google

The other day I was inspired by a story on Reddit about a guy who had created a Python script to automatically play the olympic hurdles Google Doodle. The Python script just passed the correct keyboard commands to the game so that the game was finished in 1.5 seconds, earning a gold medal. The problem was that his script was specifically for Windows, so I set about trying to create a Linux version that I could run on Kubuntu.

After a bit of research I found a decent plugin that sends keyboard commands through Python called uinput. To get this installed I had to add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.

When I found about the ability to create QR codes using the Google Charts API I decided to sit down and create a little tool that would generate QR codes for me. I've had this tool for a while and I recently noticed that the QR code mechanism has become deprecated. The API will still work for a couple of years so I thought it was worth posting this. Creating a static QR code using Google Charts is quite easy, all you need to do is create an image. For instance, to create a QR code for the #! code address I would do the following.

<img src="https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=177x177&cht=qr&chl=http://www.hashbangcode.com/&choe=UTF-8" />

Which creates the following image.

Converting from PostCode to map reference is far from accurate, but it can be done using the Google Maps API. You can get a Google Maps API key from Google by just asking for it, although you are limited to a certain number of requests each day.

Google Maps usually works through JavaScript, but it is possible to ask Google to return the data in JSON format and then use the PHP function json_decode() to decode the information into a usable array format. To get Google to return the data in JSON you must pass the parameter "output=json" in your query string.

The following function can take a postal code and convert it into longitude and latitude.

To set up multiple Google Analytics tags on the same page you need to use the _uff = false; command in between the unchinTracker() calls to reset the tracker for the next account. The urchinTracker() function will send information on the page visit off to Google Analytics.

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
  _uacct = "UA-XXXXX"; // First account details
  urchinTracker();
  _uff = 0; // Reset tracker for second account
  _uacct = "UA-YYYYY"; // Second account details
  urchinTracker();
</script>

You can do this for as many accounts as you like, but be aware that there will come a point when there will be a noticeable delay on the site when the calls to Google Analytics are done so don't do too many.