2009-09-23 Astronomy Picture of the Day for Mac OSX Desktop Background
Based on Harold Bakker's APOD script, I offer the following solution. I don’t keep my computer running, so I just install the following Apple Script as a login item (→ System Preferences → Accounts → Login Items):
(* Place your with timeout statement within a try... on error statement to prevent the script from stopping when a timeout occurs. *) try -- Give the script a three minute timeout to prevent problems when this is run as a login item with timeout of 180 seconds do shell script "~/bin/apod.pl >> /var/tmp/console.log" -- append the result to the console log end timeout on error errMsg -- display a dialog only if an error occurs display dialog errMsg giving up after 10 end try
You should probably create a new script using the Script Editor on your system, paste the above, and save it as an application. Remember to untick the startup screen checkbox.
You’ll notice that it runs a Perl script called /bin/apod.pl – you should create that directory, put the following Perl script in it, and make it executable. I keep both apod.app and apod.pl in the same /bin directory.
#!/usr/bin/perl
# This script will download the astronomy picture of the day and set
# it as the current desktop background.
# originally by Harold Bakker, harold@haroldbakker.com
# http://www.haroldbakker.com/
# changes by Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org>
# http://emacswiki.org/alex/
use strict;
use LWP::UserAgent;
use File::Temp qw/tempfile/;
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $response = $ua->get("http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html");
if ($response->is_success
and $response->content =~ /href\="image\/([^\/]+)\/(.*?)"/) {
my $url = "http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/$1/$2";
my $filename = $2;
$response = $ua->get($url);
if ($response->is_success) {
my ($fh, $tempfile) = tempfile(UNLINK=>0);
print $fh $response->content;
close $fh;
open(F, "|/usr/bin/osascript") or die "Cannot run Apple Script: $!";
print F <<END;
tell application "Finder"
set pFile to POSIX file "$tempfile" as string
set desktop picture to file pFile
end tell
END
} else {
die $response->status_line;
}
} else {
die $response->status_line;
}This should work fine as long you restart your computer about once a day. I haven’t made sure that it will try to reuse images, saving the last one in a save place, etc.
2006-08-18 Exposé or Tabs
I’ve never been a big user of Apple’s Exposé (KDE alternative: Komposé). Somehow Command-Tab (Alt-Tab on Windows) has been good enough for me. On OSX there’s an additional complication, however: If you want to switch applications, use Command-Tab. But if you want to switch windows within the same application (from one Terminal window to the next, from one Chat window to the next), you need to use Command-< (at least on a SwissGermanKeyboard).
In this context, using F9 to see all the windows of all the applications and using the mouse or the arrow keys to pick the window you want seems like a good idea.
If your applications us tabbed windows, however, you loose: You will never see windows hidden behind tabs. Just like you will never see the Emacs buffers that are not shown in a window. Is this a natural turning point for people with too many tasks?
I have no solution for Emacs, where I often have several dozen buffers open (eg. half a dozen IRC channels, half a dozen source files, an EmacsShell buffer, scratch, various directories, plus sometimes calendar or calculator). But for browsers, there is a solution: You can switch tabbed browsing on or off. So now I’m trying to live without tabbed browsing and using Exposé to navigate windows. At least for a while.

C-x C-b is useful, as is either iswitchb or ido.
– SachaChua 2006-08-19 14:32 UTC
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