Off Topic: Stunning APOD
October 23rd, 2007
I have an Automator script (available here) that pulls down the large version of NASA’s astronomy picture of the day (APOD) for use in my screen saver. Totally geeky, I know.
Most days, the images are your average star field or Hubble image, but every now and then, they throw up an image that just takes your breath away. Today’s is such an image.
Script Details
The script is simple, really. It logs into the site, “clicks” on the image to get the larger version, and saves it to a folder on your system.
- Save the script
- Open the workflow
- Specify where you want the script to save the downloaded image
- Save it as an Application
- In iCal, set an alarm to go off and make that alarm open the Application you just saved in #4
- In System Preferences, open Desktops & Screen Savers
- Point the Screen Saver to the folder you specified in #3.
- Sit back and enjoy your computer’s idle time.
StringFoo's Feed-o-Rama:
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:12 pm
How easy would it be to create a javascript so that the new picture was shown every day in a java applet on a website? What would be involved?
May 5th, 2008 at 7:46 am
It probably wouldn’t be too hard. Maybe check out the DHTML & Javascript cookbook from oreilly (look under must-own programming books in the sidebar to the right) and see if they have a few recipes that might help.