You may be wondering what the material in this directory is all about. It's
basically just a case of me being too lazy to press Enter a couple of thousand
times.

It was like this. We (i.e., my old employer; they publish local weeklies) were
migrating our page and advertisement layout software from an old, proprietary,
closed, once state-of-the-art but now outdated system to a new system (Pair of
systems, in fact, but that's not material here) based on InDesign. For this
purpose, we had to export all logos, all headers, all little columnists'
photos, in fact, all our fixed graphical material from the old database to a
filesystem, and from there into the new database.

I mentioned that the old system was proprietary and closed. It was also
ill-supported. In fact, support from our supplier on this system was just
barely acceptable; from the producer, less than that. So we couldn't get in
using a normal database tool such as Oracle, 'cause it wasn't a normal
database. There was an SQL interface, but the database itself was badly
documented (at that point, at any rate), so good luck dumping a load of
semi-intelligible hex data into a window from a barely understood data set, and
then converting it into real files. And our supplier wouldn't - couldn't -
write something to do it for us, except for Big Money.
I had no problem whatsoever getting graphics _into_ the system, as long as it
was TIFF or EPS - what limited functionality the thing ever had, it still had,
and it couldn't be blamed for efficiency. I had no problem whatsoever getting
output - whole pages, or whole ads, in EPS format. But getting separate
graphics out, by preference as the original TIFFs? Forget it. Not
automatically.

Except... there was this one tool. Well, two. One under Windows, but it could
export only a single file at a time, and you had to enter the file name
yourself. At that rate, we'd still be exporting graphics months or years later.
Ok, I could have written something to work with it, but it would have to guess
the name, guess the location - it would be too fragile to trust.
And then there was the tool on the Mac. It, at least, could export a series of
graphics in one go. Ok, you'd have to select your graphics basket; select your
desired graphics; and choose export. But at least it would fill in the file
name for you, leaving you to only press Enter. Aha - and there's _its_ rub.
Press Enter. For. Every. Single. File. No way. I value my joints, thanks very
much.
This, too, I could have automated. There are desktop automation tools for the
Mac as well as for Windows. Except - another except, this whole project was
teeming with the buggers - that for networking reasons this has to run on one
of the OS X machines; but the program is a Mac Classic program; and, as said
before, _very_ proprietary. And all that had to be automated was pressing Enter
- but could I trust this program to capture that Enter key the usual way? Like
hell I could.

But... it _was_ the Enter key. It was just a mechanical, continuous pressing of
the Enter key, nothing more. Not only could it be done by a robot, it could be
done by a child's tumbler. In fact, I considered getting one of those toys, but
it'd probably not have had the required force.
And then the thought struck me. I'd been playing with Lego with my niece the
weekend before. One of the bits we didn't use then (she's only four) was the
Technics, but I'd been handling the old-style gears. What if I made a machine
using my old battery-powered Technics electro-motor? All I'd have to do was
attach a pushrod to the axle, and insert enough gears to a. make the thing turn
slower than the too-many RPM of the motor itself, and b. give it enough force
to depress the key.

So I did. And it performed its job admirably, albeit not without making a fuss
- it rattled and whined rather, the thing hadn't run for years and my assembly
was likely less than exact. But it worked, and it saved me a large amount of
dumb manual labour.
This directory contains photos and videos of the contraption in service, of
execrable quality because taken with a first-generation second-hand digital
camera by a very inexpert photographer - me. The few videos which look a bit
better were taken by my colleague. The last time I saw that Enter key, it was
still slightly yellow...

Richard