sglavoie.com – Tag: Web

Suckless: Minimalist Tools That Work Great

Sébastien Lavoie — Sun, 12 May 2019 22:50:00 -0500

What are Suckless tools?

Home of dwm, dmenu and other quality software with a focus on simplicity, clarity, and frugality.

There are also other incredible pieces of software that are worth mentioning, including st.

Here, I will only go over the tools I use frequently, but keep in mind that everything from Suckless… Sucks less.

st — Simple Terminal

I did not know what to expect from this terminal and I found it delivers what I need! Configuring it is quite different than other terminals like Konsole or GNOME Terminal: you just edit a text file and compile the software before you can even use it. It may seem tedious at first, but compiling such a small piece of software is very fast and it needs to be done on seldom occasions when you may want to adjust a setting.

I have experienced rendering issues when scaling the text with other terminals (including Konsole), where some weird flickering would happen at certain font sizes. Simple Terminal just works without hassle. It doesn’t have much bells and whistles out of the box, but it can be patched to extend its functionality if you know what you are doing. I don’t, so my compiled version remains pretty basic although I must say I like the simplicity of it very much.

Configuration

I didn’t have to adapt the configuration file very much. I ended up changing mainly the following lines:

 cpp
 
 
 
static char *font = "Consolas:pixelsize=18:antialias=true:autohint=true";

static char *shell = "/bin/zsh";

/* Terminal colors (16 first used in escape sequence) */
static const char *colorname[] = {

 /* 8 normal colors */
 [0] = "#1c1c1c", /* black */
 [1] = "#ff005b", /* red */
 [2] = "#70e502", /* green */
 [3] = "#fcdd11", /* yellow */
 [4] = "#00a0ea", /* blue */
 [5] = "#bd1efc", /* magenta */
 [6] = "#14ecfc", /* cyan */
 [7] = "#ededed", /* white */

 /* 8 bright colors */
 [8] = "#666666", /* black */
 [9] = "#ff00a0", /* red */
 [10] = "#5dff00", /* green */
 [11] = "#ff9f00", /* yellow */
 [12] = "#71a9fc", /* blue */
 [13] = "#d571fc", /* magenta */
 [14] = "#6cf2fc", /* cyan */
 [15] = "#fcfcfc", /* white */

 /* special colors */
 [256] = "#0a0500", /* background */
 [257] = "#e0e0e0", /* foreground */
};

/*
 * Default colors (colorname index)
 * foreground, background, cursor
 */
unsigned int defaultfg = 257;
unsigned int defaultbg = 256;
static unsigned int defaultcs = 257;
static unsigned int defaultrcs = 256;

/*
 * Colors used, when the specific fg == defaultfg. So in reverse mode this
 * will reverse too. Another logic would only make the simple feature too
 * complex.
 */
static unsigned int defaultitalic = 7;
static unsigned int defaultunderline = 7;

/*
 * Default shape of cursor
 * 2: Block ("█")
 * 4: Underline ("_")
 * 6: Bar ("|")
 * 7: Snowman ("☃")
 */
static unsigned int cursorshape = 2;

/*
 * Default columns and rows numbers
 */

static unsigned int cols = 80;
static unsigned int rows = 24;

dmenu

dmenu can be configured in the same way as Simple Terminal by editing a text file and compiling the software. I like to use many keyboard shortcuts, but I find that for launching applications I don’t use that often or to launch custom Bash or Python scripts on the fly, nothing beats the simplicity of dmenu.

Configuration

This one is very easy to configure and doesn’t really require any attention at all besides defining where you want it to appear on the screen and what colors you prefer. Here are some smalls changes I made to the configuration in config.h before compiling it:

 cpp
 
 
 
static int topbar = 1; /* -b option; if 0, dmenu appears at bottom */
/* -fn option overrides fonts[0]; default X11 font or font set */
static const char *fonts[] = {
	"Consolas:size=12"
};
static const char *prompt = NULL; /* -p option; prompt to the left of input field */
static const char *colors[SchemeLast][2] = {
	/* fg bg */
	[SchemeNorm] = { "#D8D8D8", "#000000" },
	[SchemeSel] = { "#000000", "#ff7400" },
	[SchemeOut] = { "#000000", "#00ffff" },
};
/* -l option; if nonzero, dmenu uses vertical list with given number of lines */
static unsigned int lines = 0;

/*
 * Characters not considered part of a word while deleting words
 * for example: " /?\"&[]"
 */
static const char worddelimiters[] = " ";

slock

What can be said about slock? It just works and never gets in your way. Set it and really forget it. From the official page:

This is the simplest X screen locker we are aware of.

