Trixology
General Category => General Computing/Macintosh => Topic started by: Bull Winkus on July 01, 2014, 09:21:33 PM
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The arrival of gages on WeatherCat is a milestone event, and worth making a little fuss over. I was already hurting for screen space and had acquired a Thunderbolt Display to handle some of the chart display duties. Still, It seemed as though I needed even more screen space. With the new Cat gages, I had to reinvent my presentation dynamics. I hadn't used spaces much, but was thrust into it by this new feature of the Cat, because I needed more ? well ? space. What I settled on is two spaces on the iMac's desktop, one for other program use and the other for just the gages. All of my graphs went to 3 spaces on Display 2 (Thunderbolt Display). The 1st space is all 1 Day Charts. The 2nd space is all 7 Day Charts, and the 3rd space is everything above in duration.
After puzzling over how to properly display my measured variables for both my use and visitors to see and understand, I settled on this arrangement. That was after spending almost a week with all the temperatures in the same dial gage under different pointers. Switching to multiple gages afforded more visibility through the use of daily high and low pointers for each temperature.
Please use this thread to share your own adaptation to this major change in the Cat.
(http://bullwinkus.smugmug.com/Weather/Misc-Shares/i-bGtQbhr/0/O/Screen%20Shot%202014-07-01%20at%206.14.12%20PM.png)
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Hi Herb
here what I am running:
cheers
[cheers1]
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That's pretty amazing, Randall! Looks like you got just about everything covered. Reminds me of my days as an Industrial Instrument Technician, and a certain CO2 compressor I used to have to perform instrument calibrations on.
I suppose you are using spaces for your charts as well?
Herb
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Hi Herb, Randall, and WeatherCat fans,
Well, . . . . I would like to show you my gauges . . . but my WeatherCat space is such a mess! :-[ I still haven't done anything since adding gauges as Stu added features. The one thought I wanted to share was my attempt to make as compact and readable a gauge as I could come up with. Here is an example in the Blancy-Criddle ET gauge I made:
(http://www.canebas.org/misc/Voila_images/Blancy-Criddle%20ET%20custom%20gauge.jpg)
Here are the settings I used to produce it:
(http://www.canebas.org/misc/Voila_images/Blancy-Criddle%20ET%20gauge%20settings%202014-07-02.jpg)
With those settings, I could squeeze the gauges down to about 200 pixels. Anything smaller was impossible to read.
Sorry if spoils the party a little, but I find the custom gauges much harder to read than even the standard gauge console if you make the gauges small enough so that you can keep then all in one space and only have 1920x1200 pixels of display space. Right now I'm running 16 gauges and because I keep the graphs on the same space this virtual desktop is horribly cluttered.
It appears that there is nothing Stu can do, but it sure would be great if we could spread all the WeatherCat windows across 2 or 3 spaces. Alas, I don't think there are many applications that have this sort of need, so Apple isn't likely to upgrade OS X to accommodate this.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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Here are a couple of test pages I did when the private beta version first added them. I haven't fiddled with them since, so they are a bit dated as to testing the full list of options. )Steel Series are simply images for comparison, and not current data.)
http://www.avon-weather.com//gaugetest.html
http://www.avon-weather.com//gaugetest2.html
Steve
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Here is my wee set based on Edouard's synthetic channel tracking for when to open and close the windows. How did I ever handle this duty without a WeatherCat email reminder?
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So excuse my ignorance, but these gauges I assume are done with version 2, right? I'm assuming they're customizable? I'm assuming you can select which ones to show?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
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Hi Mtn.Marty. Yes. The gauges are part of the WeatherCat version being beta tested at this time. So far, it is working very well!
The gauges are as optional as the charts and even more customizable, since you can opt to fix the scale on a gauge to what you desire. Use one pointer or all four. Select pointer styles, colors and parameters such as highest, lowest or average.
Try the download. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Herb
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Edouard, I started using multiple spaces with version 2.0. WeatherCat uses 1 desktop on monitor 1, and 4 desktops on monitor 2. All the monitor 2 desktops are showing charts. The first one is 1 day charts. The second is 7 day charts. The third is 28 day charts and the forth is annual charts. That way I can keep the gauges and calendar clock window visible on monitor 1 while shuffling through the four pages of charts on monitor 2.
