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Managing Downloaded TV Shows By Folder With Applescript

March 8th, 2010 Greg Smith No comments

I’m using the TV Shows Mac application to pull torrent files of TV shows and stream them to my PS3 using the PS3 Media Server application. The flow is something like this:

  • TV Shows looks for torrent files and places them in the Media Temp directory.
  • Transmission looks torrent files in the Media Temp directory, it deletes the torrent files and puts the in-process and incomplete torrent files in the Media Temp directory.
  • When Transmission is done downloading, it moves the file to the TV Shows directory.

What neither TV Shows or Transmission does is to organize shows into separate folders by show name. To achieve this I created a folder action Applescript that parses out the TV show name from the file name and creates a folder. The folder action will then move the file into the appropriate folder.

Here is the folder action that I attach to the TV Show folder. It runs every time a file is placed into the TV Shows folder. (note: This is used on Mac OS X 10.6)

–Organize TV shows by folder

–By Gregory J. Smith http://greginthedesert.net

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items

tell application “Finder”

try

set tvshowsfolder to this_folder

set thefilelist to these_items

repeat with i from 1 to number of items in thefilelist

set thefilename to name of (item i of thefilelist)

set OldDelims to AppleScript’s text item delimiters

set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to “.”

set Pasrsedfilename to text items of thefilename

set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to OldDelims

–Hopefullug there is never a TV show named SxxExx.

set LastPartOfShowName to (count of Pasrsedfilename) – 1

repeat with x from 2 to number of items in Pasrsedfilename

if (item 1 of (item x of Pasrsedfilename) is “S” and item 4 of (item x of Pasrsedfilename) is “E”) or (item x of Pasrsedfilename) is “REPACK” then

set LastPartOfShowName to x – 1

exit repeat

end if

end repeat

set OldDelims to AppleScript’s text item delimiters

set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to ” “

set TVShowName to (items 1 through LastPartOfShowName of Pasrsedfilename) as text

set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to OldDelims

log TVShowName

if not (exists folder TVShowName of tvshowsfolder) then

make new folder at tvshowsfolder with properties {name:TVShowName}

end if

move (item i of thefilelist) to ((tvshowsfolder & TVShowName) as string)

end repeat

on error theerror

display dialog “There was an error moving TV shows: ” & theerror

end try

end tell

end adding folder items to

The applescript seems to work pretty well when there is only one show that lands in the TV Shows directory. When I have manually added several files to the TV show directory, sometimes the folder actions just stop working or give a weird error.

My next project will be to automatically delete the TV shows based the last time they were viewed. The challenge here will be that the PS3 Media Server doesn’t do anything to mark a file as read and I don’t want to delete a file unless it has been watched.

Intel Wireless Display Announced At CES

January 8th, 2010 Greg Smith No comments

Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced a new product at CES called Intel Wireless Display, or Wi-Di. It consists as an adapter that plugs into a HD TV set and allows streaming video and audio from a computer. That’s it.

Other than purchasing the adapter, I would expect the only requirement would be that the computer has WiFi. I would be wrong.

Processor ONE of the following: Intel® Core™ i7-620M processor, Intel Core i5-540M processor, Intel Core i5-520M processor, Intel Core i5-430M processor, Intel Core i3-350M processor, Intel Core i5-330M processor

Chipset ONE of the following: Intel® HM57, Intel HM55, Intel QM57, Intel QS57

Graphics Intel® HD Graphics

Wireless ONE of the following: Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6200, Intel Centrino Advanced-N +WiMax 6250, Intel Centrino Ultimate N 6300

Software Intel® My WiFi Technology and Intel Wireless Display must be pre-installed and enabled

OS Windows* 7 64-bit, Home Premium, Ultimate or Professional

Not only does it require a computer with the very latest Intel chips, it has to have all Intel chips. I expect completing technologies to come out that do not have technical requirements around a specific brand of chips. Also note: not Mac compatible.

