Thanks for all the feedback on this new feature. The /cal (send calendar) command accepts optional numeric parameters for month [1-12] and year. To send a calendar for another month of the current year, just add the month’s number after “/cal ”. Here are some examples:
/cal 7
Sends the July calendar of the current year.
/cal 7 2009
Sends the July 2009 calendar. You must specify the month if you want to specify the year.
I just released an update of Gus Verdun’s RX-Plugin. This version fixes a number of bugs and also adds a new feature that lets you send a calendar:
Give it a try.
Enjoy.
A fellow “RXer” has been kind enough to create a forum for the sharing and discussion of RX-Plugin rules. You can access it here.
There is also another forum for the discussion of my IM Tweaks plugin which can be accessed here.
So far there is not much information but that should change soon. I will do my best to add to the discussions from time to time.
Last night I released and update to my RX-Plugin. This new version has a number of fixes, new features, and an all new registration model. You can now download this plugin directly from the plugin’s main page. I have improved the activation mechanism to make it easier to automatically paste this data into the activation dialog. The installer will now direct you to the registration page if you have not activated a copy of this plugin before.
New in this release is the remote control feature that lets you specify any number of screen names that can control your client while you are online. The commands let the remote user send special IM messages to change your away (.rc away) and status (.rc status) messages. You can also let the remote screen name sign you out (.rc signout) of your IM client. These settings will apply to any screen name that is signed in from your Windows login session.
Another new feature, is the new set of /idle commands. You can toggle idle by sending “/idle” in an IM. You can also set yourself as having been idle for a specific number of minutes by adding a number to the end of the /idle command, e.g., “/idle 90″. I have been asked to provide a simple way to toggle the passive idle lock option, this can be done by sending “/idle passive”, or “/idle p” for short. To make it easy to access the idle lock settings, you can open the RX-Plugin settings window in the idle lock tab by sending “/idle settings” or “/idle s” for short. None of these messages will be sent to your buddy so you can enter them in any IM compose field.
The last seen feature has been extended to save the last 10 status messages and last 8 away messages set by all the buddies on your buddy list. Give it a try.
Finally, I have to mention that this plugin runs best on the latest AIM 6.5 Beta, especially the status message features.
Let me know what you think. I appreciate all feedback. Enjoy.
Hope everyone is enjoying their NFL season opening Sunday.
Here is a Redskins themed ‘yell’ rule for my RX-Plugin. This is similar to the existing yell rule except that it adds a color gradient from gold to burgundy. Just add ‘@@’ to the end of you message to trigger this rule.
Click here to import the ‘Redskins Yell’ rule into your RX-Plugin settings
Enjoy, and Go Skins!
I got some feedback questions today from a few of you reporting problems with my plug-ins.
Q. Do these plug-ins work on Windows Vista?
A. Unfortunately, I can only test them on Windows XP. That being said, I don’t see any reason why they should not work on Windows Vista. Can someone post a comment on their experiences in running my plug-ins on Windows Vista? Is there anything that is not working?
Q. I get an “Error opening file for writing C:\Program Files\Gus Verdun\rxplugin.dll”. What does this mean?
A. This means that the installer could not overwrite a plug-in file since it is being used by the client. Just exit AIM before installing the plug-in. Once you exit your AIM client, you can select re-try to make this install work. You might have to wait a bit for the client to truly exit so just keep re-trying.
Thanks for your feedback.
I just released an update to my RX-Plugin. This version adds support for an often requested feature: automatic translation to Leetspeak.
There are two ways to use this feature. You can send a single message that is translated into Leets by sending “/leet ” followed by your message. Or, you can turn it on and off, on a per conversation basis, by sending “/leet on” and “/leet off” respectively. These on and off commands will not be sent to you your buddy. Automatic translations occurs with each message you send when you turn it on.
Here is a screen shot of me sending a message using /leet:
This release also adds support for the Open AIM SDK 1.3.0 and later.
You can download this plug-in and read more about it here.
Enjoy.
A number of you have communicated with me indicating that you are seeing the “Disclose idle preference is off. Idle Lock is disabled.” message pop up when you sign in to AIM and don’t know how to enable this.
Idle Lock requires that you disclose your idle status to others. This is a privacy preference in AIM.
To enable this, open the AIM Settings window by pressing F7 from the Buddy List.
Click on the Privacy tab. Then, at the bottom, make sure the “I am idle” option is checked in the “Allow others to see:”… section.
Click on Save, if you made any changes.
Idle Lock should now be available for use. Press the hot key (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+I is the default) to toggle it.
While I won’t post a rule with actual profanity in it, I will help you get started on creating your own profanity filter. This won’t get rid of all the profanity in the world, but at least it lets you control what comes in through your AIM client. It can even help you in your own moments of angst by filtering what you send.
For starters, you need to have the RX-Plugin installed and running on your AIM 6.x client.
The rule lets you define a list of “bad-words” that will be replaced with “**EXPLETIVE**” in your IMs. Each “bad-word” is actually a sequence of bad characters. For example, if I filter out the sequence “test” then “testing” will show up as “**EXPLETIVE**ing”. So, choose your words carefully. 
The idea is that you don’t want to send or receive any of these “sequences of bad characters”.
Click here to import the ‘Profanity Filter Starter’ rule into your RX-Plugin settings
When you click on the above link, you will see the RX-Plugin Settings… window appear and show the rule. Here is a screen shot of part of that window:
First, for neatness, change the rule’s name by removing the “Starter” part. You can give it any name you like.
Let me explain the options in the Match section. Starting with the Scope options, I chose “Text only” because we are only concerned about the text and not the markup (HTML). Next is is the “Apply to” option. Here I chose “Both”, but feel free to set it to Incoming our Outgoing IMs only. Lastly, are the options. I want this rule to apply everywhere, so I unchecked “Skip in Chat rooms”. I could have chosen “Word boundary”, but that would limit me to matching “bad” and not “bad1″ or “1bad”. Ignore case is needed for obvious reasons. Global is needed to make sure it replaces all instances of any of the “bad-words”. Finally, skip in <a> tags is not needed in this case since I am not trying to insert a hyperlink.
The Replace section is pretty straight forward. I simply replace what was matched with the markup in there. Since this is actual markup, I left the “Escape all…” option unchecked.
Now, back to the Regular Expression in the Match section. This is just a list of words delimited with | bars which means OR in regex ease. One thing to note is that you need watch out for sub-words. If you want to filter out “bad” and “reallybad” then you need to make sure that “bad” follows “reallybad” in your regular expression.
You can have spaces if you want to filter out word phrases, but I find that it’s better to filter out specific words. Besides, you will need to do it in a way that accounts for multiple spaces and perhaps some punctuation marks between words.
Once you have the rule the way you like it, just hit Apply or OK.
The best way to test this rule is to send yourself the entire contents of the regular expression in an IM. Everyone of them should be shown as **EXPLETIVE** with the | bars between them.
That’s it. I hope this helps you sanitize your AIM experience.
I just released a new version of this plug-in. You can read the complete release notes here. The Idle Lock feature is now vastly improved. You should now be able to activate Idle Lock without any of the previously known problems. Idle Lock also now works when you have multiple AIM clients running with this plug-in loaded. I have also made numerous improvements to the inline commands (corrections and away messages) and IMpulse.
Please give it a try today and let me know what you think.