Again, its simplicity is charming and nothing really needs to be changed in config.h apart from colors and setting the correct username and group name to lock and unlock the screen.

Conclusion

This was a lighting fast overview of some of the tools I now use on a daily basis. Suckless tools caught my attention and kept it! They offer other specialized software like a web browser, a tool for presentation from the terminal, IRC client and others… but the ones described here are really those which I now can’t live without.

I was originally inspired to seek out those tools thanks to Luke Smith, a fantastic YouTuber.

Dispose of Spam with Disposable Emails And More!

Sébastien Lavoie — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 20:08:00 -0600

Introduction

If your privacy matters to you even just a little, read on, if you dare. There are easy solutions you can apply right now to filter those fools out of your digital life.

Why should I care?

Once your main email address is exposed to attacks because it was leaked in a data breach or your data was somehow sold to a third-party service, it is a hard and time-consuming process to try to unsubscribe to everything or apply filters to automatically delete most of the bad stuff coming in. Many websites won’t respect your privacy and will go ahead and share your email, which can eventually have a snowball effect and you end up getting more emails than there are trees available to print them. As with printing emails, you must agree this is totally irresponsible and should be punished by law .

Because attackers can often retrieve your complete name from your email address (either because you signed up for a service sharing your information from another provider or it’s easy to associate it with you on social media, for example), they can craft advanced phishing emails or create content that’s magically relevant to you thanks to social engineering and if you don’t look close enough, you can fall into their trap.

Then suddenly, because you opened an attachment or went into the dark corners of the Web unbeknownst to you, your laptop fan is spinning all the time at full speed or you get a colorful pop-up telling you that all your files have been encrypted and a ransom, along with only unrecognizable files on your system, convincingly dictates what your destiny looks like. At this point, you are doomed, unless you actually take pleasure in formatting your computer once in a while for the shear joy of it.

So what shall we do about it?

Solution #1: Use a temporary email

This one is quick and easy. You can use a variety of services, including Temp Mail Address, Temp Mail and ThrowAwayMail to name a few. Those are all free services and allow you to get access to a temporary email address and its associated inbox.

Perfect for all those cases when you want to receive a freebie or have access to a specific page that asks for an email and a real name. You simply give a fake but working email address and you’re good to go. Don’t even set it and forget it.

Solution #2: Use a more controlled approach

There is one particular service that I have been using for almost a decade now that eats your spam away on demand. That service is appropriately called Spamgourmet. Does it work? Here are my personal stats:

Your message stats: 805 forwarded, 14,191 eaten. You have 245 spamgourmet address(es).

Does it really work?

Oh yes! From the above stats, you can see that from a total of 14,996 messages being sent to me, I have not received almost 95% of it thanks to Spamgourmet working on auto-pilot all the time… And it’s important to mention that the other 5%, I actually wanted to receive it.

How does it work?

You can create as many email addresses as you require to login to most websites that you do not intend to use regularly and create a label Filtered mail in your inbox or something similar that matches anything sent to *@spamgourmet.com. You can create addresses on the fly without ever needing to log into your Spamgourmet account and set how many emails can be sent to a specific address all at once.

With very few extra steps, you can manage your email addresses on Spamgourmet, remove the ones you don’t want anymore, reset how many emails can be received (increase/decrease that number), etc. You can find out exactly how it works on the main page of Spamgourmet.

Why consider this approach instead of solution #1?

This approach has the advantage that you can know exactly where your spam is coming from and exactly when, as your email may be used quite a long time after your original registration with a service to spam you. If you have created an account on, say, clouds.com with your special email created on the fly without ever needing to go to Spamgourmet, let’s say it’s clouds.my_username@spamgourmet.com, if you receive spammy content sent to that address six months later, don’t look too hard: you know who did it.

Not only you know this, but you can keep on using this made up email for as long as you wish. Need to be in touch with a person who doesn’t fall into any of the categories ['friend', 'acquaintance', 'work', 'intimate', 'trustworthy']? No worries, instantly claim something.my_username@spamgourmet.com and that’s the email you give that person. Since it doesn’t expire and you have full control over how many more emails you can receive at that address at any time, it can simplify a few exchanges where you don’t really want to share your real email, not even to the Nigerian Prince. This way, you can even receive attachments just as normal!

