Are you sitting Comfortably?

2006-06-29 Computing Personal

I have been suffering from some back pain over the last year or so. A guy who performs magic has been giving me some treatment. One suggestion he made was that I should set up a reminder on my computer to sit straight, as part of my problem is due to my posture.

This is how I did it on MacOSX.

Download and install Growl.app, with it’s growlnotify command-line tool.
Find a small image you’d like the reminder to show (I use the xray of Homer’s brain).
Install the plist below in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.fiveone.comfortable.plist

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
    <plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
     <key>Label</key>
     <string>org.fiveone.comfortable</string>
     <key>Program</key>
     <string>/usr/local/bin/growlnotify</string>
     <key>ProgramArguments</key>
     <array>
      <string>/usr/local/bin/growlnotify</string>
      <string>--image</string>
      <string>~/Pictures/homersbrain.jpg</string>
      <string>-m</string>
      <string>Are you sitting Comfortably?</string>
      <string>Jeremy</string>
     </array>
     <key>RunAtLoad</key>
     <true/>
     <key>ServiceDescription</key>
     <string>Comfortable Reminder</string>
     <key>StartInterval</key>
     <integer>1200</integer>
    </dict>
    </plist>

Edit “~/Pictures/homersbrain.jpg” to be the path to your choice of image. Edit “Jeremy” to your name.

Running this from the Terminal, launches the reminder immediately.

`$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.fiveone.comfortable.plist`

This uses MacOSX’s launchd.