From: reavey <reavey@nep.net>

I'm a new member. I'm an elem. librarian in NE, Pa. near Binghamton,ny

Are you really a Worcester Linux UG member from PA? Why? Well, you're not asking me to smuggle diamonds, and nobody else is answering your question, so I'll bite the big bait.

I just got approval and installed a linux box in our library to run a couple of demo programs worldwatch clock simulator and kstars. In screen saver I now run phosphores, which I have written text for using echo and printf in a bash shell.

I am glad that Linux is spreading to new places, but I hope you find something more impressive to do with it than run a screen saver and a $1000 simulator for a $5 clock.

I would like to use noseguy but don't understand how it works??

Though I have been running Linux almost exclusively for more than six years, but I have never heard of 'noseguy' and have no idea what it is supposed to do. Where did you get it and why do you want it?

I have read it likes to run fortunes, and yet when I use either the text files or .dat it won't read.Permission denial, chmod 777== can't execute binary?? Regular text files are not parsed and it deadlocks. What do you think?

Your description is too sketchy for anyone to think much, except "some file mode is wrong somewhere maybe". If you want help, you must say exactly what you did and what was the error message.

Should I write a program in python to parse a text file(out of my ken). There is probably something stupid I can't see

(-: Who is Ken, and why won't he let you parse your file? :-) -- Keith

From: Michelle Vadeboncoeur <mrv@kluge.net>

On Tue, 29 Oct 2002, Keith Wright wrote:

KW> Though I have been running Linux almost exclusively for more KW> than six years, but I have never heard of 'noseguy'

I remember having noseguy as a screensaver option

No wonder I've never heard of it. The original screensaver just blanked the screen when the terminal was not in use, to prvent the login: prompt from getting burnt into the phosphors. Good idea, but it was hard to tell if the power was on, so somebody had the idea of displaying a small randomly bouncing spot. You could see it was on, but it was still mostly black and no place got burnt by a static image. After that, it has been straight downhill. I've never purposely installed a screen saver, though I suspect that the amount of disk space wasted by the ones that get installed by default exceeds the total amount of space on all disks I used at my first three jobs. There's a classic Dilbert cartoon: PHB: We need a program to track the inventory, print bills and invoices, schedule manufacturing, and ensure that our customers can track the progress of their orders. Dilbert: That sound pretty difficult, what if I write a program that shows pictures of fish swimming around the computer screen? PHB: OK, do that. People like that, too. -- Keith

On Fri, Oct 25, 2002 at 09:07:32PM -0400, reavey wrote:

I would like to use noseguy but don't understand how it works?? I have read it likes to run fortunes, and yet when I use either the text files or .dat it won't read.Permission denial, chmod 777== can't execute binary?? Regular text files are not parsed and it deadlocks. What do you think? Should I write a program in python to parse a text file(out of my ken). There is probably something stupid I can't see

FYI: fortune has 2 files, the text file, and a "database" dat file which specifies how many fortunes there are, what offsets in the text file they're at, etc, etc. If you only edit the text file, fortune will get very confused. doing a "man strfile" will help you out. I also wrote a perl version (for the perl power tools project) which you can find on their website (do a google search for "perl power tools"...) -- Randomly Generated Tagline: We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated. (seen in someone's .signature)