drafts"
set record = "+Sent Messages"
set trash = "+Trash"
unset beep_new # Don't beep for new messages
set imap_pipeline_depth = 0
set header_cache = "$XDG_CACHE_HOME/mutt/headers"
set message_cachedir = "$XDG_CACHE_HOME/mutt/bodies"
set certificate_file = "$XDG_CACHE_HOME/mutt/certificates"
set sort=reverse-date-sent
set assumed_charset="utf-8"
set attach_charset="utf-8"
set charset="utf-8"
# Don't try to add a copy to sent folder (throws error in batch mode)
set copy = no
# Don't include original message in reply
unset include
# Don't show the help menu at the top of the screen
unset help

# Configure keybindings
bind index = noop
bind index g first-entry
bind pager g top
bind index * noop
bind index G last-entry
bind pager G bottom
bind pager <Down> next-line
bind pager j next-line
bind pager <Up> previous-line
bind pager k previous-line
bind index o display-message
bind index n noop
bind index m mail
bind index,pager \Cwq quit

# Configure inbox style
color indicator brightblue default

ImageMagick

Compress a PDF to a smaller size file

convert 'input.pdf' -format 'PDF' -quality 10 'output.pdf'

Combine multiple images into a single PDF
```
magick *.jpg combined.pdf
```

Hugo

Generate bash autocompletions for Hugo

sudo hugo gen autocomplete --type bash --completionfile /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/hugo.sh

JetBrains

Useful subcommands exist for the following IDE command-line interfaces:

If you specify a directory with an existing project, the IDE opens this project.

If you open a directory that is not a part of a project, the IDE adds the .idea directory to it, making it a project.

Open a project (this one) in Webstorm without showing the splash loading screen
```
webstorm ~/.wiki --nosplash --wait
```

Path Variables

Link to JetBrains documentation
Pre-defined path variables include $USER_HOME$ , $PROJECT_DIR$ , and $MODULE_DIR$

TinyPNG

Link to Python SDK

REST APIs

An Application Programming Interface or API is a set of rules that lets programs talk to each other, exposing data and functionality across the internet in a consistent format.

APIs accessed through HTTP typically use Representational State Transfer or REST. This is an architectural pattern that describes how distributed systems can expose a consistent interface. When people use the term ‘REST API,’ they are generally referring to an API accessed via HTTP protocol at a predefined set of URLs.

These URLs represent various resources - any information or content accessed at that location, which can be returned as JSON, HTML, audio files, or images. Often, resources have one or more methods that can be performed on them over HTTP, like GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.

Basic Authentication
- Add the HTTP header Authorization: Basic ${token}
- Generate HTTP header for basic authentication by base64 encoding the username and password
```
username='Alladin'
password='open sesame'
token=$(base64 -w 0 < =(<<<${username}:${password}))
auth="Authorization: Basic ${token}"
```
  Authorization: Basic QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==
- Copy it to clipboard immediately
```
pbcopy < =(<<<"Basic $(base64 -w 0 < =(<<<${username}:${password}))")
```

Twilio

How to look up a phone number using the Twilio CLI

twilio api:lookups:v1:phone-numbers:fetch --phone-number '+15551234567' --type=carrier --type=caller-name

GitHub

When creating a linking a file hosted on GitHub, you can add a highlight to the relevant lines of code using a

Google Search

You can view Google's own documentation on search operators, but they leave a lot of them out. I've included some of my favorites below:

intext:
- require results to include a keyword within the text body
intitle:
- require results to include a keyword within the title
inurl:
- require results to include a keyword within the URL
related:
- find the landing page for websites of alternatives to slack.com with related:slack.com
cache:
- View the copy of the website from Google's cache

Also, I've written down two search operators that I'm convinced very few self-proclaimed search masters are aware of. These are two search operators that were added in 2018, that most people haven't caughten drift of just yet.

after:
- Search for results before a date with before:
  - For example, searching for events before 2010 would be before:2010
- Search for results after a date with after:
  - For example, searching for events after 2018 would be after:2018

Clever combined usage of search operators, and be amazed by how precise the returned results are

"whenever * says * I *"

You can use either the filetype:pdf or ext:pdf operators, both return the same results, but the ext: is a little more strict about returning only files of the specified kind

They're also rolling out a new feature called Google Collections which allows you to save images without downloading, pretty neat.

You can reverse search for images at images.google.com, details provided in their support documentation

Breakdown of the query string. For each of these query string parameters, assume the provided value is foo+bar, such as param=foo+bar. Each word is concatenated with the + character.
- as_epq: Results must include each word, and all must be in the provided order
- as_oq: Results must include one or more of the words provided
- as_eq: Results most not include any of the words provided
- num: Controls the number of results that appear
- as_filetype: Equivalent to the filetype: search operator
- as_sitesearch: Equivalent to the site: search operator
- as_qdr: Limit results to those first indexed by...
  - d: The past day
  - w: The past week
  - m: The past month
  - y: The past year
- as_rights=cc_publicdomain
  - Limit results to content free to use from the public domain.
- as_lq
  - Find sites that link to the URL you put in
- pws
  - Whether or not the search should be personalized, 1 to enable, 0 to disable
- hl
  - Determines the language of the search interface
- lr
  - Limits results to a particular language. For example, a value of lang_en would limit results to those that are written in English
- cr=countryXX: Only show results from the country XX where XX is replaced with that country's ISO 3166-1 country code

Selenium

Link to documentation
Enable the safari webdriver

safaridriver --enable

Link to documentation
Create a webdriver

#Simple assignment
from selenium.webdriver import Safari

driver = Safari()

driver.get('https://google.com')

print(driver.current_url)

Quit the webdriver

driver.quit()

WebP

A new image format for the web

Link to project homepage

Getting Started

The version installed from Homebrew opts out of some fun features like converting GIF files to WebP format. For this reason, I've decided to learn how to build this library from source, and have included the instructions below for others to follow along with.