As for restarts, it's not too bad. They do all end up on the same page, but if you drag each one to the icon for its desktop, it goes right back to the originally designated screen position. Takes less than 2 minutes. Annoying? Yes. But easily overcome.
Herb
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Howdy Herb and WeatherCat desktop real-estate expanders,
As for restarts, it's not too bad. They do all end up on the same page, but if you drag each one to the icon for its desktop, it goes right back to the originally designated screen position. Takes less than 2 minutes. Annoying? Yes. But easily overcome.
Huh? How are you doing this drag? (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/LWC_forum/Custom_emoticons/question_mark_confused.gif) The only way I know to move things in between spaces is to use F8 function key to reveal all the spaces and then manually drag each window one at a time. How are you doing this? Can you point me to some OS X documentation that I've overlooked?
Signed, . . . . very curious!! (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/LWC_forum/Custom_emoticons/thinking_idea.gif)
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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In Mission Control's System Preferences, I assigned Control UpArrow to enter the Spaces (Mission Control) window. (Note: There is also all those pesky option enabler radio buttons. Choose the ones that apply to your situation.) To move a window from one desktop to another, even across monitors, first select that desktop where the errant Finder window lies. If OS X is in Mission Control at the time you select a Spaces desktop, OS X will go back to normal Finder mode. Control UpArrow to re-enter Mission Control. Your Spaces desktop that you just selected will be the active space. Any Finder window in the middle of the screen can be dragged, from the active Spaces desktop, to the icon for any other desktop. It will fall at the same screen coordinates it had, but in the new Spaces desktop.
Since a restart places all gages and windows on the same desktop, just start from there and remove all that doesn't belong, dragging and dropping on the Spaces thumbnail for the desktop where it does belong. This only takes about a minute.
I'm still not sure how you are doing it, if not the same way I am. This area of development needs some language expert to come up with a better vocabulary for the various elements. It is difficult to describe, since so many of the nouns are used interchangeably for different things. I had to go back and edit several times for greater specificity. I hope I found and eliminated all the ambiguity.
Herb
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Hi Herb and fellow WeatherCat "stubborn" OS X "your way" users. . . . .
In Mission Control's System Preferences
;) . . . . .
Mission Control!?!?! I don't need no stinking Mission Control!!!! >:(
. . . . . (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/LWC_forum/Custom_emoticons/question_mark_confused.gif) . . . . Oh, wait a minute! . . . . :-[
. . . . . [biggrin]
Hmm, I think I see the problem here. You see, as I have confessed elsewhere on this forum, I'm still plenty sore about Apple's crummy implementation of spaces. To make things closer to what I'm used to, I've been using a shareware program called TotalSpaces2:
http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/ (http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/)
It has a number of nice features that help me visualize how my various spaces are organized. I still would much prefer a pager, but this is as good as it gets on Mavericks. However, TotalSpaces2 doesn't have any way to move a window into exactly the same position in another space.
For the moment, I'll probably try to keep WeatherCat in one space. I already have 9 (actually 10 with the OS 10.6 virtual machine) spaces and each space has a different kind of work activity assigned to it. However, I'm running an enhanced version of the Finder called Path Finder:
http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/ (http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/)
In 5 of these 9 spaces, I have a very elaborately configured Path Finder window, with a whole mess of tabs and other custom settings. These 5 windows have to be relocated at every restart and it is a pain right now. I'll try using Mission Control to see if I can avoid first moving the windows to their correct space and then having to go to that space and get the window correctly tucked into its appropriate position in the space.
Thanks Herb for the tip! [tup]
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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Ooooo? Edouard! Sounds like you've got a case of runaway complexity. Better nip it! It can spread like wild fire ?
I tried a useful Finder enhancement that mainly gave me tabbed window headers, but then Mavericks usurped the feature, making the 3rd party program somewhat useless. I kept it for a few weeks, but have since deleted it. I'm not fond of Finder mods. They tend to muck things up around OS X's major releases. Good luck with that this Fall!
