You know you love your XP¹. I love mine. I cherish it dearly. Nourish it, sing to it, play with it. People say it's unimportant. They say it doesn't matter. They say I shouldn't care. Fools. They never listen to me when I tell them it's important. Never listen. So I'll teach them, I'll teach them all. They'll see. They'll see.

Monks is that you? Lord knows it's me. Assign me some arbitrary number and tell me what little hoops to jump through to make it go up and lordy, I am there. Surely, I'm not alone.

But who has the time to constantly monitor their XP? We're talking about opening up a browser (if one isn't already open), typing in a URL (unless it's bookmarked), and then waiting an excruciating amount of time for a reply to finally know if your cool new node about using perl for spying on your neighbor's dog has gone up. Who has the time? I sure don't.

Now, you fancy winders users have your XPFixation -- The Essential Windows XP Whoring Tool. Or you have your xluke_repwalker.pl or your RSS Feeds For XP Whores And Stats Junkies or http://tinymicros.com/pm/ or your xstatswhore.pl, I think all of which are thanks to our friends at [id://jcwren|Twitching Monks Software Productions].

But there are downsides, oh yes. XPFixation is Windows only. The other ones require commands and executing and stuff. And I ask you - if I can't take the time to open my browser, how can you think I can take the time to type in a command somewhere? Hmmm? Answer me that one, smart guy.

So what are us statistically inclined Macintosh loving MacOS X users to do? Why, we'll now use PM XP Junkie, of course! Fire it up, and a cute little number pops up in your menu bar, constantly reminding you of and taunting you about your XP level. Your XP goes up? The number goes up! Nice and simple. Always there, always watching, so comforting...soothing.

Source is included, but it's 88.6% objective-c. Alas, camelbones doesn't seem to allow me to create an NSStatusItem, at least not a visible one, unless I screwed something up. A request is in to the author, but I just couldn't wait that long. Internally, there's an itty bitty perl script that grabs your total XP out of the XML feed sugested by jdporter below. You can even run that one on the command line, if you're some user of a lesser OS.

Why, literally as I sit here typing this, it just went up by 1. Joy!

FAQ

What whizbang features are going to go in there next?

No clue. Maybe I'll replace the primitive little scraper that just gets your level with something more elaborate that gets all node changes. But that requires additional, you know, effort.

What about using one of the existing perl XP scripts?

Maybe I'll do that, too. I didn't bother to look and see if such a thing existed until very late in the game, since it absolutely had to be written yesterday (Oh god!), and by that point I was just too lazy.

Can I just swap in a different fetcher script?

Please do. All source code is included. Distributed under the Artistic License.

But what about insert name of existing XP monitoring tool on OS X?

Clearly, I couldn't find it.

I've got a blue screen of death. What do I do now?

You're monitoring the wrong kind of XP.

What's that URL, again?

http://bassetsoftware.com/perl/pmxpjunkie.dmg.gz

¹that's "experience points", not "backasswards OS"

Comment on XP watching on OS X

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: XP watching on OS X by jdporter (Paladin) on Sep 28, 2006 at 18:02 UTC
++ for inventing the wheel in yet another way, but -- for not using the XP xml feed. Think of the server load. We're building the house of the future together.	[reply]
Re^2: XP watching on OS X by jimt (Chaplain) on Sep 28, 2006 at 18:19 UTC
Brilliant! That's exactly what I was unsuccessfully looking for before settling on the scraper. I'd also tried to help with the load problem by restricting to 30 minute increments. I uploaded v1.0.1 into the same place, now using the XML feed instead.	[reply]
Re^3: XP watching on OS X by demerphq (Chancellor) on Sep 29, 2006 at 08:04 UTC
What XML generators are currently available on PerlMonks? --- $world=~s/war/peace/g	[reply]
Re: XP watching on OS X by ChemBoy (Priest) on Sep 28, 2006 at 18:38 UTC
Nice. :-) Of course, this just feeds my urge to make a PerlMonks Dashboard Widget, but we'll see exactly when I have time to do that... If God had meant us to fly, he would never have given us the railroads. --Michael Flanders	[reply]
Re^2: XP watching on OS X by pemungkah (Priest) on Dec 06, 2006 at 00:50 UTC
A first cut at a Dashboard widget is at http://ibiblio.org/mcmahon/widgets/PerlmonksXP.wdgt.zip - I may add more to it later (a "mini mode" is probably first, simply because it will be interesting to do).	[reply]
Re: XP watching on OS X by jimt (Chaplain) on Sep 30, 2006 at 00:49 UTC
For those interested, I continued to refine the original with some additional niceties and am on v1.0.2. Now displays how long 'til the next update Actively displays when it's checking Has optional sound effects Quick links to the monastery gates and your detailed home node Keeps track of recently incremented nodes via the XML feed. Note - password is required for this (stored in the keychain). Freshy, minty aftertaste. Please do /msg or email me if there's some neato keen whizbang feature I've left out. Suggestions welcome. Still at http://www.bassetsoftware.com/perl/pmxpjunkie.dmg.gz.	[reply]
Re: XP watching on OS X by chargrill (Parson) on Oct 18, 2006 at 22:29 UTC
I have to admit, I've been running this since you originally put this out and I think it's a lot of fun. It's so exciting to see the number flash and then go up (or down, if I'm having a bad day ;) ). I'm glad I stopped back to check out all the new whiz-bang features. Kudos and ++ for the cool tool. --chargrill `s*lil; $=join'',sort split q; s;.;grr; &&s+(.(.)).+$2$1+; $; = qq-$_-;s,.,ahc,;$,.=chop for split q,,,reverse;print for($,,$;,$,$/)` [download]	[reply] [d/l]

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