Brighten up your console with cows and ponies!
Looking to add a splash of fun to your command line? In this post, I’ll show you how to brighten up your console with a fortune told by a cow or a colorful pony! We’ll use a simple Bash function to display a random fortune, colorize it, and present it in a speech bubble delivered by a cow or a pony.
Prerequisites
This should work in unix terminal, so far I used it in ✓ Ubuntu Bash, ✓ Mac Bash and ✓ Mac Zsh.
You’ll need the following programs installed:
fortune
andfortune-mod
: For sampling random fortunes.fortunes
Provides a collection of fortune cookies.cowsay
andponysay
To display messages in speech bubbles authored by cows or ponies.lolcat
A fun tool to colorize your terminal output.
To install all prerequisites, run the following command in your terminal:
sudo apt install fortune \
\
fortune-mod \
fortunes \
cowsay
lolcatsudo snap install ponysay
brew tap daviderestivo/fortune-mod
brew install fortune cowsay lolcat ponysay
tl;dr
If you want to be greated by a fancy cow or pony to brighten up your day, add below code to your .bashrc
, .bash_profile
, or Zsh equivalent.
fancy_console_greeting() {
# Displays a fancy greeting message in the console.
#
# (1) The function checks for required dependencies and prompts to install
# them if missing.
# (2) Then, it composes a welcome message that includes the current date
# and a fortune snippet.
# (3) The message is then displayed using either cowsay or ponysay, randomly
# chosen, with color effects applied by lolcat.
# Usage:
# fancy_console_greeting [--verbose/-v]
#
# Options:
# --verbose/-v Enable verbose mode.
# Constants
readonly DEPENDENCIES=(cowsay fortune lolcat ponysay)
# Default settings
local verbose=false
# Parse arguments
for arg in "$@"; do
case $arg in
--verbose | -v)
verbose=true
shift
;;
*)
echo "Unknown option: $arg"
return 1
;;
esac
done
# Local variables
local missing_deps=()
local dep
local current_date
local fortune_msg
local message
local cow_file
# Check for missing dependencies
for dep in "${DEPENDENCIES[@]}"; do
if ! command -v "${dep}" &>/dev/null; then
missing_deps+=("${dep}")
fi
done
# If there are any dependencies to install, print a message and exit
if [[ ${#missing_deps[@]} -gt 0 ]]; then
echo "To use fancy_console_greeting, you need to install the following " \
"dependencies: ${missing_deps[*]}"
return 1
fi
# Compose the message
current_date=$(date '+%H:%M on %A, %B %d, %Y')
fortune_msg=$(fortune -s wisdom)
message="Welcome!\n\n"
message+="It's ${current_date}.\n\n"
message+="Today's wisdom:\n"
message+="${fortune_msg}"
# Randomly choose between a cow or a pony
if ((RANDOM % 2 == 0)); then
# Sample an image from the cowsay set
cow_file=$(cowsay -l | tail -n +2 | tr ' ' '\n' | shuf | head -n 1)
echo -e "${message}" | cowsay -f "${cow_file}" -W 45 | lolcat -F 0.01
else
if [ "$verbose" = true ]; then
echo -e "${message}" | ponysay --compact
else
echo -e "${message}" | ponysay --compact 2>/dev/null
fi
fi
}
fancy_console_greeting
or save a script and run it in your terminal.
There is an instance of unescaped bakslash in the docstring of ponysay
. Since recent versions of Python 3.10, this will raise a SyntaxWarning
.
/opt/homebrew/bin/ponysay/balloon.py:43: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\-'
/opt/homebrew/bin/ponysay/balloon.py:43: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\-'
To silence the warning, by default, the script will run ponysay
and redirect the stderr to /dev/null
. If you want to see the warnings, you can run the script with the --verbose
flag.
A pull request to fix the issue has been sumitted, but it has not been merged yet.
Detailed walkthrough
Let’s dive deeper into how each component works.
Fortunes and sayings in the termianl
The fortune
command displays a random fortune from a collection of fortune cookies. The fortune-mod
package provides a collection of fortune cookies that can be displayed using the fortune
command. fortune
, created by Ken Arnold, dates back to the 1970s and is a fun way to display a random saying or quote in the terminal.
$ fortune
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
-- Benjamin Franklin
You can, for example select a subject of the requested fortunes.
$ fortune science
Statistics are no substitute for judgement.
-- Henry Clay
To see all available subjects of fortunes you can run fortune -f
that will list all available files from which fortunes can be sourced. The available files can differ between the sources of packages.
Lolcat - colorize your terminal
Inspired by the “nyan cat” meme, lolcat was created to add rainbow colors to your terminal output. To colorize the output of a command, simply pipe it to lolcat
.
$ echo 'Hello, world!' | lolcat
You can control the colors of the output with the -F/--freq
flag with higher values resulting in more colors and lower values in monochromous output.
With an -a
flag you can animate the output (controlling the duration of the animation with -d
flag and the speed with -s
flag).
