January 2008

• Take more photos
• Launch at least the two projects I’m working on
• Spend a few days at the seaside with my girlfriend
• Get my degree
• Spend a weekend in at least one European capital
• Move to Vienna
• Go to the theatre, at least once twice
• Go running, two times a week minimum
• Find a cool internship for August
• Get a job (in the web industry)
• Plant herbs
• Do a painting together with my girlfriend
• Contribute to some Open Source projects
• Learn another programming language
• Learn Cocoa
• Find a flat without a pre-installed kitchen
• Learn Swedish again
• Spend more time cooking and baking
• Watch ARTE more often (or quit my subscription)

[to be continued]

I will start my internship at Frequentis tomorrow and I have to say that I’m pretty excited (it’s not so that it would be something completely new, I did a one-month internship there in August and did some project work in spring). But still, it’s something which I’m looking forward to.

It’s also nearly the end of my studies at my university, I will write my second bachelor thesis, do the exam and then I am finally done. Plans for the future? Definitely, but I won’t tell - yet.

I played around a little bit with script.aculo.us the last few days and came up with some small Flickr photo browser called Folaroids.

It’s based on Ruby and JavaScript (Prototype and script.aculo.us). It’s the first time that I’ve done some real word application with erb and script.aculo.us (whose effects and support is just awesome).

Check it out (and leave comments).

McAfee is still not able to opt me out from their Avert Dat Release Mailing list. I wrote the first email to their customer support on the 6th of December, nearly one month ago.

Here’s the requested .plist file, insert your username (or the path where you’ve put the Apple Script) and save it to /Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.tm-notification.plist. Then do

launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.tm-notification.plist

Here’s the .plist file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>  
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>com.apple.tm-notification</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array> 
		<string>/usr/bin/osascript</string>
		<string>/Users/[user]/Public/tm.scpt</string>
	</array>
	<key>LowPriorityIO</key>
	<true/>
	<key>Nice</key>
	<integer>1</integer>
	<key>StartInterval</key>
	<integer>300</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

I’m subscribed to some mailing lists about parallel programming and MPI (which I needed for my bachelor thesis). People on these mailing lists are great, helpful and the whole experience is just dulled by the actual mailing list. Here’s why:

• You will get tons and tons of emails once you are subscribed (you’ll only read ten percent of it because you have dozens of other mails in your inbox)
• You will never be able to gain knowledge about the subject from past conversations because they are either not searchable or hidden behind monthly archive links.
• Even if you’re actively following a conversation, it’s difficult because your mail program will not put them in the right order.
• Did I say that you get loads of email?

Time machine is really a fine piece of software. The only thing which is missing is some kind of notification when a backup was done (you can open the preferences, but that’s not really satisfying).

So I crafted some little Apple Script:

set console_text to do shell script "syslog -F '$Message' -k Sender /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd -k Time ge -5m"
 
if console_text is not "" then
	tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
		set the allNotificationsList to {"Notification"}
		set the enabledNotificationsList to {"Notification"}
 
		register as application ¬
			"Time Machine Notification" all notifications allNotificationsList ¬
			default notifications enabledNotificationsList ¬
			icon of application "Time Machine"
 
		notify with name ¬
			"Notification" title ¬
			"Time Machine" description console_text ¬
			application name "Time Machine Notification"
 
	end tell
end if

Copy it to some folder and register a cronjob, something like this: */5 * * * * /usr/bin/osascript /Users/[username]/Public/tm.scpt

Here is the compiled script: Time Machine Notification

If you want to have a shorter/longer interval you need to change the cron line accordingly and the script (it’s the last parameter in the first line, now saying ‘5m’).

Edit: I did what a reader suggested, here is the .plist file.