Recent Posts

Looking for translators

For as long as I have been writing software for Apple Macs I have had occasional, but regular requests that I translate the applications I write. Much to my embarrassment, I have usually evaded such requests due to my worries over the time and complexity I expected to get into, not to mention I really only have a grasp on one language. With a (soon to be released) version of Dates to iCal I'd like to break with that and hope to be able to release it in as many languages as required - but I need your help.

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Toggle OSX screen saver password lock

In OSX it is you can set it so the screen saver asks for a password to unlock. The normal way to set this is to go to System Preferences > Security Pane > General Tab and check the tick box. Here is a quick Applescript to toggle the screen saver password setting. I wrote this in response to this request on Apple Dicsussions. There are also another couple of responses there that use Systems Events GUI scripting to open System Preferences. This script used the UNIX command 'defaults' to set the preferences .plist for the screen saver directly without opening any windows.

UPDATED: Dates to iCal and MobileMe beta

UPDATED: A couple of weeks after writing this a user of Dates to iCal wrote to tell me that Dates to iCal is now working with the MobileMe beta.

Apple have recently opened up their MobileMe beta and I have had reports that Dates to iCal is not working with the new beta version of MobileMe that uses CalDAV. I'm working on this and hope to have a solution as soon as possible. See below how to use Dates to iCal with the MobileMe beta.

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Easily switch to login window

A while ago I came back to my home computer to find I had not logged out and things not as I left them. There were files on the Desktop with names like 'sdfgasfgafasz' and things moved or disappeared. It took this happening a couple of times before I connected it to my my three year old daughter and resolved to do something about it.

In OSX there are many ways ways to protect your login when you leave the computer, logging out, using a screen saver with a password etc. These all tend to have a shortcut (like ⌘⇧Q to log out of the current user or hot corners) but none of these quite fitted my usage.

List Events and Todos of Calendars

I like how Applescript allows for quick solutions to what otherwise would be tricky problems to solve. Take the total number of events in an iCal calendar, this is a question asked recently on Apple Discussions. Counting them by hand would be a bore (especially with 40,000), but with Applescript it's as easy as:

tell application "iCal" to count events of calendars
(gives the result of 1279 currently for me.)

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Older Scripts

Applescript icon

Applescripts I have written that others may be interested in.

These are mainly to do with Apple iCal, Mail and Address Book. All are free to download, but if you use any of these scripts regularly I'd appreciate a donation. Also, I'd love to hear any feedback you have on these.

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