What is it ?

Aperture iPhoto Sync is an applescript which will sync your Aperture projects/albums to iPhoto, thereby making them available to the rest of iLife apps for you to use. (Yes I know that you can drag and drop Aperture images & create iPhoto albums, but a script sure beats doing this manually!) It syncs masters by creating links in iPhoto library to save space.. and (optionally) syncs up modified versions by exporting them using Aperture’s export presets.

Features

• Syncs Masters without copying them – save space !
• Syncs modified versions by exporting them from Aperture using selected presets.
• Will optionally delete photos from iPhoto albums before syncing – ensuring an exact replica.
• Syncs intelligently – ignores ‘Rejects’ and syncs only ‘Select’ of a stack to avoid clutter.
• Uses the library that you have configured in Aperture as the the library it imports from.

First run….

The first time it is run, it will prompt you for certain defaults for it to use henceforth. These values include :

• Whether to Export or Ignore modified photos or ‘versions’ from Aperture while syncing. Exporting modified photos to iPhoto will take up more space since duplicates of the existing versions in Aperture will be made. This also takes up more time to sync.
• If exporting, the Aperture Export preset that will be used by aperture to export the photos.
• Whether to delete photos from existing iPhoto albums (with the same name as the Aperture project/album you are syncing up) before adding photos to it. Selecting this option increases sync time by a bit, but will ensure that the iPhoto album is a replica of your Aperture album/project.

These preferences are stored in the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.devarshi.ApertureiPhotoSync.plist. To change these preferences, either edit the file using plist editor, or delete it. If the script does not find the file, it will prompt you again for the preferences.

The sync….

Using the script is pretty straightforward.

• When run, the script will present you with a list of folders and projects from Aperture that you may choose from. Currently, this script allows you to select only one folder/project at this level.
• Upon selecting a project/folder, the script will present you with a list of projects/albums contained within it, from which you may select one or more.
• If the first selection does not contain any projects/albums, the script will check to see if it contains any images itself. If so, the script shall create an album in iPhoto with the name of the selected project in Aperture and import those images into that album according to the defaults selected earlier .
• If, in step 2, you were presented with and selected one/more sub-projects/sub-albums, the script will then proceed to create albums in iPhoto with the same names as the selected sub-projects/sub-albums and import the images into those albums according to the defaults selected earlier.

A few tips…

• If you choose to “Export” modified images from Aperture, do note that this takes up some amount of time during which, apparently, nothing seems to be happening… This is because Aperture performs a background export of the images… If you don’t believe me, check your CPU usage ! .
• The “Export” of modified images creates temporary photos. After each project/album is imported into iPhoto (copies of these temporary photos are made in the iPhoto library), these temporary photos will be moved to trash. So, if you plan to ‘export’ a lot of photos, make sure you clean up your trash periodically !

A few things to note…

• As of version 2.3, the script needs your Aperture library to have atleast one stack for it to run correctly. It will fail in between if you dont. While I work on this problem, for the time being, please create atleast one stack in your library.
• I’ve done some basic tests with Aperture 2.1.2 and iPhoto ‘09. (Do not use this version script for Aperture versions prior to 2.0 – use an older version).
• Please note that this script is still in alpha stage… so please backup your libraries before attempting to use this script.
• I currently do not have a lot of time to test this script extensively, and so am posting it here hoping that it’ll be useful to others, and that I can use your feedback to fix any issues…
  
• However, if you run into any problems, or if you have any comments, please feel free to get in touch with me or leave me a comment here.

Update History

v2.3:

- Minor update : Fixed the failure in the script if you had “~” in your Aperture Library path.

v2.2:
- Minor update : Fixed preference file creation failure when starting up without an existing
one

v2.0 :
- Updated to work with Aperture 2.x and iPhoto. Does not work with previous
Aperture versions anymore. Use v0.3 of the script for pre 2.x Aperture versions

So.. if you are a GTD fan, and use a Mac, you may have been enticed into using OmniFocus (an awesome GTD app, by the way..). While the folks over at Omnigroup have provided a nice set of scripts to add tasks using Quicksilver, it’s still not that straightforward to add Emails from Entourage to OmniFocus….

