An idea for a piece of software

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I want to put an idea for a piece of software that someone will either:

1) Tell me that it already exists
2) Make it exist

I want a programme that will go an grab an image from a webcam and install it as my desktop background and update itself every so often. I can see how this could be done as an Apple Script or a perl script, run as a cron job, that grabbed the image every 5 minutes or so an deposited it in the folder that the Apple desktop background manager looks in for picture , but I can code in neither language.

I'd like the M/S Nordkaap's webcam as my desktop background.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 08:44 (twenty-two years ago)

on OSX you could probably most easily do it as a shell script that's CRON'ed. You could just "curl -O http://your_url" then kick something that updates the desktop from the downloaded file

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 09:13 (twenty-two years ago)

also see http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020806142539171

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 09:15 (twenty-two years ago)

http://webcam.aspectgroup.co.uk/bigben.jpg

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 09:20 (twenty-two years ago)

That's very cute, but it's about 3 mins slow which defeats the point. If I lean back in my seat, I can see it 'fer real'. I guess it takes awhile to process and upload the image?

― Simeon (Simeon), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 09:46 (twenty-two years ago)


#!/bin/csh -f
cd ~/Desktop
curl http://webcam.aspectgroup.co.uk/bigben.jpg -o temp.jpg
cp temp.jpg temp2.jpg 
/usr/bin/osascript <tell application "Finder" 
set desktop picture to file "temp2.jpg"
set desktop picture to file "temp.jpg"
end tell 
END

the temp2 thing seems to be needed as the Finder won't update the desktop image unless the file name changes. Anwyay, there's a start for you. Cron that.

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 09:55 (twenty-two years ago)

OK I did this.

I set up the shell script as advised

#! /bin/sh

curl -O http://www.bergens-tidende.no/grafikk/kamera/nordkapp2.jpg

did chmod 755 on the script to make it executable

Used Cronix to set up a cron job with minutes set to */10 which gets it every 10 minutes?

It just runs the script from the folder that I keep my desktop pictures in and adds it to the rotation. Waiting to see if the cronjob works.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 10:00 (twenty-two years ago)

you can do a "Run job now" in cronnix to check

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 10:03 (twenty-two years ago)

tried that and it worked. It Also sent mail to my local mail account. How can I read the local mail account in mail.app. Just out of interest.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 10:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually I sorted that one out myself you need to create a symlink like so:

ln -s ~/mbox ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/INBOX.mbox/mbox

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 10:36 (twenty-two years ago)

to stop the mail (which is the output of the curl command) add "-s" switch to the curl line, making it silent.

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 13 May 2003 11:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Geektool for OSX http://projects.tynsoe.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=4

I have London Aquarium sharks on my desktop now

― Alan (Alan), Wednesday, 14 May 2003 10:42 (twenty-two years ago)

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