Tim's Bandwagon » Software

How to run a script to do useful stuff when you plug-in your iPod

Tim Brayshaw — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 00:08:02 +0000


-- This is a Folder Actions AppleScript that triggers an
-- event when a disk (like an iPod) is mounted by the
-- System. I use it to run a compiled Automator workflow that
-- backs-up my Keychains, and copies my GTD lists to the
-- iPod notes folder.
-- 
-- To run it you should tweak the script accordingly, and add it
-- as a Folder Action to the "/Volumes" folder. It isn't
-- exactly obvious how to do this, so here's how:
-- 
-- 1. Open the "Folder Actions Setup" app.
-- 2. Click the '+' button to add a new Folder Action.
-- 3. The "/Volumes" directory is hidden from view. Don't click
--    anything, type "/Volumes" to get to it.
-- 4. Add this script as a Folder Action.

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving addedItems
    set volumeName to "Tim Brayshaw's iPod" -- change this!
    repeat with addedItem in addedItems
        if the displayed name of (info for addedItem) ¬
            is equal to volumeName then
            volumeMounted()
            exit repeat
        end if
    end repeat
    -- System Events seems to keep file references open to each of
    -- the "addedItems" above, this means you can't eject these
    -- volumes. This bodge quits System Events, so you can eject
    -- the added volumes. (System Events gets launched immediately
    -- again.)
    quit application "System Events"
end adding folder items to

on volumeMounted()
    tell application "Finder"
        open application "Update iPod"
    end tell
end volumeMounted

This should world for other devices like USB thumbdrives, external FireWire disks, Digital Cameras etc. I futzed around trying to figure out how to do this with launchd, but gave up. If anyone knows a better or other way, post a comment!

I’ve found this useful because it’s removed some backup anxieties, and means I’ve always got my shopping and out-and-about errands lists (and so on) with me when I’m away for the computer. There’s probably a better way of doing this, but it took me an inordinate amount of time to figure it out, so I thought I’d post a code snippet here for like-minded dabblers.

Google Maps Stockist Finder

Tim Brayshaw — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 17:15:25 +0000

I’ve been playing with the Google Maps API this afternoon, and it looks pretty good. I’ve knocked-up a stockist map for Cardtastic. (For those who don’t know me, Cardtastic is a greeting card company run by my partner, Helen.)

One problem encountered was performance is bad when adding lots of markers, we’re only adding about 180 markers to the map, and my browser kept alerting that a script was running slowly and asking if I wanted to abort it or continue. Not ideal.

I’ve worked around it by adding a little time between adding the markers to the map so the browser catch its breath again. I’ve also grown to quite like the gimmicky animated effect while stockists start popping-up all over the country!

NetNewsWire 2.0

Tim Brayshaw — Fri, 13 May 2005 00:54:57 +0000

Congratulations to the Ranchero crew on the release of NetNewsWire 2.0 &ndash a major update to the popular Mac feed-reader. I’ve been beta testing it for a while (actually, a scary amount of time). It’s been really interesting watching the development of this release over the beta period – there’s been loads of attention to detail in the UI and performance that might get overlooked by all the new features. Syncing is a welcome addition, as is Podcasting support; but there’s a ton of new stuff in there that I’ve probably “just got used to” by now (flagged items, Atom feeds). What can I say? I like it, you should try it!

Safari 1.3 and feed URIs

Tim Brayshaw — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 08:55:11 +0000

The feed URI scheme (aka: ‘feed:// protocol’) should make it easy to subscribe to RSS news feeds with one-click. Nick Bradbury (author of FeedDemon) explains:

[…] let’s face it: subscribing to feeds is a huge pain right now and it’s causing far too much confusion. Feed reading has left the phase where only techies do it, so relying on orange XML and RSS buttons that spew XML when clicked just doesn’t cut it.

The feed protocol aims to simplify this mess so that clicking on a feed:// link enables quick subscription via the user’s feed reader. I’m hoping more applications – and more web sites – support this protocol so that we can put the days of subscribing by URL copy/pasting behind us.