Cowsay - let the cow deliver your message
Created by Tony Monroe in 1999, cowsay
is a program that generates ASCII pictures of a cow with a message. The cow can say (cowsay
) or think (cowthink
) the message, and you can choose from a variety of cow designs.
$ cowsay 'Hello there!'
______________
< Hello there! >
--------------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w |
|| ||
There are sveral ways we can modify how the cow would look like. For example, here’s the excerpt from the cosway
manual (accessible via man cowsay
):
The -b option initiates Borg mode; -d causes the cow to appear dead; -g invokes greedy mode; -p causes a state of paranoia to come over the cow; -s makes the cow appear thoroughly stoned; -t yields a tired cow; -w is somewhat the opposite of -t, and initiates wired mode; -y brings on the cow’s youthful appearance.
We’re not limited to cows either – there are some figures to choose from.
$ cowsay -f moofasa 'Look, Simba. Everything the light touches is our kingdom.'
___________________________________
/ Look, Simba. Everything the light \
\ touches is our kingdom. /
-----------------------------------
\ ____
\ / \
| ^__^ |
| (oo) |______
| (__) | )\/\
\____/|----w |
|| ||
Moofasa
To list all available cows, run the following command:
$ cowsay -l
Cow files in /path/to/cows:
beavis.zen blowfish bong bud-frogs bunny cheese cower daemon default dragon
dragon-and-cow elephant elephant-in-snake eyes flaming-sheep ghostbusters
head-in hellokitty kiss kitty koala kosh luke-koala meow milk moofasa moose
mutilated ren satanic sheep skeleton small stegosaurus stimpy supermilker
surgery three-eyes turkey turtle tux udder vader vader-koala www
And to select a specific cow, use the -f
flag followed by the cow’s name:
$ cowsay -f tux 'Hello there!'
______________
< Hello there! >
--------------
\
\
.--.
|o_o |
|:_/ |
// \ \
(| | )
/'\_ _/`\
\___)=(___/
And to randomly select a cow, you can use the following:
cowsay -f $(cowsay -l | tail -n +2 | tr ' ' '\n' | shuf -n 1) 'Hello'
_______
< Hello >
-------
\ . . .
\ . . . ` ,
\ .; . : .' : : : .
\ i..`: i` i.i.,i i .
\ `,--.|i |i|ii|ii|i:
UooU\.'@@@@@@`.||'
\__/(@@@@@@@@@@)'
(@@@@@@@@)
`YY~~~~YY'
|| ||
Ponysay - a modern twist on cowsay
Ponysay is a fun tool that is similar to cowsay, but instead of a cow, it uses a pony from the My Little Pony series.
To have a pony say a message, you can simply use the ponysay
command:
$ fortune | ponysay
There is an instance of unescaped bakslash in the docstring of ponysay
. Since recent versions of Python 3.10, this will raise a SyntaxWarning
.
/opt/homebrew/bin/ponysay/balloon.py:43: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\-'
/opt/homebrew/bin/ponysay/balloon.py:43: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\-'
To silence the warning, you can redirect the stderr to /dev/null
. If you want to see the warnings, you can run the script with the --verbose
flag.
A pull request to fix the issue has been sumitted, but it has not been merged yet.
You can also select a specific pony to say the message:
$ fortune -s wisdom | ponysay -F owl 2>/dev/null
To list all available ponies you can specify the -A
flag to list all ponies, or -l
to list only the MLP ponies.
To list all options of ponysay
, you can run ponysay --help
.
And if you’re dedicated enough, you can even create your own pony! Check out the Providing ponies section of the ponysay documentation for more information.
Putting it all together
To comopose the message, I will take the current date and a random fortune message.
current_date=$(date '+%H:%M on %A, %B %d, %Y')
fortune_msg=$(fortune -s wisdom)
message="Welcome! \n\nIt's ${current_date}. \n\nToday's wisdom: \n${fortune_msg}"
The message will look like this:
$ echo -e "${message}"
Welcome!
It's 09:28 on Tuesday, September 24, 2024.
Today's wisdom:
You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads
lead down.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "The Cyberiad"
Then, I will display the message using either cowsay
or ponysay
, randomly chosen, with color effects applied by lolcat
.
# Randomly choose between a cow or a pony
if ((RANDOM % 2 == 0)); then
# Sample an image from the cowsay set
cow_file=$(cowsay -l | tail -n +2 | tr ' ' '\n' | shuf | head -n 1)
echo -e "${message}" | cowsay -f "${cow_file}" -W 45 | lolcat -F 0.01
else
if [ "$verbose" = true ]; then
echo -e "${message}" | ponysay --compact
else
echo -e "${message}" | ponysay --compact 2>/dev/null
fi
fi
Conclusion
By combining these fun command-line tools, you can make your terminal sessions more enjoyable. Whether you’re a fan of cows, ponies, or just colorful text, these commands offer a delightful way to personalize your console.
Happy hacking!