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Bye Bye, ICQ!

Since ICQ by now seems to be only Russian spam, and the service will likely be sold to a criminal organisation, I will cease using ICQ on April 30, 2010. I will still be reachable via Jabber and MS Live Messenger. Please ask me for contact details via IM or mail.

Und jetzt auf Deutsch...

Da ICQ mittlerweile nur noch aus Russischen Spam zu bestehen scheint, und der Dienst demnächst an eine kriminelle Vereinigung verkauft wird, werde ich die Nutzung von ICQ zum 30. April 2010 einstellen. Ich bin weiterhin erreichbar per Jabber und MS Live Messenger. Die Kontaktdaten gebe ich gerne per IM oder Mail raus.

By Shadowdancer, 2010-04-10, 14:29; permalink;
Last updated at 2010-04-10, 14:29 by Shadowdancer

Trick Question

Q: What do you get when arrogance, fraud, ignorance, and incompetence are having an orgy?

A: GOA

By Shadowdancer, 2010-03-05, 11:35; permalink;
Last updated at 2010-03-05, 11:35 by Shadowdancer

Creating User Certificates with OpenSSL

After rebuilding my own little CA (hooray me being lazy and MD5 being kind of broken by now) and recreating a bunch of server certificates, I decided to try my hands on user certificates for things like Mumble. The basic creation is not so terribly difficult once you have a CA in place, however a small detail turned out to be rather annoying: how do I get the mail address into the certificate?

Here is a rather low-level way of creating user certificates, answering the age-old-question about the mail address, and a quick glance at packing your certificate, key, and certification chain into one handy PKCS bundle. It's all built on a very simple root CA, and you may want to use stronger digest algorithms and maybe longer or stronger algorithms like elliptic curve cryptography or SHA2.

If you need to handle more than a few certificates, you may also want to take a look at tools like TinyCA to keep the typing at a minimum.

Creating the User Certificate

If you went through tutorials on running your own CA like for example this one, then you probably have some commands at your disposal by now, and just go for it: 

$ openssl req -new -nodes -out name-req.pem \
> -keyout private/name-key.pem -days 365 -config ./openssl.conf
Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key
........................................++++++
..++++++
writing new private key to 'private/name-key.pem'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Organization Name (company) [My Company]:
Organizational Unit Name (department, division) []:User
Email Address []:f@example.org
Locality Name (city, district) [My Town]:
State or Province Name (full name) [State or Providence]:
Country Name (2 letter code) [US]:
Common Name (hostname, IP, or your name) []:Fing User

Nothing bad so far. So let us take a look at the result: 

$ openssl req -noout -text -in name-req.pem
Certificate Request:
    Data:
        Version: 0 (0x0)
        Subject: O=My Company, OU=User/emailAddress=f@example.org, L=My Town, ST=State or Providence, C=US, CN=Fing User
        Subject Public Key Info:
            Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption
            RSA Public Key: (1024 bit)
                Modulus (1024 bit):
                    00:d6:6b:97:c4:2c:e2:51:c4:2e:8f:96:c6:30:86:
                    0c:7c:ed:04:71:c8:78:1d:d9:5a:ee:05:d1:e3:60:
                    bf:f6:2e:fd:bf:b6:44:24:57:cd:48:f2:33:97:93:
                    ee:80:4f:5c:ab:00:73:36:85:e5:8e:6b:3e:99:f8:
                    0d:5b:58:11:4f:40:64:14:d1:0b:29:43:bc:30:7c:
                    4a:e4:96:90:ba:89:92:8d:0c:a7:2e:85:c6:35:40:
                    49:df:eb:34:94:06:c0:cf:dd:5a:77:3d:38:6e:45:
                    80:fb:70:6e:b2:85:c1:f2:9a:29:14:d7:16:0c:bf:
                    05:5e:6e:4d:93:67:a2:7e:71
                Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
        Attributes:
        Requested Extensions:
            X509v3 Basic Constraints:
                CA:FALSE
            X509v3 Subject Key Identifier:
                B6:5D:45:50:EE:41:CA:52:97:A7:96:91:58:F6:9F:4C:70:22:FB:AA
    Signature Algorithm: md5WithRSAEncryption
        91:0c:7c:a3:ff:15:18:62:ba:b8:30:f7:a1:17:20:fa:50:24:
        dc:9a:54:27:ca:25:32:de:0d:f0:bd:0e:e0:a7:ec:60:6c:96:
        2d:ff:8d:94:45:1f:97:27:99:f9:85:15:47:db:c9:6e:93:9d:
        8a:28:61:29:56:68:18:2d:ed:a1:d1:0e:68:ee:da:6b:93:40:
        b1:94:27:42:ba:08:30:f6:56:e3:2a:98:7e:31:b2:4d:7b:20:
        22:a7:bb:05:99:f9:0c:f0:f6:0b:75:73:06:f1:6c:b8:a1:e3:
        9f:4f:64:88:14:56:b7:0c:37:ca:44:66:3e:26:36:a2:59:14:
        84:d8

