ics_awstats is one TYPO3 extension using the perl awstats-script to analyze apache logfiles. It's only for backend-users to see, what's going on. It's possible to start the script manually or to schedule the execution with the TYPO3 scheduler.

With last update from 0.3.0 to 0.5.0 the extension stopped working on my installation. The lock-file was created but not deleted anymore and the link for removing it did'nt work.

I check the extension for this failure and changed to lines to reactivate it again. Because there is no bugtracker yet on forge for this project, I sent the patch to the maintainer. Hope, he will apply it soon.

If you like, you may checkout the patch and apply by yourself.

Find more:

• ics_awstats on typo3.org
• ics_awstats repository on forge.typo3.org
• awstats.pl the original perl script

UPDATE: The maintainer, Reto Zahner from Newmedia AG in Switzerland, fixed this issue and released 0.5.1 some days after my patch and bugreport. Thank you!

On Facebook some feeds of my blog are feeded automatically by the RSS Graffiti application. And I wonder for a while why the tt_news RSS feed contains the preview image but the t3blog RSS feed comes without it.

If find images with a short teaser much more interesting than only text. That's why I add an image.

I checked out the current class.rss.php from the forge.typo3.org repository. The developers changed a lot since the last release 1.0.0 and there is still no release 1.1.0. But this class didn't worked as expected because there is still a bug inside. So first I made a bugreport with a patch.

After this the content:encoded field was filled but the images where gone nevertheless. That's because they strip all  tags out of the description with the PHP function strip_tags(). So I added the -tag to the allowed tags in line 598:

$text = strip_tags($text, '<a><img><b><br><em><hr><i><li><ol><p><strong><ul>');

REVIEW

PACKT Publishing annonced a new Book: The Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook. That's exactly what I love with Linux. Writing shell scripts. I'm looking forward to review this book. It should be in my postbox soon.

Update 2011-03-30: The book has just arrived.

Update 2011-04-14: I just started with the first chapter. All chapters have funny names. The first one is called "Shell Something Out". I'm not sure if these titles helps you when looking at the table of content.

The first chapter shows you lots small examples with your shell. But it only describes the bash (Bourne Again Shell). There is no hint that bash is not used as default shell in ubuntu and debian anymore because it is huge, slow and has many "bashisms" - bash specific and not portable syntax.

But ok, I learned hacking with bash too and it is more feature-rich than dash and fast enough for most daily scripting.

There is another point missing: You learn using a bunch of tools: cat, date, tput, tee, tr, echo and more. But the author doesn't tell you howto get more information about each tool. There are man-pages, "--help" output and for sure lots of good websites online.

In the second chapter you learn very much about find. The author seems to love it. And he knows it very well. It's really interesting. Also sort, tr, uniq and other tools are presented with short examples. Most examples are a step-by-step guide.

I've still not finished with the book but I think it's not suitable for very beginners. But it is really helpful and interessting for people having written their first scripts already.

Like in many other towns you find in Dresden "Depature Monitors" at the bus and tramway stations.

The public transport company in Dresden released some widgets in 2009 to place a widget on your desktop. That's fine for the plenty of people sitting in front of their computers up to the evening and don't want to wait long time for the tram to get home.

But really interessting is this depature monitor if you can access it from everywhere - using you cellphone. For these people the DVB offers a WAP page. But this is not very userfriendly.

Many projects startet to grab the depature information from the widget interface. From wget to iPhone and Android Apps.

Today, I release another approach: The ab_vvo_depmon TYPO3 extension. This is running on m.bigga.de. A minimalistic website you may use with your mobile browser. Or use it with your desktop browser. Some features:

• update every 60s
• data is cached in local database to reduce request to the widget server
• select the vehicle categories (bus, tram, train)
• remove destinations by clicking on it
• save the hole URL as bookmark to access your station quickly

This is a private service without any warranty. Maybe you find it useful.

Links:

• m.bigga.de
• DVB Widgets
• Android APP ddtram
• C3D2 Projekt DVB-Scraping