This has become a fairly well supported mechanism (FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, NewsGator, Shrook, RSS Bandit, NewzCrawler, Sharpreader amongst others support the feed URI scheme). Now, this depends on the browser telling your RSS reader “Hey, hereï¿½s a feed for you… now do something with it!”.

Safari v1.2 ‘played nice’ and passed the URI of the feed to your RSS reader, the feed was subscribed-to, and it was all tickety-boo. It seems that Safari v1.3 (released on Friday with the 10.3.9 System upgrade) stops doing this, and nags you to upgrade to Tiger (which hasn’t been released yet).

The worst thing is that this doesn’t seem like just a regression. Dealing with feed:// links is a special case, someone sat there and composed this ‘Error’ message — knowing that the old behaviour had changed, and presumably had it translated into the 14 languages in which Safari ships. This pretty much sucks.

Happy Easter

Tim Brayshaw — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 09:48:01 +0000

Have an Easter Egg:

Fans of BBEdit might enjoy this one: Command-click in the title bar of the About BBEdit box for a few goodies.

[via The Unofficial Apple Weblog]

NetNewsWire 2.0b10

Tim Brayshaw — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:43:08 +0000

NetNewsWire 2.0b10 (Change notes):

NetNewsWire 2.0b10 includes bug fixes, a rewritten Atom parser, a bunch of small new features and enhancements—but the feature that will probably get the most attention is podcasting support.

The podcasting (I really hate that term) support seems good and flexible. This release features a clutch of nice interface tweaks, too.

One two one two

Tim Brayshaw — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:50:17 +0000

This entry was posted using the spanking new MarsEdit:

MarsEdit makes weblog writing like writing email, with each post edited in its own window, the ability to save posts as drafts, spell-checking, and a familiar Mac OS X interface

As someone wise once said:

It’s the imagery of technology
Is what you get is what you see
Don’t worry your mind
When you give it your best
One two one two this is just a test

folder2dot

Tim Brayshaw — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 18:15:39 +0000

I’ve spent some of this morning packaging a PHP script I wrote a few months ago into a little Mac OS X application. It was at risk of going stale, so thought I’d let it out into the open for a bit of air. It’s called folder2dot. When you drop a folder onto it in the Finder it creates a ‘dot’ file that represents the item’s contents and sub-contents.

You can then render the ‘dot’ file with the Graphviz graph drawing tools (I recommend the Macintosh port of Graphviz) and you get a diagram of the dropped item’s contents and sub-contents. You might be able to open the ‘dot’ file using Omnigraffle (it supports a subset of the DOT language — I haven’t tried it yet!).

I found it handy to visualise the inventory of the files in a website I was redeveloping; it produces fairly plain output that is probably most useful as a starting-point.

Positivity

Tim Brayshaw — Thu, 20 May 2004 23:56:08 +0000

A cluetrainy post from Brent Simmons (the creator of NetNewsWire). Marketing stuff is hard (especially to hard-bitten geeks like me), but this honest and positive post that almost awakened the inner-hippy in me.

Basecamp

Tim Brayshaw — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 01:29:52 +0000

I’ve got ad-hoc solutions for my project management needs, but they’re not ideal. My bugtracker (mantis) is being asked to perform increasingly unnatural acts. I still haven’t learned to love iCal (it syncs with my PDA and iPod, so I live with it). I dabbled with an OmniOutliner version of painless software schedules and early versions of PMX, but never sustained their use beyond scoping and pricing a project (helpful nevertheless). My wiki (‘Tavi) has been running for a year or so, though, and that’s working out okay.

Basecamp is an elegant, powerful, web-based project management tool. It’s a hosted service priced at between $19 and $59 per month.

[…] It lets you and your clients keep your conversations, contacts, reviews, schedules, to-do lists, and more in one place — password protected and accessible from any computer. Plus, since Basecamp looks, feels, and works like a blog, it’s a breeze to use.

That’s assuming you know how a blog looks, feels, and works.

Reading the marketing bumph, Basecamp sounds nifty. It’s developed by the folks at 37signals so it looks pleasing too. There’s not much information on how it supports teams and roles, I think I’ll have to take it for a spin (you can use it free for one active project~~, but have to supply credit card details~~).