Mighty Digital

I’m making Bitcoins. http://www.weusecoins.com/

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:49:53 -0400

I’m making Bitcoins. http://www.weusecoins.com/

great up-to-date reference & worth considering beyond the...

Fri, 20 May 2011 16:26:06 -0400

great up-to-date reference & worth considering beyond the digital space into irl product design applications/modifications. and “in the bathroom”? eww. let this be a reminder not to touch other people’s (incredibly) personal devices.

curiositycounts:

New Nielsen study looks at how and where people are using tablets, smartphones and eReaders.

Using ifttt to track your Github activity

Fri, 06 May 2011 17:52:58 -0400

Pre(r)amble

At the first Flash in TO meetup that I attended (back in 20-diggity-4 or something) , someone did a presentation about setting up an IM bot to notify team members about activity on a shared code repo.

Flash forward to now, and I still haven’t bothered getting off of the futon to roll my own version of a repo activity notifier. Today, after the millionth time that Brent had to inform me that he pushed a commit to Github on a branch that he figured I was probably working on, I decided to do something about this sad state of affairs, using the latest lazy programmer’s tool: ifttt.

Implementation

The setup for my Github activity notifier is very simple:

Copy the Atom feed URL off of the dashboard of whatever Github account you would like to track.
Create a new ifttt task, where the trigger is a new feed item. Alternatively, you can choose the “new feed item matches” trigger, which allows you to apply a keyword/phrase whitelist filter to the Github Atom feed.
Paste in that Atom feed URL that you got in step 1 into the Feed URL field of the ifttt task.
For the “that” part of your ifttt task, you should choose Google Chat. Obviously, you’ll need to activate the Google Chat ifttt channel. If you don’t have a Google Chat account, then get one. o_o
Your ifttt task’s one and only action option is “Send me a chat,” so choose that.
After that, you’ll be able to craft the message that the ifttt IM bot will send to you. My message format is
{{EntryPublished}} – {{EntryTitle}}: {{EntryContent}} ({{EntryUrl}})
You’re done!

Closing Thoughts

I wasn’t sure how my IM client (Adium) would handle the HTML in the entry nodes of the Atom feed. I’m happy to say that both Adium and Google Chat (in Gmail) handle that content without any problems. Very happy.

I initially thought that it might be a good idea to use Github’s service hooks to consume the activity stream. The problem is that you have to configure service hooks on a per repo basis. We have too many repos in our Github organization account to have to maintain all of those service hooks. It wouldn’t be very DRY at all.

In the end, I think a better solution would still need to involve integration with Github’s service hooks, since that would essentially allow for realtime notification. ifttt runs tasks every 15 minutes, which is not great (not bad for my needs, but still not great). It’d be awesome if Github could figure out a way to implement account-wide service hooks, but perhaps that’s crazy talk.

WeTransfer = a useful service brought to you via ads. Send big...

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 11:01:45 -0400

WeTransfer = a useful service brought to you via ads. Send big files (2GB) for free & they’re available for 2 weeks, against a back drop of “exclusive designs by young artists or lifestyle brands”. (via @PSFK) Sweet. Let’s do more of this.

Robert Rodriguez 10 Minute Film School Part 1 & Part 2....

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:02:33 -0400

Robert Rodriguez 10 Minute Film School Part 1 & Part 2. Short cuts to make a professional quality film on the cheap.

Great idea with a fantastic execution. The music is good too.

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 09:15:07 -0400

Great idea with a fantastic execution. The music is good too.

URL Hunter

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 09:39:46 -0500

URL Hunter:

An experimental game using the URL bar as the game screen.

Light painting WIFI.

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:17:26 -0500

Light painting WIFI.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Tree of Codes

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 12:51:29 -0500

Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Tree of Codes

Life Below 600px

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 12:01:00 -0500

Life Below 600px

It’s always good to check back and see what Saul Bass was...

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:56:55 -0500

It’s always good to check back and see what Saul Bass was up to from time to time

3D YouTube

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:04:00 -0500

3D YouTube

Little Computer People Remix

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:25:55 -0500

Little Computer People Remix

Jacque Fresco’s visions of the future

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:03:47 -0500

Jacque Fresco’s visions of the future

Calculighter

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:00:34 -0500

Calculighter

Photo

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:57:18 -0500

Bring the Noise! Mystery Circuits

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:55:00 -0500

Bring the Noise!

Mystery Circuits

Icons through the ages. Quite a bit of goodness here.

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:30:07 -0500

Icons through the ages. Quite a bit of goodness here.

Great designer. I’m amazed at how well his work stands up...

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:22:52 -0500

Great designer. I’m amazed at how well his work stands up today. Alvin Lustig

sheisking: This needs to be in my living room immediately. I...

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:15:15 -0500

sheisking:

This needs to be in my living room immediately. I hope it’s enormous.