Boy

Wed, 3pm, at the Day Stage. Started late due to Bajofondo starting/running late.

Boy must refer to the 1 guy in the band, because it's fronted by 2 German girls. (Found out the band is actually bigger, but only these 3 could make the long trip.)

Sound a bit like First Aid Kit, very folky. Definite must-buy!

Bajafondo Tango Club

Day Stage, Wed, supposed to start at 2pm, but started VERY late, so we just came back to catch the end.

Definite "must-buy"!

The Suzan

At the International Stage in the Convention Center, Wed @ 2pm.

Very fun "J-Pop". Album: medium-high

Hurray for the Riff Raff

Another concert on the Next Stage, Wed @ 1pm. Pretty good, but more country than I was expecting.

A "medium" on the purchase priority.

Ivan and Aloysha

First concert at SXSW 2013, Wed @ 12, on the Next Stage in the Convention Center. We didn't get here until 12:30, so we only caught 2 songs, but they were VERY good!

A "must buy" for my post-SXSW album purchases.

Cleaner Export of Mac Address Book Contacts to Google Contacts

For years I've been trying to keep my contacts in sync on a million devices. If you ONLY use Apple products, or ONLY use Google products, their solutions probably work.

But I use Apple and Google products, specifically Apple Contacts (formerly Address Book) and Google Mail. Since I'm often sending Google Mail from the Google website, I need my Contacts available there too.

The Mac OS X Contacts app does provide a Google sync option, but it's strange to me. You can only sync from the "On My Mac" Contacts, which means you might have iCloud Contacts, On My Mac Contacts, and Google Contacts.

You can export all of your Contacts into a VCF file, and import into Google pretty easily, except I think there's a bug in that flow somewhere. I use a lot of contacts (in the Contacts app) that are tagged as a "Company", like "Jack's Pizza". In general, I don't have a name (first or last) associated with Jack's Pizza (I don't know Jack!), and I'd like the entry to show up under the J's. This works fine in Apple's app, but when you export the VCF file, you get this:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
PRODID:-//Apple Inc.//Mac OS X 10.8.2//EN
N:;;;;
FN:Jack's Pizza
ORG:Jack's Pizza;
X-ABShowAs:COMPANY
CATEGORIES:Business (home)
UID:e0fcaecf-0d65-4d78-b0f9-6062c5572abe
X-ABUID:E0FCAECF-0D65-4D78-B0F9-6062C5572ABE:ABPerson
END:VCARD

When you import that into Google, you get this:




Since the VCF has a single entry for "FN" (First Name), Google decides that it really should split it into a First and Last name, and it doesn't sort correctly (for me).  I think Apple's bug is putting an FN entry in the VCF when it wasn't in the Contact to start with, and Google's bug is splitting the FN into First and Last.

Well, I could ask Apple and/or Google to change... or I could just cleanup the VCF file!

Here's a simple Perl script to cleanup the VCF file (works with a single entry, or your entire Contacts list).  Your mileage may vary, but it's made exporting my Apple Contacts to Google easy and consistent for the first time in YEARS.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

if (scalar(@ARGV) < 1) {
    die "USAGE: $0 \n\nThis script cleans up the Apple Contacts VCARD export file,\nmaking it suitable for import to Google Contacts.\n";
}
my $input = $ARGV[0];
if ($input !~ m/\.vcf$/) {
    die "USAGE: $0 \n\nThis script cleans up the Apple Contacts VCARD export file,\nmaking it suitable for import to Google Contacts.\n";
}

my $output = $input;
$output =~ s/.vcf$/_new.vcf/;

{
    local $/ = "END:VCARD\r\n";
    open(IN, "$input") or die "$!\n";
    open(OUT, ">$output") or die "$!\n";
    while() {
        my $card = $_;
        my $isCompany = 0;
        if (grep(/X-ABShowAs:COMPANY/, $card)) {
            $isCompany = 1;
        }
        my @card = split(/\r\n/, $card);
        foreach my $line (@card) {
            if ($isCompany && ($line =~ m/^FN:/)) {
                # skip this line!
            }
            else {
                # print out this line
                print OUT "$line\r\n";
            }
        }
    }
    close(IN);
}

print "Done!\n";

---

Let me know if that helps anyone else!

DOS Batch script to unzip a ZIP file and then delete the ZIP

I'm not sure about you, but 95% of the time when I have a ZIP file, all I want to do is unzip. I don't want to browse it in Windows Explorer and I sure don't want to open it in WinZip. When StuffIt Expander was easy to install and use, this tool had an option to do exactly this. Double-click the ZIP, StuffIt would unzip with a minimal UI (if any), delete the ZIP, and then quit. This is no longer an (obvious) option, so I thought, why not write my own script for this?

You'll need to install 7-Zip and include the executable somewhere in your PATH, or update this script to explicitly point to your 7-Zip executable.

@echo off

:FILENAME_PARSING
REM Get the base filename (without extension) and the extension (with the period).
for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%F in ('echo %1') do (
set base=%%~nF
set ext=%%~xF
)

:MKDIR
REM Create a new dir to hold the ZIP file and the ZIP contents
mkdir "%base% folder"
move %1 "%base% folder"
cd "%base% folder"

:UNZIP
REM Unzip the file and then delete the ZIP file.
7za x "%base%%ext%" && del "%base%%ext%"
if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 goto COUNT

:UNZIP_ERROR_CLEANUP
REM Something went wrong with the unzip.
REM Move the ZIP file up a level, remove any other files in this dir,
REM then remove this dir.
move "%base%%ext%" ..
del/q *
cd ..
rmdir "%base% folder"
goto END

:COUNT
REM Check if there is exactly one file in this dir.
ls -1 | wc -l | findstr "\<1$" > nul
IF %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 1 goto END

:SOLO_CLEANUP
REM Move the file up a level and then remove this dir.
move * ..
cd ..
rmdir "%base% folder"

:END
pause