After finding the script that caused all my stress, and several ftp accounts on my account that I didn’t create, I find out on several forums that this is something specific to Servage and its lack of security.

I find it unbelievable that you haven’t notified your clients, or at least ran a script on all your servers to see who got infected.

<postscript>after cleaning up and re-chmodding the whole tree before Christmas, this thing repeated itself just after the holidays. Apologies to those who ran into the silly javascript. I have moved to a new hosting account and switched to VPS.</postscript>

As we’re approaching the new year, here is my resolution: one codebase for all, starting today with a basic object that can be used as-is, or with some additional programming, for platforms as Wordpress and Drupal. This also means that my Wordpress plugins will be built on this code once it gets out of beta (hey, even Chrome did!).

In case you’re wondering: yes, the covers on the top right of this page are there thanks to this new code. And no, it’s not a Wordpress plugin or widget yet, I wrote it directly in themes/sidebar.php

I’m releasing this code under GPL, so it is available to use in your own projects. If you do, I ask you to

1. keep my info in the javascript file
2. change the last.fm API key
3. let me know where you are going with it

Once installed, the javascript hands you one object you can configure and run, like this:

jQuery(document).ready( function() {

  // last.fm username
  lastFmRecords.setUser('hondjevandirkie');
  // id of the div element where script can add covers
  lastFmRecords.setPlaceholder('lastfmrecords');
  // image to show while loading images or when image not found
  lastFmRecords.setDefaultThumb('./lastfm_logo.jpg');
  // TODO: value is ignored at the moment
  lastFmRecords.setPeriod('smart');
  // TODO: value is ignored at the moment
  lastFmRecords.setStyle('lightbox');
  // number of covers, at the moment max. 50
  lastFmRecords.setCount(20);
  // refresh interval (get fresh data from last.fm)
  lastFmRecords.setRefreshMinutes(1);
  // GMT offset
  lastFmRecords.setTimeOffset(1);
  // log to console
  lastFmRecords.debug();

  // run
  lastFmRecords.init();
});

Most options come from my earlier projects; the refresh is new. And best of all, I found out how to get JSON from last.fm. This means jQuery can make the requests, so all requests now go directly from the browser to last.fm, without a data provider in PHP on your own server.

So what do you need to get this running?

• include jQuery
• include last.fm.records.js
  (see download link below)
• a last.fm username (you’re free to use mine when you like Randy Newman)
• a div on the page where the script can put the HTML in
  (default: <div id=”lastfmrecords” />)

You can download the beta of Last.Fm Records 3.1 here.

Surely this won’t have the same use it has on mobile devices. But it finally makes the NSFW warnings superfluous.

Anyway, I enjoyed myself writing a demo showing wiki articles on places in your neighborhood.

The solution I built is solved in one browser for now, Firefox. The javascript copies the image to a canvas element and paints the solution on the canvas. Proudly I present: mazeQuery.

This evening I was frustrated with an array in jQuery and as I was working in Chrome, I couldn’t use Firebug. So I tried to debug the old fashioned way: by displaying an alert in the each() loop. On the second alert box, Chrome added a checkbox: ‘Prevent this page from creating additional dialogs’. Really helpful.

It’s nice to have a couple of tabs open without the airconditioning going into overdrive. Let’s explore.

• make it work in IE
• option to show album title and artist next to image
• option to use it with lightbox plugin (not included)

I’ll be answering some of the questions in the comments later, but now it’s Sunday evening and I’m off to bed to have a good night of sleep before my first day at work tomorrow.

Run For Cover shows the cds you listened to recently, as you can see in the sidebar. All data is real time, so the widget shows you if you are listening to a track at this moment. It’s still a rough version, especially the javascript, but it works on my test sites and I know people are looking for such a widget.

The widget needs jQuery, luckily this comes with recent versions of Wordpress. If you get an javascript error about jQuery, you could check the readme.txt .

You can download Run for cover 2.0 here.

Update: the javascript seems to fail under some versions of Internet Explorer. First thing when I’m back home after the holidays.

No project complete without a todo list

1. better error checking
2. show a message when last.fm is unavailable or when data was not correctly loaded
3. use nice jQuery effects when displaying the cd covers
4. auto update function after x minutes

Hope you like it — I’d like to read what you think in the comments.

I also removed the commented out code that was displayed on the settings page.

The feedback has been extremely encouraging to work on this plugin. For Last.Fm Records the todo list is the first thing I’m planning to do.

The stand alone version is next. As it is already PHP5, I suspect there’ll be less disappointed people. Don’t think I’ll start on this one before I’m off on a three week holiday.

And a special note for anyone stuck on PHP4: LFM used to be called Run For Cover. I’m using that name to work on a widget that uses jQuery to parse the recent tracks list from Last.Fm. It’s still very beta, but you can follow development on that one by downloading the development version. If you make sure jQuery is loaded (see readme.txt for instructions) and activate the widget, it will display your recent tracks.

To make this happen before my holidays, I had to disable some things from the previous version:

• uploading images (already uploaded images will remain in your cache directory)
• selecting a style

Please let me know how this new version works for you in the comments! I’m especially interested in what you think of the new option ‘get more images if necessary’.

If any bugs show up I’ll try to fix them before this or another sundown.