That still looks good, we have a mail address and everything in the subject. Great, so let's sign the thing and be on our merry way: 

$ openssl ca -out name-cert.pem -days 365 \
> -config ./openssl.conf -infiles name-req.pem

(output cut)

... and then see what happened: 

$ openssl x509 -text -in name-cert.pem
Certificate:
    Data:
        Version: 1 (0x0)
        Serial Number: 1048581 (0x100005)
        Signature Algorithm: md5WithRSAEncryption
        Issuer: O=My Company, L=My Town, ST=State or Providence, C=US, CN=aaa
        Validity
            Not Before: Jan 23 15:42:40 2010 GMT
            Not After : Jan 23 15:42:40 2011 GMT
        Subject: C=US, ST=State or Providence, O=My Company, OU=User, CN=Fing User
        Subject Public Key Info:
            Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption
            RSA Public Key: (1024 bit)
                Modulus (1024 bit):
                    00:d6:6b:97:c4:2c:e2:51:c4:2e:8f:96:c6:30:86:
                    0c:7c:ed:04:71:c8:78:1d:d9:5a:ee:05:d1:e3:60:
                    bf:f6:2e:fd:bf:b6:44:24:57:cd:48:f2:33:97:93:
                    ee:80:4f:5c:ab:00:73:36:85:e5:8e:6b:3e:99:f8:
                    0d:5b:58:11:4f:40:64:14:d1:0b:29:43:bc:30:7c:
                    4a:e4:96:90:ba:89:92:8d:0c:a7:2e:85:c6:35:40:
                    49:df:eb:34:94:06:c0:cf:dd:5a:77:3d:38:6e:45:
                    80:fb:70:6e:b2:85:c1:f2:9a:29:14:d7:16:0c:bf:
                    05:5e:6e:4d:93:67:a2:7e:71
                Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
    Signature Algorithm: md5WithRSAEncryption
        8d:73:3b:10:2d:f1:e7:ae:a5:94:90:12:85:22:c8:4d:d0:d0:
        15:e9:dc:60:5c:5f:06:cb:16:e1:0a:76:95:a1:b3:b1:86:28:
        3f:d4:6a:9e:5a:60:98:37:49:bc:57:1d:5e:80:e4:6c:b7:ae:
        55:9e:5b:0a:a6:41:a4:4c:6b:8e:a3:18:88:fa:6d:84:93:20:
        be:9d:68:b2:fe:4a:ce:1d:44:69:11:dd:b0:4d:d3:4f:fb:af:
        a9:da:25:e1:34:02:c8:00:55:f3:05:a4:ca:bb:73:2f:63:9e:
        b6:80:68:d8:96:24:a6:09:e0:0b:3c:a9:f5:a5:72:40:ae:ce:
        9e:37
(certificate cut)

Looks goo... wait a second, where did the mail address go‽ That's the moment when you start digging and digging and digging, and don't find much but instructions on making a self-signed CA certificate, but you already did that.

Here is the solution: you need to put the mail address into an extension, namely subjectAltName. That is done in the configuration file you're using for creating the request and signing the certificate request. That file is quite big, so just let me show the sections that's done in if you're using the file from the tutorial linked above: 

[ CA_default ]
...
copy_extensions = copy

[ v3_req ]
basicConstraints = CA:FALSE
subjectKeyIdentifier = hash
# now the important part
subjectAltName = email:copy

What that does is

You are strongly advised to read the WARNINGS section in the manual for the CA command, since copying extensions could be exploited, but we are assuming that you are not blindly signing requests from all over the world.

