[HN Gopher] Show HN: Start every terminal session with a vivid r...
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Show HN: Start every terminal session with a vivid reminder of
life's value
Hi! I've been using a similar browser extension for a long time. It
kept me motivated. I decided to create the same thing for the
terminal where I spend a lot of time.
Author : accessd
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-01-03 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| zurfer wrote:
| Was it a weekend project? ;) looks cool!
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Thank you, but this is way too depressing.
|
| Why start it with every terminal session? This could have been a
| desktop app.
| quaintdev wrote:
| There was a similar project but for new tab of browser. It had
| a countdown timer with seconds remaining.
|
| The problem with both approaches is our brain gets desensitized
| to both the approaches after some time and it has no effect on
| us.
| tbomb wrote:
| I agree, I don't need an existential crisis every time I open a
| terminal session
| dingnuts wrote:
| I just don't need a terminal to help me get there; I'm quite
| good at existential dread without any assistance
| wharvle wrote:
| Seriously, the point of occupying one's time with most
| _any_ activity is to _avoid_ ruminating on this stuff.
|
| As expressed in the Internet-famous comic:
|
| https://imgur.com/gallery/d9KdAvH
|
| (It's the "Don't let the existential dread set in" one, to
| save those familiar a click)
|
| (YMMV, I suppose)
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I start every sesh with: fortune | cowsay |
| lolcat
| sss111 wrote:
| for people on a mac, run brew install fortune
| lolcat cowsay
| eigenket wrote:
| Same, although mine has cowsay -f stegosaurus
|
| And I've been meaning to get rid of the lolcat because it's the
| only thing on my laptop with a Ruby dependency and I'd like to
| reclaim the disk space that requires.
| macNchz wrote:
| Wow I've had my terminals open with fortune | cowsay for
| years but somehow had no idea that there were different cows.
|
| Should anyone also happen to be interested in taking a quick
| glance at everything installed by default:
| cowsay -l | tail -n +2 | sed 's/ /\n/g' | xargs -i% bash -c
| 'echo %; fortune -s | cowsay -f %; printf "\n\n\n"'
|
| edit: I like the novelty, I'm going to try out having a
| random "cow" saying my fortune greeting:
| fortune -s | cowsay -f $(cowsay -l | tail -n +2 | sed 's/
| /\n/g' | shuf | head -n 1)
| seti0Cha wrote:
| It's super easy to create your own cows. Just look at any
| of the files in /usr/share/cowsay. You basically just have
| to get an ascii picture and add a couple of tags. Mine's a
| hypnotoad.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Found a demo of what that produces:
|
| https://github.com/busyloop/lolcat#screenshot
| tbomb wrote:
| similar, only I use dadjoke and the thinking cow to keep things
| a lighthearted :) dadjoke | cowthink -s
| bbor wrote:
| Great execution, great idea, not a fan of the commentary text. I
| think people can interpret/use a life calendar in many ways, at
| least some of which are a _tad_ more hopeful! Here's to hoping
| that we 'll all be laughing about this post on mars in 200 years.
| dirtyhippiefree wrote:
| For those who find this depressing...there are probably five of
| you to the one who sees limited time as a reason to
| succeed...FWIW...
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Depressing: You will be logging into a terminal on a little
| monitor to see a little inspirational message in a monospaced
| font for the rest of your life, while the Sundays slowly count
| down. Meanwhile, healthy, successful people visit the mountain
| on your desktop background.
|
| Inspiring: You find a way to escape and never see the Sunday
| counter again.
| Ecoste wrote:
| Maybe we're just bike-shedding on the Sunday quote itself but
| I generally don't want to be reminded that I'm staring at a
| terminal on a Sunday ):
| BossingAround wrote:
| Honestly, the thought that looking into a monospaced font for
| the rest of your life is a horrible way to spend your life
| and that there's something inherently better to do seems like
| a deeply flawed thought.
|
| Of course, you can be spending time with your loved ones. Or,
| you could be jumping out of a plane with a parachute.
|
| But, whether you're doing an extreme sport, being with your
| family, or just staring into a terminal, your mind is exactly
| the same.
|
| If you're unhappy, you'll be be just as unhappy spending time
| with your family as you are spending time staring into a
| terminal.
|
| If your happiness depends on where your body is or who you
| talk to, you are bound to spend life suffering (as most
| people do I suppose).
