Some code to set the astronomy picture of the day as your desktop background... have phun :-)
#!/usr/bin/env python
# Nasa's Astronomy Picture of the Day
# Desktop Background Changer (requires python 2.5)
# Written by: Jaco Wiese
# You are free to do whatever you wish with this code. Have phun!
# Save old picture to this location
# Make sure you created the directory with correct permissions
# For Windows you can add a scheduled task for each day
# and for Linux you can just dump the script in /etc/cron.daily
# Windows Location
# For Some odd reason windows requires the desktop size
SaveLocation = "apod"
width = 1024
height = 768
# Linux Location - Uncomment next line to use on linux
#SaveLocation = "/home/snowy/Apod/astropix"
# There seems to be no easy way to set the desktop background in windows
# You have to set desktop.html as your background
# If you know of a better solution, let me know!
# ---------------------------------------------------------
import urllib
import re
import os
ServerLink = "http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/"
try:
htmldata = urllib.urlopen(ServerLink + "astropix.html").read()
except:
print "Cannot access internet."
exit(0)
b = re.search("
", htmldata)
a = re.search("\".*\"", htmldata[b.start():b.end()])
if (a == None or b == None):
print "No picture available today."
exit(0)
FileLink = a.group().strip("\"");
FileName = SaveLocation + "/" + FileLink.split("/")[2];
if (not os.path.exists(SaveLocation)):
print "Please create directory: " + SaveLocation
exit(0)
try:
fileurl = urllib.urlopen(ServerLink + FileLink)
f = open(FileName, "wb")
f.write(fileurl.read())
f.close()
except:
print "Cannot Download or create File. Please check folder permissions."
exit(0)
# There seems to be no easy way to set the desktop background in windows
# You have to set desktop.html as your background
# If you know of a better solution, let me know!
if (os.name == "nt"):
hf = open("desktop.html", "wt")
hf.write("")
hf.write("")
hf.write(" ")
hf.write("")
hf.write("")
hf.write("")
hf.write("![](\"")
")
hf.write("")
hf.write("")
hf.close()
exit(0)
# Linux - Gnome (Currently not running kde)
if (os.name == "posix"):
os.system("gconftool-2 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename " + FileName)
exit(0)
