Create A Wallpaper Slideshow With XML Background Creator For GNOME 3

"XML Animated Background Creator" is a Nautilus script to easily generate XML wallpaper slideshows (wallpapers that change automatically) for GNOME 3.

There used to be many such applications for GNOME 2, but they can't change the background anymore because they still use GConf, while the background settings are now stored in DConf. And since XML Animated Background Creator is easy to use and install on any Linux distribution, I've upgraded it to work with GNOME 3 (it works with any "shell": Unity, GNOME Shell, fallback session).

To install XML Animated Background Creator, download the Nautilus script, extract it in your home folder and run the following commands in a terminal:

cd ~/XMLBACK
./install.sh

For Fedora, open the install.sh file and replace "gksu" with "beesu" (also, make sure beesu is installed: "sudo yum install beesu").

To create a XML slideshow background, copy all the wallpapers you want to use in your new XML background in a folder, then right click the folder and select Scripts > create xml background. 

XML Animated Background Creator will then prompt you to select the time between each wallpaper (5 minutes by default), the transition duration (5 seconds by default), and xml file name. At the end, it also asks you if you want to use the newly generated .xml background file as your wallpaper.

Extra tip: in GNOME 3, you can't select a XML slideshow wallpaper through the Appearance dialog. You don't have to do this manually if you're using XML Background Creator since the script asks you if you want to apply a newly created .xml background file, however, if you want to manually set an XML wallpaper in GNOME 3, use the following command:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri 'file:///path/to/background.xml'

Where /path/to/ is the path to your background.xml (or whatever you've called it) file.

Credits for the script: algalord (I've only modified it slightly to get it to work with GNOME 3)

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Nautilus Actions Extra: A Pack Of Useful Scripts For Nautilus 3

Nautilus Actions Extra provides a set of useful scripts for Nautilus 3. Among the included scripts/actions are: advanced search, open file with Gedit as user or root, set image as wallpaper, mount or unmount ISO files, verify checksum, convert image and audio files, batch rename (pyRenamer), add emblems and more.

One of the most interesting scripts included is called "Emblemize2" (you can access it by right clicking on a file or folder and selecting Advanced Actions > Emblemize2), which lets you add emblems to files and folders in Nautilus 3 - a feature that has been removed from Nautilus -, but unlike the script we wrote about a few days ago, you can see the emblems before applying them.

Nautilus Actions Extra requires the Multiverse Ubuntu repository to be enabled (Software Sources, on the Ubuntu Software tab). Also, be aware that it will install a lot of dependencies which are required by the various scripts it comes with.

To install Nautilus Actions Extra in Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04, use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nae-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions-extra
nautilus -q

Update: you can now only install individual actions too. For instance, to install the Emblemize Nautilus action, use:
sudo apt-get install nautilus-emblemize

You can see all the available packages here.

The package provides quite a large list of actions, but you can remove (or reorganize) some of them if you want. To do this, launch Nautilus Actions Configuration Tool as root:

gksu nautilus-actions-config-tool

Then select the action(s) you want to delete, click the delete button, then save the changes (File > Save). The changes should be applied instantly, without having to restart Nautilus.

For bug reports, see Nautilus Actions Extra @ Launchpad.

Thanks to Amr Osman for the tip!

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Lossless Audio Split Tools Updates: Flacon, Split Lossless Nautilus Script

Split Lossless is a Nautilus script created by WebUpd8 reader CokiDVD to split single lossless audio files (ape, flac, wavpack) by .cue file into flac or mp3 (320kbps or 192kbps). Further more, the script also adds tags to the new files so all the resulting flac or mp3 files will have the artist, album, title and genre tags set up automatically.

The latest Split Lossless version (released a couple of days ago) comes with two new features: track name editor and album information editor and improvements such as: show selected tracks on main window.

Split Lossless is available in a PPA so to install it in Ubuntu, use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cokicd/split-lossless
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install split-lossless

In the future, a batch version might be released too. Using this version, you'll be able to load a bunch of cds and split them automatically without any user input.

For other Linux distributions, see: http://code.google.com/p/split-lossless/.

Flacon is a python tool to split lossless files like APE, FLAC, TTA, Wav or WavPack and automatically add tags to the resulting files. With Flacon, you are in total control of the output file which can be set to AAC, FLAC, MP3, Ogg and so on.

Flacon 0.6.0 has been released today and comes with the following changes:

• support for AAC
• improved error handling scheme
• bug fixes
• internal code optimizing

The GUI has also been tweaked in a way that it should be easy to use by both new and experienced users.

Please note that I haven't tested Flacon because I'm not currently using my main computer and don't have access to my files, etc.

Just like Split Lossless for Nautilus, Flacon is also available in a PPA for easy Ubuntu installation:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flacon/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install flacon

Thanks to Alain-Olivier Breysse and CokiCD for the tips and images!

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