MetroPulse launched

posted: 2008-04-05 02:35:56 perma-link, RSS comments feed

We just launched the new MetroPulse and I'm still in the 'keep an eye on it' mode. The site looks great and will only improve as we round out the features and their staff get more content plugged in.

One of my favorite things about the MetroPulse is their photography. And one of my favorite things about my desktop computer is that it's a mac. And one of my favorite things about macs is the unix underpinnings of OS X. And one of my favorite things about OS X is that it ships with python.

I had to do something about that.

First, I created a folder under my Pictures folder called ScreenSaver.

In there I created ss.py which contained this wonderfully simple python script:

#! /usr/bin/python
import os
from urllib import URLopener
from urllib2 import urlopen
from xml.dom.minidom import parseString



rss_url = 'http://www.metropulse.com/feeds/photos/'
dst_dir = os.path.expanduser('~/Pictures/ScreenSaver/' )



fd = urlopen( rss_url )
src = fd.read()
fd.close()



dom = parseString( src )



for i,e in enumerate( dom.getElementsByTagName( 'item' ) ): 
    enclosure =  e.getElementsByTagName( 'enclosure' )[0]
    link = enclosure.getAttribute( 'url' )
    mime = enclosure.getAttribute( 'type' )
    ext = mime[ mime.index('/')+1:]
    URLopener().retrieve( link, filename="%s%s.%s" % (dst_dir,i,ext) )

Next I created a new file called sscron to run hold a schedule for running that python script:

1      1       *       *       *       /Users/gfranxman/Pictures/ScreenSaver/ss.py

( If you are playing along at home, you'll need to change the 'gfranxman' to your own user name. )

And then I marked the script executable, gave a whirl, and installed the schedule by opening the terminal executing:

$ chmod u+x ~/Pictures/ScreenSaver/ss.py
$ ~/Pictures/ScreenSaver/ss.py
$ crontab ~/Pictures/ScreenSaver/sscron

Finally, I opened the system prefereces, went to the ScreenSaver preferences and clicked 'Choose Folder'. After selecting my Pictures/ScreenSaver folder, I now a screen saver of the latest 20 photos posted to the MetroPulse website, refreshed daily and displayed with that gratuitous Ken Burns effect.