New Desktop
by Jeff on Mar.15, 2009, under Nerdom
So after reading all about what GeekTool can do over on Lifehacker, I thought I’d give it a try and make myself a pretty new desktop that puts a lot more information I use all the time right in front of me and out of my web browser. Firefox still crashes occasionally and it’s really a pain when it does, because I end up losing my music player (Pandora), weather info, and Twitter updates on top of whatever else I was doing.
An hour or so later, I now have this:
Slick, eh? I like how the updates blend right into the image. The stuff on the right almost looks like it was written right on the wall. I don’t normally like super-sparse design, but this is really relaxing to look at.
Details:
Wallpaper: Forgot where I got it originally, but a Google search for the filename should do it.
Instructions for clock/day/date
One minor problem I’ve noticed with the PandoraBuddy PandoraBoy app is that if I minimize it, the GeekTool script won’t pick up on the track change and I don’t know how to edit the script to fix it. As far as I can tell, a minimized app should still be picked up System Events, but perhaps not. Oh well. I’ve just taken to hiding the window at the far edge of my screen so I don’t see it and the script still works.
UPDATE: As an astute reader notes, hiding (clicking the red button) the iTunes or PandoraBoy app will remove the app from the screen and still result in updated song info with the script. Huzzah!
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Posts about Lifehacker as of March 15, 2009 » The Daily Parr
March 15th, 2009 on 6:40 pm[...] to organize them, Calibre is a feature rich e-book manager, … via gHacks Source: Lifehacker New Desktop – waitingcasually.com 03/15/2009 So after reading all about what GeekTool can do over on Lifehacker [...]
June 3rd, 2009 on 9:58 am
Two things about the Pandora scripts:
1. They were written for PandoraBoy, not Pandora Buddy. I don’t know if that’s a typo or if you modified the script, but I’ve never used Pandora Buddy and don’t know what needs to be done to handle it.
2. I hide (not minimize) PandoraBoy while it’s playing, and the display does change as the track changes.
If you switch back and forth between iTunes and Pandora, you may be interested in this script, which toggles between play and pause regardless of which one you’re listening to:
http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2007/12/playpause-hotkey-for-pandora-and-itunes/
And there’s this set of scripts for displaying album artwork:
http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2007/06/album-art-with-geektool/
June 3rd, 2009 on 9:34 pm
First, thanks for the cool links, Dr. Drang. You’ve done some neat stuff with GeekTool I see. I’ll put your ’switching’ script to work as I do tend to have both up at once and that will help. As you can probably tell from the desktop, I like to keep the screen sparse, so deciding not to display album art was a conscious decision.
Second, you’re precisely right! Hiding the PandoraBoy (indeed a typo) app does fix the issue I described. Weird that hiding it doesn’t remove the app from system events but minimizing it does… Oh well. Again, thanks!