Automator: I’ve got the hammer, but I can’t find a nail

One of the lesser talked about Apple applications that I’ve long been interested in is Automator. I first heard about it with the rest of the world in the WWDC 2004 keynote and I remember thinking something like, “That’s nice.”

Later on I happened to watch all the Macbreak videos with Leo Laporte and Apple’s Sal Soghoian to which my reaction was, “Wow. Now that is pretty cool.”

MacBreak 20: Automator Media Browser
Macbreak 14: Automator Photoblog
MacBreak 8: Automator Life Poster
MacBreak 03: Enter the Automatrix

Then, at this year’s WWDC I went to a couple of sessions on Automator and walked away thinking, “Sweet mother of Steve Jobs’ turtleneck, that is cool stuff.” (Alright, that may not have been *exactly* what I was thinking, but you get the point.)

Yesterday I found myself with a bit of a hole in the schedule so I sat down to see if I could rig up something in Automator that might be useful to the Seapine community. Here lies the problem.

I couldn’t think of anything to do with it.

It all worked as advertised, I had workflows that copied junk from one place to another and queried the system configuration into a text file. In the end, however, I had nothing that was going to change my life or anyone else’s for the better.

I thought about setting up my build process in Automator, but I already that automated. I looked into seeing if there was any way to integrate Surround SCM into Xcode with it but found no dice there as well. I even considered using it to query against TestTrack with SOAP to produce an RSS feed of newly entered defects but that felt like too much work for the time I had. (Plus it felt like a reach, like I’m gonna make this thing do something dagnabit.)

I’m sure at some point I’ll use it to package up a bunch of pictures or Quicktime movies of the kid to keep the grandparents off my back, but for the moment I’ll just take my hammer and wander the halls. A modern day John Henry if you will. Well, maybe not, but at least a Don Quixote who’s stopped by Home Depot.