An automatic wall paper changer for wmakerAn automatic wall paper changer for wmaker

I recently switched to using Window Maker on PC-BSD, one of my favorite window managers actually. But it does have a few dis advantages over KDE when it comes to session management…

I went though my large wall papers collection and found several that I would like to use, the WMaker theme I have set is a dark one.


Terry@Dixie$ ls ~/Pictures/Wall_Papers|wc -l 6:38
657
Terry@Dixie$ ls ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Backgrounds|wc -l 6:40
57
Terry@Dixie$ 6:40

Many didn’t scale right and I don’t know of any batch image scaler, so I had my shell open each in kolour paint so I could do this. Using a graphical file manager I would have to double click each file at the least level of effort… With the shell, it was simple loop in my backgrounds directory:

for i in `ls`
do
kolourpaint $i
done

This opened kolourpaint to a file, allowing me to do a quick ctrl+e and set it to smooth scale it to 1280×800 to match my LCD’s native resolution. And then to ctrl+s save it, X out of it and volia, kolourpaint would start again with another file as it continued through the loop.

Having done this, I was thinking how to I get it to change after awhile? I thought about a symlink that would be changed to a different wall paper every now and then, tested it no go. Then I found wmsetbg and the -s (-scale) option, so yeah I wasted my time scaling them all lol.

So I removed them and made symlinks to the original files in my wall papers directory:

for i in `ls`                                                 6:40
do
ln -hfs /home/Terry/Pictures/Wall_Papers/$i /home/Terry/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Backgrounds/$i
done

Like I am going to stand here and create 50++ shortcuts myself? NO WAY!

After that I set to look into hooking up a shell script that could run in the background and change the wall paper for me. I figured that I would want some thing acline to the sleep() function out of unistd.h but I didn’t really want to use a C program or any other programming language to do it. Because while looping over the directory in C might be faster then /bin/sh by the time the compiler tried to optimize it. Having to invoke a shell for every call to system() (for running wmsetbg) would probably be a bit wasteful. At least in a shell script, there should be no need to create a new /bin/sh process on each pass. Didn’t find a built in shell command for it but /bin/sleep works fine, so I wrote the following script to change my wall paper every 10 minutes:

#!/bin/sh
# A simple automatic wall paper changer for window maker.

while (true)
do
for p in `/bin/ls /home/Terry/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Backgrounds/`
do
wmsetbg -u -s $p
sleep 600
continue
done
done

And to run it on window makers start up, I added this line to my ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/autostart file:

/usr/home/Terry/sh/setbg &

and Hooah ^_^

And here is a python script that displays it in a random order,

#!/usr/local/bin/python

import commands
import os
import random
import time

li = os.listdir('/home/Terry/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Backgrounds/')

while (True):
x=random.choice(li)
commands.getoutput('/usr/local/bin/wmsetbg -u -s %s' % (x))
time.sleep(600)

Hmm, I wonder if I could do this on Windows XP to,under explorer of course hehe.

Of dreams and actions

My dreams seem to have been plagued by the same things that often assail my mind….

Past today’s have been a lot of work for me and I’m actualy very lucky to have today off work I spent a little time working with Pre Processor like program but didn’t have time to get any thing done.

Today, I want to get back to work on NPM, I’m off (hopefully) till Tuesday so with luck I can get some work done!

Idiot spider

I am so stupid !!!

I’m sitting here working on a the configuration file stuff in my options class and BAM the laptop shuts down on me.

Battery firmly attached and not in use, laptops been on at least an hour and a half or more but it’s still cool, no signs of blockages of ports and the fan was fine last I looked.

Rolled my chair around and made sure the power cable was in the socket check,

turned around to the other flank and saw that the light on the mobile surge protector was on, check, back to the poor laptop…

“Wait”, I rolled back around and picked up the A/C Adopter and the surge protector/cable segment had come unplugged — BINGO WE HAVE A WINNER !!!

I can’t believe I’ve been sitting here using the battery the whole time, like a moron… But I am very glad that I save files often when editing and that vim keeps a swap file so I didn’t lose any thing but the open tabs in knoqueror and the interipters history.

