I found this really nice design on the internets.

I like it but I think I may need to make it brighter or something.

I recently went a little mad. It was late at night and I had heard about a deal amazon were doing so I decided to get these.

A box set of all the Star Trek Movies and the 7 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. A few hours later I was sort of regretting the purchase but after watching a good few of the movies and most of the first series I have to say I’m very happy. It was a little weird at first. It was of course filmed in the 80’s and it shows. All the women have 80’s hair, Wil Wheaton is very young, the CGI is a little shaky and since it was taken off the TV there is a fierce amount of interlacing which doesn’t work well with the Mac DVD player (something I should check to see is fixed in Leopard).

Over all though it’s very enjoyable. I’ve seen some of the episodes before and they’re just as good as I remember. Still if the 1st season is the weakest as is reported on Amazon then I’m looking forward to the rest of them.

I really need to update the design of this place. I was thinking of doing something steampunky. If there is any body still reading this and they have suggestions, post them to the comments.

I’ve been using Twitter recently to follow a couple of the internet people who’s blogs I read and it’s pretty good. I’ve been posting stuff to it too. You can follow along at http://twitter.com/kertap. It would be nice if you did as then it wouldn’t feel like I’m shouting at the wind.

While I’ve got the app open I think I’ll link to some stuff. FreakAngels is a web comic which is written by Warren Ellis (Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, Transmetropolitan, Loads of other good stuff) and illustrated by Paul Duffield (I have no idea, but he’s really really good).

It’s updated weekly on Thursdays(I think) and it’s completely free. It’s been going for 15 weeks now and is one of my favorite comics to read. That’s including print.

Technorati Tags: Web Comics, FreakAngels

I’m trying out some new blogging software. Writing blogs from the old desktop hasn’t worked for me in the past but I blame the software for that. We’ll see how this stuff goes.

Loooonnnng time no talkie.

I’ve been busy. Sometimes I’ve been busy working on a new website. I might try and post stuff to do with this new site on here in an effort to share the stuff I’ve learned.

To that end I give you a basic AppleScript that other developers may find useful and a slightly less basic Automator script.

The Apple Script

The site I am working on is done with PHP and since I’m too lazy to look for a debugger I’ve taken to writing text to a log. I got a little bored and I wanted a one click solution to opening up the mac os x terminal and tailing the log so I whipped up this little AppleScript.

tell application "Terminal" activate do script "tail -f ~/Documents/Workspace/OnlineHold/logs/debug.txt" end tell

This is probably too much information for most people who read this blarg but it’s a fairly simple deal. It opens the Terminal and then tells it to execute the unix command “tail” on the debug.txt log file. What this does then is scrolls the log file down the screen as text is written to it. It looks very matrixy to the uninformed.

The Automator Script

In another effort to dodge working on the site I’ve spent the last few days playing around with automator. I wanted to automatically download a wallpaper image of the internet and use it as my desktop image.

The first thing I needed was to find a site which would update regularly with images. I found the site InterfaceLIFT which seems to update regularly.

With that done I used an article on downloading and setting wallpapers using Automator as the basis for my workflow.

Unlike in the first article I didn’t want to download every image. Just the latest. In order to accomplish this I used the handy firefox plugin firebug to figure out how exactly the wallpaper site built there image links. I found that each image link had an ascending five digit id associated with it in the link and that the latest image had the largest id. In order to take advantage of this little fact I wrote a brief perl script.

$max = 0; $latest = ""; foreach (@ARGV) {

print “$_\n”;

$_ =~ m/[0-9]{5}/g;
if ($& > $max) {
    $max = $&;
    $latest = $_;
}

} print $latest;

This little piece of magic got me the latest image off the page, which was downloaded to a folder and then set as the background.

I was getting the workflow to run every hour but it if it runs it takes over the focus so instead I just execute the workflow when i turn my computer on.

Here it is if you want it. Download and Set Wallpaper disk image

Update: Poking around the interface lift site led me to a page that contains random wallpapers. I’ve changed the script to use this as it means that when the script is run you always get a new wallpaper.

Time for another Sundance post. When I read the blurb for Anvil: The Story of Anvil, I initially thought “This is Spinal Tap, except real”. Then on the bus to the cinema I heard the woman behind me say that it is like Spinal Tap and that it’s kind of sad. This got me thinking “If Spinal Tap was real, how good a movie would it be? Things go really bad for Spinal Tap but while watching it you have a grin on your face because you know it’s not real.”

Anvil Is Real. Watching it was like being on a roller coaster of emotion. One minute your happy, laughing at a joke. The next cringing as they miss a train. Worried when they fight amongst themselves. Happy when they apologise to each other. Crushed as they endure disappointment after disappointment. And elated when it all comes together.

Anvil is Really Real. When the movie was over the director came down. And he introduced the stars of the movie. Anvil. The people we just saw on the screen were the exact same people that were asked questions such as “Where were they playing tonight?” and “If the movie that was made was the movie they expected to be made?”. This was really special. Being able to see these guys who had become personal heroes in the space of 2 hours and realise they weren’t playing any character for the camera was amazing.

Anvil is Spinal Tap. This movie will be compared to Spinal Tap and it knows it. It’s got lots of little touches in it that pay tribute to the mockumentary from a dial that goes up to eleven to Stonehenge.

Basically Anvil: The Story of Anvil ROCKED!!!! I hope it at least gets released on DVD as this is a documentary that should be seen by everyone.

I’m in Park City for the Sundance Film Festival. I just saw Quentin Tarantino walking down the street. This place rules.