CSS Code for Hiding LibGuides Elements

This is CSS code for hiding the majority of LibGuides elements on a page, useful for creating library websites in LibGuides. This code does not hide tabs.

*WARNING* This code hides the Admin Sign In link *WARNING*

If you don’t understand this CSS from the beginning, build it one element at a time so you understand what it does. There are more efficient ways to block whole sections of the LibGuides interface, but a piece by piece method works better for my unique circumstances.

.lastupdate, .guideurl, .lgsearch, .printguideurl, .emailalertlink{
display:none;
}
#bc_library_home, #bc_libguides_home, #bc_guide_name, #breadcrumbsr, #lastupdate, #guide_header_title, #guide_tab_title_bar, #guide_tab_title_bar_page_name, #guide_tab_title_bar_page_comments, #guide_tab_title_bar_page_print{
display:none;
}

This was built with the help of the help page from Springshare. Check out your own libguides page with Chrome Developer Tools to make sure you get it right.

http://help.springshare.com/content.php?pid=28624&sid=218728

Bookbox Update – Pictures

I did an update to my BookBox project, adding additional storage in the form of a rescued 320 GB harddrive from my old media center computer. This was a simple matter of formatting, copying the ebooks and mounting the new drive on the /books folder that I used in the earlier form of the project.

This project has proved extremely robust, running 24/7 for two years.

 

 

 

Quick and dirty Android to anything (Including IOS) notifications

Prowl is a Growl compatible notification client/server for IOS that comes with its own API that is very easy for beginners to use

I used Tasker and Prowl to roll my own notification master system

In Tasker, Net > HTTP Post

This is the base URL string

https://api.prowlapp.com/publicapi/add?

Then in the data section of the Tasker HTTP Post action

apikey=[Prowl API key]
application=[User Variable]
event=[User Variable]
description=[User Variable]

I use this to send both SMS and Call notifications from my Android profile to my iPad.

Crosspost from Quora

https://www.quora.com/Brett-Williams/Posts/Quick-and-dirty-Android-to-anything-Including-IOS-notifications

How to use Google Music with your external SD card

Here’s a quick tip I figured out for mounting your Google Music cache on your SD card on your Android phone.

I’m using a Samsung Galaxy SII I-9100 with ICS, rooted

This requires Tasker and a rooted phone

Find where your google music cache is located. On Samsung phones under ICS it’s located in

/mt/sdcard/Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache

Create a folder in the root of your SD card to store the Google music cache. Mine ended up in

 /mt/sdcard/external_sd/MusicCache

In Tasker, create a task – I called it ‘Mount Script‘

Add an action Script>Run Shell

Use the following command

mount -o bind [Location on External SD] [Location on Internal SD]

Mine looks like this

mount -o bind /mt/sdcard/external_sd/MusicCache /mt/sdcard/Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache

Check ‘Use Root’

Next, create two profiles

The first, i called ‘Google Music Mount’

Context >Event>Hardware>Card Mounted

Set tas>k Mount Script

This takes care of any time you unmount and remount the card

The second, I called ‘Boot Google Music Mount‘

Context>Event>System>Device Boot

Set task> Mount Script

I’ve been using this for the past week, and it’s behaved brilliantly. Let me know if you try it out on different hardware.

A quick troubleshooting top for Unix and Linux Mail

I’d like to point out a helpful troubleshooting tip I found relating to troubleshooting email problems in Linux and Unix systems

http://www.mysysad.com/2006/12/on-number-of-occassions-i-have-used.html

Roy suggests using the mailx -v command to generate a vebose output for troubleshooting, this helped me track down a mysterious bug with our patron notification emails.

Simple Concatenate in Google Docs Spreadsheet

While working on a project involving creating a URL from a set of information entered in a Google Docs form, I ran into the problem that the concatenate formula does not work as an array formula.

This is a simple solution to allow a simple concatenate that works within =ARRAYFORMULA

=ARRAYFORMULA(A2 & B2:B)

A2 will only include what is in cell A2
B2:B will include everything in column B, except B1

Thank you, Docs Help Forums!

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/docs/array$20concatenate/docs/OU6QbGWjkVk/6r3PuWzjRboJ

You can make unused form areas blank by using an IF statement

=ARRAYFORMULA (IF (A2:A > 0, B2 & C2:C, ” “))

Using QR Codes to transfer links between devices

When I’m working on projects, I occasionally need to transfer a link from my desktop to my phone or my iPad. This is a surprisingly difficult task. I dislike emailing the links to myself as this tends to clutter up my inbox.

I’ve found some plugins and bookmarklets that have allowed me to create QR codes on my desktop computer and on my iPad.

The first, which I use in Chrome, is the QR Code Tag Extension

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bcfddoencoiedfjgepnlhcpfikgaogdg

Whenever I need to transfer a url to my phone, I can just click this extension and a custom QR code is generated for the page.

Mobile Safari doesn’t have extensions, but it does support javascript bookmarklets. 

http://code.google.com/p/qrbookmarklet/

On your iPad bookmark that page, edit the bookmark and then replace the bookmark URL with the Javascript text you can copy and paste from the page.

This is a quick and easy way to transfer a URL to your iPad or phone.

If you use Dropbox, a public link can be used to transfer files using this tool as well.