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A new version of Runny works in Windows 7 and has some new nifty features.

I cleaned up command creation so there’s no need to prepend scripts and macros with a protocol-like keyword. Now to create a macro you can simply type:

new macro [macroname] [commands]

The same goes for script. Making “macro” and “script” sub-commands of new seemed like the most natural way to think of it.

I also added cascading parameters so a command can fall back on multiple forms of input when one doesn’t exist. For example:

new g http://www.google.com/search?q={$0|clip|prompt}

This will first look for a additional parameters after typing “g” and if none are found will check the clipboard for text data before straight out prompting for a search term. Using the pipe “|” you can string together these keywords in any order.

Lastly I added a special cliptext command ” {SLEEP n}” to pause the sending of keys for a set amount of milliseconds.

On the list so far for 0.4 is multi-tweeting, regular expression search & replacing, simple reminders & timers and extra help/command reference screens.

How cool would it be to call multiple custom runny commands with just one command? Cool enough to warrant an update to Runny that’s for sure!

Runny 0.2 adds a new custom command type “macro” that lets you string together multiple runny commands with or without parameters into one single command. Why you could even string together macros! And then string those to macros and on and on ad infinitum!

Check out the new download at the labs site… http://pivotlabs.com/opensource/runny

Runny is a project of mine which is similar to the quick launch command programs such as Launchy and Gnome Do but uses the built in capabilities of windows instead of running background processes.

For about six years now I’ve used a kind of poor-man’s unix by running commands straight from my Window’s Run box. I would make shortcuts to commonly used programs rename them to something small and simple and put them into a directory that’s referenced in my environment PATH. It worked really well and I never really thought much about it.

It wasn’t until Launchy and Gnome Do (both are amazing) and others started getting big that I thought this might be a “thing”. So I cleaned up my scripts, added supporting functions for clipboard management, twitter posting and text clips and packaged them into an easy installer.

It’s definitely limited but gives complete control over what the commands are and what they do and can even be run side-by-side with other launchers.

Check it out at my labs site!

KitcheNET 0.1 Beta 2 with Software Keyboard

Over the past week since my KitcheNET project got posted on LifeHacker, I’ve been busy tweaking the software adding new features and fixing bugs I’ve found in the process of testing it out.

Once I get it packaged up I’ll post the new version to download on our PivotLabs Open Source section.

Some new features include:

• Software keyboard for VERY simple textual input
• Added page buffering so dialing through configured web sites seems quicker
• Added right-click reset to automatically go back to home page when navigating away
• Added snazzy splash screen
• Switched from <browser> to <iframe> elements.
• Fixed links that would otherwise open in a new browser to open in current one
• Fixed up styles

The online response from readers has been very supportive and inspiring.

One reader, James Tandy, sent me a picture of an inspired setup sporting Windows Media Center and a wireless mouse.

Another reader pointed out another similar project on TechRepublic and others had great ideas for other methods of input such as the Wiimote.

I also learned about the Linux From Scratch project which might be my ticket to finally diving head first into the barebones mechanics of Linux instead of letting Ubuntu take care of everything for me.

Either way i definitely have a list of new ideas to take from this whole experience and plan to keep going with it.

After much meticulous code combing and optimization, I think I’ve got a good portion of the redundent code out of Xootools as well as started on some pretty useful libraries and plugins. I also moved it out of my projects section and into my software section.

There’s a new Native in the plugins section named “Unit” when  takes the work out of dealing with standard units of measurement such as time, weight, mass, etc.

Got some nice Fs updates and other interesting ideas for dealing with 2-dimensional arrays and the elusive “Thread” in xul.

Stay tuned!

I just finished posting JPath 1.0 which is my implementation of an XPath like query language for JSON objects.

It offers two methods of querying a json object much like an XML document. One using a Javascript syntax and the other an XPath notation, both with their own set of pro’s and con’s.

I hope there’s people out there that will find this as useful as I did.

When given a choice of transportable data structures, I pick JSON over XML. I always liked the promises of XML however the amount of processing and external libraries needed to parse XML gives me a headache. Whereas JSON is pretty darn close to programming language’s native structure so parse time is greatly reduced. Plus, JSON files are much smaller than XML.

One thing I did like about XML is the ability to perform advanced queries to data structure using XPath. Doing a quick search for an XPath equivalent for JSON turned up nothing so I plan on creating a jPath object to do exactly this.

If anyone knows of a script that can already do this, please shoot me an email at [bryan at bluelinecity dot com]. Thanks!

I’ve been working quite a bit on Foul and Wookie updates. The new Foul version will implement prototype.js so additional test packs can be loaded, for different locales such as UK. I also modified the language parser to act more like a real processor so commands can be strung together much easier.

For example:

Wookie 2.1 is going to have the ability to categorize resources, keep a diff of page versions and restrict user access to categorized pages.

Stay tuned!

* Allowing resource organizing using slashes.
* Resource versioning
* Controlling access to organized resources. So users can be given rights to everything in the cat/* resource group.
* View modifiers such as ‘edit’, ‘raw’ now seperated by ! instead of slash. Plus a new modifier for viewing past resource versions.
* Standarized heading comments in plugins.
* sack.js replaced with prototype.js
* New ‘ls’ plugin lists all grouped resources.
* Query string bug fix.

Wookie 2.1

I’ve got a ton of kewl new updates for Wookie 2.1 but everytime I think I have an offical release ready, I find a bug.

Someday It’ll be available.

Also, we should place weather sensors which stream data to central servers on all the cell-phone towers or electrical poles to better predict the weather.

And we should attach mini-sterling engines which capture the wasted thermodynamic work put off by factory smoke/steam stacks.

Just some thoughts I’ve had.