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Wait really? "If you're unhappy, you'll be be just as
| unhappy spending time with your family as you are spending
| time staring into a terminal." I mean, you could say this
| for any two things and it would be equally silly. Happiness
| is often the consequence of an environment.
| wharvle wrote:
| > If you're unhappy, you'll be be just as unhappy spending
| time with your family as you are spending time staring into
| a terminal.
|
| If this is coming from _either_ Buddhist or Stoic
| traditions, both of those _strongly_ emphasize practice and
| _right action_. You achieve a calm flow of happiness
| through right thought _and_ right deed. Maintaining peace
| in chaos or pain doesn 't mean chaos and pain are
| indistinguishable from other external circumstances, even
| to a Ruling Mind.
|
| There are excellent reasons for traditions of monasticism
| to exist, for instance, and to often prescribe activities
| and mandate separation from common sources of chaos and
| distraction. There's such a thing as doing enlightenment on
| Hard Mode, and practically nobody can manage that. Thought
| and deed, and _circumstances that tend to come about by
| right deed and by choices made in attempting to bring about
| a calm state of being_ , are vital to long-term practice.
|
| Neither tradition is delusional, in this way.
| matwood wrote:
| If you haven't already read it, read A Man's Search for
| Meaning by Frankl. Even in death/concentration camps,
| people found meaning in their life and thus happiness.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Just change the message to "what the fuck are you doing here
| on a sunday, go play with your kids/visit some mountains/pet
| your dog"
| matwood wrote:
| Maybe. I love the hiking and the terminal. After long
| vacations, I'm excited to sit back down and code. I don't
| find it depressing. I think a varied life is a life well
| lived.
|
| Real success is finding happiness in whatever it is you are
| doing at this moment.
| scotty79 wrote:
| When I see such burndown chart for life my first thought now
| is: ffs be done with it already!
| matwood wrote:
| Why would someone being reminded that death is inevitable be
| depressing? Honest question. Death isn't a secret. Life is
| short, and everyone dies. I'm not saying someone needs to be
| happy about dying one day, but are they actually depressed?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| That's such a sweet idea. If you're looking for a weekend project
| idea, I recommend flipping it 180: https://days.sonnet.io
| addandsubtract wrote:
| This is much nicer! Added to the endless list of weekend
| projects.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I did something similar that I hand wrote but it's different
| verses from the Bible whenever I cd into my main working
| location. It helps me memorize verses slowly over time and it's
| not too intrusive though occasionally I'll disable it before pair
| programming on something with a colleague since it feels
| inappropriate at work to force someone else to put up with it if
| they have qualms about it.
| ironmagma wrote:
| You can always just open a new terminal and then quickly hit
| ctrl-L to clear. Gives an opportunity for them to ask if they
| care, or to just move on otherwise.
| lakpan wrote:
| Ah yes, I'd love to start the day reading a fresh "Numbers
| 31:17" verse. For pair programming I'd just stick to "Leviticus
| 18:22"
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Yesterday I discovered fortune(1) and in turn display-
| dhammapada(1).
|
| I'm tempted to set up a cron job and receive daily emails.
|
| Were you just doing shuf(1) on a text file of Bible quotes?
| selfawareMammal wrote:
| Aaaah gotta love me some Corinthians 14:34-35 in the morning
| waihtis wrote:
| good, do the Quran next
| paywallasinbeer wrote:
| Cool. Do you have a list of which verses you use? I'd like to
| do something similar myself.
| mkii wrote:
| For the sibling commenters trying to grief OP, he never said he
| randomly selects verses. I wish you all a nice day.
| _false wrote:
| I'm using zsh with tmux and it's a bit frustrating to have it
| appear on every window and every pane. At the same time if it
| only appears once I might miss it. Does anyone have suggestions
| on how to make it appear only a handful of times per day?
| accessd wrote:
| You can run it randomly with: (( RANDOM%2 == 0 )) &&
| $HOME/last_sunday.sh
|
| Or add after the command ;sleep 1;clear
|
| to clear the screen after one second.
| o11c wrote:
| The problem with the RANDOM approach is that it scales with how
| many terminals you open on a given day. Compensating for that
| requires state.
|
| I'm too lazy to write actual code right now, but here's a
| sketch of a possible solution that allows bursts. This is racy
| but safely so. declare N, the burst size. Say,
| 5. declare T, the time in seconds after which a new burst
| can start. Say, 3600. declare S, the time in seconds
| after which a new occurrence is allowed within a burst. Say,
| 10. declare P, a unique identifier. Say, the-last-sunday.
