Skip navigation

Category Archives: Chrome

New Chrome Extension To Turn Observable Notebooks Into Quarto Projects

My previous post announced a Rust-based command line tool for generating Quarto projects from Observable Notebooks.

Some folks may not want to use yet-another command line tool, and it dawned on me that it’d be more convenient to just do the conversion in-browser when one is already on a Notebook page. So, I dusted off some very creaky Chrome extension skills and put together an extension for doing just that.

It’s pretty straightforward:

  • navigate to a Notebook you want to serialize to a Quarto project
  • press the button
  • …
  • profit!

You can download individual resources by hand or just use the zip file that automagically downloaded.

screen capture of observable notebook showing how to press the quartize button

screencap showing the aftermath of the quartize process with annotations

vs code screencap showing the downloaded quarto project in source and render

Pipes (%>%) Everywhere

An R user asked a question regarding whether it’s possible to have the RStudio pipe (%>%) shortcut (Cmd-Shift-M) available in other macOS applications. If you’re using Alfred then you can use this workflow for said task (IIRC this requires an Alfred license which is reasonably cheap).

When you add it to Alfred you must edit it to make Cmd-Shift-M the hotkey since Alfred strips the keys on import (for good reasons). I limited the workflow to a few apps (Safari, Chrome, Sublime Text, iTerm) and I think it makes sense to limit the apps it applies to (you don’t need the operator everywhere, at least IMO).

I can’t believe I didn’t do this earlier. I use R in the terminal a bit and mis-hit Cmd-Shift-M all the time when I do (since RStudio is my primary editor for R code and muscle memory is scarily powerful). I also have to use (ugh) Jupyter notebooks on occasion and this will help there, too. If you end up modifying or using the workflow, drop a note in the comments.

Adding a CRAN Search Engine to Chrome

Riffing off of [the previous post](http://rud.is/b/2015/08/05/speeding-up-your-quests-for-r-stuff/), here’s a way to quickly search CRAN (the @RStudio flavor) from the Chrome search bar.

– Paste `chrome://settings/searchEngines` into your location bar and hit return/enter
– Scroll down until the input boxes show, enabling you to add a search engine
– For _”Add a new search engine”_ put “`CRAN`”
– For _”Keyword”_ put “`R`”, “`rstats`” or “`CRAN`”, but “`R`” is super easy to type, though it may not be optimal for you :-)
– For _”URL with %s in place of query”_ put the following:

https://www.google.com/search?as_q=%s&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=cran.rstudio.com&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=&gws_rd=ssl

(you may be able to trim that URL a bit, if desired)

Save that and then in the Chrome location bar hit `R` then `[TAB]` and you’ll be sending the query to a custom Google search that only looks on CRAN (specifically the @RStudio CRAN mirror).

Speeding Up Your Quest(s) For “R Stuff”

I use Google quite a bit when conjuring up R projects, whether it be in a lazy pursuit of a PDF vignette or to find a package or function to fit a niche need. Inevitably, I’ll do something like [this](https://www.google.com/#q=cran+shapefile) (yeah, I’m still on a mapping kick) and the first (and best) results will come back with `https://cran.r-project.org/`-prefixed URLs. If all this works, what’s the problem? Well, the main CRAN site is, without mincing words, _slow_ much of the time. The switch to `https` on it (and it’s mostly-academic mirrors) has introduced noticeable delays.

Now, these aren’t productivity-crushing delays, but (a) why wait if you don’t have to; and, (b) why not spread the load to a whole [server farm](http://cran.rstudio.com/) dedicated to ensuring fast delivery of content? I was going to write a Chrome extension specifically for this, but I kinda figured this was a solved problem, and it is!

From the plethora of options in the Chrome Store, I grabbed [Switcheroo Redirector](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/switcheroo-redirector/cnmciclhnghalnpfhhleggldniplelbg?hl=en) because (a) it has a decent user base and rating; (b) it’s not super-complex to use; and, (c) the source is [on github](https://github.com/ranjez/Switcheroo) and closely matches what’s in the actual installed extension (some extensions are tricksy/evil and you can even build your own with the source vs trust the Chrome Store one).

So, go install it and come back. We’ll wait.

…

OK, you back? Good. Let’s continue. You should have a Switcheroo icon near your location bar. Select it and you should see a popup like this:

Fullscreen_8_5_15__9_10_PM

I’ve already made the entry, but you just need to tell the app to substitute all URL occurrences of `cran.r-project.org` with `cran.rstudio.com` when Chrome is trying to load a URL.

Now, when you click one of those links in the above example, it will go (speedily!) to the RStudio CRAN mirror server farm.

Once nice (to security freaks like me) feature is that if you have one of the Switcheroo links open in a new tab (i.e. not directly/immediately visible to you) it will let you know that something is happening out of the ordinary:

Redirect_Notice

This is a tiny (and good) price to pay to know you’re not being whacked by a bad plugin.

If you have another preference (or have suggestions for Safari or Firefox) please drop a note in the comments so others can benefit from your experience!

Alternative to Grouped Bar Charts in R

The #spiffy @dseverski gave me this posit the other day:

and, I obliged shortly thereafter, but figured I’d toss a post up on the blog before heading to Strata.

