Some background info…
I could never stay motivated to workout. I’d always start and go strong for 2 weeks and then stop for months. So I found this iPhone app called Streaks. It tracks how often you do something. You can setup a calendar for each thing you want to track. The thing I wanted to tackle was pushups. Each day I did them i’d mark an X in my Streaks app. Today I’m up to 29 days in a row! That’s pretty much unheard of for me, so the app works wonders. You can even track things every other day, every week, and every month.

There was one incident that made me want to write about this app. I’ve got terrible allergies. My nose was running non-stop, eyes were red and itchy, head hurt, had a tissue stuffed up my nose to block the snot (pretty picture right?). I finally went to bed, got all cozy around 1:30 am and set my alarm for the next day on my iPhone. I noticed the streaks application and saw that my streak was gone because I forgot to do pushups that day. I had a 28 day streak at this point and didn’t wanna break it. So at 2 in the morning, feeling like complete trash and looking like a drug addict, I did my pushups and went to bed. If it wasn’t for that app, there was absolutely no way I was getting up.

This is a screenshot of their interface. Nice and simple.

The app is $2.99 right now, they also have a free version that only allows one calendar to track. Definitely something to check out for those that have a hard time keeping something going.

Thanks Streaks developers!

Tint2 is a a fully customizable taskbar that can add some more eyecandy to your linux desktop. It features custom color and transparency on fonts, icons, borders and background. It also has a clock you can setup.

To get it, download it from this link. Save it to your desktop and open up a terminal. Type in the following commands to extract and install tint2 (your folders may be different if you downloaded a different version)

cd Desktop/
tar -xvf tint2-0.7-beta1.tar.gz
cd tint2-0.7-beta1.tar.gz/
cd src/
make
sudo make install

After the install, I tried to run it in my terminal and got this error…

tint2: error while loading shared libraries: libImlib2.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This can be fixed by installing the libimlib2 library. You can look for it in synaptic or type

sudo apt-get install libimlib2

Now you need to play with the config file to get your desired look. The default config file should be under /etc/xdg/tint2/tint2rc. I was going for a transparent style with each open task as a floating element. Here is my tint2rc with a screenshot under it (tint2 is the bottom panel).

#---------------------------------------------
# TINT CONFIG FILE
#---------------------------------------------
 
#---------------------------------------------
# PANEL
#---------------------------------------------
panel_mode = multi_monitor
panel_monitor = 1
panel_position = bottom center
panel_size = 900 28
panel_margin = 15 0
panel_padding = 9 3
font_shadow = 0
 
#---------------------------------------------
# PANEL BACKGROUND AND BORDER
#---------------------------------------------
panel_rounded = 7
panel_border_width = 1
panel_background_color = #000000 60
panel_border_color = #ffffff 18
 
#---------------------------------------------
# TASKS
#---------------------------------------------
task_text_centered = 1
task_width = 120
task_margin = 2
task_padding = 6
task_icon_size = 13
task_font = sans 7
task_font_color = #ffffff 70
task_active_font_color = #ffffff 85
 
#---------------------------------------------
# TASK BACKGROUND AND BORDER
#---------------------------------------------
task_rounded = 5
task_background_color = #ffffff 30
task_active_background_color = #ffffff 50
task_border_width = 0
task_border_color = #ffffff 18
task_active_border_color = #ffffff 70
 
#---------------------------------------------
# CLOCK
#---------------------------------------------
time1_format = %H:%M
time1_font = sans 8
time2_format = %A %d %B
time2_font = sans 6
clock_font_color = #ffffff 76
 
#---------------------------------------------
# MOUSE ACTION ON TASK
#---------------------------------------------
mouse_middle = none
mouse_right = close
mouse_scroll_up = toggle
mouse_scroll_down = iconify

Screenshot:

Hope this helps make your desktop look even more incredible

Thanks to python’s easy to use IMAP library this is a piece of cake. The script should work with any IMAP mail server. I have tested it with my Gmail and Drexel University accounts. Your mail server info should be publicly available. Google has theirs under the gmail settings >> imap/pop3 tab (You may have to enable imap under this tab). Best bet is to search google.

The script shows you the total number of messages in your inbox and the number that are unread.

To get it working edit your .conkyrc file. Add the following line under the TEXT section. Change the path to where your script is

${execi 60 python /path/to/script/imap.py}

This’ll make obsessive email checking much easier…no need to login manually

Screenshot

Download IMAP.py here (Right click and Save link as…)

This morning I decided to write a script to stick the deal in my conky. Having it sit on my desktop means one less thing to manually check in my browser

If you don’t know what conky is here’s my conky tutorial
I used the same method as I do in the rest of my scripts…set flags around our data, extract the info between the flags and shoot it out to conky.

To get it working add this line to your .conkyrc under the TEXT section

${execi 12000 python /path/to/script/woot.py}

Now you’ll know what’s on Woot as soon as you turn on your computer

Screenshot

Download woot.py here (Right click and Save link as…)

If you don’t know what conky is click here for my conky tutorial.

To get it working, download the script and add the following line to your .conkyrc

${execi 120 python /path/to/script/stocks.py stock1 stock2 stock3}

Replace 120 with your interval, use your path to the script, and change the stocks to actual stock quotes.
Example:

{execi 120 python /home/bhavik/scripts/stocks.py goog msft aapl}

Hope it helps any of the linux users out there that also like to trade =)

Changes:
3/5/09 – Removed decimal conversion to float…
If the market was closed the value was N/A.
Since you can’t convert a string to float it was getting errors.
Should be good now.

Screenshot

Download Stocks.py Here (Right click and Save link as…)