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Conky inspires

For quite sometime, I had been trying to make my ubuntu desktop more and more cool. First I stumbled upon macubuntu script. This is single no-hassle script that will make a Mac blush. And now, I found something more interesting - Conky. I was aware of conky earlier but not in the same incarnation. See the attached screenshot of my desktop. Isn't cool?



In case you are wondering, conky provides the nice looking sidebar on the desktop. This sidebar is heavily customizable in terms of what you fit in there. The desktop is inspired by this link. I did some customizations of my own and made a few things working. In doing so, I realized how easy it is build upon this nifty utility called conky.

Here is How:
Install the programs

 sudo apt-get install conky hddtemp lm-sensors python-feedparser

Download Scripts
Download the scripts that I used from here. Extract these files into ~/bin/conky directory. I generally keep my programs in ~/bin but feel free to customize the location. You would need to change in couple of files. So, watch for gotchas. I modified these files from the original link as some of the stuff was not working for me.

Scripts folder

.Conkyrc
Use the .conkyrc file from this zip and save it in your home directory as .conkyrc. Then you can run conky on the command line and should be able to get the basic conky stuff. Use ALT+F2 or terminal to fire conky.

Gmail
Change the username and password in .conkyrc file. Of course, do not do if you are concerned about security as the password in this file is plaintext.



Weather
This is the coolest part. In file "pogodynka.sh", look for "kod=USWI0254" and replace the USWI0254 part with your location code from weather.yahoo.com. Here is how .. head to weather.yahoo.com and search for your city. View the page source in html and look for your code in a string looking like below at the top of the page...

title="Franklin - Wisconsin Weather"  
href="http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=USWI0254&u=f">


Battery
My laptop required me to use "BAT1" instead of "BAT0". This change should be done in .conkyrc file.

Startup
Conky created unnecessary borders and remained on top of the windows when it is added to start on login. This is fixed by using this small script instead of directly calling conky binary. Add the script "conky_on_startup.sh" to session startup. This is done from the menu System --> Preferences --> Startup Programs.

That is it. Happy working.

Credits to below blog where from I took the base for my customization.
http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/09/27/gmail-weather-beauty-right-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/
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