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	<title>JohnAllen.us</title>
	
	<link>http://johnallen.us</link>
	<description>...When none of my other Blogs will do</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:35:14 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	
	<language>en</language>
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			<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Johnallen" /><feedburner:info xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" uri="johnallen" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><item>
		<title>Simple Lockfile class for Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=383</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=383#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:35:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lockfile]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=383</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I was writing a Ruby program today that just needed a very simple way to control multiple web requests to a Sinatra server from querying a remote server at the same time. I would think that Sinatra does have some nice way to do this(and if you know it, please send me the link  [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=383</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Adding Commas to Numbers in Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=380</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=380#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:57:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=380</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There are a lot of posts out there about how to add commas to numbers, but I haven&#8217;t seen any that showed how to make it a method of the built-in number types.  Its very easy actually, but for those who are beginner Rubyists, here&#8217;s how I did it:


class Bignum

  def commas
  [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=380</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>fport program in Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=370</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=370#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:01:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WIN32OLE]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=370</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Recently I decided that I needed a copy of an &#8216;fport&#8217; program for Windows that would let me see what program was making connections out of my computer.  Unfortunately, my Anti-Virus software warned me that the website where it is posted was on the known virus websites list, so I just decided to make [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=370</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Radiation Meter Readings</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=357</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=357#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 23 May 2010 03:26:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HomeStuff]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=357</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Black Cat Systems sells a number of radiation meters that will capture and measure all kinds of radiation (Alpha, Beta, Gama, X-Ray, etc.).  I bought one of these several years ago and recently unearthed it from my Pile of Forgotten Electronic Projects and hooked it up to one of my computers.  The software [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=357</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Textual Table class for Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=347</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=347#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:33:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Array]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Text]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=347</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From my bag of tricks&#8230;
On occasion, I run into the need to present some kind of table information on to a console/terminal session so that the information is readable. After doing this several times, I decided to write a text table class so that i didn&#8217;t have to worry about formatting the table within my [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=347</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>List Dir Tree with Ignore list using Python</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=341</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=341#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:50:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Python]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[os.path.walk]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=341</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of my common Python tools:  use this to list out all the directories from the specified root on down, ignoring some common directories that are specified in the program. You might want to modify this code to read in your ignore list.  The program will also optionally take a size limit so [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=341</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>IronRuby 1.0 Released</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=338</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=338#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:58:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IronRuby]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=338</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Let the fun begin&#8230;.
Microsoft has released the first official version of its Ruby integration with .NET called IronRuby 1.0.  If you look closely to the release notes, you will see me on the list of bug reporters    As I get more familiar with it, and feel I have something worth while [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=338</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Perl Connectivity Check Script</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=332</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=332#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 07:11:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Perl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IO::Socket]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[networks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=332</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is a follow-on to my Python Connectivity Check Script that I posted a while back.  It functions the same way&#8230;its just written in Perl. I use both program as part of a System Connectivity Check program I wrote in Ruby to connect to many hosts, upload one of these connectivity check programs, run [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=332</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>File Transfer using XMLRPC, Python, &amp; Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=305</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=305#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:03:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Python]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[XMLRPC]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=305</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Every once and a while I get too fancy for my own good.    A customer of mine has lots and lots (well&#8230;hundreds really) of Unix hosts that need updates of config files and such. There are lots of tools out there that can do what I need to do, but they all [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=305</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Using a Class as an Array in Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=321</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=321#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:44:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Array]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Class]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=321</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[While there are plenty of places on the web that talk about Ruby Arrays and Ruby Classes, I never have found one that just explained how to use a Class as an Array.  So I thought I would post one for those who might want something simple to reference  
First, the sample code:

class [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=321</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Adding HTML Copy support to Win32::Clipboard in Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=289</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=289#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:13:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clipboard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Copy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Excel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HTML]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Word]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=289</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In my line of work I end up trying to move a large amount of text from web pages into things like Word and Excel. Getting the Text from the Web Browser is easy&#8230;Putting the text with formatting into an Office app could be a lot of work trying to parse through all the HTML [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=289</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Successfully using OCRA with Watir</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=278</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=278#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:37:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[AutoItX3]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ocra]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Watir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WIN32OLE]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=278</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you try to &#8220;compile&#8221; a Ruby script that has the Watir gem in it with OCRA, you will find that running the compiled .exe file on a computer without the Watir gem previously being installed may result in this error:
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/watir-1.6.2/lib/watir/ie.rb:113:in `initialize': unknown OLE server: `AutoItX3.Control' (WIN32OLERuntimeError)
    HRESULT error code:0x800401f3
   [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=278</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Resetting the Oil Change light on a 2007 Saturn VUE</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=274</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=274#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:41:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[HomeStuff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saturn VUE]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=274</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My friendly oil change person taught me the trick to resetting my oil change light on my 2007 Saturn VUE:
1.  Turn the ignition on
2.  Press the gas pedal all the way down three times
3.  The Oil Change light and the Airbag light will alternately blink for about 15-20 seconds, then go out.
4. [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=274</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Watching the Tivo Beacon using Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=267</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=267#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:53:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TiVo]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=267</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[While doing a quick search for Ruby code that could catch and print out the Beacon packet that Tivo machines send out on the local network, I was shocked to not find anything&#8230;.tons of stuff in Perl&#8230;.but nothing Ruby!  Unbelievable! So I went and figured out what the code would be in Ruby.  [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=267</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Using Word Spellcheck from Ruby</title>
		<link>http://johnallen.us/?p=256</link>
		<comments>http://johnallen.us/?p=256#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:12:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>john</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Automation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spellcheck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WIN32OLE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Word]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://johnallen.us/?p=256</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ever wanted to have a spell check function in your Ruby Program?  As long as you have MS Word installed, you can use the Spellcheck function from your program.  Here&#8217;s the code:

require 'exo/iswindows'

if not RUBY_PLATFORM.isWindows?
   puts &#34;This program only runs under Windows!&#34;
   exit
end

require 'win32ole'

def spellcheck(scstring)
   word = [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://johnallen.us/?feed=rss2&amp;p=256</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
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