No Stinking Phone App Needed

The Watercooler
1

I meditate in my living room with my Linux computer running.

There is a dearth of kitschy little counter apps for Linux desktops as there are for Windows.

So I made myself a Bash script to play a gong audio file. Been using it for years. Recently I accidentally deleted it when moving to a new hard drive. I had to recreate it.

I thought I would do two nice things with the same action by posting the script here. Others can use it and should I lose it again I can find a copy of it on the web :).

You can download the audio file by clicking this link

Just paste the script quoted below into a file on your *nix computer and read the top for instructions on how to set it up.

Enjoy!
#!/bin/bash
################################################################################
##
## File: meditationTimer
##
## Purpose: Count down and display the number of minutes left. Play an audio
## file when done.
##
## Usage: Type the name of the script followed by the minutes desired
## Example: count down two hours
##
## meditationTimer 120
##
## Setup: 1. Install the package called “sox” on your Linux system
## 2. Place the meditationTimerBell.wav file in the same directory as
## this script.
## 3. Set the permission on both files with chmod 755 theFileName
##
################################################################################

# Get the current directory so that the audio file placed in the same 
# directory can be found
directory=`dirname "$0"`

# If minutes in whole numbers only is not supplied on the command line.
if [[ -n ${1//[0-9]/} ]]; then
    echo "Please supply a value for minutes,only minutes,and only whole numbers."
    exit
fi
 
# Convert the input argument of minutes into seconds to count down.
sec_rem=`expr 60 \* $1` 

# Calculate and print the time left
while [ $sec_rem -gt 0 ]; do 
	clear 
	let sec_rem=$sec_rem-1 
	interval=$sec_rem 
	seconds=`expr $interval % 60` 
	interval=`expr $interval - $seconds` 
	minutes=`expr $interval % 3600 / 60` 
	interval=`expr $interval - $minutes` 
	hours=`expr $interval % 86400 / 3600` 

    printf "\nMeditation Timer:\n\n"
    printf "%02d:%02d:%02d" $hours $minutes $seconds    

    sleep 1
done

printf "\n\n"

# Play the audio file for the bell
play $directory/meditationTimerBell.wav



printf "\n\n"


################################################################################
##                    END OF FILE:  meditationTimer
################################################################################
2 Likes
2

How ironic!

While admittedly commentarial (Visuddhimagga et al), central to the “five masteries of concentration/jhana” is the ability to exactly time the duration of sessions.

That is to say, no nerd-prop whatsoever needed.

3

Post back when you get there.

4

Thank you for this. :slight_smile: Even tho i will not use it (no linux), it gave me a warm feeling to see the generosity.

1 Like
5

Thank you for the nice thought.

It should work on a Mac, as they use BSD ( unix ) command shell.

1 Like