With that configuration in place, let's create a new request and see what happens: 

$ openssl req -new -nodes -out name-req.pem \
> -keyout private/name-key.pem -days 365 -config ./openssl2.conf
Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key
...........++++++
.++++++
writing new private key to 'private/name-key.pem'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Organization Name (company) [My Company]:
Organizational Unit Name (department, division) []:User
Email Address []:g@b.c
Locality Name (city, district) [My Town]:
State or Province Name (full name) [State or Providence]:
Country Name (2 letter code) [US]:
Common Name (hostname, IP, or your name) []:Great User


$ openssl req -noout -text -in name-req.pem
Certificate Request:
    Data:
        Version: 0 (0x0)
        Subject: O=My Company, OU=User/emailAddress=g@b.c, L=My Town, ST=State or Providence, C=US, CN=Great User
        Subject Public Key Info:
            Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption
            RSA Public Key: (1024 bit)
                Modulus (1024 bit):
                    00:aa:91:30:cd:bc:7c:85:2c:ef:84:2b:48:5a:9f:
                    af:31:4e:dc:d9:c9:c9:2b:70:a1:cf:81:f4:a3:13:
                    1d:a2:9a:c6:27:26:6c:f2:7a:27:fa:08:ca:14:fe:
                    36:79:ae:6a:99:f0:22:2a:99:0a:e7:e5:65:85:68:
                    eb:8e:d9:2f:2c:76:6a:76:a7:85:ef:6e:40:60:1b:
                    01:f0:49:76:a5:33:77:09:e2:a0:b6:d1:43:2b:21:
                    c7:2d:19:cc:41:ef:e4:e3:10:af:0b:ff:eb:0f:d4:
                    b3:07:04:a0:ae:4a:54:55:12:70:c4:32:6f:d5:4f:
                    f2:15:03:d3:09:e2:c6:4b:f1
                Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
        Attributes:
        Requested Extensions:
            X509v3 Basic Constraints:
                CA:FALSE
            X509v3 Subject Key Identifier:
                0A:BD:F5:76:3D:C8:A2:9E:B6:21:4B:6E:9E:41:80:B1:A8:34:10:F5
            X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:
                email:g@b.c
    Signature Algorithm: md5WithRSAEncryption
        59:a0:de:83:b1:cc:fc:22:29:3e:1d:7d:73:61:04:77:09:4a:
        06:cc:cc:fd:1a:3f:74:8a:32:ab:19:a6:a8:42:a6:6d:64:b5:
        a1:63:dc:ec:71:bc:ac:83:b9:a4:5e:ef:4f:f0:bf:07:24:52:
        6b:1b:60:ef:9e:0e:85:6c:1e:36:43:a4:0d:74:ff:9e:b5:0b:
        da:d6:34:aa:66:20:92:1c:69:ba:72:99:3c:80:83:03:dd:19:
        67:d3:88:3b:e4:ed:09:7c:66:be:f3:d6:e2:94:5d:d8:d7:7d:
        4f:81:ac:87:ae:c1:18:38:c7:58:e7:f4:1d:5b:63:74:74:a7:
        25:c0


$ openssl ca -out name-cert.pem -days 365 \
> -config ./openssl2.conf -infiles name-req.pem
Using configuration from ./openssl2.conf
Enter pass phrase for ./private/cakey.pem:
Check that the request matches the signature
Signature ok
The Subject's Distinguished Name is as follows
organizationName      :PRINTABLE:'My Company'
organizationalUnitName:PRINTABLE:'User'
localityName          :PRINTABLE:'My Town'
stateOrProvinceName   :PRINTABLE:'State or Providence'
countryName           :PRINTABLE:'US'
commonName            :PRINTABLE:'Great User'
Certificate is to be certified until Jan 23 15:59:51 2011 GMT (365 days)
Sign the certificate? [y/n]:y


1 out of 1 certificate requests certified, commit? [y/n]y
Write out database with 1 new entries
Data Base Updated


$ openssl x509 -email -in name-cert.pem
g@b.c

(certificate cut)

And there you are.

Bundling it up

Chances are that you will not want to mess around with a bunch of PEM files. The solution is to put it all into one neat PKCS file. That can easily be done with the OpenSSL command-line tool as well, and it can include the whole certificate chain: 

$ openssl pkcs12 -export \
> -in name-cert.pem \
> -inkey private/name-key.pem \
> -certfile cacert.pem \
> -name "Great User" \
> -out name-cert.p12
Enter Export Password: (blind password here)
Verifying - Enter Export Password: (and again)

You can then import the file name-cert.p12 into Mumble, your mail program, and other applications that can use SSL certificates, and thereby identify yourself as a user of your very own CA. The program will just ask you for the export password you set when creating the bundle. If anybody else decides to trust your root certificate, you're all set for trusted communication with them.

