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Snipeye

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 29, 2008
26
0
I'm fairly new to automator, haven't really used it that much (ever) and I was wonder if there is a way to, and if so how to, do this using automator.

1. Go to the astronomy picture of the day (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html)

2. Go to the larger version of the picture.

3. Download that picture.

4. Set it as my desktop.

5. (not entirely necessary) automatically do it every day.

Is there anyway to do this at all? I'm willing to use something other than automator if necessary, I'm just trying to stay simple.
 
Here ya go

Not the best ever, but I whipped it up in 2 seconds.

Opens up a browser of course.

Maybe i'll make a better one tomorrow. Just double click the app every time you want it to run. I'll see about having it run every day at a specified time.

Download: http://kttns.org/1ytcw
 
Fix

It leaves a file or two in your downloads folder, but they are really small and don't matter. Also, I will be fixing that little unimportant bug tomorrow.
 
Wow, thank you so much. It works excellently, I just hope future pictures have better resolution.

EDIT - Today, (second day i tried it) it looked like it worked, but it didn't set the picture it downloaded as the desktop... is there a reason for this?

EDIT - I found the problem. On the "get specified finder files," it expects a different kind of file - once the first image jpeg is deleted, it wants a blank file, or something like that - the preview changes from a preview icon to a blank icon, then it can't find the right one. It will delete it, though. How can we fix this?

EDIT - i got it working by having the program search for an image where the images are stored, then setting that as desktop. Last question - how did you get it to display your name, etc, on startup?
 
Now I've realized that sometimes, then image might be the "wrong" direction for my computer. I was wondering if there was a way to have automator flip the picture left or right (don't care) if it was taller than it was wide. An applescript would work, too. PLEASE HELP!

*Crap - sorry for the double post.
 
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