I wrote yesterday of how I keep a now.txt file that contains the title, author and Amazon product code of the book I’m currently reading. Since I have one book per line, whatever that number of resulting lines is represents the number of books I’ve read so far this year. The -l says to count the number of lines int he results. It then filters the results through the “wc” command, which is the word count command. To produce the number of books that I’ve read so far in the current year is as simple as running the following command: grep `date ' %Y'` ~/Dropbox/Public/reading.txt | wc -lįor those who don’t speak UNIX, all this command does is searches for anything in my reading.txt file that contains the current year. And I can also use simple UNIX commands to extract additional information. I can parse it to produce my formatted reading list page. Because it is plain text, it can be easily manipulated. I’ve explained how my main reading list is a plain text file that I keep in Dropbox. Reading/writing metrics Books read this year It basically parses Yahoo’s weather for your zip code and produces a simple result. I got the latter from a repository of GeekTool scripts. I used three different simple shell scripts to produce the date/time/weather section of my desktop:Īnd for the weather: curl -silent "" | grep -E '(Current Conditions:|F//' -e 's///' -e 's///' -e 's///' -e 's///' -e 's/\(.*\) F/\1° F/' -e 's///' GeekTool allows you to run shell commands and render the results as widgets that are embedded into your desktop. This means that I never have to look further than my desktop to see what is on my to-do list. I embedded this into my desktop using GeekTool, and it updates automatically as my to-do list changes. ![]() basically, it shows you what you completed yesterday (or the last day on which you completed a task) and what is still on your list. I use todo.txt to manage my to-do list, and there is a little add on that takes your to-do list and produces a rundown. You’ll note I’ve made 3 annotations on the image. I found a cool typing paper background and an old typewriter font to give it some flavor. I use multiple “desktops” but all of them have the same basic look as above. I have a 27″ iMac so my screen is pretty big. Click on the image to see a larger version. And thanks to the fact that my to-do list is based on text files, and that I use text files for many other things, it was fairly easy to include some real-time analytics embedded into my desktop via GeekTool. I spent this afternoon giving my desktop a long-overdue makeover. It simply must be turned on, it doesn't necessarily have to be connected in case you happen to be on a hardwired connection.Every now and then, I need a change of scenery, and that includes what I see on my computer desktop.
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