Fun with Ruby and OS X

Today I decided to start teaching my 6 year old Ruby. The easiest thing I could think of off hand was to "make the computer count" to any number she wanted :). Of course it wasn't enough to see it count, she wanted to hear it count!

There were only a few ways I knew to do this; find a ruby sound library; or easier, use AppleScript. I choose AppleScript just to show her how it could speak. But all along wishing I had gone the ruby route to keep it pure.

Thus enters my find of the day, rb-appscript.

To install it just:

sudo gem install rb-appscript

Now run this nice little script and you'll have your computer counting to 100 out loud in no time!


require "rubygems"
require "appscript"
require "osax"
include Appscript

count = 100
speaker = OSAX::ScriptingAddition.new("StandardAdditions")

speaker.say("I am now going to count to, #{count}", :using => "Victoria")

count.times do |current_number|
current_number = current_number + 1
puts current_number
speaker.say(current_number, :using => "Victoria")
end

speaker.say("ta da ah!", :using => "Victoria")


Of course you could modify this to be slimmer in code and say anything. I just wanted to make it clear and readable to everyone. I actually modified this to sort through my address book, count the number of people it found, and then start reading through the list. It made me feel like I have more friends than I actually have (ah the bliss)!

Hope you guys have fun with this :).

Labels: osx applescript coding ruby