Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

Applescript is a wonderful thing. You can use it to tell pretty much any program on the Mac to do anything.

Some people say it has a natural language that makes it more approachable by non-programmers. That’s fine if you are editing someone else’s Applescript, but it can still be a challenge if you are starting from scratch, because you still have to learn the syntax. There may even be two or three ways of saying something; I don’t know this.

All I know is that it took me all of two minutes with the Applescript dictionary for Safari and a few google searches to come up with a script that I can use to perform actions in a facebook game, roughly every two minutes.

tell application "Safari"
repeat
set URL of tab 1 of window 1 to "http://example.com/"
delay (110 + (random number from -5 to 5))
end repeat
end tell

And with that, while other people are wasting their time logging in to do this action of little consequence, I can go on with the rest of my life.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Applescript, Safari, development

…and I’m glad his stage name is his real name.

The Washington Post writes about a childhood friend of mine, Raheem DeVaughn. He’s been nominated for a Grammy (the awards are this Sunday), and I hope he gets it, even though I have not been in touch with him in years.

I knew him through school and church; I saw his grandmother there most often, but I sometimes saw his mother there, as well. I have a ton of stories about him, but I think the most fitting tale to tell, considering the article’s mention of how he is constantly selling himself and other stuff, is the time he and I were 6 years old, looking around the recessed patios at my apartment building for treasure. By someone else’s patio, we found some colored pebbles - the kind that you’d find at the bottom of the fish tank. So we collected a handful of them, and tried to sell them to passersby.

Eventually, Raheem’s mother came to pick him up (maybe it was his grandmother that day - I don’t recall anymore). She bought one of the pebbles from us for a fifty-cent piece. We were so excited.

Keep on selling, Raheem.