From the department of things-that-I-know-are-possible-but-can-never-remember-how-to-do-so-hey-I-read-the-manpage-and-now-I'm-blogging-it, I bring you "downloading a directory of photos from a website":

 wget --recursive http://example.com/photos/some-event/ --no-directories --directory-prefix <local-folder-name> --accept JPG,RW2

I always remember wget --recursive (or wget -r for short), but that produces an annoying tree of directories starting with the website's domain and working its way up to the directory you actually want. In the command above, --no-directories removes the tree, and --directory-prefix tells wget to put the downloaded files somewhere that's not the current working directory. The --accept option tells wget to discard files with extensions other than those mentioned, so your downloaded directory is not cluttered with webserver-generated files like index.html if you don't want it to be.

Here's the short version, since the long version is nice to remember but not so nice to type:

wget -r http://example.com/photos/some-event/ -nd -P <local-folder-name> -A JPG,RW2

There's a relatively new Google Maps hack floating around that's titled HYDESim: High Yield Detonation Effects Simulator. Read: "range and strength of effects when dropping a nuclear warhead of X strength on X location."

This entry in Eric Meyer's blog explains its origins and a few other things. It's somewhat scary to think that such a thing could happen, but interesting nonetheless. Such an unfortunate part of the world we live in.

It's kind of neat to think of how Google has brought about such a wide range of unique and inventive web apps with their maps API. They're real pioneers, despite having a few flaws.

I seem to have forgotten to note that I got myself a neato Audioscrobbler account about a week ago. The mad "this is so neat!" refresh-page-clicking-of-doom phase has passed. My username's spanginator; feel free to add me to friends or whatever. I joined the Debian "user" group there, which works for now, heh. And yes, I did feel the need to test out all the buttons, which meant seeing what happened when I did "wipe music stats" the day after registering. Hmm. That might have had something to do with some minor frustration with switching between plugins on different applications; it takes a few hours of inactivity to start accepting new submissions from a different plugin right after a swap. Or at least it did for me.

This has got to be the most awesome Google Maps hack ever. Finally, I know that when I bike to school, I'm going around 1.4 miles. To a friend's house that I often bike to, it's about 2.12 miles; another's is 2.7 the way I currently go, which could be cut down to about 2.3 if I take a slightly different path (I knew there had to be a shorter route, I just didn't want to get lost figuring out exactly which way it was). The park is 1.7 miles. My large running loop is 3.25 miles long; the shorter one that I occasionally take is 1.3 miles long. And the middle one is 2.3.

Woot. Now I'll finally have running mileages in my journal as well as times, without having to bust out the car's trip counter (which was too much of a pain to ever do). I am happy!

Drivel is supposed to support WP with the Movable Type API - does anybody happen to know how exactly to get this working? What page do you point the 'server address' field to?

...tips from places too numerous and varied to attribute every one.

no-WWW: Make sure your site is accessible from domain.com as well as www.domain.com.

Mailinator: Don't use your own mail address for validation at sites you suspect may sell your address to spammers. No, I've never used it yet, but it looks like a spiffy idea.

2002: A 2002 word long palindrome story. Amusing!

Wil Wheaton Dot Net: Not just an ex-Star Trek actor. He's got some good left-wing stuff. Like this.

The New Yorker: Episode III: Yes, I do like Star Wars, and I do intend to see Episode III. It's still funny... very.

Aside from what most people are happy about. i.e. the hopeful end of sites not putting up full text RSS feeds because of a fear of lost ad revenue, I'm glad that sites may hopefully use it instead of putting clunky, slow-loading banner ads into feeds (like some sites cough).

I'm sure that I know at least a few people who could certainly benefit from this article. Probably myself included, though for the last month and a bit I've dramatically cut down the time I spend on certain forums (nudge). There is a point where you realize how stupid it is to care about things like making sure to read every thread, and checking post counts and other mundane silly things.

Steve Pavlina also has an article regarding effective e-mail using, for any who find themselves spending inordinate amounts of time daily in their mail reader.

While I was reading this story at the Inquirer, about the only thing that was going through my head as I got toward the bottom of the article was "why on EARTH is the person that wrote this using NETSCAPE?" Netscape may have just made a new release, but it has arguable the most cludgy and ugly interface of any web browser ever designed. Really.

Then again, the fact that an article concerning standards has been published by a site that doesn't validate is another face to the irony. Not to mention it looks like a nightmare from 1995.

Nudge.

Mezzoblue's dailies point over to this site, which says that Slashdot is in the process of eventually being converted to valid XHTML and CSS.

WHOA. Hell freezing over no crap. Good luck to them - the site could really use an update. I don't envy the those doing the job, though.

I'm headed up north for the Easter weekend, visiting family in Canada. Will be back on Sunday.