FlickrFan and My Mac Desktop
Posted by Rich | Filed under Apple, How To's, Photos, Technology
One of the things I missed when I moved from Linux to Mac OSX was the ability to display Flickr photo feeds as the background of my monitor desktop. Dave Winer fixed part of the equation for me by setting up FlickrFan which allowed me to grab Flickr feeds and bring them to my computer. Assigning the pictures for use as a screen saver or archiving is trivial but what I really wanted was to have the pictures displayed as my desktop background while I worked. Here is how I did it:
Once you have setup the screen saver you want in the Mac System Preferences you need to create two small scripts. The first script called RunScreenSaver (or whatever you wish) contains this simple code.
#!/bin/bash
/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app
/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &>/dev/null & echo $!
Make sure the /System/…/ScreenSaverEngine path is all one line above. Wordpress wants to break it apart for formatting reasons.
The second script called KillScreenSaver (or whatever you wish) contains this simple code.
#!/bin/bash
killall ScreenSaverEngine
Be sure to make both script files executable by typing this in your terminal.app:
chmod a+x RunScreenSaver
chmod a+x KillScreenSaver
Or you can simply download both scripts.
When you want the background running, run the first script by double clicking it in the finder and when you want to stop the background run the second script by double clicking it in the finder. Of course, you can also run each script from the terminal.app:
./RunScreenSaver
./KillScreenSaver
Update:
Dave Winer over at Scripting News did a quick video of this effect:
11 Responses to “FlickrFan and My Mac Desktop”
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Scripting News for 1/2/2008 « Scripting News Annex Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:38 am[...] an interesting Howto on connecting FlickrFan to the Mac desktop. I love this [...]
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The Burningsoul’s Blog » Blog Archive » FlickrFan and the Mac desktop Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:36 am[...] an interesting Howto on connecting FlickrFan to the Mac desktop. I love this [...]
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Nikolai Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:13 amYou could also just install Backlight (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8962/backlight)
Or even more simple: In system preferences: Add the folder “images/photofan/screensaverpics” to your desktop and set it to change every 5 seconds
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Rich Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:34 amYeah, it seems that the developer for backlight left it for dead a while ago though. I do prefer simple little scripts.
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Scripting News for 1/2/2008 | Auto Technology | Auto Blog Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:32 am[...] an interesting Howto on connecting FlickrFan to the Mac desktop. I love this [...]
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rexblog.com: Rex Hammock’s weblog » Blog Archive » links for 2008-01-03 Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:24 am[...] FlickrFan running on a Mac desktop | RobotThoughts Geeks do the darndest things. (tags: flickrfan) [...]
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links for 2008-01-03 | mad dog in the fog Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:14 pm[...] FlickrFan and My Mac Desktop | RobotThoughts Turns your Mac desktop into a screen-saver powered by FlickrFan. Make sure to watch the video. (tags: mac desktop screensaver flickrfan) [...]
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techproject Says:
January 6th, 2008 at 6:04 amseems dificult!
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aaron Says:
January 12th, 2008 at 1:15 pmor just use DeskLickr!
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links for 2008-01-27 « Netweb Says:
January 27th, 2008 at 1:18 pm[...] FlickrFan and My Mac Desktop | RobotThoughts (tags: flickr screensaver mac desktop apple flickrfan) [...]
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Fluid Flow » Blog Archive » Playing with FlickrFan Says:
April 6th, 2008 at 5:34 am[...] screensaver will grab images from nested folders. Today on Scripting News was a post pointing to a HowTo that would sets your desktop to use the [...]
