God damn those rar files

I have a tendency to put a lot of stuff in my download queue and revisit it some days later which explains the clutter in my download folder. It nags me to have to go through everything to sort things out but I get very frustrated when I have to extract rar files, especially large ones because my mac-mini is very slow. So the other day I had an idea, why don’t just stop being a cry baby and fix this problem of mine – It took me a couple of hours to throw together a script for mac os x or linux (with unrar installed) which just extracts every rar file it finds under a particular directory (recursive).

Open up a terminal and do:

1. Download script from link above
2. $ cd /Users/me/Downloads # or whatever directory you want
3. $ /path/to/unrarer.py -h # view help before using script
4. $ /path/to/unrarer.py # execute script

The script may run for a while depending on how many and how big the rar files are, but THE benefit is that you just run the script once and it takes care of all the rar files in one go. I’m sharing this script because I find it very useful but I won’t take responsibility for what it might do to your system or files so be careful.

Host migration and Rackspacecloud

Update:

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Easy peasy! and everything went according to plan. I’m hosting my server at rackspacecloud.com and I must say that I’m very happy with their services. So happy in fact that I answered their customer satisfaction survey the other day, I usually don’t bother taking these surveys but I felt that these guys were doing such a great job that I decided to give them a small pat on the back.  This brings me to another story; I’m involved with a facebook app project with a few people I met at Copenhagen Startupweekend and during one of our early Skype meetings I was introducing my idea that we should host our development environment using Rackspacecloud servers and browsed to their pricing site in order to get the link so I could copy-paste it to the other guys in the call.

Now to my surprise, as I scroll down the page I noticed that Rackspacecloud was actually using one of my satisfaction survey comments as a quote on the pricing page. It makes me feel good to be able to give something back – apart from the few bucks I actually pay for their services.

Go Rackspacecloud!

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Just migrating all of my stuff from one host to another (Debian to Ubuntu), this site might not be working for the next two days or so.

Cashew-Chicken with oyster sauce

In my 6 month dreamline I list the task of “become better at cooking asian dishes” by mastering 6 new ones and I’m already experiencing reduced food preparation time and increased tastebud happiness, so I’m quite excited about it all. So far I’ve mastered two dishes, two other in the works and two that remain undecided. The other dishes I’m working on are; Tom Yam soup and Sweet and Sour Pork/Chicken, and I need ideas for the undecided ones so let me know what is your favorite!

I started out mastering my old time favorite Khao Phad Gai and now I present to you, Cashew-Chicken with oyster sauce! Before I go into details the “Uhm! this is so delicious! I’m going to take you with me home and chain you to my stove and you wont ever-ever leave” – test involves making each dish several times for family and friends with the aim of getting the before mentioned response.

I hope you find it tasty as well.

Cashew-Chicken with oyster sauce

Suited for 4 persons

Ingredients – Sauce

• 1 cup Brown sugar
• 4 tbsp Fish sauce
• 8 tbsp Soy sauce
• 24 tbsp oyster sauce

Ingredients

• 2 pcs Chicken breasts, diced
• 4 pcs Small green onions, chopped (boats)
• 1 pcs Large red pepper, sliced
• 5 pcs Garlic cloves, minced
• 2 pcs Small chili’s, diced
• 2-4 pcs Large chili’s, chopped in large bits (optional)
• 1 can Bamboo sticks / Mini corn
• 100 gr Cashew nuts
• 2 pinches Salt
• 2 tbsp Nut oil

Preparation

1. Prepare sauce by adding all ingredients in a pot, heat until it boils and let cool down.
2. Start preparing jasmine rice (about 400-600 gr. rice vs. that x 1.33 of water)
3. Heat cooking oil in a wok, add chicken and stir fry until half cooked.
4. Add garlic and small chili’s, cook for 30 sec until adding onions and stir fry.
5. When the onions start to soften, add peppers, large chili’s and bamboo/corn sticks , peanut oil and continue frying.
6. Finally add cashew nuts and season before adding the sauce.

Copenhagen Startup Weekend

I attended the Copenhagen Startup Weekend (CSW) last weekend and I must say that it kinda took me by surprise because I did not expect to have so much fun! But lets start at the beginning and perhaps explain to those who don’t know what a startup weekend really is. A “startup” is a young technology-based company which is taking it’s first steps in the real world with it’s “novel” idea or concept or even a prototype. Such companies are looking for talent and funding which are the reasons for such initiatives as the CSW because it is all about:

• selling your idea (pitching) to the talent (other participants in the event like yourself),
• networking to connect with the talent you need to
• develop the idea to mature it from an idea -> to concept -> to product/service,
• Finally gather funding by pitching the results in front of potential investors.

The weekend didn’t start very well for me, I had been sick for a couple of days and felt like I was only getting worse. Other indicators that this weekend was to be spent at home was when I was just checking the location of the venue on Google maps, 15 minutes before I was supposed to show up, and my Macbook’s power adapter cord caught fire and stopped working for obvious reasons, how typical!

Despite the distractions I made it in time and as the first night progressed, I got to know quite a few people and eventually joined a team which was going to set out to develop a facebook app. Personally I’m not at all a fan of facebook and rarely use it but I am really intrigued by the application concept, so I said to hell with it and went for it. Late that night (friday), Pedro, Karl, Mikael, Marcia and I set off to develop a business case and a prototype of the application and after intense two days of work, fruits, coffee and little sleep we got our demo working and were ready to pitch in front of the jury (sunday evening). The teamwork was very interesting and I had lots of fun with my teammates and I feel very fortunate to have met and worked with such good people over the weekend, thanks guys!!

However, in the end our concept did not win the grand prize but wasn’t a let-down at all because I got to know many great individuals which I would be interested in working with in the future. Furthermore, my team and I decided to continue working on our concept and if you’re at all interested, although I haven’t told you what the concept is all about, you can subscribe to our mailing list here: gowalkthetalk.com – I’m not going to ruin the suspense right now :). If you’re interested in joining the next CSW event, I can tell you that the next one is planned for August/September this fall – subscribe to CSW newsletter or join on twitter via. their official homepage (above).