Compared to some other people, I use OS X in a very Windows-ish way: lots of contextual menu action going on. Also, if I want to make a new document, I'm more apt to use the Finder to navigate where I want to be, and use TigerLaunch to trigger my "Make New (Text) File Here" script, as opposed to doing File->New, File->Save in the creation application itself. Since I'm a programmer/nerd, 99% of the time I'm creating text files, so my limited script works well.

Tonight I was looking at a picture file, in the Finder, and wanted to make it my desktop picture. I don't have a TigerLaunch script for that, and I'm too lazy to write Applescript (does anybody see a pattern in my Automtor posts?). I also hate using the open/save file dialog box to navigate to somewhere I'm already at (what I would get if I used the Desktop And Screen Saver control panel.) (I suppose I could have used drag and drop, but I didn't think of at the time. It would have also meant playing games with window positions, etc)

So, how do I solve this issue? Hmm.. what's this Automator item in the Finder's contextual menu? Hmmm...

So I created a two step automator work flow, I brought up the contextual menu item on my picture, selected my Automator Workflow, and boom! The selected picture appeared on the desktop.

As I was writing this entry I felt a strange feeling of deja vu, like I had already written a script to do this, but Spotlight turned up nothing. I must have written it and thrown it away, or lost it. Now I have a much nicer solution, one that doesn't involve me writing/maintaining code