Install latest version of libwebp:

mkdir -p ~/.local/opt/libwebp
url='https://storage.googleapis.com/downloads.webmproject.org/releases/webp/libwebp-1.1.0-mac-10.15.tar.gz '
curl ${url} > ~/Downloads/libwebp.tgz
tar xf ~/Downloads/libwebp.tgz -C ~/.local/opt
mv ~/.local/opt/libwebp{*(/),}
< =(<<<'path=(~/.local/opt/libwebp/bin ${path})') >> ~/.zshrc

Enable optional packages in the libwebp installation:

./configure --prefix=${HOME}/.local --enable-everything

`cwebp` Encoder

Link to documentation
Compress PNG file image.png to WebP file image.webp (with quality range of 80)
```
cwebp -q 80 image.png -o image.webp
```

Compress PNG file image.png to WebP file image.webp

# quality: 100
# width: 1920
# height: auto-fit
cwebp -q 100 -resize 1920 0 image.png -o image.webp

Compress JPG file image.jpg to WebP file image.webp

cwebp \
    -noalpha \
    -hint 'photo' \
    -jpeg_like \
    -m 6 \
    -q 90 \
    -alpha_filter 'best' \
    -metadata 'all' \
    -mt \
    'image.jpg' \
    -o 'image.webp'

Crop a 500x1000 photo so that 10px are cut off from all four sides

cwebp \
    -crop 10 10 480 980 \
    image.jpg \
    -o image.webp

`dwebp` Decoder

Link to documentation
Decode WebP file image.webp to PNG file image.png
```
dwebp image.webp -o image.png
```

Utility Commands

Convert a file to WebP, with the same filename, but with .webp extension
```
cwebp ~/Downloads/file.jpg -o !{#^:r}.cwebp
```

Convert the most recently created file

cwebp ~/Downloads/*(om[1]) -o image.cwebp

Looping

Compress a series of images into the animated WebP format

img2webp -lossy -d 1000 -m 6 -loop 0 'one.jpg' 'two.jpg' -o ~/Downloads/mowgli.webp

Slack

Slack supports URL Schemes, which they document on their developer API site

Link to a conversation with a specific user, in a particular workspace

user_id=W01543F37L3
workspace_id=T019B257FQT

open "slack://user?team=${workspace_id}&id=${user_id}"

Fonts

Decompress WOFF2 font face into its original file format (TTF or OTF)
```
brew install woff2
woff2_decompress 'font.woff2'
```

Firefox

Hidden Keyboard Shortcuts

To copy the location behind a hyperlink, do the following:

Hover the cursor over the link
Right click (or ⌃ Left-Click)
Type a

Google Chrome uses c, which is what you would normally expect to select a command titled Copy Link Address. If you're curious, you can check out why a was chosen. Personally, I feel it's a discussion worth reading.

Search Operators

Mozilla Firefox

When using the address bar to search, you can filter the results suggested using a set of special characters separated by spaces

Operator	Searches for results in...
`^`	browsing history
`*`	bookmarks
`+`	bookmarks with matching tags
`%`	currently open tabs
`$`	in the URL
`?`	in search suggestions
`#`	with every term matching title/tag

Search bookmarks for mozilla
```
* mozilla
```
Search browsing history for react
```
^ react
```
Search for results containing giphy in the URL
```
$ giphy
```

Google Chrome

The shortcuts above require a little more configuration in order to be usable on Google Chrome. To be able to search bookmarks, you'll want to visit chrome://settings/searchEngines, add a search engine, and provide it with the URL chrome://bookmarks/?#q=%s. The %s should be provided as-is, but it will expand to contain the contents of your query when you are performing a search using this search engine.

You can search history as well. The process is very similar: simply repeat the steps outlined above, and provide the following URL: chrome://history/?#q=%s.

Quick Find

Some websites use / as the keyboard shortcut to focus the cursor on the main search bar of the page. The problem, however, is that Firefox uses / as the keyboard shortcut for Quick Find, and intercepts a user when they press /.

To disable the usage of / by Firefox

Go to about:config
Search for accessibility.typeaheadfind.manual
Set its value to false

`youtube-dl`

Custom config file location
```
youtube-dl --config-location FILE
```

Audio can be extracted using the -x or --extract-audio option

QR Code Generator

Stumbled upon the amzqr project and I found it absolutely delightful.

Installing amzqr
```
pip install amzqr
```
Creating a QR code with an image embedded inside of it:
```
amzqr -p IMAGE 'https://URL'
```