APPLEVIEWS » commands

Halloween Spider Mac Desktop

Tina Brunner — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:10:02 +0000

Since Halloween is right around the corner, I wanted to make a realistic spider web effect sucking in the Apple logo. My husband is the guru when it comes to design, so he created a cob web and added the Apple logo and gave the effect of it being pulled into the spider web. In fact, there are spiders in the screen, can you see how many there are? I wanted to make this fun for those viewing it, so I had him add some spiders, and asked the audience to see how many they can count. To add to the effect, I used GeekTool to add a countdown of how many days left to Halloween and used the echo to add ‘days to go’ behind after the countdown number. There is of course a way to do it without having to add an extra shell command, but we didn’t see the code until after the fact. However, you can use the echo command to add text to your screen though, so this is why we added it to this article. We used the Moon Phase II Yahoo Widget for the moon. Here are the commands for GeekTool:
Days To Go shell command:
echo "days to go"
CountDown shell command:
echo '' | php
To add the Yahoo Widget, click on the moon to be directed to the download page on Yahoo Widgets.

To download the background without my desktop screen, go to the Freebies tab in this site for the download. This concludes this article, if you have any other GeekTool commands or Yahoo Widgets, please, leave a comment to help fellow readers. Also, check out more designs by my husband at http://philipbrunner.com.

Creative Implementation Of GeekTool And Yahoo Widgets

Tina Brunner — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:34:12 +0000

Todays article is about the creative implementation of GeekTool and Yahoo Widgets by Zack. He has done an excellent job implementing these tools into everyday scenes. Check these out.
GRAFFITI
On this desktop, Zack chose to use Graffiti as part of his customization. He used several fonts in GeekTool for the clock, date, month, weekday, CPU, RAM, Uptime, Top Processes, to do list and calendar. He used Yahoo widgets for the battery and weather. Blending it all into the background. This design was also featured in Lifehacker.

Wallpaper:
http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/details/949/train_with_graffiti.html
Dock Information:
www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html
Font Information:
Degrassi	http://www.dafont.com/search.php?psize=m&q=degrassi
Time 65pt Date 36pt Uptime Text 18pt
Searfont	http://www.dafont.com/search.php?psize=m&q=searfont
Month 48pt
Vandalism	http://www.dafont.com/search.php?psize=m&q=vandalism
Weekday 36pt RAM Text 24pt
Garage Shock (Condensed)	http://www.dafont.com/search.php?psize=m&q=garage+shock
Calander 17pt
Turntablz Bold	http://www.dafont.com/search.php?psize=m&q=turntablz
To Do List 14pt Uptime 13pt Top Processes 12pt
Graffiti Treat	http://www.dafont.com/search.php?psize=m&q=graffiti+treat
RAM 24pt CPU 24pt AM & PM 36pt
Graffonti 3D Drop	http://www.dafont.com/search.php?psize=m&q=graffonti
CPU Text 24pt
Geek Tool Commands
Top Processes	`top -FR -l2 -o cpu \| grep -v 0.0% \| cut -c 7-24\| sed -n '15, $p'`
Time	`date "+%l:%M"`
AM & PM	`date +%p`
Date Number	`date +%d`
Month	`date +%B`
Weekday	`date +%A`
Calendar	`cal`
To Do List	Create a text file with TextEdit but make sure you click Format>Make Plain Text before save. Then select the file in path in GeekTool.
Uptime	`uptime \| awk '{print "" $3 " " $4 " " $5 }' \| sed -e 's/.$//g';`
RAM	`top -l 1 \| awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;`
CPU	`top -l 2 \| awk '/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $12, $13}'`
Text, Uptime, CPU, RAM	Another text file, remember have to Make Plain Text before saving
Yahoo Widgets
Weather Widget	widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/widescapeweather
Battery Widget	widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/wdscp-battery
Icons
iCal	www.blocksoft.net/iconical.html
Folders	http://jr050680.deviantart.com/art/Pry-System-95517859
Hard Drives	http://thvg.deviantart.com/art/Slick-Drives-95235862
Others
http://rimshotdesign.deviantart.com/art/Milkapp-26790473
http://kano89.deviantart.com/art/iPhoto-08-93032097
http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/details.php?id=1980 (alumi icons)
Coversutra for iTunes integration – www.sophiestication.com/coversutra/

SPIDERMAC

On this desktop, Zack made it in Lifehacker (2nd time) & Gizmodo!!! On Flickr, Zack states that from reading what his viewers had commented on the Graffiti Desktop, viewers would rather have everything easier to read, so he came up with this idea, which is ingenious. All of the text bubbles have information such as CPU, RAM, Uptime, a To Do list, & Hard Drive. He used GeekTool along with Yahoo Widgets and a few other cool tools. See below for the goodies ;-)

