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 ] )
Related media
Video 01: ASCIIQuarium – Sea Animation on Linux / Unix Desktop
Download: erminal ASCII Aquarium KDE and Mac OS X Version
Download asciiquarium. 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.
If you enjoyed this desktop fun app, you may also like to use the following apps on Linux:
- Terminal ASCII Aquarium
- Steam Locomotive
- Let it Snow On Your Desktop
- Summon Swarms Of Penguins To Waddle About The Desktop
- Text Mode Box and Comment Drawing
- Christmas Tree For Your Terminal
- Cat And Mouse Chase All Over Your Screen
- Bastet Tetris(r) clone with block-choosing AI for console
- The Digital Rain: Simulates the display from "The Matrix"
35 comment
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. 😉
Strictly speaking this is a curses animation, it will work over any terminal with a proper curses descriptor not just an ANSI terminal.
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
Redhat distro’s can also use “CheckInstall” to create an rpm package from the source code. Check out http://checkinstall.izto.org/ for more information. This should already be included in the latest CentOS repo’s. Works very well and allows one to easily remove the application with your package manager as well.
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
This is awesome! I turned all my tty1~6 into this aqarium xD
can u tell, how must I do after I get this message : BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 2. I used fedora, thanks
“cd asciiquarium_1.0/”
needs to be
“cd asciiquarium_1.1/”
They updated it.
Can it be made as a screen saver..?