lastblog.rb: a simple script for checking how recently I've posted to my blogs. Edit the BLOGS and MAX_ENTRY_INTERVAL globals to suit your tastes. term/ansicolor is an optional gem that will make the output prettier.

lastblog.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# lastblog: a simple script for checking how recently I've posted to my blogs.
# Edit the BLOGS and MAX_ENTRY_INTERVAL globals to suit your tastes.
# term/ansicolor is an optional gem that will make the output prettier.

require 'rss/1.0'
require 'rss/2.0'
require 'open-uri'
require 'date'

BLOGS = {
    "Personal" => 'http://svallens.com/eric/rss',
    "Eric on Tracks" => 'http://svallens.com/ericontracks/rss',
    "Hacker|Engineer" => 'http://hackerengineer.net/rss'
}

MAX_ENTRY_INTERVAL = 8.0


begin
    require 'rubygems'
    require 'term/ansicolor'
    include Term::ANSIColor
rescue LoadError
end

def print_entry(name, publish_date)
    days = Date.today - publish_date
    print sprintf("%-16s", name), ": ", publish_date, " -- "
    if defined?(Term)
        include Term::ANSIColor
        if days >= MAX_ENTRY_INTERVAL
            print on_red(black(days.to_s + " days old"))
        elsif days >= MAX_ENTRY_INTERVAL*0.75
            print on_yellow(black(days.to_s + " days old"))
        else
            print on_green(black(days.to_s + " days old"))
        end
    else
        print days, " days old"
    end
    print "\n"
end

BLOGS.each do |name, url|
    content = "" # raw content of rss feed will be loaded here
    open(url) do |s| content = s.read end
    rss = RSS::Parser.parse(content, false)
    publish_time = rss.items[0].date
    publish_date = Date.civil(publish_time.year, publish_time.month, publish_time.day)
    print_entry(name, publish_date)
end