[HN Gopher] Cowsay
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Cowsay
Author : tontonius
Score : 76 points
Date : 2024-03-02 09:55 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| vander_elst wrote:
| I use this very often with my kids (3yo twins). It's fun for them
| to see animals, dragons and other things popping up on the white
| screen. I usually ask them what they what they want see, prepare
| it and then let them press on enter to display it. Simpler things
| e.g. 'gnu' or 'fox' they can type themselves.
| tarcar wrote:
| If they like ponies then check out ponysay, just an alternative
| with some cute colorful ponies in the terminal!
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| next project: use sed (or your favourite shell/scripting
| language) as a filter in front of ponysay, to rewrite
| "anybody"->"anypony", "somebody"->"somepony", etc.
| koolba wrote:
| Colorful ponies? Blasphemy!
|
| The Unix way is to do one thing and do it well:
| fortune | cowsay | lolcat
| wwilim wrote:
| I like putting it at the end of scripts that take a long time,
| it's hard to miss the script having completed this way
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| That's an excellent idea. It neatly distinguishes a script that
| completes successfully from a script that exits prematurely.
| mindcrime wrote:
| ----------------------------------------- < pg says 'What
| problem does this solve?' >
| ----------------------------------------- \ ^__^
| \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\
| ||----w | || ||
| nojs wrote:
| The best startups always look like toys initially.
| thih9 wrote:
| The worst too though.
|
| I.e. watch out for survivorship bias.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Cowsay has been around for decades. It's here to stay.
| thih9 wrote:
| Note that my reply was about startups, and not about
| cowsay (which is not a startup).
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| On every machine I operate, I put
|
| > fortune | cowsay
|
| in to my .bashrc. Every time I open a new terminal I get a cow
| telling me a fortune. I have done this for about 10 years now and
| it just feels right.
| Xaiph_Rahci wrote:
| Mine is very similar (fortune -c | cowsay -f tux)
|
| I don't think I've ever seen a cookie repeat in over 10 years,
| but it might just be my poor memory
| thih9 wrote:
| The default data file[1] contains 500kB of plaintext
| fortunes, this seems plausible.
|
| [1]: http://bxr.su/OpenBSD/games/fortune/datfiles/fortunes
| bluedino wrote:
| I know a guy who got fired for doing this.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I'd wager there was more going on than just this. He was
| under performing, or failing in some other way and this was
| just the excuse to get rid of him.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Well that doesn't seem reasonable or a valid excuse for
| firing someone (or at least in places with a minimum of
| employee protection). What problem does it cause if you
| customise your shell prompt?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I used to send fortune to a printer display. It did backfire
| as some of the fortune quotes can be offensive if they get
| cut-off by the display. Flags are required to do the true
| one-liners. Nobody actually got upset as much more offensive
| things were shouted across the room daily [1] but leadership
| suggested it should be avoided.
|
| [1] - The Oracle system pw was intentionally as offensive as
| it could be and people would _forget_ it on purpose so it
| could be shouted across the room. I have good memories of
| that place. It was laid back and the people were fun. It was
| acquired and parted out by a bank.
| almatabata wrote:
| I do the exact same but I prefer the turtle to the default (htt
| ps://github.com/schacon/cowsay/blob/master/cows/turtle.co...)
|
| It caused questions sometimes when I had to open a new terminal
| in a demo with the team.
| becquerel wrote:
| perhaps the only good program ever written?
| pfarrell wrote:
| Let's not forget _sl_
| ffsm8 wrote:
| And _gti_
| elif wrote:
| All the best hackers pipe their script output to cowsay.
| Toorkit wrote:
| It's a bit weird finding `cowsay -f sodomized` though lol
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| If you have this installed on your system and run an Ansible
| playbook, all the playbook logging will be automatically piped
| through cowsay.
|
| I'm not sure why anyone would want to, but you can disable this
| behavior by setting ANSIBLE_NOCOWS=1
| more-coffee wrote:
| It's a tad silly that they made this the default
| bravetraveler wrote:
| I have a hard time finding where I land with this Easter egg.
|
| Someone who doesn't appreciate a little fun, probably won't
| have cowsay installed on their controller
|
| And yet... I've been toting around a role that's basically a
| list of packages to ensure are absent from the
| controller/managed hosts. Cowsay has been a long time resident
|
| For such a little piece of fun, I 'have' to maintain a lot
| unnecessarily (if I want useful output)
|
| I think this not being a "whoa neat" thing I encounter every
| now and then... but something I regularly endure, is part of
| it. We aren't all solo administrators
| gdulli wrote:
| I found this out by accident. I wasn't mad.
| taopai wrote:
| Cowsay was one of the first "hacky show your friends" command.
|
| I still use it when I want to impress someone.
|
| I've been using this a lot. Check this out:
|
| $ fortune | figlet | cowsay -n -f tux
|
| or
|
| $ fortune | cowsay -n -f dragon
|
| even this!
|
| $ fortune | cowsay -n -f dragon | cowsay -n | cowsay -n -tux
| dvh wrote:
| For more practical use try espeak, I often use it in long running
| scripts that runs somewhere in background, e.g. it tells me when
| keyboard get disconnected because of the soldering iron or when
| it's time for dinner, or a pomodoro timer, or reminds me I should
| turn off IM when I put new work in time tracking app.
| mindcrime wrote:
| > or a pomodoro timer,
|
| That's one of my top uses for espeak. I have a script setup as
| /home/bin/work that looks like this:
| #!/bin/bash sleepTime="20m" # default is 20
| minutes if [ -z "$1" ]; then echo
| "using sleepTime = $sleepTime" else echo
| "using sleepTime = $1" sleepTime=$1 fi
| reset ; date ; echo "You should be working ($sleepTime)" ;
| sleep $sleepTime ; reset ; echo "Time to take a break!" ; while
| true ; do espeak-ng "Time to take a
| break"; sleep 3s ; done
|
| This was inspired by another HN poster from a post a few years
| ago. I'd credit them, but I don't remember exactly who it was
| now.
|
| That said, I'm sure this script could be improved considerably,
| but for my purposes it suffices.
| makapuf wrote:
| Interesting take from the git repo: some files were committed
| 25years ago ! See by example https://github.com/tnalpgge/rank-
| amateur-cowsay/blob/master/...
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(page generated 2024-03-02 23:01 UTC)