It would kind of suck to lose the entire projects files on day one =/

Saved by the editor… hehe

I’ve compiled all of my stored bookmarks (aside from the handfull on my laptop) into a single flat file…

One URL per line with a grand total of 662 lines.

Plenty are just enqueued to be read while others are perm storage.

Not bad for about 10 years of surfing =/

Now neatly redoing my bookmarks on ma.gnolia is the next big project of the day :'(.

And in the near future, properly using this for all my bookmarking needs.. lol.

Operation: Sit on my Ass, starts…. NOW !!!

I got off wok early today, about 1400 local and home for lunch by 1445, hit the Forums over at www.sasclan.org, ate, and got my movies list ready… Taking the rest of the day off as a personal vacation/holiday.

Blog, radio, tv, food, code, books, e.t.c 🙂

Raided my bookshelves bottom shelf for the VHS collection. We’ve got like 150-250 VHS tapes in the house but I’ve maintained only a small collection (20-40) in my room, so I know where to find them lol. We’ve taped just about every thing but watch almost none of it unless it’s on TV HAHAHA ! It set off my nose but I’ve complied my watch list, probably will take me a few weeks but it’s nice considering that I have not seen most of them in ages.

Links the the plot outlines on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) for convenience.

Robot Jox
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Dune — A great book also
The Three Amigos
Dear GOD — A goodie I found on late-tv years ago.
Mission Impossible
Legend of Drunken Master
Ghost Busters I and II
Ernest Goes to Jail
Jackie Chan’s First Strike
The Freshmen
Tron
Hot Shots
Spaced Invaders
Hook
El Dorado

Not all of them are my favorites although a few are, they all are however good movies xD

I started at ~1230, it’s now ~1630 and I’ve gotton shit done…

You’ve just got to love my family….

Ready to scream

The official rage list…

  • I’m f***ing tired of not being able to get stuff done in the afternoon.
  • I’m f***ing tired of being driven out of my skull.
  • I’m f***ing tired of having my train of thought derailed.
  • I’m f***ing tired of of being annoyed.
  • I’m f***ing tired of being interrupted.
  • I’m f***ing tired of not being able to concentrate.
  • I’m f***ing tired of being antagonised by computer-illiterate scum.
  • I’m f***ing tired of being barked, screeched, and shouted at.
  • I’m f***ing tired of having to live like this.
  • I’m f***ing tired of being tortured whenever I try to learn some thing.
  • I’m f***ing tired of having to stay up till 4am or later.
  • I’m f***ing tired of not being able to do f***ing any thing other wise.
  • I’m f***ing tired of watching my home work pile up.
  • I’m f***ing tired of not being able to rest when I’m *not* trying to do some f***ing thing.
  • I’m f***ing tired of being denied a chance to follow my goals.
  • I’m f***ing tired of this.

and I’m about ready to explode !!!

This mother f***ing rat ass sucking hell hole is pushing the limit. I’ve got over 4,500 pages to read — and I’m going to start knocking the damn walls down if I have to, but I am FINISHING THESE f***ing BOOKS.

There is no where else to go to read, study, nap, or any damn other thing. And my family makes it very hard to do any of those.

That means either this house learns to live with my work load or face the consequences. I should fuk’n start evicting people by force…. Let them enjoy freezing their ass off outside for a few hours.. While I get things *DONE* for a change.

Why, just why can’t I just once let myself be as cruel and vindictive as the rest… Instead of suffering aggravation after one another and hating that I feel like hating back…

Is it to much to ask to sit down and read a damn blasted book before I have to get back to work? I think not !!!!!!!!!!!!

I need a frigging vacation….. big time

reading

Worry undermines the body, dulls the mind, and slows down thinking and learning. It adds to confusion, magnifies troubles, and causes you to imagine things which really do not exist. If you are worried about something, talk to your leader about it. He may be able to help solve the problem.

Now if that’s not good advice to pray, I dunno what is hehe.

+S

Hmmm…. learning the hardway.

lukeftp advantages over filesilla site manager.

You have to manually type information so you can’t fuck it up unless you really fuck up…. lol.