This Space Intentionally Left Blank: Sing In Tune You Bastards!

18 Thermidor CCXI (August 5, 2003)

Sing In Tune You Bastards!

Well, inspired by someone else's page, I've put back up a Yasis page.
Granted phpSysInfo is much nicer than Yasis, but I can't be bothered to install PHP right now. Combine that with the fact that Yasis only has major issues if it's taken off of the x86 platform, which seems unlikely at the current time, and I doubt I'll get around to replacing it with phpSysInfo for a while.
Edit: Just noticed that Yasis fails to report ISA devices. Maybe I'll get around to adding that if I'm ever in the right mood. And yes, I do need to work on getting the colours to look right there.

Anyways, real reason for posting this; I've decided to put up my word of the day scripts. They consist of two: one which runs periodically using cron and one which is run as a CGI script.

The one that's run with cron should be run daily at some point after 00:00 GMT-05:00 as that's when dictionary.com updates their WOTD page.
I personally use the following crontab entry:
30 2 * * * /path/to/work/dir/wotd.pl
Keeping in mind of course that I'm in GMT-04:00/-03:00 (depending on whether or not DST is in effect.)

The other one should be run using a server side include call, such as  which will print the word out on the page.
Edit the Second: Apache users will need to have mod_include installed in order to use SSIs. thttpd users are SOL.
Edit the Third: Additionally, the file should end in the extension shtml for SSIs to work properly. (Providing you've set up Apache correctly that is)

Anyways, enough with the blathering already, here are the files:

Cron script: wotd.pl
CGI script: wotd-cgi.pl

Remember to fill out the variable names in both files, otherwise one won't run and the other will give you a rather fitting word of the day.
It's also your responsibility to do something with the word it spits out.
The webster.com search URI is:
http://webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=word
On the other hand, the dictionary.com URI format is:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=word

Posted by g026r at 16:23

Comments

Are you getting tired of learning the meaning of "absquatulate"?

Posted by peter at 18 Thermidor CCXI 20:29 (2003/08/05)

Absquatulate is a perfectly interesting word, and when I can remember how to use it without looking it up I'll say I'm tired of it.

I enjoy writing random scripts, and it was either these or writing a script that used the dictionary files that I never bothered to install, so...

Now if you'll excuse me, it is time I absquatulated since I really should get back to work.
Wait... Now I don't need to learn the meaning anymore.