Instead here’s an AppleScript which will take the selected message(s) and automatically create one task for each email in the “Next” focus in Things. It will then archive the mail messages and show a Growl notification. The todos in Things will get tagged with the “Reply” tag (which in my setup is a subtag of “Email”).

The script is a modified version of the one found here. I also put the script in an Automator action like described in the article so you can assign a shortcut key to it without including third party software.

1. Sign up for a new iChat screen name and add your normal user as a buddy.
2. In Transmission, open Preferences → Transfers and set the folder for incomplete files to something different than the “Default download location”.
3. Start Automator (in /Applications) and create a new workflow
4. Add the “Run AppleScript” action and paste in this code (replace YOURBUDDY with the scree name of your own iChat account:
5. Save as a plugin and choose “Folder action” in the “Save As” dialog. Select the folder you setup Transmission to use as the “Default download location”.
6. Done! The script should now send you an iChat message whenever a new file is added to the folder.

I created this setup a pretty long time ago and still use it, but these days together with a Growl notification plugin that also twitters me when the download is complete.

Just a quick note that RailsTerm, my AppleScript to automatically open the tabs (in OS X 10.5 Terminal) needed for Rails development), is bumped to version 0.3.

Since I use Passenger (mod_rails) and Passenger.prefpane for my local development the script will now auto detect the virtual hosts available on your system (in /etc/apache2/passenger_pane_vhosts/*.vhost.conf). I use the script daily and is a real time-saver for me.

RailsTerm or browse source is on GitHub.

I never really liked iTerm because of slow redrawing, ugly text anti aliasing and not reflowing text when resizing the window.

After reading some interviews on a Rails site today and saw that a lot of people are using iTerm i wanted to give one more try (because I’d really like a tabbed terminal).

It has improved a lot the latest months and seems really usable now. To make Rails development easier, I hacked together a small AppleScript what will ask you for the path to the Rails directory you want to use and then open four new tabs with Server/Mongrel, Console, Autotest and the directory itself. I thought it could be useful for others as well so here you go:

Save as an .app and run from Quicksilver:

global rails_dir

tell application "iTerm"
    activate
    set rails_dir to the text returned of (display dialog ¬
        "Please Enter the Path to Your Rails Directory" default answer ¬
        "~/Projects/" as text)

    if (count of terminal) = 0 then make new terminal

    my open_tab("Server", "&& ./script/server")
    my open_tab("Console", "&& ./script/console")
    my open_tab("Autotest", "&& autotest")
    my open_tab("Rails Directory", "")
end tell

on open_tab(title, command)
    tell application "iTerm" to tell first terminal
        launch session "Default"
        tell last session
            write text "cd " & rails_dir & command
            set name to title
        end tell
    end tell
end run_command

Just create a folder on your desktop, name it something like “Dump (temp)” and attach this Folder Action to it (Folder Actions need to be located in ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Actions).

-- Set item count as folder name.scpt
on adding folder items to this_folder
    my update_name(this_folder)
end adding folder items to

on removing folder items from this_folder
    my update_name(this_folder)
end removing folder items from

on update_name(this_folder)
    set this_name to POSIX path of this_folder
    set sh_script to do shell script "P=\"" & (POSIX path of (path to me) as string) & "\";echo ${P/%.scpt/.sh}"
    set new_name to do shell script "\"" & sh_script & "\" \"" & this_name & "\""
    tell application "Finder" to set name of this_folder to new_name
end update_name

The script needs a shell script to work (since I don’t like working with AppleScript that much). It should be named exacly as the AppleScript but with an .sh extension instead of .scpt and put in the same directory. Remember to make it executable (chmod +x "Set item count as folder name.sh").

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Set item count as folder name.sh

# Since the folder has a custom icon and therefore a `Icon?` file I
# decrease the item count by 1. Bad solution but works for now.
NUM_ITEMS=`bc <<< "$(ls "$1" | wc -l) - 1"`
if [[ $NUM_ITEMS == 0 ]]; then
    ITEMS="empty"
elif [[ $NUM_ITEMS == 1 ]]; then
    ITEMS="$NUM_ITEMS item"
else
    ITEMS="$NUM_ITEMS items"
fi
BASE=`ruby -e "puts %x(basename \"$1\").match(/(.+) \(/)"[1]`
echo "$BASE ($ITEMS)"

I first renamed the folder from the shell script but then Finder would visually move the folder one step down or left on the desktop for every update. Instead I just let the shell script generatr the new name and pass it back to the AppleScript that will rename the file as I want.

This is the second version of the Colhour as iChat picture I posted the other day. The biggest improvment is that it will show both the hours and the minutes.

There’re two versions of the script. The first one uses a Ruby script together with RMagick to create every image on the fly with the current time. But since it requires some installation of Ruby gems and other libraries, I decided to make a version with all 1440 images pregenerated (created with a small Ruby script of course) so you wont need to install the other libraries. The AppleScript still uses some Ruby, but it’s included in OS X, and should (at least) work on a basic OS X 10.4 Tiger installation. Let me know otherwise.

Instructions on how to set up a cron job to run the script every minute is in the previous post. Both the on-the-fly generated version (update-gen.scpt) and the pregenerated version (update-pregen.scpt) are included in the zip file.

This is a small AppleScript to update your iChat picture from the Colhour system that I have created with Peter. From the beginning I wanted to update it every second, but since it used 60% – 80% CPU, I decided to go with an update rate of once a minute instead. So you’ll only be able to se the current minute from the iChat picture.

To install: Download and extract somewhere on your hard drive. Edit your crontab file manually or with an app like Cronnix to run the script every minute. It should look something like this:

*/1 *   *   *   *   YourUserName    osascript ~/path/to/update.scpt

I suppose I should do this in the “correct OS X Tiger” way by using launchd instead, but that’s for next time. As well as update it to show the the full date in different squares (without seconds due to CPU usage) like the one on harald.net

Source included.

Version 0.2

Added a check in the script to see if iChat is running or not, so it wouldn’t launch iChat every minute.

This is an attempt (and my first Apple Script) to generate an html-page using Peter Ström’s E-mail system. Everything could probably been done better etc but it works for now.

Download here (source included)