By Shadowdancer, 2010-01-23, 17:14; permalink;
Last updated at 2010-01-24, 13:22 by Shadowdancer

To the WAR-Europe Team

(This is about the European Warhammer Online website. It's what I also sent via the web feedback)

Hello,

This is just to let you know that you have apparently managed to completely break forum sign-in, at least when using Firefox/Linux. Logging in on the main site does not carry over to the forums, and the "Login" link on the forum just redirects to the splash screen and then to the main site.

This is a long-standing issue with the quite frankly disgusting cobbled-together Flash monstrosity that is the war-europe website.

Regards,
(insert real name here)

Update (2009-10-07)

Firefox/Linux: The site fails to scroll down, so only whatever fits into the window initially is visible. Account management is totally unusable.

Is there someone actually getting paid for that stuff?

By Shadowdancer, 2009-10-06, 16:33; permalink;
Last updated at 2009-10-07, 11:15 by Shadowdancer

You Have To Stand in Line!

... For a lousy download‽

So apparently EA decided to give Battlefield 2 a final patch before turning around and milking parts of the franchise that people actually pay money for. It's only around a 2GB patch.

The killer?

They do not host it themselves, but instead depend on mostly retarded download sites that try to peddle "premium memberships", promising faster downloads if you pay (insert high amount of money), possibly per month. Regarding that, I have a message for you:

This is not the 1990's anymore!

There are far better solutions today, including content distribution networks like Akamai or Limelight Networks (CCP is using the latter to distribute EVE Online) who will happily distribute big chunks of data to a global audience in a hassle-free manner, so your users do not have to screw around with shitty download queues ("You are number 502174 in the queue, your download will start sometime around 2011. Plox giev monniez!") and sub-par data rates that would make a 56k modem laugh with glee.

Similar situation with the "too little, too late" Forgotten Hope 2, which got a 2.2 release to go with BF2's swan song. They distribute their ~3GB thing in two ways:

Folks, Rapidshare gets banged for distributing all the warez someone could possibly want as fast as technologically possible, and you really have to depend on sites that are failing epically since multi-gigabyte addons were invented?

Also, big news: the Battlefield community sucks ass at seeding torrents. They leech what they want, and then they kill the client because it's hogging their shoddily configured routers's bandwidth!

Go with the times!

By Shadowdancer, 2009-09-11, 11:51; permalink;
Last updated at 2009-09-11, 11:55 by Shadowdancer

Please Liberate Germany

This is a plea for help. We are currently ruled by fascist paranoids and plain dumb bimbos. Please liberate us and bring back democracy.

Thank you.

By Shadowdancer, 2009-07-11, 22:10; permalink;
Last updated at 2009-07-11, 22:11 by Shadowdancer

Bau eines Calmato 60 mit Viertakter

Ein paar kleine Hinweise, wenn man eine Calmato 60 Sports (Tiefdecker) baut, insbesondere wenn ein Viertakter wie zB die 91er Modelle von OS oder Magnum drauf sollen. Im folgenden Text fasse ich meine Erfahrungen zusammen wie ich sie mache.

Aktueller Stand: Die Flächen sind fertig.

Werkzeuge

In der Liste in der Anleitung fehlen ein paar Kleinigkeiten:

Flächen

Hier ist im Allgemeinen nicht viel zu sagen, die Anleitung ist recht gut, und wenn man ein Stück Pappe unterlegt solle auch der Folie so schnell nichts passieren. Wenn man die Servokabel mit der schon eingelegten Schnur einzieht, sollte man darauf achten, den Stecker sehr gut festzuknoten. Sollte sich die Schnur lösen, kann man auch mit einem Draht und ein wenig Geduld das Ziel erreichen. Anscheinend geht es am besten, wenn die Fläche beim Ziehen senkrecht aufs Ruder gestellt wird. Sollte mal was haken, reicht es normalerweise, die Fläche auf die eine oder andere Seite zu kippen.

Die Schraublöcher in den Montageplatten (die übrigens mit Klebeband fixierrt sind...) kann man 5mm vom Rand weg bohren, dann sitzen sie auch einigermaßen mittig in den Auflageflächen in der Fläche. Das Holz lässt sich sehr leicht bohren, man sollte also aufpassen, nicht die Folie auf der anderen Seite zu verletzen.

