mtcodex

I’ve had enough. If you read my previous post on self improvement then you may have noticed I waste a lot of time, and consequently a lot of my life, stitting at a desk in front of a computer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, unless there is no good reason for me to be.

I also said I wasn’t making any resolutions this year. I fibbed. My one resolution is to find as many excuses and ways possible to not use my computer. One way includes writing, as in pen and paper, most of my blog posts. It’s a nice record for me to keep and I can stick things in it to remind me what i’ve actually been doing as the year progresses.

I’m going to try and read a book instead of surfing the web, get out of my room to write posts, cook something or go for a run instead of playing a game for an hour.

I must admit, there is one thing that keeps me tethered to the computer, especially in the evenings. Megan. We talk almost every day, but from time to time one of us gets held up for whatever reason and the other is waiting. To stop this reason from keeping me in my room with the computer, I wrote my first AppleScript which is executed everytime Megan comes online.

tell application "Adium" 
    if my status type = away then
        tell application "Skype" 
            activate
            set TheSMS to (word 2 of (send command ("CREATE SMS OUTGOING " & "+44##########") script name "Notifier") as text)
            send command (("SET SMS " & TheSMS & " BODY " & "It looks like Megan has popped online") as string) script name "Notifier" 
            send command (("ALTER SMS " & TheSMS & " SEND") as string) script name "Notifier" 
        end tell
    end if
end tell

If my status message is an away message, then it’ll send me a text (SMS message) to let me know that Megan’s popped online. Now I know it could probably be made better by someone that knows what they’re doing, e.g. pulling the name from Adium and getting my phone number from the address book. But it works for my purposes.

If you want to try it out then you’ll need the latest version of Skype Beta for Mac with SkypeOut and Adium

Edit the AppleScript above with your phone number and the name of whoever it is you’re checking. Then in Adium, right click on the name of the person you want to attach the event to, click ‘Get Info’, select the ‘Events’ tab, select ‘Contact signs on’, click the ‘+’ button, choose ‘Run an Applescript’ as the Action, and then find the file of the AppleScript you just saved. phew!