Best,
Herb
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Howdy Herb and WeatherCat power-hungry Mac users! (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/LWC_forum/Custom_emoticons/car_3gears.gif)
Ooooo? Edouard! Sounds like you've got a case of runaway complexity. Better nip it! It can spread like wild fire ?
You are . . . . Soooo . . . right! Alas it is too late . . . I'm addicted!! [goofy]
I tried a useful Finder enhancement that mainly gave me tabbed window headers, but then Mavericks usurped the feature, making the 3rd party program somewhat useless. I kept it for a few weeks, but have since deleted it. I'm not fond of Finder mods. They tend to muck things up around OS X's major releases.
Well, . . . . . when I upgraded to Mavericks I gave the Apple version of a tabs in the Finder window a try. Let us say it is a bit . . . impoverished! [rolleyes2] Alas, Path Finder doesn't seem to be getting the attention it used to get, so I fear you are correct, the writing is on the wall. Still, it is another example of Apple stealing ideas from others and not even getting the best ideas put together into powerful but user-friendly package. Apple has definitely gotten too big for its britches. (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/LWC_forum/Custom_emoticons/pout.gif)
Good luck with that this Fall!
*Heavy sigh*, I'm still running some programs discontinued many years ago. We'll see what damage Yosemite does to my computing ecosystem. I'll burn (err, cross) that bridge when I get to it! [biggrin]
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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Here is my wee set based on Edouard's synthetic channel tracking for when to open and close the windows. How did I ever handle this duty without a WeatherCat email reminder?
[rockon] Blick, I'm having a little difficulty figuring out what you're doing there. Could you give a little explanation? [tup]
I'm not using any growler alerts, but here's my synthetic channel gage and temperatures to perform the same function. For me, it's just a delta temperature, outside minus inside, so when it goes negative, that means it's colder outside than inside. But, I'm running AC all the time now. My inside is relatively stable. I still run AC with cool ambient temperatures, because of the high humidity here this time of year. Plus, we have gnat swarms, and those little buggers can go through screen doors easily. I've got an attic fan that would be great in the Spring, except for gnats getting in. Even in full AC mode, I still get a few gnats just from coming and going.
Herb
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Howdy Herb and WeatherCat indoor climate engineers,
I'm not using any growler alerts, but here's my synthetic channel gage and temperatures to perform the same function. For me, it's just a delta temperature, outside minus inside, so when it goes negative, that means it's colder outside than inside. But, I'm running AC all the time now. My inside is relatively stable. I still run AC with cool ambient temperatures, because of the high humidity here this time of year. Plus, we have gnat swarms, and those little buggers can go through screen doors easily. I've got an attic fan that would be great in the Spring, except for gnats getting in. Even in full AC mode, I still get a few gnats just from coming and going.
Your climate is very different from mine, but I'm realizing there is a subtle skill in using a central air conditioner to best advantage. For most of my life I never had this capability, so I have to learn all this anew. Since we are in a coastal region with a lot of onshore flow most of the time, there simply aren't that many opportunities to decide how long to run the A/C. However, I'm learning that even if the outside temperature is cooler than inside, that doesn't remotely mean that you should switch from A/C to the attic fan. Bugs is definitely one consideration. Another is cooling efficiency. The air conditioner is far more efficient at removing heat than a small temperature differential. Since sleeping is difficult above a certain temperature, there may be no way to cool the house down fast enough with outside air to avoid disturbing your sleep patterns. Central air conditioning has one more advantage that seems trite until you lose sleep over it. With the A/C running, the windows are closed and rooms are quiet. Trying to sleep with the windows open means everything from wild critters to passing cars can once more disturb your sleep.
I used to be an "expert" at running the fans to cool the house without A/C, but I'm realizing quick that I'm will to pay a little extra for a good night's sleep!! [bed]
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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Ooooo? Edouard! Sounds like you've got a case of runaway complexity. Better nip it! It can spread like wild fire ?
Ha ha! Herb, I love your sense of humor. I too used a third-party finder until Mavericks.
