battis.net

2010-08-08: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 12:00:00 +0000

just saw that #facebook notified me that someone had posted pictures of me… but not that someone had married me. Wow. #
is marveling at the horror that is the "gettin' Windows to work" process: who woulda thunk that an OS wouldn't come with Java pre-installed? #
laughs at this. 2 weeks ago it was a cut-thru path from Ralph's parking lot to Trader Joe's. Guess they got wise. http://yfrog.com/j359ibj #

2010-07-25: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

@nkogan Had a trip last year, was cheaper to eat the cost of an entire roundtrip than to pay change fees. #someregulationmightbeappropriate in reply to nkogan #
is waiting for his MacBook battery to recalibrate… which is taking its toll on his iPhone battery. #
just saw 18% charge on his MacBook battery for the first time in months! #correctsysteminformationisnice #freereplacementbatteryfromapple #

2010-07-18: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

@tylerhall Tyler! Thank you. Doing interesting stuff these days? in reply to tylerhall #
@nkogan the aluminum case is worth it alone. My white polycarbonate is my daily driver _and looks it._ in reply to nkogan #
@gruber we should be so lucky. in reply to gruber #
@tylerhall looks like "yes" — reminds me of the pile of dev/course prep awaiting me post-honeymoon. :D when I saw your compression tools. in reply to tylerhall #
would like to use Safari extensions… but would also like to be able to run JavaScripts in realtime. #

2010-07-04: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0000

believes a Philadelphian is on the iPhone team: cheesesteak (singular) spellchecks as cheesesteaks (plural). They _do_ get lonely. #
@nkogan Congratulations! in reply to nkogan #
is enjoying a beautiful Bel Aire evening… while waiting to see if any parents show for the _late_ session of tonight's workshop. #
@Julia0101 nope. 2 for the second session. in reply to Julia0101 #
@alfredapp Yes. Highlight it — makes it clear that it is the default choice. in reply to alfredapp #

2010-06-20: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0000

loves the irony that @Qiqqa's web page features "screenshots" set in MacBooks… but has no Mac version. #sometimesyouneedaprettiercomputer #
is in awe. http://blip.tv/file/2856053 (via @gruber) #
@alfredapp awesome! in reply to alfredapp #
thinks that it's all cute and Windows-like that @ParallelsMac puts unasked-for shortcuts on my desktop.
Stop it. #

2010-06-13: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0000

is reflecting on the message sent by IT saving his browsing history, but not his home page preferences. #
wonders if it's possible that @YouTube prioritizes iMovie uploads behind uploads directly through their web site? #
would love to see an option/hack to use QuickLook to load documents in Safari (links to .doc, .ppt, etc.). #lazyweb #
@afischer It's all about the fusion. Keep an eye out for Irish-style souvlaki with kim-chi on the next shelf down… in reply to afischer #

2010-06-06: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0000

is contemplating identity and affiliations online. #
@ebencom Multitasking dude. Multitasking. in reply to ebencom #
just had a Wally World moment: the local Baskin Robbins was closed and gutted when we arrived on our evening stroll. #
notices that "I think…" is not a winning start to a policy argument. Better to start on "Research shows…" or "My experience suggests…" #
amen.
http://ised-l.blogspot.com/2010/05/re-rationale-for-switching-from-pc-to_6487.html #
finds that there is no transitive property of bathing with relation to felines: a cat bath ? bathing a cat. No one's dignity survived. #
is just sittin' here on the Group W bench. #
now knows what it feels like to be inside a tater tot.
Oh! My kingdom for a horse! And also some ventilation in the Quiet Room! #
@gruber Normalcy has returned. They'll get it together just in time to choke in the pennant race. As always. in reply to gruber #

GeekTool/AppleScript Display of Desktop Picture Info

Seth Battis — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:34:21 +0000

So… I am the world’s biggest dork. I don’t dispute it. And when I get stressed out, my inner librarian comes out, and comes out big.

I have a large folder of desktop wallpaper that I rotate through with some regularity (every five minutes or so). They all come from the web. And I project my desktop with some regularity. Which means that I get asked about where my desktop photo comes from pretty often (a few times a week). And I teach about media literacy, intellectual property and citation. Which means that I want to give credit where credit is due.

A few years ago, I started actually adding the URL of the page that I had downloaded an image from as its Finder Get Info comment. And then, in one of the Leopards, Apple started including this metadata in the Spotlight database for all downloaded files, too. Which means that, if I know the name of the image on the desktop right now, I can look up the URL that I got it from. That’s a big if.

I spent a little while last night tinkering, and came up with the following command that gets me the name of the currently displayed desktop wallpaper:

defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop | grep 'LastName' | tail -n 1 | grep '[^"]*\.[^"]*' -o

This extracts the final LastName entry out of the com.apple.desktop.plist file and pulls just the file name out of it. Then, because I knew that I actually want the URL that I stored in the Get Info comments field, I extended this to the following:

cd ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/Single\ Display/; defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop | grep 'LastName' | tail -n 1 | grep '[^"]*\.[^"]*' -o | xargs mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment | grep 'http[^"]*' -oi

You’ll note that I assumed that all my wallpaper comes from a specific folder (~/Pictures/Wallpapers/Single Display/) — but this information could also be extracted from com.apple.desktop.plist (run the defaults command without the grepping to see what I mean — look for ChangePath). The big breakthrough for me was realizing that I needed to use xargs to extract meaning from the result of my grepping, which was presented to mdls with a newline at the end — xargs then runs mdls on all of the one lines of resulting output.

In the end, I presented the output of each of those shell scripts as overlays on my desktop (using GeekTool) and I wrapped all of this into a little AppleScript that opens the web page from whence my desktop image comes:

do shell script "cd ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/Single\\ Display/; defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop | grep 'LastName' | tail -n 1 | grep '[^\"]*\\.[^\"]*' -o | xargs mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment | grep 'http[^\"]*' -oi | xargs open"

The real addition is that I use the xargs to pass the URL to open, which opens the URL in the default browser.

In all of this, it is worth noting that Bwana has been enormously useful. As was this article from O’Reilly on using Spotlight from the command line and this page on the defaults command.

2010-05-29: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 30 May 2010 05:00:00 +0000

@jashapiro :) I keep meaning to rejigger things so _that_ post goes untweeted. in reply to jashapiro #
loves seeing deserving friends honored by other people. Charlie Sellers, you rock the Faculty Prize! #
is contemplating shows in Vegas. Oh, and also definitely, definitely thinking about FirstClass batch scripts. #

2010-05-23: The Week in Tweets

Seth Battis — Sun, 23 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

@nkogan Put a drain in the floor and tile everything. in reply to nkogan #
is wondering why his MacBook no longer hibernates, and how 16% battery is a reasonable time to shut down with no warning. #ruhroh #
wonders what kind of sad person has "sexlessly" in their spellcheck dictionary but not "seamlessly" — FirstClass, I'm looking at _you_. #
hates PowerPoint with a blinding, all-consuming passion. #

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