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A Small List of Common GeekTool User Commands

Written by on September 28, 2009 in GeekTool - 18 Comments

Ldesk screenshotast week, I wrote an article about GeekTool and its uses. I decided that it would be nice to create a list of some of the most common user commands that I’ve found online so that others may benefit the great features of GeekTool.  I am using GeekTool 3 for the commands. To the right is a preview of the GeekTool pane area (just click it to enlarge). So let’s get to the commands….

Month:
date +%B
Month
Day of Month:
date +%d
Day of Month
Full Date:
date "+%A, %B %d"
Full Date
Day of Week:
date +%A
Day of Week
Time:
date +"%l:%M"
Time
AM/PM:
date +"%p"
AM:PM
Current Calendar Month
This is just a simple, small calendar:
cal
Small Calendar
Simple Horizontal Calendar:
cal | sed -e '1d' -e '2p;2p;2p;2p' | sed -e '$!N;s/\n/ /' -e '$!N;s/\n/ /' -e '$!N;s/\n/ /' -e '$!N;s/\n/ /' | sed "s/^/ /;s/$/ /;s/ $(date +%e) /\|$(date +%e)\|/"

Horizontal Calendar

Weather Conditions:
lynx -dump http://printer.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=51501|awk '/Cond/ && !/Fore/ {for (i=2; i<=10; i++) printf $i " " }'
Weather Conditions
Historical Events:
curl http://www.infoplease.com/rss/dayinhistory.rss | grep CDATA | sed -e 's/\(.*\[\)//' -e 's/\].*//'
Historical Events
UPDATE: The original quote of the day has been removed due to Encarta no longer having a valid RSS feed. Here is a replacement. Found this geeklet here: http://www.korvus.com/blog/geek/dailyzen-in-geektool/
Quote of the Day:
curl -s http://www.dailyzen.com/ | sed -n "/<\!--Add Quote for correct day-->/,/<\/TD>/p"|sed -e "s/<[^>]*>//g" |strings|fold -sw60
Current Homeland Security Level (which will most likely show ‘Elevated’:
curl -s http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition | grep CONDITION
Threat Level
RAM:
top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "" $8 " "}' ;
RAM
CPU:
top -l 2 | awk '/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print $12, $13}'
IP Address
If you simply want to know your IP Address, this sort of command can be very helpful.
echo External IP: `curl -s http://checkip.dyndns.org/ | sed 's/[a-zA-Z<>/ :]//g'`
External IP

About the Author

I am currently working on an Associates in Art for Web Design. My interests include finding various apps for Mac OS and iPhone/iPad and tweaking the system. I also like finding ways to tweak my internet experience on Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome. I also enjoy learning new things from others along with course work.

18 Comments on "A Small List of Common GeekTool User Commands"

  1. Steve October 21, 2009 at 1:50 pm ·

    suggested improvement for homeland security status:

    curl -s http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition | grep CONDITION | cut -d = -f 2 | cut -d ‘ ‘ -f 1 | sed ‘s/.\(.*\)/\1/’ | sed ‘s/\(.*\)./\1/’

  2. Всеволод October 23, 2009 at 6:40 am ·

    Обилие интересных статей на вашем сайте меня поражает! Автору – удачи и новых интересных постов!

  3. Tina Brunner October 23, 2009 at 2:04 pm ·

    Author, Большое спасибо. Я высоко ценю вашу просмотре веб-сайта и надеемся на более комментариев!
    (Thank you very much. I appreciate your viewing the website and look forward to more comments!)

  4. DenzelWPn November 3, 2009 at 7:02 pm ·

    Hello there, Did you have a happy Haloween?

  5. Tina Brunner November 3, 2009 at 8:45 pm ·

    DenzelWPn:
    Yes, we had a wonderful Halloween. Hopefully you did too. Thanks for asking!

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