Blick, I'm having a little difficulty figuring out what you're doing there. Could you give a little explanation?
Herb, I like your one gauge solution; it's simpler than mine. I used two gauges and reversed the formula so my two gauges do not go below 0. I did it that way mainly because I was enamored with the new gauges options. I'm not using Growler either. I just have an alert set up to email me. I live up in the mountains so I don't have A/C. I want an email to remind me when to open and close the windows. Where I live, it's simple; open up when the outside temperature is lower than inside. I have no traffic but I do have a beautiful mountain stream about a hundred yards downhill and I love listening to that when I open up the windows in the evening.
I'm thinking about Growler, but I don't know anything about Apple Scripts and I don't want to pester Edouard and Randall to death to teach me.
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Howdy Blick and WeatherCat interior climate engineers,
I'm thinking about Growler, but I don't know anything about Apple Scripts and I don't want to pester Edouard and Randall to death to teach me.
Actually you don't need to know a thing about AppleScripts to use Growl and the two AppleScripts that I supply with the synthetic channel. All you need to do is get hold of Growl. Here is the link for to the Mac App Store for Growl:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/growl/id467939042?mt=12 (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/growl/id467939042?mt=12)
Apple claims that Growl is not available in the US store - huh? . . . (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/LWC_forum/Custom_emoticons/question_mark_confused.gif) I hope it is just a glitch. Growl costs $4 these days.
Then my AppleScripts will just run. You can double-click them to check. You can configure Growl to forward the messages to the OS X notifications manager if you prefer, but the OS X system doesn't like the long-winded messages of my Growl notifications - it truncates them. I guess Apple is increasing an organization of "few words" . . . . . [biggrin]
Once the AppleScripts do what you want, just have them launched as the action of your WeatherCat Custom Alert. Then instead of getting an email (or in addition to) you'll get a little notification on your desktop saying when to open or close the windows.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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Two of the reviews for Growl state that it does not work in Mavericks. I can't remember what you are running Edouard, but I know Randall is running Mavericks. Any insight Randall?
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Didn't notice that, Blick! And, I already gave my $4. Have to give it a try anyway now. I launched it on my non-WeatherCat computer to poke around. Will play with it later.
Found a program called Dropzone 3, while fiddling with the App Store. Half price for the rest of this week at ? [ta da!] ? $4. Has actionable items, like applescripts. Is a launch bar for applications. Looks quite useful. Just set it up. I like it. Don't know about the growl like features yet. Need to convince Edouard to cough up $4 and look at it. Found this on their website concerning sandboxing.
EDIT: Oops! It was $4.99 for the app. Who looks at anything on the right side of the decimal?
Dropzone 3 Sandboxing
There are two slightly different versions of Dropzone 3 available. One is the version available on the Mac App Store which runs sandboxed and the other is the non-Mac App Store version available for download direct from our site which runs unsandboxed.
The sandboxed version available on the Mac App Store cannot write to arbitrary directories or run AppleScript. Therefore actions that do either of these things will not work under the sandboxed version.
If you'd like to run actions that are incompatible with sandboxing, there's a simple workaround: Simply download the non-Mac App Store version of Dropzone 3 from the link below. When you open this version it will detect that you already purchased Dropzone 3 on the Mac App Store and you will be automatically registered. It will also migrate your settings to this version. Note that you have to run the Mac App Store version at least once before running the non-Mac App Store version for this automatic registration and migration of settings to happen.
https://aptonic.com/dropzone3/sandboxing.php
What do you think, Blick, Edouard?
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Two of the reviews for Growl state that it does not work in Mavericks.
I've been using Growl with Mavericks since it launched launched, and it has worked flawlessly with Edouard's AppleScripts.
Steve
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Hi Blick
As Steve has mention it works just fine on Mavericks
And for the reviews I don't work well with Maverick either
cheers
[cheers1]
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Howdy Blick, Herb, Steve, Randall, and WeatherCat fans,
Two of the reviews for Growl state that it does not work in Mavericks. I can't remember what you are running Edouard, but I know Randall is running Mavericks. Any insight Randall?
