(originally from https://web.archive.org/web/20150422203246/http://ajcsystems.com/blog/page/2/)

I’ve been on a bit of a coding tear lately. I’ve written a FUSE filesystem for Amazon Cloud Drive, and also made a lot of improvements to my Toodledo API library, including writing a command-line tool modeled on Tom Limoncelli’s Cycle System from Time Management for System Administrators.

FUSE Filesystem for Amazon Cloud Drive

Github; does what it says on the tin. I couldn’t find a supported way to upload music from Linux, so I made one. Currently I’m a bit hesitant to call it production-ready, as Amazon has an eight-device-per-account limit and this appears to consume multiple slots instead of counting as just one extra device. I’m hopeful I can get that sorted soon.

Poodledo (Toodledo API Library)

Github; I wrote (well, forked and extended) a Python library for interacting with the web-based task management system Toodledo. Toodledo has quite an extensive ecosystem, including a light version of the website suitable for embedding, SMS and Twitter integration, an official iOS client, and several Android clients (Due Today is what I use). However, there was no easy way to add tasks from a command line, and also it wasn’t possible to create tasks with metadata (due date, project name, priority, etc.).

With the Python library in hand, I wrote a couple of tools to add and manage tasks from a command line. tdcli implements a super-fancy lexer which can add metadata to a task while creating it, e.g. “Create a task that’s due today and part of the Poodledo project #today *Poodledo”.

“cycle” for Toodledo

The other tool I wrote for interacting with Toodledo is cycle, modeled after Tom Limoncelli’s Cycle System from Time Management for System Administrators. It would take a while to explain; you should read the book, as it’s excellent. Here are some examples of its use.

(originally from https://web.archive.org/web/20150422203246/http://ajcsystems.com/blog/page/2/)

At $work, we use Puppet to manage some of our servers, and part of that involves writing custom facts for Facter, Puppet’s tool for gathering node information. (If you’re not familiar, here’s a quick description of Facter.)

These custom facts can use information present on a given host, such as hostname or IP address, to make their determination. However, we’ve also found it useful to be able to ask a custom fact, “what answer would you give if you were run on a given host?”

The answer:

This is a simple Facter fact that takes a hostname and determines which Ganglia grid to place it in. When run as a part of Facter, it will operate as a fact:

$ facter architecture => x86_64 [...] grid => build hardwareisa => x86_64 hardwaremodel => x86_64 [...]

But when called as a standalone script, it will operate as though it were running on that host:

$ ./grid.rb build01 build

Building facts like this will let you keep any custom logic you might have in one place, but reuse it in different contexts. Code reuse FTW.

P.S.- If you’re thinking about posting a comment to the effect that Facter can be run with one or more arguments of facts to output:

$ facter architecture x86_64

you’re missing the point. This technique allows you to run Facter facts on a different host than the target and still get the benefit of the logic embedded in the fact.

(originally from https://web.archive.org/web/20150421212536/http://ajcsystems.com/blog/blog/2012/10/06/poodledo-library-updated/)

I spent some time the past few days updating and improving the Python library I maintain for integrating with Toodledo. The big new features I’m excited about are automatically tab-completing your folders, goals, etc. when creating a new task (as I can never remember exactly what I called them without checking), and adding multi-line notes. Now I can add a new task, pick out the right project and such right from the command line, and ramble on to add whatever other notes I want to write down right there.

I’m hoping that this new set of features will help me get back in the habit of adding new tasks directly to Toodledo, instead of just writing them in a text file and going back to reprocess them later.

Check it out at github.