

Show HN: Inspiration to your desktop background – Powered by RubyMotion - atjonasnielsen
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id838419930

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fredoliveira
Hey Jonas: interesting app. I can't use a white desktop background, though.

As probably most of the people here at HN, I often spend 12+ hours per day
around screens, so anything that contributes to my eyes getting more tired is
a bad idea. White really isn't the way to go.

Perhaps adding the possibility to choose a hex color for the background, or
making the app add the quotes to the user's existing background is where you
should go next. Best of luck with sales.

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thestepafter
I agree, you definitely need to be able to change colors. Even better if you
could overlay an image.

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atjonasnielsen
Thanks guys, that's great feedback! I'll add choice of colour in the next
version.

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sdfjkl
You can do this better with Geektool/Nerdtool, that way it'll be an overlay of
your actual desktop background (so you can have things other than plain white)
and you can of course supply your own quotes.

    
    
      $ /usr/local/plan9/bin/fortune
      Don't look back -- something may be gaining on you.  -Satchel Paige.

~~~
atjonasnielsen
Interesting! Thanks!

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huseyinkeles
it could be a little nice free app. Doesn't look like something I can pay
$2.99 for. (don't tell me that I already pay $5 for coffee)

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kranner
Interesting, just this morning I wrote a python script using
[https://github.com/alloy/terminal-
notifier](https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier) and
[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pync](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pync) to do
something similar, except by sending OS X notifications to myself. I made some
resolutions recently and I needed to remind myself of them regularly so I'd
stick to them. So my 'app' chooses one from a list (randomly) and every 1-3
hours (randomly) sends a notification.

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atjonasnielsen
Nice idea. How's it working for you?

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kranner
Pretty good but it's only been one day.

I started by copying these out by hand every morning. It sounds cheesy, but it
does give me the chance to reflect on them which may work better in the long
run.

Or I could keep both strategies. It's stuff like "Get up if you don't feel
like working. Don't guilt yourself into trying to work." so it does help if I
can see it in the middle of the workday.

~~~
atjonasnielsen
Actually, wouldn't it be possible to make a web app to trigger that?
[https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-
notifi...](https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-
notifications/)

~~~
kranner
Possibly. It might depend on users registering to receive notifications via
Safari, though I'm not sure about this.

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normloman
No thanks, I'll stick to those crappy posters that say "Achievement" or
"Creativity". Or maybe the cat hanging off the branch.

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lotsofmangos
I've never before seen someone try and monetise a MOTD feature.

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stevelaz
Before any flame war starts, I'd like to say that my comment below is not
meant to be offensive.

This type of thing would only happen in the OSX app store. It's interesting
what a market will pay for depending on where/who you're selling to.

~~~
lotsofmangos
I was just thinking that given osx desktop background already has a feature to
cycle through a directory of images, if you have imagemagick and curl then to
do something that generates backgrounds from online MOTD services could be
done in one line of bash.

~~~
bemmu
How would you solve choosing the right font size though? It should be such
that the longest line perfectly fits the width.

~~~
lotsofmangos
generate an imagemagick text label at a certain font size, then pipe it to
identify -size , pull the width out of that and then use the result to
calculate the required font size which you then use in a second textlabel

edit - or just generate a large text label to start with, then scale it to
whatever is required