Quicken Essentials for Mac Pre-order, Still Sucks

December 18th, 2009 Greg Smith 3 comments


I have been patiently awaiting the arrival the the new Quicken for Mac product. The Unofficial Apple Web Log says the Quicken Essentials for Mac (formally Quicken Financial Life for Mac, formally Quicken for Mac) is actually, finally available for pre order. It will be released February 2010. Yet, It cannot do the one single thing that I need it to do.

3. Can I pay my bills within Quicken?
While you cannot pay bills within the product itself (“direct bill pay”), you can track your bills and make sure you have enough cash to pay them when they’re due. A few alternatives available include using Quicken Mac 2007 or using the bill pay functionality on Quicken Bill Pay.

Downloading transactions from my bank is a huge time saver, but paying them directly within a single application, using several banks, is a even bigger time saver. So much more that I’m wiling to suffer using a crappy three year old application to do so. As far as I can tell, iBank doesn’t do this.

It does every thing every other financial app on the mac does, just not as good and doesn’t include the feature that I use Quicken for the most. I wonder if I will have to wait another three years for this to get added back into the product.

Costco La Crosse Technologies Weather Station WS-2810

November 16th, 2009 Greg Smith 110 comments

IMG_0610

Costco has La Crosse Technologies weather center that appears to be the same as the La Crosse Weather Pro Center WS-2810. I couldn’t find any markings on the package at the Costco in Albuquerque other than Costco Specific.

The WS-2810 is has PC compatibility using a wireless USB dongle. I’m interested to know if it’s Mac compatible. La Crosse only supplies PC software but I’m using WeatherTracker by After Ten Software with a similar wired model I picked up last year. This wireless model looks to be improved over the wired model I have now.

Costco’s price was around $80 and the La Crosse website lists the WS-2810 at $249.99. I did not see a simialr model on Amazon’s La Crosse Technology Professional Weather Center page (Update: There are 2810’s on Amazon
, they are not labeled as such are there are currently none available).

The description from La Crosse’s website.

DDE33291-A69D-41CD-A7E2-94F84DED8CF6.jpgWS-2810
Weather Pro Center:
Wind • Rain • Weather •
PC Software
$249.99

  • Included PC Interface
  • Wind Chill, Direction and Speed
  • Solar Powered Wind Sensor
  • Rain Data
  • Forecast w/ Tendency
  • IN/OUT Temp
  • IN/OUT Humidity
  • Weather Alarms w/ Storm Warning

Dimensions:
Receiver: 4.59" x 0.94" x 7.01"
Thermo-hygro:3.13" x 3.54" x 7.45"
Rain Sensor: 5.18" dia. x 7.19"
Wind Sensor:9.84" x 5.74" x 11.11"

My next option would be the Vantage Vue wireless weather station for about $300 at Amazon which is considerably more expensive.

MacWorld Reviews Online Backup Services

September 9th, 2009 Greg Smith No comments

How convenient that MacWorld reviewed 8 online backup services for Mac. Perfect timing for me since I just dumped Mozy, my online backup service since fall of 2007.

Since using Mozy, I rarely have had to restore files. When I have it hasn’t been an issue, until recently. It was the end of July 2009 that I needed to restore a file. It took until the end of August 2009 that I was finally able to restore the file from their web based interface but could never get the native Mac restore application to work properly.

MacWorld’s review of Mozy mostly agrees with me.

PROS
Terrific initial backup selection set; simple approach for basic use.
CONS
Controls and status windows are split into too many pieces; restore software failed on one computer; backup halted due to bugs for four weeks on one computer (fixed in a subsequent release).

My next pick, which I have been testing locally for several months, is CrashPlan. It’s also MacWorld’s pick. I like it when MacWorld agrees with me.

What I like about CrashPlan is it lets you back up to your own server for free and has an inexpensive family plan.

CrashPlan has worked great until I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6. The non Mac OS X 10.6 version of CrashPlan caused my Mac to freeze. Reasonable enough I tried to upgrade to the Snow Leopard approved version. The CrashPlan installer fails to install the application citing errors of an unknown kind: “There were errors with the installation. You may want to try installing again” and “The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance”.

