Author: Andy Balaam

Automatically filling in the UK COVID test results page with Selenium IDE

Lots of people are filling in the extremely detailed UK government COVID test result page twice every week.

It asks you to fill in a very large list of details, most of which are the same every time, but it doesn’t remember what you typed last time.

I didn’t want to write a Python script or similar to enter my results, because I wanted to check I’d done it right, and because there is a captcha at the end that is clearly intended to prevent automation like that.

However, with a Selenium IDE script, I can drive my browser, watching what it does and checking the input, and manually filling in the captcha and final double-check page.

In case it’s helpful, here is the script I created: report-covid-test.side.

You can create one for each child if you have several, filling in school name, NHS number, names, date of birth etc. in the script and re-using it, modifying it each time to enter the bar code number for the test itself.

To use it you’ll need the Selenium IDE plugin for firefox, or Selenium IDE plugin for another browser.

I’d recommend loading this script into the Selenium IDE plugin in Firefox, looking through it and editing the values that say “ENTER…HERE”, then clicking Run Script and watching it fill in values.

It doesn’t actually submit the result, so you can always check and modify it manually if something doesn’t work out, before clicking the last couple of buttons to submit.

Toggle window decorations on Linux GTK3 with Python3

The Internet is full of outdated Python code for doing things with windows, so here is what I got working today in a Python 3, GTK 3 environment.

This script toggles the window decorations on the active window on and off. I have it bound to Ctrl+NumPadMinus for easy access.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import gi
gi.require_version('Gdk', '3.0')
gi.require_version('GdkX11', '3.0')
gi.require_version('Wnck', '3.0')
from gi.repository import Gdk
from gi.repository import GdkX11
from gi.repository import Wnck


def active_window(screen):
    for window in screen.get_windows():
       if window.is_active() == True:
            return window


def toggle_decorations(w):
    if w.get_decorations().decorations == 0:
        w.set_decorations(Gdk.WMDecoration.ALL)
    else:
        w.set_decorations(0)


screen = Wnck.Screen.get_default()
screen.force_update()
display = GdkX11.X11Display.get_default()
window = active_window(screen)
window_id = window.get_xid()

w = GdkX11.X11Window.foreign_new_for_display(display, window_id)
toggle_decorations(w)


window = None
screen = None
Wnck.shutdown()

Questions about RFC 8771

During my work on RFC 8771 The Internationalized Deliberately Unreadable Network NOtation (I-DUNNO) I have come across a number of questions. I am documenting them here so I can send them to the authors and try to improve my understanding of the intention.

This is an excellent RFC, and I thank the authors for their efforts in creating it.

1. Non-printable characters

In 4.2. Satisfactory Confusion Level, the RFC states that encodings may be deemed Satisfactory if they contain ‘At least one non-printable character’ (as well as one other condition in this section).

Both of the existing implementations that I know of (lilyinstartlight’s and audeoudh’s) interpret “printable” to mean the same as Python’s isprintable() function: that is Nonprintable characters are those characters defined in the Unicode character database as "Other" or "Separator", excepting the ASCII space (0x20) which is considered printable.

However, the definition of this function may be rather Python-specific, since its intention appears to be related to language internals like the repr function.

It would be helpful to find out exactly what is meant by “non-printable character” in the RFC.

2. Are Modifier Symbols, Symbols?

Also in section 4.2, the RFC mentions ‘”A character from the “Symbol” category’.

The Python implementation excludes Modifier Symbols from its definition. I believe this is incorrect, and have logged an issue on the topic: Some Symbol characters not recognised as such.

It would be helpful to have clarification on this point.

3. What does “different directionalities” mean?

Unicode classifies characters into several Bidi_Classes (for example, U+CED6E is Left_To_Right). In section 4.3. Delightful Confusion Level, the RFC refers to ‘Characters from scripts with different directionalities’.

As far as I can see there are two possible interpretations of this phrase:

  1. The encoding should contain characters from at least two different Bidi_Classes, or
  2. The encoding should contain characters that are both left-to-right and right-to-left in direction, either weakly or strongly.

Both current implementations interpret this statement like number 1, but I suspect the intention may actually be something more like number 2.

If number 2 was meant, I think that would mean ignoring characters with Neutral directionality, and treating weakly directional characters as the same directionality as strongly directional ones.

4. What is a Confusable character?

Section 4.3 mentions ‘Character classified as “Confusables”‘. Both implementations interpret this quite loosely, as meaning something like ‘the encoding contains any character or substring which might be confused with any other character or substring’.

This means a lot of “normal” characters are included: all of the ASCII digits, and many of the Latin letters.

Was this the intention?

That’s all my questions. It has been great fun working on this RFC.

Announcing Rust I-DUNNO

At the ACCU Conference last week I learned about RFC 8771 The Internationalized Deliberately Unreadable Network NOtation (I-DUNNO) from Jim Hague, and thought it would be fun to knock up a Rust implementation.

The project is here: gitlab.com/andybalaam/rust-i-dunno and the docs are published at https://docs.rs/i-dunno.

It’s not done yet, but encoding an IP address as I-DUNNO appears to be working:

$ i-dunno 216.58.205.46
lYÔ®

$ i-dunno 216.58.205.46 | hexdump -C
00000000  db 81 6b 1a 2e 0a                                 |..k...|

Decoding is still to be done.

The implementation is seriously slow at the moment, so I am looking forward to improving it.

I am hoping it is reasonably correct – I based it on the existing Python I-DUNNO implementation and in the process found several potential bugs in that, and created some merge requests to fix bugs and help with testability.

Speaking of testability, I am building up a collection of test cases that could be a potential resource for other implementors, and would welcome suggestions of how this could be shared between projects. The examples so far were generated using the Python implementation, and then manually corrected where I found bugs in that, so I do not have 100% confidence that they are correct.

Anyway, have a play, and send patches and feedback!

Letter to my MP on Yemen

Sent via WriteToThem on Monday 1 March 2021.

Dear Ben Spencer,

Your experience on the front line in medicine means you are probably much more able than I to imagine the human impact of the situation in Yemen.

On Sunday OCHA stated that 16 million people will go hungry this year, and nearly 50,000 are already living in famine-like conditions.

How can the UK government throw away its position of leadership on this matter by cutting funding at such a desperate time? I share the urgent concern expressed by Andrew Mitchell this morning.

I would be grateful if you would pass my concerns on to the FCDO.

Yours sincerely,

Andy Balaam

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