The Automator

I've always been one to dislike repetitive tasks. I think it's partially because I find it hard to concentrate for a long time on tedious chores and partially because I fear getting carpel tunnel syndrome.

Just this weekend my "disability" was put to the test. I found myself going trough 8 GB of assorted files (note to self: do _not_ label zipped backups "stuff"...) trying to find a couple of pictures I wanted my girlfriend to see. I didn't know the filenames (note to self: rename the pictures I like because PIC00731 or DSC00239 aren't real _names_) or the time stamps.

Know, if I was "doing" Windows, I would pull out one of my 50+ lines VBS's, but that wouldn't get me no lollypop. I might had tried a bash-slash-perl trick to move only a couple of selected filetypes onto a new folder, but that wouldn't get me too far either since I would still need at least one more action to open all of them. And my girlfriend would leave before waiting for me to get the script right....

The solution ended up being my new favorite Mac OSX app. Automator.

Automator comes bundled with OSX 10.4 and basically it's a tool that provides you with a way to visually set up a group of actions that get a specific job done. And they call it a workflow, which pretty much sums it up.

Although you would use it to build a program, the programming background needed to use is zero, and the learning curve is neglectable.

After analyzing my specific needs, I came up with this list of necessary steps:
1 - specify the main folder;
2 - get the folder contents, repeating for each of the subfolders;
3 - filter the specified finder items by file type;
4 - decide what to do with them, in this case, I wanted to open the images in Preview so i could see them and find the ones I really needed.

And this was what I got:

Not bad huh?

By selecting and dragging the specific actions from the action list on the left to the right side pane and then changing a couple of options I was done! I saved it as an Application, runned it and 2 minutes later I was seeing the images trough Preview's Slideshow feature.

tiananmen e o "massacre" de berlin. em perspectiva

Fez esta semana anos que estudantes e outros bebados se juntaram numa manifestação sem precedentes na praça de Tiananmen para gritar pelo benfica e lutar pela democracia na china. Também fez anos a Angelina Jolie, mais merecedora de manifestações e apelos, mas muito menos interessante enquanto fenomeno social.

Em Rostock esta semana houve (uma vez mais) confrontos numa manifestação organizada como protesto anti-globalização, o que prova que quase vinte anos depois e a quase meio mundo de distancia, um pais moderno e democratico também consegue atiçar a policia sobre jovens manifestantes e tudo em nome da defesa daquilo em que acreditam. Se não é a ordem e disciplina chinesa, então que seja a democracia capitalista ocidental.


Este semana morreu um blogger, um fotografo, um amigo, um professor, um ser humano de fazer corar de humildade qualquer palerma que se ache com alguma piada ou que julgue perceber alguma coisa sobre alguma coisa.

Não há ninguem que tenha frequentado o IADE (ou que conheça alguém que tenha frequentado o IADE) que não tenha ouvido falar do Prof. Roberto.

A sua perda é irreparavel, mais de 600 comentários no seu ultimo post e a multidão no seu velório ontem á noite dão-me razão. Muitos mais nunca o esquecerão.

morabeza roberto!