OT: saytime program

[John Heim]

Yeah, I have a line in my crontab like this:

0 * * * * /bin/date +"\%l \%P" | /usr/local/bin/say -fi /dev/stdin

Note that there is no %M in the date format string so every hour it just 
says "2 P M" or whatever.  IMO, this is a better approach than running 
another daemon just to say the date once an hour.

I deliberately did not have it stop saying the time at some reasonable hour 
like 9 PM. This is for the benefit of the cleaning staff. :-)

One last note... I have a linux box at home that i often access from my 
office. I've played sounds just to see if I get an error message. So far, no 
complaints from my wife about strange noises coming from my home office. I 
was thinking of playing a practical joke this way though. "Hey hotstuff, how 
about coming over here and tickling my keyboard."

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Holmes" <steve at holmesgrown.com>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: OT: saytime program


> Hey thanks for the date suggestions.  I've had something similar around
> here for a long time but it just writes to the screen and I review it.
> This might be fun to pipe into Cepstral Callie as she has a fine
> sounding voice!:)
>
> I think this saytime program Cheryl and others are talking about would
> automatically say the time at selected intervals if I remember
> correctly.  If not, well, your alias/script idea could be coupled to
> cron and auto speak at designated intervals.  So many ways to skin a cat
> with Linux applications.
>
> On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 10:35:33AM -0600, John Heim wrote:
>> I do this:
>>
>> alias tm='date +"\%l \%M \%P" | say -fi /dev/stdin'
>>
>> Then all you have to do is type 'tm' and it will say the current time. 
>> For
>> example, "ten fourty one P M". That uses the DECtalk speech engine but 
>> you
>> could also use espeak.
>>
>> alias tm='date +"\l \%M \%P" | speak
>>
>> Or you could have it speak through whatever synth you're using for 
>> speakup
>> by just saying
>>
>> date +"%l %M %P"
>>
>> For that matter, you can just say 'date'.
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Lorenzo Taylor" <lorenzo at taylor.homelinux.net>
>> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
>> <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
>> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 9:39 AM
>> Subject: Re: OT: saytime program
>>
>>
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> > Hash: SHA1
>> >
>> > There is a saytime program that sounds better than the one in Debian?
>> > Hm.  If anyone has that I would like it as well.
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Lorenzo
>> > - -- 
>> > I've always found anomalies to be very relaxing. It's a curse.
>> > - --Jadzia Dax: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Assignment)
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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