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Mark paid Substack posts as read in FreshRSS automatically

Substack supplies an RSS feed for each site, but there is no information included within that would help discern whether a post is paid or public. Filters based on searches such as "Read more" create too many false positives and are unreliable. After playing with this for quite a while, I realized that if you scrape the site yourself you can create a flag for paid articles and have FreshRSS mark anything with the flag as read. It only works with FreshRSS version 1.25.0-dev or above, since there was previously an issue with flags being ignored during scrape operations. I've included example code for Many Such Cases, written by Magdalene J. Taylor. I highly recommend that you subscribe and follow her writing, as she is tremendous! All you should need to change is the title and URL. As a bonus, this scraper also supplies a larger thumbnail image than the official feed. Substack RSS feed (with filter for paid articles)
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Instagram media ID to shortcode

HTML I wanted a bash solution to convert Instagram media ID numbers to the shortcode they use for their posts. This seems to work pretty well so I'll share it here in case anyone needs it. Big thanks to mokoshalb's instagramid.php , which helped me figure out how to do this.   media_id_to_shortcode () { media_id=$1 alphabet="ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-_" shortcode= binary_media_id=$( echo "obase=2;$media_id" | bc ) pad=$(( 6 - ( ${#binary_media_id} % 6 ) )) if [[ $pad == 6 ]]; then pad=0 fi len=$(( ${#binary_media_id} + $pad )) binary_media_id=$(printf "%0*s\n" "$len" $binary_media_id) for (( i=0 ; i<(( $len - 1 )); i+=6 )); do chunk=${binary_media_id:$i:6} digit="$((2#$chunk))" shortcode="$shortcode${alphabet:$digit:1}" done echo "$shortcode" }

Old Taxcut software

 If you have old files that were created by the Kiplinger Taxcut program (back in the days of CD-ROMs) they are impossible to read now, unless you had the foresight to print all of your forms to pdf. Twenty years later, who cares, but in case anyone finds it useful I am uploading a copy of TaxCut 1998 here. Rather than waste a lot of space with the .iso, it's just a zip file of the necessary program files. I used it in a Win7 VirtualBox and was able to print everything easily.  Spoiler alert: you probably (hopefully) make more money now. Or maybe less. Anyway it might be fun to find out. Kiplinger TaxCut 1998

You do not have permission to open the application Canon IJScanner2

YOU DO NOT HAVE THE PERMISSIONS! Ugh. Upgrading to Big Sur 11.5.1 murdered my old flatbed scanner, which I use all the time. Evidently, it's a problem for many many   many people. The following sequence worked, but I can't guarantee that it will work for you as well, since I deleted, added, re-deleted, upgraded and downgraded all kinds of files until it finally showed up without an error: Delete the scanner from Preferences Delete Canon utilities Remove any Canon-related files from /Library/Printers/Canon Remove any Canon-related files from /Library/Image Capture/Devices Reboot Install the misd-mac-ijscanner2-4_1_4-ea21_3 driver Don't install the LiDE 210 Scanner Driver Ver.18.2.0 (Mac) file, that seems to be both useless and part of the overall problem. Just use Image Capture and you should be fine.

Find my iPhone doesn't work on iOS 7.1.2

My old iPhone 4 doesn't show up on "Find my" even when logged in (under iOS 7.1.2). The problem seems to be that it must have the "Find My iPhone" app installed, but that app didn't come with this version of iOS. To get it, you need iOS 8, which doesn't work on this iPhone. Thanks, Apple! Anyway, download this old version of iTunes , which will let you install apps. Install "Find" on iTunes, then go back to the phone and try to install it from the App Store. This will let you install the 7.0 version of the app, which will then re-enable Find, and the world will be a better place. Hey wow first post here in 12 years! I should get a prize.

Southwest Ding requires an administrator to install

Seriously? I need to be an administrator to install the annoying little "you are now free to move about the country" notification icon? A limited user can install Firefox but can't install the Ding!? Bad programming if you ask me, but a simple fix: install on another machine as Administrator copy the file DingParser.dll from \windows\system (or system32, if that's where it ended up) to the \Program Files\Southwest\Ding folder zip up the Ding folder and copy it to the other computer, unzip it somewhere convenient, and put a shortcut in your Startup folder

Napster player 512 MB no longer syncs

This probably applies to any MTP sync'd device, but I'm specifically referring to the dmpj-210 512MB Napster player. It worked fine with Vista for years but suddenly was not recognized by the computer, and any attempts to reinstall the driver ended with a "code 10" error. If you've installed libusb-win32 for any reason (like, I don't know, to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod touch) then the problem is with the file libusb0.sys. Uninstalling libusb-win32 should restore Napster-to-go.