chmod a+x ~/Pictures/DeskFeed/deskfeed.py
~/Pictures/DeskFeed/deskfeed.py

This will automatically download the latest photos from the Chromasia and daily dose of imagery blogs, and save them in the DeskFeed folder. To modify which feeds are downloaded (or not), open the deskfeed.py file you just downloaded and comment out / uncomment the photo feeds you want on the first few lines that are clearly marked. You can have as many feeds as you want in the script, but they have to be generated from the App Engine script which I wrote.

To set this up as a periodic task using cron, create a text file on your desktop called dfcron, and in it place this single line:

5      1       *       *       *       /Users/username/Pictures/DeskFeed/deskfeed.py

Make sure you replace username with your own short username. What this file contains is a command that will tell cron to run the deskfeed.py file every day at 5 minutes past 1am. Then, run this command in the terminal once:

crontab ~/Desktop/dfcron

You can now safely delete dfcron. To set this folder as your desktop background, go to System Preferences / Desktop & Screen Saver, press the little '+' button under the list of folders, navigate to the DeskFeed folder, and select Choose. I found that "Fit to Screen" with a black background works best.

I am open to suggestions about what other photo feeds to include in this application, it only takes about 10 minutes to add a new feed. Furthermore, I will be creating a more solid application that will be customisable through preferences rather than relying on a Python script. But as this is a first attempt, I'm publishing the code to the script to see if anyone else has any suggestions for improvement. If you just want to look at the code used instead of downloading the above file, here it is:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import md5
from urllib import URLopener
from urllib2 import urlopen
from xml.dom.minidom import parseString
 
rss_feeds = {}
 
#
# Comment / Uncomment the following lines to use the required feeds
#
rss_feeds['chromasia'] = 'http://deskfeed.neophytou.net/rss/chromasia'
rss_feeds['ddoi'] = 'http://deskfeed.neophytou.net/rss/ddoi'
 
dst_dir = os.path.expanduser('~/Pictures/DeskFeed/')
 
# Based on script found at HackerMoJo.com
# http://hackermojo.com/mt-static/archives/2008/04/metropulse-launched.html
def parseFeed(rss):
  try:
    rss_contents = urlopen( rss )
  except:
    print "Failed to read rss feed %s" % rss
    return
  rss_src = rss_contents.read()
  rss_contents.close()
  dom = parseString( rss_src )
  node_lst = dom.getElementsByTagName('item')
  items = range(node_lst.length)
  hashes = {}
  group = node_lst.item(0).getElementsByTagName('title')[0].getAttribute('group')
  # Store the md5 hashes of all the saved photos
  for i in items:
    img_filename = "%s%s_%s.jpg" % (dst_dir,group,i)
    try:
      image_file = open(img_filename, "r")
      hashes[img_filename] = md5.md5(image_file.read()).hexdigest()
      image_file.close()
    except IOError:
      hashes[img_filename] = ""
      pass
  # Go through all the photos in the rss feed, in reverse order
  items.reverse()
  for i in items:
    element = node_lst.item(i)
    group = element.getElementsByTagName( 'title' )[0].getAttribute('group')
    link = element.getElementsByTagName( 'link' )[0].getAttribute('source')
    photo_hash = element.getElementsByTagName('hash')[0].firstChild.data
    img_filename = "%s%s_%s.jpg" % (dst_dir, group, i)
    # Check all the saved photos and see if any of them have the same hash
    for j in range(i):
      old_img_filename = "%s%s_%s.jpg" % (dst_dir, group, j)
      if (hashes[old_img_filename] == photo_hash):
        # If one does, give it the current photo filename
        os.system("mv %s %s" % (old_img_filename, img_filename))
        hashes[old_img_filename] = ""
        hashes[img_filename] = photo_hash
        break
    try:
      image_file = open(img_filename, "r")
      old_hash = md5.md5(image_file.read()).hexdigest()
      image_file.close()
      if (old_hash == photo_hash):
        continue
    except IOError:
      pass
    try:
      URLopener().retrieve(link, img_filename)
    except IOError:
      continue
 
def main():
  for key in rss_feeds:
    parseFeed(rss_feeds[key])
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

Download this script

That's pretty much it. As you can see, the script is not that complicated, and I can very easily modify the way the photos are served to the clients. This code has been tested under Leopard using Python 2.5, but also under Ubuntu using Python 2.4.3, and I believe it should also work under Tiger using Python 2.3, but I could very well be wrong. So as always, I'm open to feedback and suggestions. If anyone knows how to create a Preference pane, please contact me. I know exactly what needs to be done in the Preference pane, but I have no idea how to use Xcode.]]> http://www.cneophytou.com/2008/04/17/photo-feed-as-desktop-background/feed/ 7 http://www.cneophytou.com/2007/09/18/searching-google-the-way-you-want/ http://www.cneophytou.com/2007/09/18/searching-google-the-way-you-want/#comments Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:56:53 +0000 Constantinos http://www.cneophytou.com/2007/09/18/searching-google-the-way-you-want/ There’s a lot of sites that explain some of these advanced features [google.com], but I’m more interested in the ones I use regularly, or ones that make my search experience easier.

First, I’ll start with the Google by Keyboard search. I first came across this in a Lifehacker article. I liked Google by Keyboard because it allowed me to use the same keyboard shortcuts that I use in Google Reader for my search results. The best part? The post included a link to an .xml file which would enable Firefox to have ‘Google by Keyboard’ as one of the options in it’s search box!

Unfortunately, the link on lifehacker no longer works, so here’s a link to my copy of the .xml file. To install, simply download the .xml file, and save it in the searchplugins directory inside your Firefox profile directory, as per the lifehacker post instructions. To repeat:

On Windows, that path is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\
On the Mac, go with ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles/yourprofilenamehere/searchplugins/

and then simply restart Firefox. Now at the time, I was not using Firefox’s box to search, but instead Google’s toolbar. So I went ahead and created a custom .xml file to add the button to the Google toolbar. To install it, you can simply click on this link.

But that’s not all. There’s another search feature that I’ve learned to love, and use all the time, especially since I’ve started organizing my iTunes Library. I’m talking about Google Music search, and like most ‘special’ searches in Google it triggers automatically when it detects you’re searching for something music-related. I have not been able to find a ‘home page’ for Google Music Search, which is a problem because most of my searches don’t get automatically recognized as a music search (for example I’ve recently been searching for the band called ‘Peaches‘… They’re pretty good btw. Obviously there’s no way searching for ‘peaches’ on Google will ever trigger music search).

Now what I would usually do is search for something like ‘Pixies’ (as per the Music Search example), which would always bring up the Music search link, and proceed from there. But that’s two steps I’d love to completely eliminate. So, instead, I went ahead and modified the above .xml files to directly search Google Music. To use, you can either download the firefox search plugin and follow the same directions as above, or if you’re using the Google toolbar, install the button.

I wonder if there’s an easy way of creating a script to automate this process for any arbitrary Google Search url… hmm…]]> http://www.cneophytou.com/2007/09/18/searching-google-the-way-you-want/feed/ 1