| declare D, the directory to store state in. Say, /tmp/bursty-
| ratelimiter. mkdir -p "$D" if "$D/$P-central"
| exists and its timestamp is within the last "$S" seconds, exit
| the process without doing anything else (hmm, I suppose when
| opening multiple panes at the same time, this race might
| actually matter ... I guess you could use a lock if it matters
| that much) touch (create and update the timestamp of)
| "$D/$P-central" for I from 1 to "$N" if
| "$D/$P-$I" exists and its timestamp is within the last "$T"
| seconds, continue with the next iteration touch
| "$D/$P-$I" run the rest of the program under load
| exit the process without doing anything
| jcul wrote:
| Maybe just touch a file somewhere in /tmp or /run or somewhere
| and do if [ -f $file ]; then touch $file ...
|
| If you never reboot could set up a cron job to delete it. Or
| store a counter in the file and output each time it reaches x %
| N.
|
| Might be susceptible to race conditions, so could wrap it in a
| flock or something...
| moffkalast wrote:
| > Made initially with Bash, I wrote another version with Ruby
| language because I love Ruby and to show Ruby is not dead! :)
|
| Ruby, only 231 Sundays remain.
|
| How are you gonna spend those Sundays, Ruby?!
| cscscscscsc wrote:
| Grim, but neat! You might consider leveraging an actuarial table
| of life expectancy by age[0], rather than hardcoding it at 80,
| since you're already doing the necessary age calculations.
|
| [0]: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
| t8sr wrote:
| The name is a missed opportunity - instead of "Last Sunday" it
| could be called the "Terminal Sunday".
| accessd wrote:
| Got it!
| krunck wrote:
| And of course this person or any of us could keel over tomorrow.
| So maybe add :"Or maybe you have no Sundays left. YMMV.'
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| "You might die tomorrow. How are you making this day a great
| last day?
| matwood wrote:
| And conversely, you may live so how are you at the same time
| making tomorrow a good day?
|
| This is the struggle of existence.
| atommclain wrote:
| Interested to see what others display when opening a new
| terminal. I have a personally meaningful but somewhat
| embarrassing trite platitude followed by 3 random fortunes. A
| quote from my personal collection, a bit of advice from Kevin
| Kelly, and a Deep Thought by Jack Handy.
| theogravity wrote:
| Is there something like this for learning words of another
| language?
| elzbardico wrote:
| Changed the life expectancy variable to 90. A bit of optimism but
| also based on the fact that people on my family usually dies at
| really old ages.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| This chrome extension that inspired this was probably inspired by
| this wonderful blog post that is very much worth a read:
|
| https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
| bambax wrote:
| Sunday's the worst day of the week. I wouldn't mind if there were
| zero Sundays left.
| rngname22 wrote:
| Sounds like you should be spending your Sundays on trying to
| make it so that some future Sundays aren't so bad.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| I'm surprised that there's someone out there seeing it that
| way, and would be interested in hearing your reasons if you
| don't mind. Unless I'm hungover from a Saturday evening, Sunday
| is the day where I can be most creative and most free.
| mkii wrote:
| I'm surprised someone's surprised, it's a well-known thing:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sunday_scaries
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| I don't like Sundays either. Reasons:
|
| - I know Monday is coming, so I need to go to sleep early
|
| - The day is shorter since I wake up late because Saturday
| was a long nice day, and because of previous point
|
| - everything is closed. Not that I care much, but it limits
| the options of "what to do today"
|
| Favorite day: Saturday and then Friday
| machinerychorus wrote:
| Similar to this, I created an android wallpaper that shows what
| percentage of your life is already past. This helps me ensure
| that I'm spending my limited time in the most valuable way
| possible, and really helps put things in perspective.
|
| App:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.machineryc...
|
| Source code: https://github.com/ethanmdavidson/DeathProgress
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Love this. Added it to my path under ~/.bin/mori
|
| I simplified the output a bit so it fits on 2 lines. This
| renderers a single progress bar the width of the terminal:
| https://gist.github.com/retrohacker/19978af044a080ed5677c0ea...
| Memento mori (Latin for 'remember that you die') is an artistic
| or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of
| death.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
| Vitaly_C wrote:
| So a reminder from the terminal that I am also terminal?
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(page generated 2024-01-03 23:02 UTC)