Active Desktop
Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 2:21 pm
Hi all
This morning I setup Active Desktop on my work PC to display my user stats and the UBT stats on my desktop.
With a 15 minute refresh its never really that much out of date when Dazza updates it at 5 past the hour.
It looks cool :thumbup:
Now, me being a linux guy, I wanted to do the same sort of thing in linux.
Oops, no such thing as Active Desktop in linux, well not my Fedora Core 4 anyway.
So, how do I get it to work I wondered.
1st thing would be to download the 2 images I suppose
wget http://www.ubtforum.icandothis.co.uk/st ... 663a39.png
and
wget http://www.ubtforum.icandothis.co.uk/st ... 663a39.png
will do that for me.
Next I need to combine those with my normal desktop image. Handily, theres a util called composite that works a treat, so
composite -geometry +650+480 5b9257f09ca25cb7e702caa82f663a39.png /usr/share/wallpapers/KDE34.png KDE34-2.png
and
composite -geometry +500+600 UBT-5b9257f09ca25cb7e702caa82f663a39.png KDE34-2.png KDE34-3.png
combines all 3 images into a single new image.
All that lot goes into a script that cron runs.
I can now change my desktop from a single image to a slideshow pointing at the new combined image and set it to refresh every 15 minutes and its done.
If anybody is interested in the script files I've done then gimme a shout.
Or even if you want a HOWTO foreither WinXP or Linux
This morning I setup Active Desktop on my work PC to display my user stats and the UBT stats on my desktop.
With a 15 minute refresh its never really that much out of date when Dazza updates it at 5 past the hour.
It looks cool :thumbup:
Now, me being a linux guy, I wanted to do the same sort of thing in linux.
Oops, no such thing as Active Desktop in linux, well not my Fedora Core 4 anyway.
So, how do I get it to work I wondered.
1st thing would be to download the 2 images I suppose
wget http://www.ubtforum.icandothis.co.uk/st ... 663a39.png
and
wget http://www.ubtforum.icandothis.co.uk/st ... 663a39.png
will do that for me.
Next I need to combine those with my normal desktop image. Handily, theres a util called composite that works a treat, so
composite -geometry +650+480 5b9257f09ca25cb7e702caa82f663a39.png /usr/share/wallpapers/KDE34.png KDE34-2.png
and
composite -geometry +500+600 UBT-5b9257f09ca25cb7e702caa82f663a39.png KDE34-2.png KDE34-3.png
combines all 3 images into a single new image.
All that lot goes into a script that cron runs.
I can now change my desktop from a single image to a slideshow pointing at the new combined image and set it to refresh every 15 minutes and its done.
If anybody is interested in the script files I've done then gimme a shout.
Or even if you want a HOWTO foreither WinXP or Linux
I thought I'd done something original there, oh well.
