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posted on 03/04/07
Scare Your Roommate with a Macbook
Requirements:
1) Macbook, Macbook Pro, or any mac with an isight camera
2) A phone that can send e-mails or a friend with a computer.
I got the idea for this from a video that showed how to sleep your mac through Mail.app
I think I can top that though.
First your going to want to record or find some audio that will scare someone. I used Audacity to record a clip of myself speaking to my roommate as the computer. “Hey, it’s me the computer! I’m talking to you!”
Next, put it into an iTunes playlist. I just called mine Scary
Now you’re going to have to open Automator. Here’s an image of what you’re going to have to do.
First go to iTunes and drag in Get Specified iTunes item. Select your playlist with the scary sound or sounds.
Next drag in Play iTunes Playlist.
The next four are optional, but fun. Under quicktime drag in New Video Capture, Start Capture, then Pause for a few seconds, and finally Stop Capture. This will save a video of your poor roommates reaction.
Save this all as an Application.
Next open Script Editor. I’ve called my Application scary, so just insert your apps name:
tell application “scary” to run
and compile it, then save the script into the same folder as your Applicaiton.
Finally, go to Mail.app and set up a rule(in Prefences) so that whenever you recieve an email from yourself with a certain subject line, it plays the specified script.
Be sure that Mail.app starts checking email atleast every 5 minutes so you don’t have to wait forever.
Now for the fun: Leave the room(but make sure your computer volume was all the way up), send yourself the email with that specified subject from your phone or your friend’s computer, and return to a saved video of your roommates reaction. Enjoy!
edit: If anyone gets a really good video of a scared roommate, girlfriend, or family member, please get it on youtube and post a link in the comments.
Teen help
posted on Mar 5, 01:55 AM
Make sure to add the action “system>set volume>max” just in case your roommate has it lowered for some reason. You want to protect all of your bases. :-)
Matt
posted on Mar 5, 02:00 AM
@Nick
It’s just a prank based off the “Sleep the computer via Email”. Just using that technique to do other things. Fair enough?
Matt
posted on Mar 5, 02:01 AM
@Teen help
nice! I should post an updated prank after all this digging is over. Or a bunch of various pranks based off this one.
david
posted on Mar 5, 02:05 AM
could this be triggered by something in iChat or Adium instead, that way you wouldnt have to worry about haw often it checks for new mail
momthinksimcool
posted on Mar 5, 02:18 AM
You guys are cruel. Your poor roommate :(
Tom
posted on Mar 5, 02:22 AM
And people say you guys have too much time on your hands, what do they know eh?
panique
posted on Mar 5, 02:56 AM
The filming your roommate part is priceless
Nate B
posted on Mar 5, 02:59 AM
you could just scare them with VNC or something.
tomas
posted on Mar 5, 03:15 AM
sooo useless, just use vnc or pc anywhere and you can do anything you want (for vnc you dont even need a client, just java enabled browser)... too bad all vnc mac clients suck … maybe cuz 99% of mac users won’t be even able to use it (lets face it, once something gets a little more complicated than just a single click, mac users are lost …)
zcat
posted on Mar 5, 03:17 AM
I gave Verne a shell on my Linux machine probably about 5 years ago. Didn’t take him long to figure out he could record a phone ringing on his computer, scp it over and play it back. I have my computer hooked up to the stereo and it took me a while to work out where the sound was coming from.
zcat
posted on Mar 5, 03:25 AM
One more thing…
This is hardly unique to the Mac; Evolution’s filter also has an option to run a program when a message matches, and/or pipe the message into a program. And I assume Outlook has something similar..
Matt
posted on Mar 5, 03:27 AM
that’s true.. this is not unique on the mac at all.. in fact, on linux, you could write your own operating system that’s specifically for pranking your roommates! good call!
Justin6512
posted on Mar 5, 03:55 AM
Post a vid of you freaking someone out with it!!!
Matt
posted on Mar 5, 04:05 AM
@Justin
I will. I have a two videos so far, but my roommates didn’t walk in front of the isight! I’ll get a good one though. If anyone else gets one, post a youtube link in here.
Nighthawk
posted on Mar 5, 10:02 AM
Pretty nifty idea, I’ll have to try this on one of my Mac-loving friends. ;)
TheMacThinker
posted on Mar 5, 10:25 AM
This is really cool. I like the way people are getting more and more creative with automator on Mac. It is really a great application. And the more people get interested in it the more they’ll be able to do… Watch out guys cuz the Watch Me do is coming up in leopard Automator where you can actually let automator record your gesture on the computer….————
http://www.mostofmymac.com
Tanuki
posted on Mar 5, 12:33 PM
If you can sniff the traffic going to/from your roommate’s computer, maybe you could script your computer to detect accesses to his favorite porn sites, then play a sound file of God’s booming voice telling him not to masturbate.
EE
posted on Mar 5, 02:29 PM
@Thomas. You haven’t used a mac lately have you? COVNC is a great mac VNC client. OSX has a VNC server built into the OS as well, and all that is necessary is to enable it. Another reason why not to use VNC, is that firewalls may keep you from doing just that. It would be crazy for someone to have VNC enabled out to the wide world, so setting up a VPN may not be worth the effort for a simple prank. Your call i guess…
Jerry
posted on Mar 5, 05:03 PM
What would be cool is to e-mail your computer and have it record 30 seconds of video, then e-mail it back to your phone/work computer. Fun way to check on things at home. (Can’t connect iChat through the work network or I could set auto answer on video chats and see live stream).
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Nick
posted on Mar 5, 01:32 AMWhat is this, intro to stupid pranks?
You know there’s an actual “say” command for 10.3+.
Why not make a cron job?