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Making your desktop really cozy — that is so splendid to see at the end of the day how dusk comes, turning on lights everywhere, making houses look really cozy through their windows. And also very splendid seeing how your own desktop turns its lights on when it comes dark outside.

This project is called gnome-yoritsuki, because it is basically based on wonderful wallpapers Yoritsuki by HybridWorks.JP.

What’s that all for?

• It is calculating sunrise and sunset time for today, via Yahoo! Geocoding API;
• Every system start it corrects background animation settings to suit your real daylight time;
• The evening and morning at your desktop happens exactly same time with the real sunrise and sunset
• The transition is very smooth, like in real world

Installation instructions (for Ubuntu Linux 9.04+)

We are going to install the application files into your home folder (not system-wide).

cd ~/
mkdir Backgrounds # You can invent any name, or even omit this (and next) command.
cd Backgrounds

Now we need to install prerequisites

sudo apt-get install perl libdatetime-astro-sunrise-perl

Then we have two ways: First to load project’s SVN snapshot:

wget http://gnome-yoritsuki.googlecode.com/files/gnome-yoritsuki-svn-20091114-r6.tar.bz2
tar xvf gnome-yoritsuki-svn-20091114-r6.tar.bz2
rm ./gnome-yoritsuki-svn-20091114-r6.tar.bz2
cd gnome-yoritsuki

… or, if you keen on version control, get the latest build:

sudo apt-get install subversion
svn checkout http://gnome-yoritsuki.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gnome-yoritsuki
cd gnome-yoritsuki

So, that’s just a program and setting files. Next we need to download the wallpapers. Approved for the application wallpapers are available freely to personal use — you’d better get them from source website HybridWorks.JP and then put into «gnome-yoritsuki/data/wallpapers» folder — this is necessary!. To download via the site (it is Flash), open the site, find in the left в навігації Yoritsuki, click and follow instructions, wait, follow instructions, wait, follow etc. (REMEMBER: we need Windows (PC) version). Then do the same again — find Vacation 2008, click and follow instructions… (again, we need Windows version). Do not forget to read terms of usage — it is only for personal usage. By the way, there lots of beautiful high-resolution icons and excellent creative Japanese artwork.

Or, if you are real console geek, you can do the following (but anyway, read the Terms):

cd data/wallpapers
wget http://www.hybridworks.jp/apps/yoritsuki/gifts/yoritsuki_win.zip
wget http://www.hybridworks.jp/dayworks/d_vaca08/gift/d_vacation2008_win.zip

Then, you should unpack downloaded archives with unzip:

cd data/wallpapers
wget http://www.hybridworks.jp/apps/yoritsuki/gifts/yoritsuki_win.zip
wget http://hybridworks.jp/dayworks/d_vaca08/gift/d_vacation2008_win.zip
unzip yoritsuki_win.zip
rm yoritsuki_win.zip
unzip d_vacation2008_win.zip
rm /d_vacation2008_win.zip
cd ../..

Almost done!

Changing the background

Now four backgrounds available. CAUTION! Don’t forget to change resolution parameter in the examples --res=XXXXxXXX, and watch the double dashes.

Yoritsuki Original

./bin/update.pl --res=1680x1050 --install

Vacation 2008: Into the Sky: Full View 1 (--wp=v2008-fw1)

./bin/update.pl --wp=v2008-fw1 --res=1680x1050 --install

Vacation 2008: Into the Sky: Full View 2 (--wp=v2008-fw2)

./bin/update.pl --wp=v2008-fw2 --res=1680x1050 --install

Vacation 2008: Into the Sky: North Side (--wp=v2008-ns)

./bin/update.pl --wp=v2008-ns --res=1680x1050 --install

If you want to change background in future, just run ./bin/update.pl --wp=NEW-BACKGROUND-CODE --res=1680x1050 --install from console form folder gnome-yoritsuki

System requirements

I’ve tested it only on Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (Karmic Koala) for now on. It looks like the application should run on any Linux distro with Gnome 2.22+. So, if you got experience of installation this program on other systems, please share it with me.

Troubleshooting

My sunrise time is far not the same as real.

• Try to run install script again, it can probably be unavailability of Yahoo! Geocoding API
• Try to edit data/config.xml by hand and set real latitude and longitude
• Check if you system’s timezone is real (console date command)

The daylight time is not corrected automatically.

• Check if autoupdate script was installed successfully. Go to menu System → Preferences → Startup Application, and find if Daylight Time Update is exists and enabled.
  

Feedback

If you have any questions, suggestions or impressions, feel free to left comments, or write issues to Google Code.