OCD and filenames, as pertaining to TV series

I like all my file names to be similar, and this applies to both mp3 and series. For mp3 I use the wonderful foobar2k to tag and rename files, but for series I ended up coding my own formatter. All this assumes a linux system (as is my home server, flatline)
First of all, to extract the video files from the rars:

find -name "*rar" -type f -exec rar e {} \;

This extracts all rars from under the current directory (and subdirectory) into the working directory.
If the files already come uncompressed, but are in subdirectories:

find -name "*mkv" -type f -exec mv {} . \;

Replace mkv with avi if that's what you've got.
Now, sometimes the files come in different formats. Some have [season][episode], others [season]x[episode], and I'd like for them all to be in the same [title]S[season]E[episode] format.
For that all you need is the following python script:


It can take 2 arguments: the directory where the file names are, and a title that overrides the one found in the file names. Hope this is helpful for someone else :)

Just replaced the fan on my laptop

For a couple of months my macbook's fan has been a bit on the fritz. Sometimes when the CPU got a bit hot it started making some noises and once in a while stopped working completely.

The repair would most likely cost me about 100€ (50 for the fan, 50 for replacing it), so I decided to look up if anyone sold those. Thankfully a store in Hong-Kong does, and they ship international (they're called eeshop). It took a while to get here (a month and a half, perhaps) but for 10€ that's not a big issue. I did ask after a while if it was supposed to take so long, and answer was prompt (apparently the postal office was swamped).

Opening the laptop was another issue. First attempt failed when some of the screws were a bit too small for the screwdrivers I was using, so today I went and bought a new set with a better grip. After removing the screws, I just had to take care to remove the connection for the trackpad and slide the keyboard left to remove it. Opening it gave me access to the internals as you can see on the left. Replacing the fan was a matter of just removing the connector, two screws and taking it off. The right screw was hidden under some cables, but gently pulling them off gave me access to remove it.

I do have to say, putting it all back again was a bit difficult, since on the right hand there are some "hooks" that you need to slide the keyboard plate into, and that wasn't trivial. Other than that it was easy.

And now my laptop doesn't scream anymore when hot! And it cost me just about 15€ plus an hour and a half. Yay.