blog@cliffdweller

Here's a link to an AppleScript that I wrote to wake me up when I was traveling. When I was in Norway last summer, I realized after I got there that even though I had my PowerBook, I had neglected to bring an alarm clock. That's only important if you have to be places on time, which I did, so I sat down and devised this scheme in about 2 minutes. It's been updated a little bit since then, to use the Party Shuffle playlist.

Here's how it works for Mac OS X users:

1. download the script here
2. unstuff it
3. double click on it to make sure it works
   it will launch a tune from your party shuffle playlist, that's all it does, then it quits.
4. put it somewhere on your hard drive where you can find it
5. open iCal and make an event for the time you want it to start playing a tune
6. click on the "alarm" option in the event info drawer
7. choose "open file" from that list
8. set the file to open to be the applescript you downloaded and unstuffed above
9. voila, you have a clock set to launch iTunes now.

Here's how it works for Windows and Linux Users:

1. Go to the Apple Store
2. Buy a Mac
3. Follow the directions above

there are a couple of gotchas:

sometimes when I download music and the quit itunes, the next time iTunes launches it puts up a MODAL (thanks Apple for going against everything Mac OS X is supposed to be about) DIALOG that will not allow iTunes to play until you click OK. Suck suck suck. it's not a bad thing until you set itunes to wake you up in the morning and it can't play because of the old-style os 9-ish modal dialog.

sometimes when I use autofill on my iPod shuffle, iTunes tries to put too many songs on the shuffle, and it puts up a (you guessed it) MODAL DIALOG that keeps iTunes from playing music until you click OK. Again, if you're sitting right there it doesn't matter but if you plug the iPod Shuffle in and then go to bed while it syncs, iTunes won't wake you up in the morning because it will be waiting for you to click OK.

Finally, for this to work, you have to leave your Mac on and awake. It won't wake the Mac from sleep or boot it or anything. That was another OS 9 feature that hasn't returned to OS X yet (any hopes for Tiger?) – you could set your mac to boot at a specific time so you could turn it off, have it boot in the morning and then start playing a tune. We'll see if Tiger has caught up on that front in a couple of weeks.

Enjoy, and don't blame me if it doesn't work on your machine. It's AppleScript, and I saved it in wide-open mode, so you can open it with your favorite script editor and edit away.