InstallerScreenSnapz001.jpg

At the moment I am without a offsite backup option. Hopefully CrashPlan responds to my support issues.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Available For Preorder

August 1st, 2009 Greg Smith No comments

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is available from Amazon for preorder. It is due to be released in September.

14C43263-82C7-4BEB-B5BD-E3AE4747E0A3.jpgThe single user version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is 29.99 and the Mac OS X Snow Leopard Family Pack (5-User) is 49.99

There are also box sets available that include iLife and iWorks and Snow Lepoard. The Single user Mac Box Set is 169.99 and the Mac Box Set Family Pack (5-User) is 229.99.

Finally for the really special Mac OS X Server 10.6 is 499.99.

Quicken For Mac Delayed Again

July 13th, 2009 Greg Smith 1 comment

If your like me and are a Quicken fanatic and are like me a Mac user, then you have most likely been anticipating the latest version of Quicken that was due to be released summer of 2009.

I have bad news for you. An Intuit Quicken blog post says that the next version of Quicken for Mac (Quicken Financial Life For Mac, or whatever they call it) is now slated for February of 2010. It was first supposed to come out in 2008, then 2009 and now 2010.

Intuit will release a new version of Quicken for the Mac platform in February 2010.

I don’t know why I’m having a hard time believing Intuit. They must have one programmer who is new to Mac programming working on Quicken for Mac.

The one killer feature that keeps me using Quicken 2007 is the integration with financial institutions. I can write checks and schedule transactions with all of the banks and credit cards I use and have all of my information in Quicken up to date. I almost never have to visit the individual website of any of these banks and rarely write a paper check.

There are a number of better application than Quicken for the Mac but none of them have this integration with banks that is a huge time saver.

I have attempted to sign up with Intuit to be a beta tester for years and have never been selected. They have a new program called Quicken Inner Circle that might get me closer.

NetNewsWire Update For Mac And iPhone

June 6th, 2009 Greg Smith No comments

52CBABEE-823A-4549-8FC5-7EE42C04BCFE.jpg

I’m glad Brent Simmons posted an updated on NetNewsWire for Mac and iPhone, my RSS reader of choice, on his blog at inessential.com. I was getting ready to post a pithy comment on the Newsgator forums about the lack of progress.

Brent says that NetNewsWire 3.2 for mac and NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone are in competition for release. Although he does not give a time frame for either. He describes NetNewsWire 3.2 for Mac as not a major upgrade except for the Google Reader synchronization options and NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone as a huge upgrade.

He goes into some detail about iPhone performance and NetNewsWire 4.0 for mac so if your interested I would read his post.

XTension Now Supports UPB On The Mac

June 1st, 2009 Greg Smith No comments

Universal Powerline Bus (UPB) is now available on the Mac through a private beta of XTension. This is great news as there has not been a UPB option on the Mac before. For Macintosh home automation software, UPB gives XTension a competitive advantage over Indigo and Shion who support X10 and Insteon, Thinking Home supports X10 and Wayne-Dalton’s still vaporware Z-Wave software.

UPB support is still in the early stages, visit the XTension Wiki for more information.

Thanks to Gorden Meyer.

One Fix For Aperture’s “Unsupported Image Format” Error

May 15th, 2009 Greg Smith No comments

ApertureScreenSnapz001.jpg

My Canon G9 died on me and I had to revert back to using my Canon Digital Rebel EOS (1st Generation). Last week images I started uploading into Aperture started showing as red boxes with the message “Unsupported Image Format”. This was occurring with both RAW files and JPEGs.

I checked the Apple Discussion Forums and found “Unsupported Image Format” is a common issue. There were several solutions such as restarting Aperture and rebuilding the library, none of which worked for me.

I tried other programs and found Graphic Converter would download the images with minimal problems and sometimes complain it can’t download some. Image Capture.app downloaded the images but there would be nothing in the download directory. It appeared to be a system level issue.

I realized that I added something new to my workflow a few weeks ago: a USB hub. When I connected the camera directly to the USB port of the computer the images would download just fine. It would seem that the image files were corrupt when Aperture tried to download them off the camera.