Ubuntu Wallpaper of the Day

My inspiration of the ‘Wallpaper of the Day’ comes from the Nation Geographic Photo of the Day. National Geographic recommends an amazing photo each day on this web site. I wrote a bash script to automatically set the photo as my desktop background everyday when I start my Ubuntu laptop.

#!/bin/bash
# clear cache
rm -f /home/jchen/Pictures/wall.jpg
rm -f /home/jchen/Pictures/photo-of-the-day

# download photo-of-the-day page
wget http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day -O /home/jchen/Pictures/photo-of-the-day

# check if there is a high resolution copy
if grep '1600 x 1200 pixels' /home/jchen/Pictures/photo-of-the-day; then
        url=`cat /home/jchen/Pictures/photo-of-the-day | grep '1600 x 1200 pixels' | cut -d'"' -f4`
else
        let line=`cat /home/jchen/Pictures/photo-of-the-day | grep -n '<div class="primary_photo">' | cut -d':' -f1`+5
        url=`sed -n "$line p" /home/jchen/Pictures/photo-of-the-day | cut -d' ' -f2 | cut -d '"' -f2`
fi

# download the photo
wget $url -O /home/jchen/Pictures/wall.jpg

# set the desktop background
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri 'file:///home/jchen/Pictures/wall.jpg'