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mattypenny

Bloke from Salisbury, England. In my 60's, somewhat unbelievably.

techie

    ∞

    I got an email about HIMSS24. It stands for ' Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 2024'….and I’m sure it’s marvellous, but being a sad, techie sort of geek I thought ‘HIMSS24’ looked like a datetime format gone wrong.

    ∞

    Setting up a file-specific (not filetype-specific) colorscheme in vim

    Setting up a file-specific (not filetype-specific) colorscheme in vim is a two step process.

    First, you need a ‘modeline’[^1] in the file like this: [^1] a ‘modeline’ is a comment with vim instructions in it. My actual modeline for this file is ‘# vim: ft=readme syntax=markdown tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 softtabstop=2 expandtab’. There’s some explanation of modelines here: https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Modeline_magic

    # vim: ft=readme

    ‘ft’ here is, somewhat confusingly given my post’s title, short for filetype. The name of the filetype is kind-of arbitrary. It’s probably best to be descriptive, and better if it doesn’t correspond to an actual filetype like .md or ‘markdown’ or ‘txt’

    Second, you need like this in your vimrc

    autocmd FileType readme colorscheme peachpuff

    Why would I do such a thing

    I have a couple of ‘big old text files’ open most of the time.

    One is for general notes, and a record of what’s happened during the week. The other is when I’m doing a chunky-ish bit of coding which records decisions, todo’s, worries and web-clippings which are specific to that code

    Having a separate colour scheme just makes it handier to find either of the files I want when I’m alt-tabbing through my 103 open windows

    ∞

    Vim commands to write out parameter list

    Executive summary :)

    For each line

    
0

D

PP

    From the colon prompt:

    
%s/^  */    write-dbg "`

%s/  *\$/: <\$

%s/$/>"

%s/,//g

    The gory details

    Starting with a parameter clause like this:

    
Param(
     $Parameter1,
     $Parameter2,
     $Parameter3,
     $Parameter4
)

    The manual bits

    First, take off the ‘Param(i’, and the bracket at the end

    Second, for each line do this:

    0
D
PP

    … to get:

         $Parameter1,     $Parameter1,
     $Parameter2,     $Parameter2,
     $Parameter3,     $Parameter3,
     $Parameter4     $Parameter4

    The colon prompt bits

    Replace spaces at the front with the write-dbg, a double-quote, and then a backtick. The backtick is because I need to escape the name of the variable

    :%s/^  */    write-dbg "`

    This gives:

        write-dbg "`$Parameter1,     $Parameter1,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter2,     $Parameter2,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter3,     $Parameter3,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter4     $Parameter4

    Replace the spaces between the repeated variables with ‘: <’

    :%s/  *\$/: <\$

    ….giving:

        write-dbg "`$Parameter1,: <$Parameter1,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter2,: <$Parameter2,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter3,: <$Parameter3,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter4: <$Parameter4

    End the string:

    %s/$/>"

    ….which gives:

        write-dbg "`$Parameter1,: <$Parameter1,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter2,: <$Parameter2,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter3,: <$Parameter3,
    write-dbg "`$Parameter4: <$Parameter4

    Finally get rid of the commas

    %s/,//g

    Leaving:

        write-dbg "`$Parameter1: <$Parameter1>"
    write-dbg "`$Parameter2: <$Parameter2>"
    write-dbg "`$Parameter3: <$Parameter3>"
    write-dbg "`$Parameter4: <$Parameter4>"
    ∞

    How to post to micro.blog with powershell

    Get the token

    Go to the account page in micro.blog, scroll down to the bottom where there is ‘App tokens’ and click on the link which has the text ‘5 apps’ (or however many apps you’ve authorized)

    Screenprint of the link

    Pick an app name (I went wild with my imagination and called it Powershell), and click on ‘Generate Token’

    Screenprint of the App name box

    Reveal the token and Ctrl-C it.

    Do the powershell bit

    Convert the token into a securestring

    $Token = 'whatever-the-token-is' |  ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force

    Set up the $Body

    $Body = @{
  content = 'Testing again. 1 , 2, 1, 2'
  h = 'entry'
  'post-status' = 'draft'
}

    You need the quotes around ‘post-status’ because Powershell doesn’t like hyphens in variable names. I’m keeping this post as draft, because the content is even less interesting than my other posts

    Then call invoke-restmethod as follows:

    invoke-restmethod https://micro.blog/micropub -Method post  -Authentication Bearer -Token $Token -Body $Body

    …and Bob’s your uncle

    Screen-print of the post

    There is, clearly, a lot more really basic stuff that I need to work out:

    • how to create a title

    • how to make the URL more meaningful (tbf, I don’t know how to do that through the browser as yet)

    • how to attach a photo

    • how to post to the testing blog rather than the default one

    Then, I’d like to:

    • create a function to select a particular post, download it, edit in in vim or vscode, then post the new version
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