Jenna turned me onto Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies which were published a few times as a set of cards — the idea being to choose a card at random when you were stuck in your work (music, that is for Eno), and this random thought would help you figure things out a bit.
She was using a web-site that would allow you to browse them and had included it in her status message in iChat. I asked her about it and she remarked that it would be cool to just have a little quick app that would stick a random strategy in your iChat status.
Ask, and you shall receive. The Oblique Strategy Status package includes 2 Applescript applications. The first, iChatObliqueStrategyStatus, will run once and change your status to a random strategy. The second, iChatObliqueStrategyStatusRepeater, is for the more gear-headed I guess. It basically runs as an Applescript application that stays open and changes your status every 5 minutes to a new strategy (keeps your buddies guessing).
PlasticWare Downloadable ::
Oblique Strategy Status Version 1.0 (Jan. 18, 2006)
Download for iChat OSX :: ObliqueStrategyStatus.zip
Download for Adium OSX :: ObliqueStrategyStatusAdium.zip
*Update :: 20060120 :: Corrected the strategy array to fix an errant odd character that was in the original content source which caused one of the strategies to truncate.
