A script to display a random goal from 43things.com in Ubuntu's Notify-OSD. Set it up to start on login and you'll get a new goal every day.

43_tips.py

#!/usr/bin/python -tt

# A script to display a random goal from 43things.com in Ubuntu's Notify-OSD. Set it up to start
# on login and you'll get a new goal every day.
# Author: A. Roots

import urllib, sys
from xml.dom import minidom
import random
import pynotify

def main():

  print 'Fetching today's tip...'
  random.seed()
  randomNumber = random.randint(1,3000000)
  url = 'http://www.43things.com/service/get_goal_by_id?api_key=2939451@43hKaaBzWkJ8&id='+str(randomNumber)

  xmlFile = urllib.urlopen(url).read()

  dom = minidom.parseString(xmlFile)
  objektid = dom.getElementsByTagName('name')
  objekt = objektid[0].toxml()
  objekt = objekt[6:]
  objekt = objekt[:-7]

  n = pynotify.Notification ("You should...", str(objekt))
  n.show ()

  print 'All done, exiting.'
  sys.exit(0)

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()