How to use a tagged photostream from Flickr as a screensaver in Ubuntu Hardy

This information is fairly hard to find for some reason, so I’ve documented the steps here. Should take less than 10 minutes to set up hopefully, any questions please post in the comments and I will help.

1. Install Webilder – you will need this repository:
deb http://debian.websterwood.com/ feisty main
There is no repo for hardy; the feisty one worked for me. More info on this here, also featured on lifehacker.
2. Open Webilder Desktop (ALT+F2, “webilder_desktop” if it does not appear in your menu) and go to Tools -> Preferences to add an album for your required photos. I used the tags “plane” and “aircraft”, and sorted by interestingness. Do Tools -> Download Photos.
3. Add the folder to your xscreensaver settings file with this command (don’t worry if the file does not exist yet):
gedit ~/.xscreensaver
and add this line, replacing “album Name” with whatever you put into Webilder
imageDirectory: ~/.webilder/Collection/"Album Name"
4. Go to System -> Preferences -> Screensaver, and set the Screensaver theme to ‘GLSlideshow’. You should see photos from your chosen stream.

Posted by akaDruid on 02 Jul 2008 at 09:07 am
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RescueTime

RescueTime is one of those killer webapps that makes you wonder how you’ve been using a computer and the internet for 12 years without ever finding something like it. It’s a pseudo time tracking tool, that makes guesses at what you are doing based on what application or website you are using, and does not require any actual input from you.

It’s more of a niche killer app than say, gmail or facebook, but I find it kind of the opposite of lot of websites, in that it really encourages me not to spend to much time fiddling with it, or any other site for that matter. Getting more minutes tagged ‘work’ has actually become a useful challenge, and I don’t find myself tempted to cheat yet either. Whereas a lot of things I’ve tried to boost my attention tend to be nagging type things, which are easy to ignore, especially once you get used to them. The fact that it works without any attention from me means it will actually get used in the long term, and since I’m a data geek, I’m hoping for some real interesting data in the longer term.

More pluses include an API and a helpful team (I found a bug and the ceo guy responded personally to my email, very quickly too).

All in all, RescueTime is definitely my top find for June.

Posted by akaDruid on 01 Jul 2008 at 11:07 am
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