You can now enjoy mysteries of the sea from the safety of your own terminal using ASCIIQuarium. It is an aquarium/sea animation in ASCII art created using perl.
Install Term::Animation
First, you need to install Perl module called Term-Animation. Open a command-line terminal (select Applications > Accessories > Terminal), and then type:
$ sudo apt-get install libcurses-perl
$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/K/KB/KBAUCOM/Term-Animation-2.4.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf Term-Animation-2.4.tar.gz
$ cd Term-Animation-2.4/
$ perl Makefile.PL && make && make test
$ sudo make install
Download and Install ASCIIQuarium
While still at bash prompt, type:
$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://www.robobunny.com/projects/asciiquarium/asciiquarium.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf asciiquarium.tar.gz
$ cd asciiquarium_1.0/
$ sudo cp asciiquarium /usr/local/bin
$ sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/asciiquarium
How do I view my ASCII Aquarium?
Simply type the following command:
$ /usr/local/bin/asciiquarium
OR
$ perl /usr/local/bin/asciiquarium
(Fig.01: ASCII Aquarium [ click to enlarge ] )
Download: KDE and Mac OS X Version
Download - If you're running Mac OS X, try a packaged version that will run out of the box. For KDE users, try a KDE Screensaver based on the Asciiquarium.
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{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you.nice!
You need to cd to asciiquarium after tar -zxvf asciiquarium.tar.gz
cpan install Term::Animation
That’s cool :-)
How can I compile rpm for CentOS 5.5?
Cent OS users, try:
yum install perl-Curses
instead of
sudo apt-get install libcurses-perl
Worked for me :)
There is nothing about libcurses-perl in CentOS yum programme.where can i get it?
See comment # 5
Debian / Ubuntu
dh-make-perl –build –cpan Term::Animation
Forgot, then afterwards dpkg -i libterm-animation-perl_2.4-1_all.deb
As I know, in rpm-based OSes it’s preferable to build rpm with rpm-build and than install it.
Nice. Someone must have been really bored to do this…
If anyone asks – in OpenSuse 11.3 you need to add the CPAN repository (if you don’t have it):
sudo zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/perl/openSUSE_11.3 perl
and install perl-Curses (for some reason the package name is different than in Ubuntu):
sudo zypper install perl-Curses
Have fun!
FYI: There is a slight difference between ASCII and ANSI. ;)
Cool, I see it is already installed by default in my KDE (Mandriva Linux). Love it.
Just a small detail: chances are you are not the owner of the file you just sudo cp’d into /usr/local/bin, so you won’t have the necessary permissions to chmod at the end. It should be ‘sudo chmod’.
A great find. Thanks.
Wow nice :)
Thanks!
I want this as screensaver, does anybody has a solution to do this?
Cool, Thanks for tip :-)
Any idea how to Install Term::Animation on Fedora 14?
The perl ‘Makefile.PL && make && make test’ fails with message:
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 2.
When I looked at this line I see:
use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;
Then I installed the perl-MakeMaker-5.41-10.i386.rpm package from:
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/12105913/dir/redhat_7.x/com/perl-MakeMaker-5.41-10.i386.rpm.html
Ok. Installed without errors.
Now I tried again ‘Makefile.PL && make && make test’
And again it complains about BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 2.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance
I don’t have a Fedora system to test on, but you might want to try looking for a perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker package.
Thanks for your suggestion, but after that I’ve got still the same error message.
you need to install Test::Pod – cpan get Test::pod
Thanks. Finally it is working now!
Glad you guys like it! I have a similar program that displays a scene based on the weather:
http://robobunny.com/projects/weatherspect/html/
If you have any problems or suggestions, let me know.
In addition to the KDE screensaver version, there’s now a live wallpaper for Android ported by Claudio Matsuoka:
http://www.androidpit.com/en/android/market/apps/app/org.helllabs.android.asciiquarium/Asciiquarium-Live-Wallpaper
Is possible ascii aquarium in motd on ssh?
Thanks.
Thx For Your post
that’s cool
That’s very nice.
10 points for your “bash street credibility” :)
That’s very funny ^^
Thank you very much
THis is really neat. LOve it>>>>
Jaysunn
Not sure if posted. For OSX. I became root and issued the command:
prompt>cpan
I then accepted all the default prompts.
Then I ran
cpan>install Term::Animation
Then I ran:
shine:~ jasonralph$ asciiquarium
Since it was in my path the binary ran perfectly.
Afer that I was able to see the coolness. Very sweet.
Jaysunn