Awesome

Fetch images from piccsy.com

There is no API yet, so until that arrives this script simply scrapes the overview pages of images you’ve picked.

Note that the script fetches the low-res versions. For now this serves my purpose just fine, but let me know if you make it fetch the full versions without hammering the piccsy.com server too much.

Using the script

Get the code:

git clone git://github.com/alloy/piccsy-fetcher.git
cd piccsy-fetcher
cp config.rb.sample config.rb

Now enter your username in config.rb.

From then on you can run the following command, which will keep scraping until it comes across a file that already exists:

ruby fetch.rb

Use images with the Apple TV 2 screensaver

Connect to your Apple TV 2 with ssh and issue the following commands:

cd /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppleTV.framework
mv DefaultFlowerPhotos DefaultFlowerPhotos-backup
mkdir DefaultFlowerPhotos

Then run the script which is by default configured to place the images in the DefaultFlowerPhotos, but you can change that to DefaultAnimalPhotos if you prefer.

Now when you use the Flowers screensaver it will show the piccsy.com images instead.

Note that it might well be the case that updating your Apple TV 2 removes this directory and replaces it with the actual default set again, but I haven’t done that yet. In case you want to protect yourself from this it might be a good idea to create a backup copy of the directory somewhere. I tried creating a symbolic link to the images directory outside of the system directory, but the screensaver did not pickup the images.

Finally, I had to install an older Ruby 1.9 build than the one that comes with apt-get. Install it like so:

curl -L -O http://apt.saurik.com/cydia-3.7/debs/ruby_1.9.1-p429-6_iphoneos-arm.deb
dpkg -i ruby_1.9.1-p429-6_iphoneos-arm.deb