Proxi Blog

Time Machine Goodies

Casey — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:27:14 +0000

Apple introduced an the Time Machine backup software in Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard. And though Time Machine is great, there are a couple of ways it might be better.

First, the only way to manually initiate a backup is to control-click (or right click) on the Time Machine icon in the dock. Well, thanks to a tip from Jonathan Wight, we know that you can launch a helper app: /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper to force Time Machine to backup whenever you like. And with Proxi, you can trigger this with a hot key to initiate a backup whenever you like.

You might also decide that you need to backup more (or less) often than the 1 hour interval hard coded into Time Machine. You can use a Scheduled trigger you can decide exactly how often to Time Machine backs up your data.

Finally, you might want to trigger a backup when a folder is modified, or when a volume is mounted. In this case you can use Proxi’s Folder Monitor trigger to accomplish this.

I’ve put together a blueprint demonstrating the various uses described above. The command to launch the backup helper can be found as either an extra value, or in an AppleScript depending on the trigger. Included triggers are:

Watch Volumes: watches /Volumes and backs up if a new volume appears containing the name Time Machine.
Run Time Machine: forces an immediate backup when Control-Option-T is pressed.
Half hour backup: backup every half hour.

Download the blueprint and modify as needed to suit your tastes. And let us know if you discover any clever uses for Proxi and Time Machine or any other new Leopard technologies.

Disclaimer: These examples are for illustrative purposes. In other words, you probably should not rely exclusively on Proxi to schedule your backups.

Proxi 1.5.1 released

Casey — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:44:35 +0000

It looks like Proxi v1.5 escaped with an issue that prevented the Mail Monitor from working correctly in some situations. Version 1.5.1 should correct that problem.

link: Proxi v1.5.1

Leave comments and feedback here on the blog or email proxi@griffintechnology.com

Proxi v1.5 released

Casey — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:09:13 +0000

Version 1.5 of Proxi has been released with the following changes:

Changes to make Proxi a better Mac OS citizen such as:
- UI changes which fit better with established conventions especially in Leopard.
- Moved ProxiLib.framework into the application itself.
- Moved ProxiCore.bundle and skype.bundle into the application itself.
Added Application Monitor trigger.
Reduced startup time and memory usage.
Added an alert to the Key Press task when selecting a “Press” style stroke.
Added icons to trigger and task menus.
Added “game mode” to PowerMate trigger
PowerMate trigger icons now indicate type of trigger
Added editing commands to trigger and task menus
Added Duplicate function for triggers and tasks
Skype should no longer ask permission to allow Proxi to work with it on every launch.
Added ability to set Skype mood in Skype task
Bubble text color now defaults to black.
Fixed a problem where unknown components in a blueprint could cause data loss.
Other minor changes and fixes.

link: Proxi v1.5

Please direct comments and feedback to proxi@griffintechnology.com

Proxi Beta v1.5 (2A88)

Casey — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:44:57 +0000

A new release of Proxi is in the works. Initially version 1.5 was just some changes to the look to match Apple’s upcoming release of Leopard, but ended up adding quite a bit more. The release notes so far:

Changes to make Proxi a better Mac OS citizen such as:
- UI changes which fit better with established conventions especially in Leopard.
- Moved ProxiLib.framework into the application itself.
- Moved ProxiCore.bundle and skype.bundle into the application itself.
Added Application Monitor trigger.
Reduced startup time and memory usage.
Added an alert to the Key Press task when selecting a “Press” style stroke.
Added icons to trigger and task menus.
Added “game mode” to PowerMate trigger
PowerMate trigger icons now indicate type of trigger
Added editing commands to trigger and task menus
Added Duplicate function for triggers and tasks
Skype should no longer ask permission to allow Proxi to work with it on every launch.
Added ability to set Skype mood in Skype task
Bubble text color now defaults to black.
Fixed a problem where unknown components in a blueprint could cause data loss.
Other minor changes and fixes.

Worry not that Proxi still sports a brushed metal look under Mac OS X 10.4. It will look much better when running under Leopard. Honest. Also, If you’ve developed plugins for Proxi, note that ProxiLib.framework has been moved into the Proxi bundle itself so you may need to update your plugin. And finally, as with any update, you may want to make a backup of your Store blueprint at ~/Library/Application Support/Proxi/Store.proxibp

Please direct feedback to proxi@griffintechnology.com or leave a comment here on the blog.

link: Proxi v1.5 (2A88)

Trigger chains with AppleScript

Casey — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:41:18 +0000

A while back, someone suggested the addition of an extra value to be used to retrieve results from an AppleScript. This is a fine idea and I’m going to take a close look at it in a future release, but the suggestion was made as a solution to a problem that could be solved by chaining triggers together using AppleScript.

