CHRISTMAS CONVERSIONS

Guess what? I got you a present! At least it seems to meet the 
definition of a Christmas present because it's vagely relevent to 
you, yet you never asked for it and don't really want it: A Gopher 
currency converter.

Yes my Christmas was mostly spent tinkering with Bash scripts. I 
know a currency converter is nothing too revolutionary, but it has 
been a fun thing to tinker with and actually took quite a bit of 
work to get it just the way I wanted it. Most of the work was 
actually done early in the year though, this was just the 
"finishing touches" stage, which usually takes almost as long 
anyway.

A quiet Christmas with just me and a 90s PC is about as good as 
anything, I figure. I really don't know why people go to so much 
trouble trying to travel all over the globe just to meet certain 
people for Christmas. Personally I refuse to drive any distance 
around the Christmas break, because it's just too dangerous with so 
much traffic. Though that is annoying this year since I only just 
got the Jag working again and would have really liked to go for a 
nice long drive.

But what has resulted can be found up at the main index of my 
Gopher hole by following the "Gopher Banker" link, which previously 
only lead to a currency rates list - though that nevertheless 
required the bulk of the overall coding to generate. The Bash 
scripts used can be found in the Scripts section, though I'll need 
to write a README for it to make things clear. It's actually the 
biggest Bash script that I've ever written, and I tried out a lot 
of new things. It even has a neat little part that uses the HTTP 
Etag header to only download the currency names list when it 
changes, with GNU Wget. I might split that out into a little script 
of its own once I get around to adding HTTP error handling to it.

I also got the FireText script finished and working properly on an 
old router running OpenWRT for use by a relative to send them text 
messages about nearby fires (using a mobile broadband modem for 
both internet and SMS). The new (finished) version of that script 
is now in the Scripts section too, though I somewhat doubt anyone 
else will use it. An update frequency of 5min was settled on in the 
end, because at 1min the cost of all the internet downloads was too 
much, even when only downloading the file when it changed (by 
checking the file length because unfortunately that server doesn't 
provide Etags, or meaningful update times). 15-20KB every 2-3min 
(it changed more frequently than I expected due to minor changes to 
event details) adds up quick. Still $5/month is more expensive than 
I had hoped, but they're happy paying for it during the fire season.

 - The Free Thinker

P.S. I hope somone appreciates all the ASCII flags that I
     collected. I've got a few more still to add, but am open to
     submissions of missing ones.