Category: Tools

Let’s Encrypt on cPanel

Here is how I set up Let’s Encrypt for all sites on my hosted virtual private server running cPanel.

1. SSH as root

$ ssh -p 22 root@123.1.23.123

Your port might also be 2200. Ask your VPS hosting provider.

2. Then run the command:

$ /scripts/install_lets_encrypt_autossl_provider

3.Log into your main control panel:

https://123.1.23.123:2087

or however you access it (possibly port 2086 if http://)

4. Under SSL/TLS you’ll find “Manage AutoSSL”
Under “providers”, you’ll see “Let’s Encrypt”. That’s a new option that was created by running the command as root.

Select “Let’s Encrypt”. Then agree to their terms of service and create a new registration with Let’s Encrypt if necessary. Under the “managed users” tab you can enable / disable AutoSSL by account.

5. Now, under the control panel of each account, under SECURITY > SSL/TLS, under “Install and Manage SSL for your site (HTTPS)”, if you select “Manage SSL Sites”, you’ll see the Let’s Encrypt  cert.

Note: If you had a self signed certificate (which you don’t want), delete the cert in the individual account. Click the “run AutoSSL for all users” button as root under “Manage Auto SSL”. When you refresh the individual user, the correct cert should be there.

6. Yay. All your accounts now have an SSL Cert. You still need to redirect all of your http:// traffic to https://. In the .htaccess add the following:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}

Now http://machinelearningworkshop.com/ redirects to https://machinelearningworkshop.com and http://www.machinelearningworkshop.com redirects to https://www.machinelearningworkshop.com/

and one of these days this blog will do the same.

W3C Performance Specifications

Here are some of the W3C’s web performance specifications:

  • High Resolution Time (Level 3)

    The DOMHighResTimeStamp type, performance.now method, and performance.timeOrigin attributes of the Performance interface resolve Date.now() issues with monotonically increasing time values with sub-millisecond resolution.

    https://w3c.github.io/hr-time

  • Performance Timeline (Level 2)

    Extends definition of the Performance interface, exposes PerformanceEntry in Web Workers and adds support for the PerformanceObserver interface.

    https://w3c.github.io/performance-timeline

  • Resource Timing (Level 3)

    Defines the PerformanceResourceTiming interface providing timing information related to resources in a document.

    https://w3c.github.io/resource-timing https://w3c.github.io/navigation-timing
    Supported in all browser except Safari and Opera Mini, starting with IE10

  • User Timing (Level 2)

    Extends Performance interface with PerformanceMark and PerformanceMeasure.

    https://w3c.github.io/user-timing
    Supported in all browser except Safari and Opera Mini, starting with IE10

  • Beacon API

    Defines a beacon API which can “guarantee” asynchronous and non-blocking delivery of data, while minimizing resource contention with other time-critical operations.

    https://w3c.github.io/beacon
    Not supported in IE, Safari or Opera Mini. Support started with Edge 14
    navigator.sendBeacon() on MDN

  • Preload

    Defines preload for resources which need to be fetched as early as possible, without being immediately processed and executed. Preloaded resources can be specified via declarative markup, the Link HTTP header, or scheduled with JS.

    https://w3c.github.io/preload

  • Cooperative Scheduling of Background Tasks

    Adds the requestIdleCallback method on the Window object, which enables the browser to schedule a callback when it would otherwise be idle, along with the associated cancelIdleCallback and timeRemaining methods.

    https://w3c.github.io/requestidlecallback

Capturing Captions from Youtube Videos

There are many tutorials on how to download the caption files created by Youtube if you own the video, but I was unable to find a way to download the captions of videos I don’t own. There’s probably an easy way to do it, but since I couldn’t find it, creating a JavaScript function to do it via the console took less effort.

Here’s the code (I did it three ways depending on how you like to code your JS)

Constructor method:

function CaptionCollector () {
  var that = this;
  this.captions = '';
  var nowShowing = '';

  this.collect = function(){
    try {
      var currentCaption = document.getElementsByClassName("captions-text")[0].innerText;
    } catch (e) {
      var currentCaption = null;
    }

    if(currentCaption && nowShowing != currentCaption) {
      nowShowing = currentCaption;
      that.captions += ' ' + nowShowing;
    }

    setTimeout(that.collect, 300);
  }
}

var foo = new CaptionCollector();
foo.collect();

Print the caption with foo.captions. Of course you can use anything instead of “foo”.

Here’s a version using JS object notation:

var captionCollector = {
    captions : '',
    nowShowing: '',

    collect : function(){
      try {
        var currentCaption = document.getElementsByClassName("captions-text")[0].innerText;
      } catch (e) {
        var currentCaption = null;
      }
    if(currentCaption && this.nowShowing != currentCaption) {
        this.nowShowing = currentCaption;
        captionCollector.captions += ' ' + captionCollector.nowShowing;
     }
    setTimeout(captionCollector.collect, 300);
  }
}

captionCollector.collect();

With this version, you print the console with captionCollector.captions

Or you can use the anonymous function method with a single global variable:

(function(){
    ___captions = '';
    var ___nowShowing = '';

    function getCaption() {
        try {
          var currentCaption = document.getElementsByClassName("captions-text")[0].innerText;
        } catch (e) {
          var currentCaption = null;
        }

        if(currentCaption && ___nowShowing != currentCaption) {
          ___nowShowing = currentCaption;
          ___captions += ' ' + ___nowShowing;
        }
        setTimeout(getCaption, 300);
    }

    getCaption();
})();

With this version, you print the console with the global variable ____captions

Because it uses the classname of the caption box Youtube uses for videos, this only works on Youtube. Alter the classname for other video services.

You do have to play the whole video to capture all the captions. With settings, you can play the video at twice the speed.

Clear the console when the video ends. Print the transcript to the console. Select all. Copy. You’re good to go.

TWELP: Twitter Help

Sometimes Twitter gets things wrong. Very, very, wrong. A few “features” that I think are bugs include Twitter Moments,

To this end, I created a little bookmarklet called “TWELP”.

<a href="javascript:(function(){function kill(){$('.promoted-tweet, .Icon--heartBadge').closest('li.stream-item').css('display','none');$('.js-moments-tab, .DismissibleModule').css('display','none');setTimeout(kill, 1000);}kill();})();">TWELP</a>.

Let me rewrite that for you in a version that’s easy to read, but won’t work to copy and paste:

(function(){
    function kill() {
         $('.promoted-tweet, .Icon--heartBadge').closest('li.stream-item').css('display','none');
         $('.js-moments-tab, .DismissibleModule').css('display','none');

         setTimeout(kill, 1000);
     }

     kill();
})();

The bookmarklet creates a kill function that:

  1. hides promoted tweets by finding the parent tweet containing a promoted-tweet child class
  2. hides any “liked” tweets that contains the heart icon, including uninteresting tweets in your stream suck as the fact that your friend Jane liked a tweet of a picture of her acquaintance Joe, who you are not following, eating an oyster. Seriously, who the fuck cares? It also hides the “people who liked your tweet” feature in your notifications. Not sure if that is a feature or a bug.
  3. hides the “Moments” tab by hiding the tab that has the  js-moments-tab class
  4. hides promoted modules that I hate like “In Case You Missed It” and “Who to follow”
  5. Calls itself once per second so if you scroll, it will continue killing those annoying tweets mentioned above.

TWELP – You can drag this link to your bookmarks bar, and click TWELP bookmarklet whenever you load Twitter. It kills the “Moments” tab, all ads, and removes the “X liked” tweets.

or, you can wrap your own.