Desktop Wallpapers 2 – Open Software and ~/xplanet

Since i was posting Desktop Wallpapers – Open Software and ~/Fun_Tools, i remembered another trick. This time the problem was time and day/night issues. 

If you point your browser to http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/ you can get yourself a very interesting piece of software named Xplanet. Now, to make a long story short, there was xearth and then xplanet.  What this program does, is a bit ludic but i find it very very interesting and fun.

Now, if you install the program and play with it, you might try this: 

$shell:> xplanet -window -latitude X -longitude Y -radius 35 -rotate 23 -geometry IxJ -output ~/map.jpg

You will get a nice little picture you can *again* use as your desktop Wallpaper. 

Why ? Try to work long hours in a suite without windows (underground) and check the updated image as your wallpaper and you will see the phycological effect of the time on you; Meaning, it’s very interesting to perceive time in terms of planet rotation instead of a conceptual interpretation of numbers (9:47pm). 

Sebb

Desktop Wallpapers – Open Software and ~/Fun_Tools

For a short period of time i had the necessity to control some resources (both local and remote) and display the information on a computer screen. Since i am *always* busy doing other things, i wanted this information to be updated automatically and easy to keep my eye on. While i was thinking of an easy way and *time_not_consuming_way*  to implement a structure that would bring me this information i remembered my *old* love, the all mighty ImageMagic!

Basically, my solution (UNIX) is definitelynot the most elegant one, yet it works for me and it’s really easy to implement; So let us start.

I gathered the information needed into a file and put it in /tmp directory via bash script; Namely use some unix commands and concatenate the output to a file. 

Example:
$shell:> df -h | grep /dev/xxx | awk '{print $3}' > /tmp/foo.txt

Then use the `draw` option of convert, which is a part of the ImageMagick image processing package to *print* the text that you have in /tmp/foo.txt over an image that you choose to be your desktop wallpaper. 

Example:
$shell:> convert wallpaper_image.jpg -draw 'text +X+Y $text_from_file' wallpaper.jpg

At this point you have your picture ready to be used as wallpaper. You now need to use crontab to repeat this operation at regular intervals ($shell:> crontab -e) and change the desktop wallpaper accordingly (Platform dependent; On OSX just select the automatic picture shuffle option).

And the trick is done.

Sebb