Let me show you what I mean. Suppose you wanted a Hotkey that displayed track information for the current track in iTunes when pressed. You’d use a Hotkey Monitor trigger, which is simple enough. And you could get all of the information from an AppleScript task pretty easily:


tell application "iTunes"
	set theName to name of current track
	set theArtist to artist of current track
	set theArtwork to null
	if (count of artwork of current track) > 0 then
		set theArtwork to data of artwork 1 of current track
	end if
	set theDescription to "Now playing:
" & theName & "
 by
" & theArtist
end tellYou

But what to do with it? This is where the AppleScript Trigger comes in. Not only can this trigger be used to poke Proxi from iCal, Folder Actions, or anything else that can execute an AppleScript, but it can be used to have Proxi trigger itself. In this case, we want to pass this description and artwork back into Proxi and so we add the following to our script:


	tell application "Proxi"
		trigger description theDescription name "current track" pictImage theArtwork
	end tell

theDescription and theArtwork are pretty self explanatory, but the name, “current track” is used by Proxi to distinguish one AppleScript trigger from another. So next we need to add an AppleScript trigger to Proxi and set the AppleScript trigger name to “current track”. Then we can add a Screen Message task and display the Image and Description values we got from the AppleScript trigger.

You can use this technique to string together as many triggers as you need. You could even use a dialog to prompt for information and put together a bit of logic by filtering on the return value. And yes you can create a recursive trigger if you want but it doesn’t take much to overflow the stack in AppleScript.

A blueprint demonstrating the current iTunes track hotkey I described above is available here.

Browser fixed

Casey — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:49:54 +0000

The Blueprint Browser should be working again. Hat tip to the IT crew for tracking this one down for me. Also, keep an eye open for some new entrants in the browser. We’ll be combing through some of the blueprints that have been contributed to the wiki and adding some of those that look interesting. Or, if you don’t want to wait, head over there and take a look now. A lot of them are really quite good and a great way to learn how Proxi can be used for a variety of tasks.

Browser outage

Casey — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:40:23 +0000

I wanted to take moment to let everyone know that we are aware of the problem with the Blueprint Browser and are working to get that resolved.

Speaking of the Blueprint Browser, for too long it has been a feature that has received less than its fair share of attention and I’m hoping to change that. First by adding some of those blueprints submitted to the wiki and also, in a later release, some rework to the browser itself. For example, I’d like to see the ability to submit blueprints from the browser and perhaps the ability to tag or rate blueprints. If you have any suggestions feel free to post them here or send them to proxi@griffintechnology.com.

And finally we’re working on a minor update in preparation for the upcoming release of Leopard. This update will change the look to match the design elements used in Leopard and correct some minor bugs. Again if you have suggestions, please send them along.

Proxi can do that too!

Casey — Tue, 01 May 2007 20:05:21 +0000

I ran across a post on Daring Fireball today which described using a perl script along with ThisService to search Google for selected text and replace that text with a link to first result returned by Google. Very handy, but I wanted to achieve the same functionality using Proxi.

Proxi supports shell script execution, but only as extra values (for now) so that makes it a little trickier. If you don’t care how much trickier, you can skip the rest of this and simply grab the blueprint.

We have to first break down the blueprint into several stages:

Put the selected text on the clipboard.
Construct a script using the text we’ve selected. Display the query.
Execute the script, place the results in the clipboard, paste and display the results.

More specifically:

Stage 0 - A Control-Shift-L Hotkey Monitor trigger starts the ball rolling. It executes two tasks, a Command-C Key Press to initiate a copy, then an AppleScript which waits a short while to allow the clipboard to export after which it asks Proxi to handle an AppleScript trigger named “query stage 1″.

Stage 1 - Is an AppleScript trigger continues the process. This trigger will fire when Proxi is triggered via AppleScript with the correct name. In this case the name it’s looking for is “query stage 1″. The trigger places the contents of the clipboard into a value named “Clipboard” and executes a Screen Message task to display the search term. Next it write our a perl script using the clipboard contents and the Write to File task. Finally, it kicks off the last stage with another AppleScript task named “query stage 2″.

Stage 2 - An AppleScript trigger which matches “query stage 2″. When fired, it executes the perl script we made in Stage 1 and places the results in an extra value named “ScriptResults”. ScriptResults is displayed in a Screen Message task and loaded onto the clipboard using a Load Clipboard task. Finally, Command-V (paste) is simulated to insert the results in place of the selected text.

This is a great little exercise to demonstrate how to construct complex triggers using Proxi. It also demonstrates some of the shortcomings of Proxi that I’d like to address in future revisions. The ability to execute a script as a task and also modify values during task execution would eliminate the need to break this down into three separate triggers. In the meantime, I hope this helped.

The Proxi wiki has a download link as well as additional information on the Insert Link Blueprint.

Proxi v1.4

Casey — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:39:06 +0000

link: Proxi v1.4

Version 1.4 delivers the following additions and improvements:

Added Post Tweet task (Twitter).
Added Twitter Monitor trigger.
Added Bubbles task to the core functionality. Note: existing Bubbles users should uninstall the stand alone version.
Added ability to limit the maximum number of bubbles on screen.
Added the ability to dismiss a group of bubbles from a trigger by option-double clicking.
Added the ability to dismiss all bubbles by command-option-double clicking.
Added ability to regonize and link URLs in Screen Messages and Bubbles.
Fixed crashing radio SHARK tuner control.
Fixed a problem with the AirClick trigger introduced in Mac OS X 10.4.9

G15 task v0.3

Casey — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:32:51 +0000

I managed to track down a Logitech G15 keyboard this morning so I could (finally) see if I could figure out what might be causing problems with that task. I believe I have located the problem and posted an update. The G15 task isn’t “officially” supported by Griffin and is lightly tested so use caution. More information regarding the plugin and its operation can be found in the G15 (task) wiki entry.