Geektool Desktop

So a while back I downloaded this great little program for my mac. It's called Geektool, and it's free, you can download it here. Basically, it's an automatic command line-running tool, that will display anything you can possibly run in a unix terminal, as well as system logs, and pictures, right on your desktop. Everything runs in the background and is always on the desktop. You can change the font colors and sizes, and place them anywhere on the desktop.

I'm posting here to describe what I have recently done with a couple real simple scripts and some help with photoshop. I am a huge Assas

sin's Creed fan, and with the new one being released, I thought I should spice it up a little b

it.

Currently this is my desktop, using Geektool and a couple scripts I wrote real quick to change the configurations of the lettering.

So, I found the Ezio image on Google images, and the background had a few stars in it, but I went along and Photoshopped the large, faded Assassin's logo somewhat behind Ezio and pulled the "Assassin's Creed II" closer to the center of the picture.

Now for the scripts which enabled me to mimic the font and positions of the words for the date. The simplest way to do this, is to just use Geektool to run some separate shell scripts.

date +%B <- Gives you the current month.

date +%A <- Gives you the current day.

date +%d <- Gives you the current day (number).

date +%Y <- Gives you the current year.

Then all you have to do is position the scripts, change the fonts and colors, and you're all set. They actually have a matching font built right in, it's called Trajan Pro (yes, yes, hehe, let's all get the giggles out first). The only problem with this is that, although it is the same font, it does not perfectly match the Assassin's Creed logo, and being the perfectionist that I am, I needed to find a quick and dirty way to get it to look as much like the logo as I could. This is where the scripts come in to play. If you are familiar with writing scripts, this should be fairly easy. If you are not, I am still fine-tuning them to make sure they work for every day, in every month, and still holds the perfect font we're looking for in our output. As soon as I am sure that the scripts work for everything, so long as you set the font and position correctly, I will post them.

For now, however, I will merely describe what they do, so all you people out there who know how to write scripts, can write your own, maybe you can come up with a better one than I have.

Originally, I was calling if statements, and in each one I was using grep to search for certain letters in the "date +%A" and then acting based on that. Now, I have realized that it is much more efficient to merely call "date +%A" once, and then do if statements for each of the 7 days of the week. Based on which day it is, I pull out all the letters except the first and last, and leave enough spaces in between to account for the missing letters. The script then outputs my results (the two letters with spaces in between) to the console. This is the first script. The second script uses the same method, but instead of removing the inside letters, it removes just the first and last letters of the day, and outputs that. Make sure that you save your scripts as .scpt and that they are in a location that you can remember and access easily later on.

Now that we have the scripts, we can run them using Geektool. Go into Geektool, and place a new "Shell" anywhere on your desktop. For the code that will be executed in the shell, type "osascript /The/Location\ of\ Your/Script_File.scpt". Now you have Geektool running the script file, set the interval which you would like it to update, and change the font to Trajan Pro, with the size and color you would like. Do the same thing for the other script, and you are good to go. Like I mentioned before, I have not made the scripts absolutely perfect yet, the spacing for particular days and months still is not exact, but as soon as I know that they are working perfectly, I will post them.

Fun to be One

So it's official, well it has been for a while but now I have proof outside of the game itself, that I am the best in the world at Yaris. Yes, Yaris, that terrible free arcade game made by Toyota in order to promote their new line of cars. No matter how bad the game is, or even what it is about, how often can someone say that they are the best in the entire world at something? I think it's pretty cool.

Pub Games

So I got the Fable II Pub Games off the dashboard yesterday, thinking they were going to be games of skill/chance. Turns out they are all games of luck, where the computer basically decides if you win or not. The only one that I can find which has a little thinking involved is "Fortune's Towers." It seems that this game can be 'mastered' if one has enough patience to lose a few games and keep playing. Granted ultimately it seems as though no matter what you do, your overall gross is negative. So much for starting Fable II off with some cash ha.

Damn You Dell

It's 5:30, I want to go home, a girl comes by to pick up her laptop that has already had its motherboard replaced (by me around 2:30), but it is still not working. The only people left in the tech room are me and Dave. The girl arrives but the motherboard wasn't the problem. Between the 4 brains working on the laptop earlier, we could not figure out why the LCD wasn't displaying anything, or allowing us to transfer the image to another screen. By now I had tried all combinations of 3 different LCD screens, and two motherboards, still not working. Dave, being new, and the girl watch patiently while I begin replacing anything and everything that may be effecting the LCD. 

I tried the RAM, the HD, the LCD (3 different ones), the motherboard

 (2 different ones), the keyboard, the modem, the WLAN, the heat sync, the processor, the speaker, the fan, and the DVD ROM drive, but the computer refused to display anything on the LCD screen. 

6:30 and I have run out of options. I am surrounded by computer parts, none of which have made this computer work. The girl was very patient which helped, but here's a picture of what I had been doing. Note that this is only one of the 3 tables I was using for the repairs, and of course, my Mac is on top.

Here's the Tech Room Carnage

Fable 2

It's official, Fable 2 is coming out this month, and of course I have it pre-ordered. There are plenty of screenshots and trailers for it, but I'm not going to list them all. This game will be a great addition to my collection of games. I can't wait to play. 

Amazing, The Best Speach EVER

**Don't Read Who Said This Until You Have Read the Whole Speach**

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?

I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.

If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this Happen?" (regarding Katrina)

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school . the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.

Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards .. honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

Rob - Pwned

It was a bright and sunny day, no actually it was a freezing, raining, New England fall night, but that's besides the point.

A group of us gathered together to play some custom games, not knowing what we would get into. As I remember, it was xRobxPunk13, XL SARGE LX, Inizuka Kiba, and myself. We decided to have a little fun and play a Mongoose-only no-scope game. Little did we know that this would spell the beginning of Rob's ascension in the 'amazing shots of r3d 4uerb4ch' world. A world currently inhabited by only a few (Interista, The n00b BtrayR, Hitman1516, and especially Rec Gh0stmAn).

We were playing around, trying to get cool no-scopes from the backs of the Mongooses, when all of a sudden, from out of nowhere, Rob lost his head, giving him a rightful place as a member of the above mentioned group.

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