You can even go as far as having trusted senders (from whom you can receive as many emails as you define) and send mail from your custom Spamgourmet emails, including with attachments! For this, you can visit Spamgourmet and generate an email of your choice that will be sending to a specific address email. You will simply send the email to this specially generated address from your email account and voilà! The person on the other end will have a hard time figuring out your real address, except if you added it in your signature.

Solution #3: Using filters

Gmail is one email service that allows you to create filters as you wish: let’s take advantage of that. What you could do is delete only messages that match exactly the groups of terms you never want to read as to not exclude important emails. To create one filter for all of them, you can use the field has words and enter something like the following in the case of GDPR policy updates:

"Privacy Policy Update" OR "GDPR" OR "General Data protection regulation" OR "Updates to our terms of use" OR "Updates to our privacy" OR "updating our privacy" OR "updated our privacy"

If you know more specifically how the words you are looking for appear, you can check for turns of phrases such as Updates to X's Privacy Policy and manage them with the keyword AROUND <number>, where <number> is how many words can be around what you are searching:

"privacy policy" AROUND 3 update

This will look anywhere in the subject or in the content of the email and find the word update as well as updates near the match privacy policy. If you are interested in looking for the word update but not updates, you can specify an exact match with the + sign right in front of it: +update.

_{Note: If you go too broad with the chosen keywords, you may not be able to reply to everything you would like to…}

A next step could be to filter potentially important emails with more keywords but instead of deleting them, you can select a few options for your filter such as Skip the Inbox (Archive it), Mark as read, Apply the label and Never mark it as important. That way, you still have access to all those emails and you can review them separately and quickly at your convenience.

For a list of available search operators, you can refer to this Gmail help page — Search operators you can use with Gmail.

Solution #4: Use the `+` symbol in your email

Gmail lets you add a + symbol in your email address. For example, you can set up your ServiceNameHere email to be username+ServiceNameHere@gmail.com. That way, you know where your spam may be coming from, but it is always more effective to just use a unique address with the above service or even forward emails from another Gmail account so you never have to give away your main email. By doing this, you can then set up filters for individual services. This doesn’t work for all websites as sometimes the + symbol isn’t allowed. In that scenario, there is another way…

Solution #5: Forward secondary emails to your main email

This is pretty straightforward and even though you initially have to do more work to set things up, this can work very well for various reasons:

You get 15GB on each Gmail account. This can be useful, as long as you don’t abuse it and get banned for life without the possibility of ever communicating through email ever again in your lifetime.
You can apply custom filters such as send to trash for each secondary account before forwarding what’s left to your main account. You can then apply a filter in your main account to visually get a hint of where the email is coming from, like a label my.second.email@gmail.com.
You can stop forwarding emails at any moment if you decide. You will have to log into your secondary account and click a few buttons there, but it’s easy, almost painless and you shouldn’t have to repeat the process so often that it gets boring.
You can even set up your main account so that you are able to send messages from your main account as if it were coming from any of your secondary accounts. No more account switching: you get something sent to my.second.email@gmail.com in your main account and you can have it set up so that when you reply to that email, it is automatically sent from that secondary email instead of the main one.

Conclusion

I hope you found something useful in this rambling about spam. I don’t like spam myself, so if you have any tips or tricks you would like to share with me to help in this quest for freedom, please reach out to me at my email shared in plain text at sebastien39571@gmail.com.

Surfing with qutebrowser — a Keyboard-Driven Web Browser

Sébastien Lavoie — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:46:00 -0600

What is qutebrowser?

qutebrowser is a web browser that makes great use of Vim commands to navigate. From its website:

qutebrowser is a keyboard-focused browser with a minimal GUI. It’s based on Python and PyQt5 and free software, licensed under the GPL. It was inspired by other browsers/addons like dwb and Vimperator/Pentadactyl.

Why use it?

Perfect companion to any Vim user

The first notable feature of qutebrowser is obviously how well the use of keyboard shortcuts is integrated with the experience of using the software (there is a useful key binding cheatsheet on the homepage). Search bindings (/, n/N, ?), visual mode (v), tabs (gt, T), copy (yy), open URLs (o/O), J and K for switching tabs, etc. Many key bindings will look familiar to Vim users.

It even features a command mode, accessible by typing :, just like with Vim. Settings can be set from there directly, help can be accessed by typing :help [command/setting], the configuration file can be customized on the fly, the position and size of tabs can be set in many ways, history and settings page can be accessed and navigated through like any other page (hjkl, Ctrl + d, Ctrl + u, gg, G), etc.

