HOWTO: Discordian date displayed on startup on transparent background terminal

[Dean]

This is from a post I did on apple talk, but it got buried in a bitchfest, so I thought I would move it over here for anyone interested in setting this up on their linux machine.

ddate is in one of the integral security parts of the linux kernel, which means: 1. it will be present in all versions of linux unless specifically removed. and 2. it will never come out (as foretold by the guy responding to the complaint ticket about it).

I have worked for a long time trying to make my clock applet in ubuntu display the discordian date, but have so far failed. Instead, i think i oped for a much more awesome solution.



If you want to do this too, here is how:

First go and do everything on this page to install a terminal in your background (move any icons from behind the place where the terminal will be, because you won't be able to click on them anymore once the terminal is over them. http://www.webupd8.org/2009/05/ubuntu-embed-terminal-into-you-desktop.html

Once you make the terminal in the background, modify step 3.2 to where the file that gets called in startup also calls the ddate command after opening the terminal. My version of this file is:

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#!/bin/bash
sleep 20 && gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=trans777 --geometry 72x35+780+50 -e ./ddate

You can modify the geometry sizes however you like, but make sure that the command calls another executable file in the home folder (mine was called ddate, but that's just the name of executable file)

Now you have to create the executable file in the home folder that the above command executes (make sure to flip the executable bit on this file as well). My copy of this new file is below:

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ddate
/bin/bash

This calls the ddate command, but unfortunately the terminal just freezes up without a command line after this, so we manually add in a line calling a command line (which is the /bin/bash line).

And that's it. Just make sure to add the "start terminal" shell to the programs at startup list and you should have a wonderful transparent background terminal displaying the ddate for today whenever you start up your computer.


Side note: if you run commands in the terminal and want it to get cleaned up to "just started up" status, run the command:

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clear && ddate

to clear all output above ddate and just leave the output of ddate and a command line below it in the terminal.