Many folks have put together nice scripts (see this thread,  on the Omnigroup forums) that will take a set of emails currently selected in Entourage and add them to the OmniFocus Inbox… However, if you use Quicksilver, I’ve extended these scripts so that they will automatically add these emails into the appropriate Project and Context, therby saving you the time and effort of having to go in and clean up your inbox later on..

Installing the script

• Copy the script to /Users/<your username>/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions/ folder. (Create the folder if it doesnt exist)
• Restart Quicksilver.
• Open Quicksilver preferences. Go to Preferences -> Actions and make sure that ‘Entourage to Omnifocus’ is selected.
• 

  The picture shows the Quicksilver preferences window and how to activate the new Entourage to Omnifocus action

Using the script

• Select one or more emails in Entourage.
• Bring up the Quicksilver window, hit “.”  (period) and enter text in this format : ” > Project @ Context ” without the quotes, ofcourse. Note that this part is an integration from the Quicksilver Omnifocus script that comes with Omnifocus, and so supports the different features of that script (such as creating the project/context in Omnifocus if one does not exist already and trying to match the first few characters of the project/context with the any that already exist).
• Hit Tab and enter the name of this script (Entourage To Omnifocus)
• Once the script comes up, hit enter. This will cause the selected emails to be added to the specified Project and Context with their subject as the task title. The email body as well as a link to the actual email will be attached to the notes section of the task.

Ofcourse – this is, by no means, a completely indigenous script. I took the two scripts available (Quicksilver-Omnifocus script & Entourage – Omnifocus script), made some modifications and here we go…  Have fun!

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

The RSS Visualizer Screen Saver in Mac OS X 10.4/10.5 is a pretty nifty one… However, in my opinion (and in that of so many others !), it still lacks some functionality – especially being able to specify multiple feeds from which to grab news items… After having searched around on the web for something that would do, I finally bit the bullet and opened up Quartz Composer. The result ? MultiRSS Visualizer…

Ok… so once I opened up the stock RSS Visualizer in Quartz Composer, some playing around was all that it took to understand the basics of how it operates. The great thing about Quartz Composer is that you can pretty much do everything by simply interconnecting blocks. Anyone with even a little bit of programming background shouldnt have any problem understanding how QC works. Being both an EE and Computer Science engineer, it was pretty easy to look at it from the perspective of digital circuit design – putting together blocks, interconnecting them with signals carrying data ! So much for my thoughts.. on to the actual process..

The only needed addition to the stock RSS visualizer is the ability to change URLs periodically. That and a bit more work to add a randomization element. The first was solved by parsing a comma separated list of URLs to produce a list, and then stepping through that list one at a time (with a time interval equal to NumNewsItems * Time to display one news item) – and passing each URL to the existing processing blocks. 

It took a little bit more time to implement the randomization – using which you can select a different feed to start the screensaver each time. An initial solution was to use the Random patch – but it took one run for me to realize that because this was a pseudo random generator – with no way to specify a starting seed – this approach would never work ! The solution ? Add in a system time patch which can then be used to really generate a random starting index for the feeds. 

That was it.. You can open up the screen saver in QC and look at it in more detail. Enjoy !

The screenshot below shows the preferences panel for the screensaver. The RSS feeds to be displayed by the screensaver are configured as a comma separated list in the field RSSURLList seen below.

Screenshot of the System preferences pane for MultiRSS Visualizer

Greek mythology speaks of the 9 muses.. the sources of inspiration for artists and scientists.. “The Nth muse” is my attempt to acknowledge the fact that there are more, many more than 9 of these.. That one can (and probably should) learn to derive inspiration from a myriad of people, places and happenings around oneself.. That whenever you feel you’ve run out of ideas, try searching for the one tiny little thought that escapes you…; the one glimpse of sheer ingenuity that’s within your reach…; the one muse no one has ever thought of… the “n”th muse !

As I stand back and try to reflect on what I just said, I cant help but think about what prompted me to do this in the first place… Somehow, the idea of sharing my thoughts with the world at large has never appealed to me.. And yet – here I am.. why.. ? Maybe because the act of putting your thoughts down in a coherent fashion lends itself to the yet-more-thought-provoking act of introspection.. Maybe because it forces you to give shape to what has previously always been an amorphous glob of unexplored ideas and feelings… and maybe, in that process, it helps you discover muses you never knew were right there !