This is my method for getting the resulting file onto my iPod. I’ve included it here in case it’s useful to someone.

Things you will need

• A jailbroken iPod/iPhone
• MobileTerminal (from Cydia)
• wget (from Cydia)
• file:// Schema in Safari (from Cydia)

Setting up the alias

Open MobileTerminal and type the following:

iPod:~ mobile$ nano .bashrc

This will either open your existing .bashrc file or create one for you in Nano.

The following command will create an alias that makes a backup of your previously downloaded export page and then downloads the latest version.

alias wp='cd; mv export.html export~.html; wget http://www.domain.com/pathtopage --output-document=export.html'

Note that if your blog is behind a password you will need to add --http-user=name and --http-password=pass to the wget part of the alias.

Now close the file by typing CTRL-O.

To make sure your .bashrc file loads when you start up your iPod you now need to create a .profile. Type the following:

iPod:~ mobile$ nano .profile

Then add the following to that file:

source $HOME/.bashrc

Close the file by typing CTRL-O.

Now any time you want to download your WP data just load up MobileTerminal and type wp. To load your offline page in Safari you need go to the URL file:///var/mobile/export.html.

Reading the various comments on TUAW the fanboy response of "if you want firewire buy a pro" is quite spectacularly idiotic. If your laptop is your only computer then fine, go pro. I however, already have a desktop, I don't need another all singing all dancing workhorse, and 15 inch laptops are not very mobile. The MacBook is too expensive to be missing such a key port. I don't mind that my Eee PC only does USB, it cost less than £300, it's not designed to be used solo. A MacBook is, or was.

I'm seriously questioning my commitment to using Apple computers. I've already given up waiting for a netbook for this round of my laptop upgrade cycle with the purchase of the Eee. Currently I work on a white 20 inch iMac, what do I do if that breaks? Suck it up and buy a shiny screened iMac? Nope, I remember the nightmare of shiny CRTs too clearly. What about a Mac Pro? I design websites, I don't operate mission control, 8 cores is overkill for my needs. And an £1800 starting price? Forget it. So it looks like either I join the dark side and get used to Windows or I switch to Linux. I've been using Ubuntu on my Eee and I'm impressed with it. It even runs Photoshop. Then there's always VirtualBox to run anything that isn't covered on linux.

First you need to go to your WordPress admin page and set up the permalink structure in Options > Permalinks. I've set mine to /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ but you may want something different.

The notes in the script assume the requested URL to be http://www.domain.co.uk/blog/2007/10/31/an-example-post/?color=red I've added the GET queries so you can see how they are handled, they're not used in WordPress. This URL is then translated into http://www.domain.co.uk/blog/index.php/2007/10/31/an-example-post/?color=red. Notice the index.php in the middle? That's the key bit to making all this work.

Save the following code in a file called rewrite.script and upload it to your web space. Note that you will need to uncomment some parts of the script depending on whether your blog is in a sub directory or the top level of your site.

The code is currently set to work with a sub directory of blog. It has only been tested on Namesco servers and it's set to ignore their specific hosting folders like webmail, controlpanel and tech_support.

The Easy Stuff

Some apps didn't need replacing, Firefox is available for linux and Photoshop runs brilliantly under Wine. And of course linux has a Terminal.

Text Editor

Mac: TextMate
Linux: jEdit

I've been using TextMate for a while now, it's probably my most used app, it's the only one I actually miss when using my laptop. jEdit is a reasonable substitute, it allows you to configure your own syntax colouring, so I copied my favourite TextMate colour scheme.

FTP

Mac: Transmit
Linux: gFTP

Initially I tried FileZilla but I had problems with it disconnecting from servers, it got painful having to navigate to the same folder over and over again each time I wanted to update a file. gFTP fixes this, plus it is quick to load and run.

Chat

Mac: Adium
Linux: Pidgin

Pidgin is available for both windows and linux. It supports MSN, AIM, Google Talk, ICQ and Bonjour among others.