To rephrase the tweet a bit, Mr. Severski asked me what alternate encoding I’d use for this grouped bar chart (larger version at the link in David’s tweet):

linkedinq31

I have almost as much disdain for grouped bar charts as I do for pie or donut charts, so appreciated the opportunity to try a makeover. However, I ran into an immediate problem: the usually #spiffy 451 Group folks did not include raw data. So, I reverse engineered the graph with WebPlotDigitizer, cleaned up the result and made a CSV from it. Then, I headed to RStudio with a plan in mind.

The old chart and data screamed faceted dot plot. The only trick necessary was to manually order the factor levels.

library(ggplot)
 
# read in the CSV file
nosql.df <- read.csv("nosql.csv", header=TRUE)
# manually order facets
nosql.df$Database <- factor(nosql.df$Database,
                            levels=c("MongoDB","Cassandra","Redis","HBase","CouchDB",
                                     "Neo4j","Riak","MarkLogic","Couchbase","DynamoDB"))
 
# start the plot
gg <- ggplot(data=nosql.df, aes(x=Quarter, y=Index))
# use points, colored by Quarter
gg <- gg + geom_point(aes(color=Quarter), size=3)
# make strips by nosql db factor
gg <- gg + facet_grid(Database~.)
# rotate the plot
gg <- gg + coord_flip()
# get rid of most of the junk
gg <- gg + theme_bw()
# add a title
gg <- gg + labs(x="", title="NoSQL LinkedIn Skills Index\nSeptember 2013")
# get rid of the legend
gg <- gg + theme(legend.position = "none")
# ensure the strip is gone
gg <- gg + theme(strip.text.x = element_blank())
gg

The result is below in SVG form (install a proper browser if you can’t see it, or run the R code :-) I think it conveys the data in a much more informative way. How would you encode the data to make it more informative and accessible?

Full source & data over at github.




IP Intelligence Lookup Chrome Extension

The topic of “IP intelligence” gets a nod in the book that @jayjacobs & I are writing and it was interesting to see just how many sites purport to “know something” about an IP address. I shamelessly admit to being a Chrome user and noticed there were no tools that made it possible to right-click on an IP address and do a simultaneous lookup across a these resources. So, I threw one together (it’s pretty trivial to write a contextMenus extension). It will create a new window and run search queries on the following OSI sources in new tabs:

– whois.domaintools.com
– www.mywot.com
– www.tcpiputils.com
– *labs.alienvault.com*
– www.projecthoneypot.org
– www.virustotal.com
– www.senderbase.com
– www.mcafee.com
– www.sophos.ocm
– www.ipvoid.com

(I’m kinda partial to the AlienVault IP Reputation database, tho.)

The source is up on github, but—if you’re in an organization that controls which Chrome add-ons you are allowed to use—I also published it to the Chrome Web Store (it’s free) so you can request a review and add by your endpoint management/security team if you find it handy.

ip-intel-cap

I’m definitely open to suggestions/additions/rotten tomatoes being hurled in my direction.

Chrome App for Tiny Tiny RSS

I’m still getting my self-hosted [Tiny Tiny RSS](http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki) configuration just the way I want it prior to doing a full blog post on it, but I thought it would be helpful to share a basic Chrome App for it. I ended up creating it to replace the Google Reader Chrome App icon. Making these “Chrome App bookmarks” is dead simple: just create a manifest.json with the following contents:

{
     "name": "TT-RSS",
     "description": "Tiny Tiny RSS Reader",
     "version": "1.0.0.0",
     "app": {
          "urls": [
               "http://example.com/"
          ],
          "launch": {
               "web_url": "http://example.com/"
          }
     },
     "icons": {
          "128": "rss_128.png",
          "16": "rss_16.png"
     },
     "permissions": [
          "clipboardRead",
          "clipboardWrite",
          "notifications",
          "unlimitedStorage"
     ],
     "manifest_version": 2
}

Change the salient strings and put it in a directory along with the images below.

rss_16

rss_128

Then, enable “Developer Mode” under Chrome→Extensions, select “Load Unpacked Extensions…” and navigate to the folder you made.

You can also just [download a pre-built folder](http://rud.is/b/?attachment_id=2358) with the above files, but you’ll still need to edit the manifest.json to customize the strings.

If you can make a more “TT-RSS-like” set of images, please drop a note in the comments with their location and I’ll incorporate them into the download (and may even setup a github for the whole project if there’s interest).

CVE Queries Right From Your Browser’s Address Bar

I’m not sure why I never did this earlier, but a post on LifeHacker gave me an idea to add location bar quick search of CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), no doubt due to their example on searching LifeHacker for “security”.

My two favorite sites for searching CVE specifics are, at present, Risk IO’s and CVE Details.

I’m fairly certain anyone in security reading this can figure out the rest, but as I’m ever a slave to minutiae, here are the two shortcuts I’ve setup in Chrome:

Title: CVE Details
Search URL: http://cvedetails.com/cve-details.php?cve_id=%s
Shortcut: cved
Title: Risk I/O Vulnerability Search
Search URL: https://db.risk.io/?q=%s
Shortcut: cvedb

Here’s what the location bar changes to when I use cvedb to search for 2012‑4774

Screenshot_12_28_12_8_58_PM

In reality, this is only saving a scroll and a click since entering CVE‑2012‑4774 into an unoptimized location bar would have just searched Google and given me most of the usual suspects in the first few links. Still, it saves some time and immediately gets me the vulnerability data from the sites I prefer.

I may start poking to see what other security-related searches I can setup in the location bar.