Die Löcher für die Ruderhörner sollten nicht senkrecht zur unteren Ruderfläche gebohrt werden! Wenn man das macht, steht die Konterplatte nach der Montage ins Scharnier rein. Es ist hier besser, senkrecht zur Oberseite oder in einem Winkel zwischendrin zu bohren. die Löcher müssen auf jeden Fall parallel verlaufen, damit die Konterplatte passt.

Höhenruder

Aus irgendeinem Grund waren bei meinem Bausatz die vorgebohrten Löcher für die Schrauben am Höhenruder so gesetzt, dass die Schrauben oben ins Leere gingen, weshalb ich neue Löcher gebohrt habe. Gegebenenfalls bietet es sich an, Vertiefungen für die Senkköpfe zu bohren, da ansonsten die Folie verzieht unf eventuell das Holz reißt.

Das Ruder habe ich gemäß Anleitung ausgerichtet, indem ich eine kline Schraube mittig an der hinteren Kante der Flächenaufnahme gesetzt habe, und mit einer Schnur den Abstand bestimmt habe. Zusätzlich sollte man noch darauf achten, dass das Ruder mittig sitzt. Danach einfach die Schrauben soweit eindrehen, dass man Markierungen auf dem Ruder hat, und mit 2,5mm vorbohren.

Anlenkungen: Federstahl und Du

In der Bauanleitung steht, dass man die Stangen um 90° biegen und kürzen soll. Das liest sich wesentlich einfacher als es ist, die Stangen sind nämlich recht hartnäckiger Federstahl.

Das erste Problem tritt schon auf, wenn man die Gabelköpfe aufschraubt, was sich ohne das passende Werkzeug als schwierig herausgestellt hat. Eine brauchbare Technik ist es, eine Stange fest(!!) in einem Schraubstock einzuspannen, und dann den Gabelkopf mittels einer Kombizange aufzuschrauben. Von der Montage "frei Hand" rate ich insbesondere Akademikern ab ;-). Es hat sich ebenso als wenig geeignet erwiesen, mit einer Kombizange zu halten, da man so doch schnell die schwarze Oberfläche verletzt und hässliche Scharten produziert.

Alternativ besorgt man sich passendes Gestänge im Fachhandel. Man kann für die Querruder gut Stangen mit M2-Gewinde verwenden, auf die man dann auch entsprechende Gabelköpfe aus Metall ohne Gewaltanwendung aufschrauben kann (die mitgelieferten Gestänge sind "natürlich" nicht zu M2-Köpfen kompatibel). Die Clips an den Servohörnern passen auch auf diese Stangen.

Dann kommt das Problem mit dem Material, das sich weder gerne schneiden noch biegen lässt. Zum Biegen habe ich die Stangen wieder in einen soliden Schraubstock eingespannt, so dass die Markierung grade so über die Spannbacke rausschaut. In dem Zustand kann man dann mit einem mittleren Hammer ganz einfach einen präzisen 90°-Winkel formen. Nachtrag: Das könnte für die Materialeigenschaften abträglich sein. Man kann die Stangen auch mit einem kleinen Gasbrenner anglühen, und dann recht einfach mit einer Zange biegen. Danach lässt man sie an der Luft auskühlen (auf keinen Fall in Wasser "abschrecken", da der Stahl dadurch hart und spröde wird). Nach dem Biegen sollte man die Stange nochmals ins Servohorn stecken, um sicherzugehen, dass man im nächsten Schritt nicht zuviel abschneidet. Ich habe so geschnitten, dass die Stange mindestens 3mm aus dem Sicherungsclip rausschaut. Den Clip selber kann man einfach mit einer Kombizange draufdrücken.

Zum Schneiden spannt man die Stange wieder in den Schraubstock und flext sie entsprechend ab. Danach kann man noch mit dem Schleifstein ein wenig entgraten, und die Anlenkung ist fertig.

Gas

Die Calmato ist auf einen 61er Zweitakter ausgelegt, entsprechend kommt auch das Plastikröhrchen für die Anlenkung an einer für Viertakter ungeeigneten Stelle aus dem Rumpf. Ich plane, ein neues Röhrchen so zu verlegen, dass es kurz hinter der "Firewall" oben aus dem Rumpf kommt, aber da hole ich noch ein paar Meinungen ein bevor ich bohre.