Music Player

Mac: iTunes
Linux: Exaile

Exaile doesn't do everything, it won't sync my iPod for instance. It does play MP3s however and that's all I needed.

PDF Reader With Annotation

Mac: Adobe Acrobat
Linux: PDF Xchange Portable

This one's a bit of a cheat, being a Windows app it needs to be run under Wine. I searched in vain for a native linux app that handled annotation in a standard way; I need to be able to read my annotations on my mac as well as my Eee. PDF Xchange Portable runs very well under Wine.

You can read all about Phorm here and find some useful detection scripts here.

• You have 2.* software jailbroken iPod
• Using Cydia you have installed the following:
  • Mobile Terminal
  • sudo
  • wget
  • file:// Schema in Safari

Overview

The aim is to have a simple command that can be run from the terminal on the iPod to download the HTML file. Safari is then used to view the file offline.

Setting up the aliases

Create a .bashrc file in your home directory, this is where we will store the alias settings. We will use Nano for this:

iPod:~ mobile$ nano .bashrc

Hopefully your screen now looks something like the image below.

I'm making an assumption about the filename you wish to give your downloaded HTML file, change it if you wish. In Nano you need to type the following:

alias notes='cd; mv notes.html notes~.html; wget http://www.domain.com/page.html --output-document=notes.html'

If, like me, the page you wish to download is behind a password change the dlnotes alias to the following, supplying your own username and password:

alias notes='cd; mv notes.html notes~.html; wget http://www.domain.com/page.html --http-user=username --http-password=password --output-document=notes.html'

That's it. You can now save your .bashrc file by typing CTRL-o and answering yes to the prompt. Quit Nano by typing CTRL-x.

The iPod doesn't always load the .bashrc file so we need to create a .profile page again using Nano and add the following code:

source $HOME/.bashrc

Finally you need to reload your .bashrc file:

iPod:~ mobile$ source .bashrc

Whenever you want to grab your HTML page for offline viewing just open the terminal and type notes. Then view the file in Safari by typing in the URL file://var/mobile/notes.html, a copy of the old HTML file will have been saved too just in case. You can setup another alias to delete the backup in the same way above, the command would be:

alias delnotes='cd; rm notes~.html'

Air Sharing

If you use Air Sharing you may want your file to be saved in its directory and be available over a network. Below is a quick guide to finding where Air Sharing stores files.

Use Air Sharing to copy a file from your computer to your iPod, make its filename unique as you will need to search for it later on. e.g. moocow.html

The rest of the work is done in the iPod Terminal. So grab your iPod and open the Terminal application. Note that I've highlighted the commands you type as bold.

We can use the locate command to find the file. First you will need to update the locate database. This needs to be done as root. To change to the root user type the commands below. The password will be alpine unless you've changed it:

iPod:~ mobile$ su
Password:<password>
iPod:/var/mobile root# updatedb
iPod:/var/mobile root# exit


Next we search for the file you copied over with Air Sharing:

iPod:~ mobile$ locate moocow.html

Note that it may take a few seconds to search, there are a lot of files on your iPod. You should get something back that looks like this:

/private/var/mobile/Applications/94724F2A-847G-371D-8H36-3DF5E659C9D2/Documents/Air\ Sharing/moocow.html

So now we know that Air Sharing stores its files here:

/private/var/mobile/Applications/94724F2A-847G-371D-8H36-3DF5E659C9D2/Documents/Air\ Sharing/

Using this information you can adjust the alias above to download your files directly to the Air Sharing directory.

Went to see the B-52s last night at Birmingham Academy. We learned several things; GPS hardware doesn't like those underpass road bits they like in Brum and that maybe it would make more sense to go on the train - if they weren't so shite that is.

We got to the place at 7pm and joined the line outside. As there was no supporting act there was a bit of a wait till the B's hit the stage at 9.15ish. They played a good mix of old and new songs, plus Love Shack and an encore of Rock Lobster. It was awesome :) Well worth enduring the headache inducing lights, particularly during Strobe Light, a good test of my migraine reflecting green glasses of power.