RTP-area local music and culture

[Steve Salevan <steve.salevan AT gmail.com>]

Hey guys,
It's been a while since I've posted on a.m.c-h (as I recall, my last
message was rather lengthy too...), but I'm back on to announce that
my new band, Pundits, is playing its first show in Chapel Hill this
weekend!  We're a Talking Heads cover group, focusing on material from
'77 through Speaking in Tongues, and we're ready to bring a rather
blistering set of afro-futurism, rants about buildings, and frantic
dance rave-ups to Jack Sprat on the 22nd, starting at 9PM.

Our opening act will be a group out of Richmond called The Itchy
Hearts, who, to my ears, sound a lot like The Avett Brothers.  This is
most certainly a good thing, and, from what I told, they completely
dominate when they're allowed out in front of an audience.  I think
that we're going to have a pretty solid show on our hands...

If you'd like to hear more of us, here's our Myspace:

http://myspace.com/punditstheband

and here's the Myspace of our opener:

http://myspace.com/theitchyhearts

So, in the midst of setting up the Facebook event for our show, I
found that clicking through the 600-odd friends I had on my list was a
terrifically arduous process.  It is my solemn credo as an engineer
that every arduous manual process can be automated, given an
appropriate level of tenacity and true grit, so, instead of clicking
through the remainder of the list, I wrote a Selenium script to do it
for me.  I want to share it with you guys, because it'll totally make
your lives easier too.

Without further ado, I present to you...  DJ Stevo's Epic Facebook
Friend Clicker Script:

http://thekobayashimaru.org/friend_clicker.zip

Contained within this zip are two files, friend_clicker.xml and
goto_sel_ide.js, two highly important scripts which we'll use in
tandem with a Firefox plugin called Selenium IDE to automate this
process.  Unzip it to somewhere that you'll be able to keep them for a
while and follow these steps to make the magic happen:

Installing the Selenium IDE plugin and installing the goto_sel_ide.js
Selenium extension:

1.  Visit the following URL via Firefox:

http://seleniumhq.org/download/

and click the 'Download' link next to 'Selenium IDE'.  You'll likely
be presented with a 'Firefox prevented this site (seleniumhq.org) from
asking you to install software on your computer.' warning...  if you
do, click 'Allow'.  You'll see a dialog window appear, asking if you
want to install this newfangled Firefox plugin.  You do, so click
'Install Now'.

2.  Restart Firefox, open the Tools menu, and select 'Selenium IDE'
from the list.

3.  Within the newly-opened Selenium IDE window, open the Options
menu, and select 'Options...'

4.  Under the field 'Selenium Core extensions (user-extensions.js)',
click the Browse button, and navigate to the 'goto_sel_ide.js' file,
selecting it.  After selecting the file, click the OK button in the
'Selenium IDE Options' window, which will close it.  Due to a Selenium
bug, you might have to resize this window to see this OK button, but,
scout's honor, it's so there.

Running the script:

1.  Goto Facebook, open the Events tab, and click 'Create an event'.

2.  Fill in some of the event details then click the 'Select Guests'
button.

3.  Open Selenium IDE (if it isn't already open) and, within the
Selenium IDE window, open its File menu and select 'Open.'  Navigate
to where you unzipped the friend_clicker.xml file and select it, which
will load it into Selenium IDE.

4.  Start the script by clicking the play button next to the Fast-
>Slow slider...  it looks like a green triangle with three green
horizontal bars sitting beside it.

5.  Pound a beer, go out to lunch, or just chillax...  within a few
minutes, your friends will be selected.  When it's done, click 'Save
and close', and you're done!

I hope that this helps you out, and if you run into any snags or bugs,
drop me a line and I'll be glad to address them.  Otherwise, happy
inviting, and come out to our show!  :-)
-Steve Salevan
steve.salevan AT gmail.com