RidingTheClutch.com

I found a neat app this evening called GeekTool for your Mac. It lets you add a few neat things to your desktop:

1. the contents of a plain text file (like a log)
2. the output of any command run in the terminal
3. an image from the local drive or the web

There are a few sample desktops on the site. Here’s a really tightly integrated example.

For those that use git here’s a neat way to keep an eye on the status of a directory. Add the following command as a new “shell” entry in GeekTool (all on one line):

["\n/opt/local/bin/git --git-dir=/Users/rob/Sites/my_project/.git \n--work-tree=/Users/rob/Sites/my_project status\n"]

In my case I installed git via Macports so I’m using /opt/local/bin/git to call git. Do a which git and change the above script to use that location. Since GeekTool calls to the terminal from who-knows-where, we’re giving git the full path to our project. After you add the command to GeekTool hit tab to enable it and then F11 to move all your windows out of the way. You should now see the output of the command at the upper left of your desktop. You can move it, or drag the handle in the lower right corner to resize.

I changed my font size and color to make it a little more readable on my desktop. I’ve got uptime and top -l1 -u -o cpu -S, as well as cpu, bandwidth and io graphs from my Linode vps.