Hmm, can't run Growl on OS X Mavericks? . . . . . (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/LWC_forum/Custom_emoticons/question_mark_confused.gif)
Does this answer your question!!
(http://www.canebas.org/misc/Voila_images/Growl%20running%20on%20OS%2010.9.4%202014-07-14.jpg)
I don't know who is having problems with Growl, but like Steve and Randall, what I downloaded from the App Store (2.1.3) is working fine.
Found a program called Dropzone 3, while fiddling with the App Store. Half price for the rest of this week at ? [ta da!] ? $4. Has actionable items, like applescripts. Is a launch bar for applications. Looks quite useful. Just set it up. I like it. Don't know about the growl like features yet. Need to convince Edouard to cough up $4 and look at it.
. . . . .
What do you think, Blick, Edouard?
Okay, I took a quick look at the documentation, but I don't understand how it would replace AppleScripts or Growl. I see that it claims to have some support for Twitter, that would definitely be useful since our present access to Twitter is broken. Still I don't see anything for automation. Am I missing something?
Looks to me if it can be used, you would want to purchase this app directly from the developer to avoid the sandbox limitations.
If you want to expand the number of things that you can send notifications for you might have a look at OmniGrowl:
http://www.woodenbrain.com/products/omnigrowl/omnigrowl.html (http://www.woodenbrain.com/products/omnigrowl/omnigrowl.html)
It provides a bridge from all sorts of services to Growl. However, even if I did buy it, I ultimately never found it useful enough to keep using it. Still, others might find the sort of services that it interfaces to more interesting than I did.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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Haven't had time to play with either Dropzone 3 or Growl, yet. Spent all day in the dentist's chair (well, 4 hrs anyway). Root canal and a new crown. Got visitors from out of town, tomorrow.
I did get a chance to download and review Edouard's window notification script. Nice work, Edouard! I think I can use that and adapt it to my, "Sure is a pretty day!" notification action, perhaps followed after a few more degrees of outside temperature drop by my, "Are you daft?! Go outside and play!" script.
Dropzone 3 description page.
https://aptonic.com/dropzone3/
Dropzone 3 Actions web page (Dropzone 3 uses Ruby.)
https://github.com/aptonic/dropzone3-actions/blob/master/README.md#dropzone-3-api
RubyMonk - Interactive Ruby Tutorials
https://rubymonk.com
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Ha ha ! Love your scripts. However, shouldn't you be in bed this time of night?
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Does this answer your question!!
HA HA! Thank you Steve, Randall and Edouard. I am now an official believer. And unlike Randall, I run fine on Mavericks.
Now that we are over that hurdle, before I can bring myself to invest US$4 I have one more question. What about Growl-type notification on iOS, in the rare event that I can pull myself away from WeatherCat and go outside for some actual weather?
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(http://bullwinkus.smugmug.com/Weather/Misc-Shares/i-T9dnrbp/0/O/Screen%20Shot%202014-07-16%20at%202.07.07%20AM.png)
Sure was a pretty day, Tuesday!
[biggrin] OK. I'm going, Blick! G'nite all!
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Hi Herb and WeatherCat tinkerers,
Dropzone 3 Actions web page (Dropzone 3 uses Ruby.)
I made a quick pass over those docs and I didn't see any way to connect it to Weathercat. As far as I can tell, all you can do is create complex actions that are started by dragging something on to the Dropzone or when you click on the zone. That's a perfectly reasonable thing for this program to do, but that doesn't help us automate anything with respect to WeatherCat. At least that's all I see here.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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Hi Blick and WeatherCat iOS fans,
Now that we are over that hurdle, before I can bring myself to invest US$4 I have one more question. What about Growl-type notification on iOS, in the rare event that I can pull myself away from WeatherCat and go outside for some actual weather?
Actually there is a Growl client for iOS called Prowl:
http://www.prowlapp.com/ (http://www.prowlapp.com/)
It looks like a very interesting iOS tool. Alas, I've never had a chance to install and play with it. I'll try to shoe-horn some time between . . . . all the other things I need to juggle! . . . . (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/LWC_forum/Custom_emoticons/juggle.gif)
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]