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cumpstey

neil cumpstey Atlanta, United States of America
Hi, I am cumpstey and I create Conky.

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Last time active : Sep 15 2007
Joined : Mar 16 2007
CPU Temperature gDesklet

Conky by cumpstey 5 comments

gDesklets sometimes does this to me, even if the control is good. I don't know why - it seems a bit buggy sometimes in detecting controls.

In version 0.2 I've taken away dependency on the specific ICPUTemp control, in favour of the built-in generic IExec control. Hopefully you should have no problems with this.
- Sep 02 2007
Photo frame gDesklet

Conky by cumpstey 11 comments

Thanks! I'll incorporate this, and post the update soon. - Jul 29 2007
Photo frame gDesklet

Conky by cumpstey 11 comments

I tried to use 'identify'. However, the only way I could find to use it from within python was with an os.system(identify...) command. Although this displays the appropriate response in a terminal, I don't know how to use this information - what is returned is not the output from the 'identify' command, but instead the state of the terminal once the command has been carried out (0). If you know how to get the 'identify' output into python, please let me know.

I eventually hit on the idea of generating a thumbnail - which you can do without knowing the dimensions of the original. In its current state the desklet will generate a thumbnail with the required dimensions, then display this full size. This has the disadvantage of having to store the image, but the advantage that it appears to be faster to generate and display the thumbnail than to display a large original.

I hope you find it useful. ;-)
- Jul 23 2007
Photo frame gDesklet

Conky by cumpstey 11 comments

Thanks. I'll see if I can incorporate this. I intend to do a rewrite to use the newer Control system rather than the Sensor, and will try to put it in at the same time.
- Jul 16 2007
Page Scraper

Conky by cumpstey 3 comments

It's pretty frustrating that people feel the need to rate this (and other items) as 'bad' without leaving any explanation why. Please, if you think it is bad, leave a comment.

With some of the other desklets, like the fuzzy clock, I can understand that many people may not like them, or think that they are a waste of time and space - some things are just personal preference.

However, there is no denying that this is really a very useful desklet - with it you can extract virtually any information off the web, and display it in a whole host of different ways. It also works, at least on my machine, which is more than can be said for many of the desklets published on gdesklets.de.

So please, if you feel the need to rate it badly, tell me why. It doesn't take much effort, and it would make me a lot happier.
- Jul 10 2007
eBay Watcher

Conky by cumpstey 4 comments

It's pretty frustrating that people feel the need to rate this (and other items) as 'bad' without leaving any explanation why. Please, if you think it is bad, leave a comment.

What makes it expecially frustrating is that it's getting negative ratings when there isn't even an alternative. It's the only gdesklet I'm aware of to do what it does, and it's functional. Fair enough to rate it bad if there were another 5 that had the same functionality but were prettier or more customizable, but there really aren't. - Jul 10 2007
eBay Watcher

Conky by cumpstey 4 comments

It looks like gDeskelts may not have recognised the control. It seems really temperamental when installing new controls. Check in the gDesklets shell whether the control is there - you need both IFileToList and IeBayScrap. You'll (almost) certainly need to restart gDesklets for it to recognise a new control, and I have needed to reboot sometimes. And sometimes it just fails, despite the control being good.

You could try using the File > Install Package function in the shell. I don't know what structure the tarball has to have, but it's worth a go.

I hope you get it to work.

As an example of the trouble I've had with installing controls: I initially wrote the control, named it IeBayScraper, and tried to install it but it was not recognised. I then copied a working control, renamed it IeBayScrap, installed it successfully, then edited it successfully. Then, when I tried to rename this gDesklets refused to recognise it. It's a working control, but apparently only works under one name. It's pretty frustrating. I hope that the new version 0.40 is a little more reliable.
- Jun 30 2007
Page Scraper

Conky by cumpstey 3 comments

I'm confused. Today the array desklet crashes when I try to change some of the options, notably the font and the first instance. Yesterday it crashed only on the font change, until I turned my computer off, took a load of cat hair out of the fan(!), and rebooted, after which it worked perfectly. It was at this point I uploaded it. I can't understand what's going on, as no code changed between last night and this morning. I'd appreciate people's feedback as to whether it crashes on their systems too, and if so under what circumstances.

Note that this problem is only with the desklet that includes the array. I've re-added the single-line desklet to the tarball, which seems entirely stable.

Thanks in advance for your help. - Jun 20 2007
Photo frame gDesklet

Conky by cumpstey 11 comments

Thanks.

I too wanted to be able to specify a maximum dimension rather than just width, but it's not easy to do. I need to be able to read the dimensions of an image file, in order to tell whether x or y is larger, and (from what I've found googling) this seems to be a common problem that there is not a simple solution to. I could give the option of specifying either maximum height or width, but I'm still hoping to find some way of doing what I really want. If anyone knows a way to read image dimensions please let me know. - Jun 11 2007
Photo frame gDesklet

Conky by cumpstey 11 comments

I don't really understand this. It looks like it's having trouble understanding its own error reporter. Do you have gdesklets and python installed correctly? I have gdesklets 0.35.3, and python 2.5.1c1, though I had python 2.4 until a couple of days ago.

Can anyone else help? - Apr 22 2007
Photo frame gDesklet

Conky by cumpstey 11 comments

Hey, come on, if you're going to rate it badly at least tell me why.

'It's obviously not finished and shouldn't be here' perhaps? But it actually does work, and it was requested. And I've pointed out how to get round all the things I know don't work as I want them to.

'It's stupidly hard to install'? Everything in gdesklets is hard to install.

'I have to go to a different site in order to download files'? Apache seems to go into spasms with .py files, and it was the only way I could think of.

Anything else?
- Apr 17 2007
Fuzzy clock

Conky by cumpstey 4 comments

i've just followed the 'download' link, which doesn't appear to be working correctly. If I click the link I get the file opened in the browser as text, but if I try to save the target it's a .php file, which I don't want. I guess in order to download you should click the download link, copy the resulting text from you browser, paste it into a text editor, save it as ~/.gdesklets/Displays/fuzzyclock.display
then run gdesklets open ~/.gdesklets/Displays/fuzzyclock.display - Mar 18 2007
Fuzzy clock

Conky by cumpstey 4 comments

I'm still learning myself how to work gdesklets, and the documentation is by no means complete, but this is what works for me:
Save the file (which should be called fuzzyclock.display) into a convenient place (I use ~/.gdesklets/Displays/).
In a terminal enter:
gdesklets open ~/.gdesklets/Displays/fuzzyclock.display

As I say I'm pretty new to this, so if this doesn't work, assuming you've got gdesklets installed correctly, I may not be able to help. - Mar 18 2007