Mac OS X Programming: Automator?

I'm noodling with Automator, investigating the best way to do some webby things on a mac. For a while last night I was a bit frustrated, as it looked like the only best way to do this was call out to a perl program. Which I've done before, in Linux; but I thought there might be more macish ways too. I'm also trying to convince myself that Automator isn't a gimmicky glitzy fake-programming tool.

I just wrote my first Automator script; it opens safari, logs into my credit-card account, and downloads all my activity in .qif format.

Most of this is thanks to OttoMate. It's a free set of four Automator actions: to click links or buttons, fill in form fields, check whether the page has certain contents, or call arbitrary javascript against a page.

The puzzling thing to me is that OttoMate is only billed as a Website Testing tool; it's a bit more than that. And it only has 200 google hits. It's not perfect, but it does the job, and well. Totally bizarre. I couldn't find any other macish tool that was better. Why is that?

If I can figure out how to share Automator scripts, I'll put up a tutorial somewhere. (So far, I've seen a lot of people sharing Automator scripts by doing a screen shot of their code. Screwy!)

Splendid afternoon

The weather is picture-perfect today. Slightly warmer than yesterday: about 20 degrees (68F). Not a single cloud in the sky. I'm on the porch just finishing up with a good book.

Running errands for dan, earlier today: it was OK that the mega-super-gigando-Zehr's didn't have sage (for the stuffing). But I also couldn't find deodorant, and I couldn't find anyone to ask. (OK, dan tells me they have a separate pharmacy, which is apparently separate enough that I never found it. I miss Sobeys.)

So I went to the Orwellian Grocery, and they, too, didn't have sage. However, I ran into tbiedl, who offered some from her garden, which has more than they can use. Awesome.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow off; bats22 & persephoneplace are coming over for roast bird & fixings. The weather is supposed to be more of just about the same.

Much to be thankful for.