Ebenso wird es etwas eng im Motor-Abteil, insbesondere muss der Hebel vom Choke zur Seite rausgeführt werden, die Vollgas-Nadel liegt eng am Holz, und der Vergaser kommt mir generell einer Schraube vom Motorträger zu nah.

By Shadowdancer, 2009-06-27, 18:32; permalink;
Last updated at 2009-07-29, 14:26 by Shadowdancer

WBB3 Password Hashing

Ever wondered how Woltlab's Burning Board 3 (WBB3) hashes passwords? The default configuration does it like this:

Salt: Each user gets an individual salt value, which is a SHA1 hash of a random value (let's call that r). The implementation is a bit more involved, but for the sake of argument, let's just say it's a 40 hex-character string s from [a-z0-9].

Hash function: You may now think that for a password p, the hash is simply calculated as SHA1(s+p), but you'd be wrong. First, the hash by default uses double-salting. Second, there are more SHA1 invocations than you'd think. The full hash function turns out to be:

h = SHA1(s+SHA1(s+SHA1(p)))

Fun, eh? Now remember that s = SHA1(r), and expand the above line accordingly.

By Shadowdancer, 2009-04-14, 17:20; permalink;
Last updated at 2009-04-14, 17:21 by Shadowdancer

Making sense of GOA's WAR news format

You can easily get the news content of GOA's war-europe.com from e.g. here (German version). Replace the "de" in the URL by the required language code. It is an XML file with a rather simple top-level structure:

Why the hell GOA wouldn't stick with good old-fashioned HTML in the first place, as even the US site does, is a miracle. Instead they decided to construct a horrid mess of badly working Flash that would have been embarrassing in 2001. The only good thing I can say about it is that the login process is encrypted, contacting an HTTPS server (authid.goa.com).

But for now, here's the XML structure as far as I could figure it out.

Element structure

WAR

Attributes:

news

Attributes:

ti, hl, ct

Those elements are title, headline, and content. Title and headline are straightforward text in CDATA. The content element is more fun, since it encapsulates some kind of pseudo-HTML markup as CDATA.

Markup Structure

A HTML conversion could look like: 

  <h1>(contents of ti)</h1>
  <h2>(contents of hl)</h2>
  (postprocessed contents of ct)

The postprocessing is probably the trickiest part, since it involves transforming semantically loose structures to more rigid XHTML. Steps would include paragraph separation and list item separation.

Update 2009-04-23: One of today's news items brought along a list started with 'li' and terminated by '/lI'. This seems to suggest that whatever they are using for the Flash site is case insensitive, while XML is not. So during processing, it would be advisable to generally lowercase all tag names.

Update 2010-05-21: The markup allows some things that are tricky to convert to HTML, e.g., runs of bold text spanning paragraphs, lists, and other "block" elements. When parsing the markup, you technically have to make sure you split the text-level formatting, closing it at the end of a generated element, and re-opening it in the next. Seeing how ugly that is handled in the MediaWiki parser, I'm not inclined to touch that.

Postprocessing in Ruby

Given a message body, a single level of lists can be easily converted to MediaWiki markup by the following construct: 

# let input be the raw CDATA
input.gsub!(/<li>(.*?)<\/li>/m) { |m|
  $1.split(/[\r\n]+/).collect! {|i| "* #{i.strip}\n"}
}
The output is suitable for processing by MediaCloth.

By Shadowdancer, 2009-04-03, 12:27; permalink;
Last updated at 2010-05-21, 10:37 by Shadowdancer

Filtering KVirc Logs With vim

In our series of highly specialized tasks nobody is likely to ever do, we present a way to quickly remove KVirc markup from IRC logs.

KVirc annotates lines in two ways:

Filtering the type number is trivial, but removing the annotation markers requires a bit of regex-fu. I chose to do it in vim, simply because it gave me visual feedback, and because I had it open anyway. The resulting command was:

%s/^M\![a-z]\+^M\(.\{-}\)^M/\1/g

where ^M is a literal 0x0d character, input by ^v^m. The one not really intuitive part in that is the \{-} which is a non-greedy zero-or-more match, which would be expressed as *? in most other regular expression dialects.

By Shadowdancer, 2009-03-27, 10:12; permalink;
Last updated at 2009-03-27, 10:16 by Shadowdancer

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