My company laptop has some remnants from the previous IT regime's mindset (one that is all too common) and so I'm not allowed to adjust how quickly the screen-saver / desktop-locker kicks in.

I have shows that get recorded for me but that I rarely have the time to sit down and watch. So I transfer them to my work laptop and watch them (mostly just listen to them, actually) during my bus commute.

I finally got a really nice biking backpack I've wanted so now I can even listen to them when I commute by bicycle and I even have a little program to cue up cuts to skip over the commercials for me.

The first day that I tried that, playback stopped about half-way to the office. I stopped and checked the laptop and the screensaver had kicked in. At work I googled and got the suggestion that I run Windows Media Player with its volume turned down while it was configured to prevent screen-saver activation. The ride home demonstrated that this is not sufficient to prevent administratively mandated screen-saver timeouts.

More googling at home mostly found people noting that when one doesn't have administrative rights, one can't install a program to thwart the screen-saver activation anyway so no such programs are offered.

So I wrote the following Perl program: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

use Win32::GuiTest qw< GetCursorPos MouseMoveAbsPix >;

sleep 5;
my( $x, $y )= GetCursorPos();
my @dx= ( 10, -10, -10, 10 );
my @dy= ( 10, 10, -10, -10 );

while( 1 ) {
    sleep 1;
    my( $x1, $y1 )= GetCursorPos();
    exit
        if(  $x != $x1  ||  $y != $y1  );
    $x += $dx[0];
    push @dx, shift @dx;
    $y += $dy[0];
    push @dy, shift @dy;
    MouseMoveAbsPix( $x, $y );
}

[download]

It just waits five seconds and then makes the mouse pointer move around in a nice little diamond pattern until you bump your mouse.

This morning's bike commute I enjoyed the audio from uninterrupted video playback. Thanks, Perl.

- tye        

In reply to Keep the playback rolling (Win32) by tye

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