Even though it is based on Python which is a “slow” language, most of the libraries and the web engine rely on C++ and the end result is a fast and powerful browser that’s totally customizable… Not unlike Vim.

Minimal interface ⇒ more space

Until I upgrade my laptop to a larger screen (≥ 17 inches), my current setup with its 15 diagonal inches benefits tremendously from configuring all applications to use pixels as efficiently as possible — which is why I now use exclusively [i3 as a window manager](/posts/2019/01/08/using-i3-as-a-window-manager-for-increased-pr oductivity/).

qutebrowser doesn’t even have a menu bar. By default, it only displays a small tab bar at the top (which can be moved to another side or removed) and a thin status bar at the bottom to see the URL, the current position in the page expressed in percentage, the number assigned to the current tab, etc. There is also a fullscreen mode available like in most other web browsers with the key F11, which will remove any window decoration and leave you in a (possibly) productive mode.

History, bookmarks and quickmarks

The history page (:history), while being minimal like all the rest, loads extremely fast and is a joy to navigate. The bookmarks page (Sb) is equally simple yet useful. The way I like to open a bookmark is in a new tab by typing gB (go bookmark as a mnemonic. Note that usually all uppercase letters open or do some action in a new space, such as a window or a tab).

Where qutebrowser shines in my opinion is with quickmarks. This is a simple but genius way to find what you are looking for: you type b (or B for new tab) to open a list of pages that are defined with a keyword, you type that keyword (or can type anything to search for a page), move around with arrow keys if necessary to select a page, type Enter and there you go. As far as I know, Google Chrome doesn’t offer the equivalent (only keywords for search engines). Firefox allows to add keywords for any bookmark that you have, but there is no good way to search around for keywords, define them quickly, remove them quickly, etc. qutebrowser comes with a set of commands that serve just this purpose (:quickmark-add, quickmark-del, etc.), apart from adding them very quickly by typing m for quickmarks and M for bookmarks.

Hinting system

You may have tried extensions for other web browsers such as Vimium, Vimperator, or Vimium-FF that let you navigate with Vim shortcuts. They usually use the letter f for following links. Some text appear on the screen for each visible link and you type the letters that match the link you want to see. The best way to get how it works is just to try it out, really.

Well, qutebrowser takes those features and make them even greater! There is, for example, a rapid hinting mode you can access by typing f followed by Ctrl + r and it will open links in the background for as long as you type any matching hint provided as a letter or combination of two letters when there are many visible links on the page. This is especially useful when doing some research to avoid breaking the rhythm on the current reading while preparing more resources to be available.

What’s the best place to start learning about it?

The help page on the website contains all the information you really need. I did stumble upon the following resources, which I would recommend to read in order of appearance:

Quickstart Guide.
[Key bindings cheatsheet](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/ma ster/doc/img/cheatsheet-big.png).
FAQ, which is interesting but not indispensable. It did help me take a step forward in trying out qutebrowser though.
Open inside qutebrowser: default keybindings.
Open inside qutebrowser: settings page.
List of commands.

Conclusion

qutebrowser has been around for a while and is very stable. It is ideal for any Vim user and is a great option for anyone interested in efficiency and/or in trying out alternatives. Because I am very fond of relying on the keyboard as much as possible and because I love to program in Python, I have grown to like this web browser very quickly. This is clearly a tool designed for a specific type of user in mind and who knows, you might be one of those.

sglavoie.com – Tag: Web

Suckless: Minimalist Tools That Work Great

What are Suckless tools?

st — Simple Terminal

Configuration

dmenu

Configuration

slock

Conclusion

Dispose of Spam with Disposable Emails And More!

Introduction

Why should I care?

Solution #1: Use a temporary email

Solution #2: Use a more controlled approach

Does it really work?

How does it work?

Why consider this approach instead of solution #1?

Solution #3: Using filters

Solution #4: Use the + symbol in your email

Solution #5: Forward secondary emails to your main email

Conclusion

Surfing with qutebrowser — a Keyboard-Driven Web Browser

What is qutebrowser?

Why use it?

Perfect companion to any Vim user

Minimal interface ⇒ more space

History, bookmarks and quickmarks

Hinting system

What’s the best place to start learning about it?

Conclusion

Solution #4: Use the `+` symbol in your email