ss3_gokoux

Dammit, I set my alarm too damn early and now I have too much free time before going in to work. I wish I could trust myself to only sleep for another five to ten minutes, but I'm sure I'm good for another five to ten hours.

Let me explain my alarm, since the few geeks out there will appreciate it. Every one else will think I'm weird (I know Ember does).

I use iCal to track my work schedule daily and I gave it an alarm. The alarm opens up a small Automator workflow I wrote which does the following:

• Turns off mute
• Sets iTunes' volume to zero
• Runs the AppleScript:

  on run
  
       tell application "iTunes" to play playlist "Party Shuffle"
  
  end run

• And then slowly, a few steps at a time, raises iTunes' volume from zero to maximum. Like a cheap fade in effect.

So to summarize, my computer speakers are kept on all night, and before I go to sleep I mute the system's volume (so emails, IMs, etc. won't wake me up at 4 am). Then when iCal's alarm goes off, it runs the workflow which turns the volume back on, sets iTunes' volume to zero, makes iTunes start playing, and then slowly raises the volume so a nice metal tune doesn't start super loud shaking Ember and I out of bed. And when I eventually do crawl over Ember (probably waking her up and pissing her off), smack the spacebar (assuming iTunes is frontmost), and eventually just shut off my speakers (when iTunes is not frontmost and I type a ton of spaces into an IM). And then I'll probably fall back asleep only to wake up a minute later freaking out because I think I'm running late.

So this is a nice little example of my iCal + Automator + AppleScript + iTunes integration. (Thank you, Apple, for making my waking up ritual more geeky.)

This one is one of the simpler Automator workflows I use daily. I have another one which changes my monitor's idle sleep timer and plays/pauses iTunes.

Oh, I nearly forgot! If I plan on taking a shower in the morning, iCal's alarm is set to go off 85 minutes before I should be at work. If I took a shower the night prior, I'll change the alarm timer to something like 65 minutes, so I get those extra twenty minutes of stupid dreams that I'll never remember.

Last night Ember and I showered and then went to bed. I forgot to change my iCal alarm, so that's why I'm awake with twenty extra minutes. Usually I have plenty of time to read webcomics with my breakfast, but twenty additional minutes is just too much.

Shit, I think someone just woke up and is about to hijack the bathroom. Time to go.