Wallpaper:
www.flickr.com/photos/zackshackleton/3406234712/
Font:
Comic Book – www.dafont.com/comic-book.font
Taskbar/Finder:
Magnifique UNO-AE Theme – http://magnifique.pcwizcomputer.com/forum/filebase.php?c=2
Yahoo Widgets:
Weather	widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/widescapeweather
Battery	widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/wdscp-battery
GeekTool Commands:
Top Processes	`top -FR -l2 -o cpu \| grep -v 0.0% \| cut -c 7-24\| sed -n ‘15, $p’`
Time	`date “+%l:%M”`
AM & PM	`date +%p`
Date Number	`date +%d`
Month	`date +%B`
Weekday	`date +%A`
Calendar	`cal`
To Do List	Create a text file with TextEdit but make sure you click Format>Make Plain Text before save. Then select the file in path in GeekTool.
Uptime	`uptime \| awk ‘{print “” $3 ” ” $4 ” ” $5 }’ \| sed -e ’s/.$//g’;`
RAM	`top -l 1 \| awk ‘/PhysMem/ {print “” $8 ” “}’ ;`
CPU	`top -l 2 \| awk ‘/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $12, $13}’`
Hard Drive Space	`df -h \| grep disk0s2 \| awk ‘{print $4 }’`
The Text Uptime, CPU, RAM, HDD Space	Another text file, remember have to Make Plain Text before saving

TIMES SQUARE DESKTOP

Zack used a picture of Times Square, which he photoshopped to better suit his needs.
On Flickr, he stated that his favorite part of this desktop is the calendar with a twisted look as if it were on the street (all created with GeekTool). Here are the tools and information he provided on Flickr.

Wallpaper
By Michael Shane – www.flickr.com/photos/mbshane/2450094084/
Yahoo Widgets
Weather Widget	widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/widescapeweather
Battery Widget	widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/wdscp-battery
GeekTool
Calendar using a picture from i61.photobucket.com/albums/h52/TheAEBeachbum/April.png (when I checked this link, it did not work). Zack did not leave any other GeekTool information for this desktop. If you have any questions though, he would more than likely give a response.

INTERESTING BOOK DESKTOP

On this desktop, Zack used GeekTool on some of the spines of the book. (CPU, RAM, Hard Drive Space, Time, Date and others hidden in the spines.) He also used some Yahoo Widgets. He didn’t give too much detail about the GeekTool user commands on this design.

Wallpaper
By OutofPrint – www.flickr.com/photos/22309082@N07/2157407789/
Yahoo Widgets
Weather Widget	widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/widescapeweather
Battery Widget	widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/wdscp-battery

As you can see, there is a ton of information listed. Some of it is duplicate information but was necessary to include so that you may know what exactly was used for each design. Zack has all of his designs on Flickr and is seen in various groups. If you have any questions for Zack, you can find him on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/zackshackleton/ and he will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Sorry this was such a long article guys, I just really like the creativity that Zack has shown using several of the available tools for Mac. You can also click on the link below the article to be directed to his information. Thanks!
-TINA

A Small List of Common GeekTool User Commands

Tina Brunner — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:37:06 +0000

Last week, I wrote an article about GeekTool and its uses. I decided that it would be nice to create a list of some of the most common user commands that I’ve found online so that others may benefit the great features of GeekTool. I am using GeekTool 3 for the commands. To the right is a preview of the GeekTool pane area (just click it to enlarge). So let’s get to the commands….

Month:
date +%B

Day of Month:
date +%d

Full Date:
date "+%A, %B %d"

Day of Week:
date +%A

Time:
date +"%l:%M"

AM/PM:
date +"%p"

Current Calendar Month
This is just a simple, small calendar:
cal

Simple Horizontal Calendar:

cal | sed -e '1d' -e '2p;2p;2p;2p' | sed -e '$!N;s/\n/ /' -e '$!N;s/\n/ /' -e '$!N;s/\n/ /' -e '$!N;s/\n/ /' | sed "s/^/ /;s/$/ /;s/ $(date +%e) /\|$(date +%e)\|/"

Weather Conditions:

lynx -dump http://printer.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=51501|awk '/Cond/ && !/Fore/ {for (i=2; i<=10; i++) printf $i " " }'

Historical Events:
curl http://www.infoplease.com/rss/dayinhistory.rss | grep CDATA | sed -e 's/$.*\[$//' -e 's/\].*//'

UPDATE: The original quote of the day has been removed due to Encarta no longer having a valid RSS feed. Here is a replacement. Found this geeklet here: http://www.korvus.com/blog/geek/dailyzen-in-geektool/
Quote of the Day:

curl -s http://www.dailyzen.com/ | sed -n "/<\!--Add Quote for correct day-->/,/<\/TD>/p"|sed -e "s/<[^>]*>//g" |strings|fold -sw60

Current Homeland Security Level (which will most likely show ‘Elevated’:
curl -s http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition | grep CONDITION

RAM:
top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;

CPU:
top -l 2 | awk '/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $12, $13}'

IP Address
If you simply want to know your IP Address, this sort of command can be very helpful.
echo External IP: `curl -s http://checkip.dyndns.org/ | sed 's/[a-zA-Z<>/ :]//g'`