$ cat /home/buntine/mind_melting_brilliance

ROT13 (that is, ROTate by 13 places) is a very simply substitution cipher that is often used in online forums, games and chat rooms. The idea was invented by Julius Caesar over 2,000 years ago (it was ROT3), but has been popular on the WWW since the '80s.

It works by rotating each character in a string of text by thirteen alphabetical characters, wrapping over to the beginning if necessary. For example:

Hello --> Uryyb --> Hello

As demonstrated above, one of the cool things about this simple technique is that it is it's own inverse. That is, applying the same filter twice will yield exactly what you started with. This, of course, makes it totally useless as a production-level encryption algorithm, but very handy for non-critical uses such as games and puzzles.

A very-similar alternative is ROT47, which applies the same concept to a larger range of characters in the ASCII set (94 to be exact: 33 to 127). This allows us to include several additional characters such as exclamation marks, commas, etc.

I've written a Firefox add-on, which allows you to select some text on a webpage, right-click it, and then generate the ROT13 or ROT47 substitute. From here you can re-apply the cipher and/or copy the new value to your local clipboard.

Please check it out and let me know of any problems you run into. Thanks!

Official download: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/125128/

Or view/modify the source code: http://github.com/buntine/Quick-ROT13/

A big "thanks" to the people that emailed me and those who brought it up on forums, etc. Sorry for my delay, but I've just updated Witchhammer to be compatible with Firefox 3.6.*. All should be fine within the next 30 minutes or so (just waiting on Mozilla to update their cache).

As per usual, download it from the official repository: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9671/

Thanks again!

I've just finished an upgrade to Witchhammer, my Firefox extension for finding information on the http://www.metal-archives.com database.

I've made the following changes:

• Added song search
• Implemented loading dialogue
• Cleaned up JS namespace pollution
• General code cleanup and refactor

It's currently available on the Firefox Addons website. You can also fork me on github.

Any feedback you may have would be greatly appreciated! :)

After I released Witchhammer 1.0, my bandwidth usage went up 3,000%. My logs are telling me that over 500 people have already downloaded the extension!

In any case, I decided that I could make an enhancement or two. Namely:

• Full support for both band and album/release searching
• Better handling of AJAX requests (as metal-archives is often down or slow)

It still works in the same way as before, although there is now a submenu available that allows you to choose to search for either bands or albums. The results are aggregated and displayed efficiently (instead of simply redirecting you to a webpage).

You can download the extension at Firefox Addons and Softpedia (thanks to whoever submitted it there!).

Note, you will need Firefox 3.0 or above -- so make sure you upgrade if you need to.

Please let me know if you find any bugs or areas for improvement. Thanks!

NOTE: My latest version is available here: http://andrewbuntine.com/articles/2008/11/27/witchhammer-13-available-now

Record Collecting is a hobby of mine. Well, perhaps an obsession. Infact, I feel somewhat comfortable in claiming that I have the best collection of obscure Czechoslovakian Heavy Metal LPs in Australia!

One of the best general resources for confirming information about bands (or discovering new ones) is undoubtedly The Encyclopaedia Metallum (or simply "Metal Archives" to most of us). When browsing a tradelist, distro listing, EBay, etc I find myself continuously jumping to said website. So I thought:

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a Firefox Extension that allowed you to simply highlight a bands name (or keyword) on a webpage, right-click, select "Find at Metal Archives", and be presented with a nice listing of the results?! You could then select the results you wanted to see, and click "Ok". A new tab, linking to the bands profile, would be opened for each.

So this is exactly what I did. I decided to name the extension Witchhammer; a reference to the cult Czech band, Törr.

Witchhammer is currently in sandbox at the official Mozilla Add-Ons website, and should be available for download there soon. In the meantime, you can download it here: http://www.andrewbuntine.com/firefox/witchhammer.xpi

You will need Firefox 3.0 or above. I developed it on Linux, but have tested on Windows XP and found no problems. It also works fine on Mac OSX.

If you find any issues or areas for improvement, please feel free to email me!

Enjoy, thrashers!!

My first Firefox extension, Freyja, is now available for download! See my first post for an introduction to the functionality and inspiration of this work.

Freyja is currently in an experimental state, and being my first attempt, may not be 100% stable on all operating systems (tested on Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 8, Windows XP).

To use it properly, you will need Firefox 2.0 or above (FF3 is recommended), access to an SMTP server (Gmail is supported!) and the Python interpreter (comes bundled on most Linux distro's and Mac OS X).

MS Windows users -- the extension will work for you if you have Python installed on your machine.

Direct download: http://www.andrewbuntine.com/firefox/freyja.xpi

I would really appreciate it if someone could download it, test it out with their own email address(es), and let me know if you run into any problems. Any feedback at all is appreciated!

General usage is as follows:

• Go to Tools > Freyja
• Add a few URLs to the Websites list
• Add one or more email addresses to the Email list
• Go to Preferences and set your email information (example: Gmail password, email address, full name)
• Browse to a disallowed URL (that you just set)
• Look in the status bar for the "Sending email..." message!

A while ago I stumbled upon one of the weirdest/coolest/most original reasons for abandoning Linux I have seen in a long time. Check it out here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=878991

Basically, the guy is heading back to Windows due to a massive addiction to pornography. He says there is not enough pornography-filtering software available for *nix systems.

Perhaps he is right? I'm not sure. But it sure is very original!

At one point in the post, he makes mention of an O/S tool that scans your browsing habits and threatens to email a person of your choosing. I thought to myself that such an idea is great for a Firefox Extension!

So I sat down and started hacking on an extension that works in the following way: The user (adictee) preconfigures the extension with a list of the websites he/she visits in order to "fill their need" and provides one or more appropriate email addresses (their mother, girlfriend/boyfriend, etc). From here, the extension silently pays attention to the users browsing and, in the occurence of the user browsing to a "disallowed" page, the supplied individuals are instantly emailed informing them of what their son/partner/whatever is up to!

I don't believe in censorship or content filtering, and so the pages will be completely available to the user, but the consequences could be dire (provided they use it with integrity!).

I have basically finished the extension and should have it packaged up and ready for download within the next day or so. I will give out more specific details (including full source code) at that time.

Also, I have decided to name it "Freyja"; a not-so-accidental reference to the Norse Goddess of Fertility.

Now there is no excuse, porn addicts all over the world can feel comfortable using free software!