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Comment by bryogenic | Hacker News Reader

Great fun with cowsay

  $ curl https://api.github.com/zen -s | cowsay

   _____________________
  < Speak like a human. >
   --------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

View on HN

See also:

  $ curl https://api.github.com/octocat

           MMM.           .MMM
           MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
           MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM      _____________________
          MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM    |                     |
         MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM   | Speak like a human. |
        MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM   |_   _________________|
        MMMM::- -:::::::- -::MMMM    |/
         MM~:~   ~:::::~   ~:~MM
    .. MMMMM::. .:::+:::. .::MMMMM ..
          .MM::::: ._. :::::MM.
             MMMM;:::::;MMMM
      -MM        MMMMMMM
      ^  M+     MMMMMMMMM
          MMMMMMM MM MM MM
               MM MM MM MM
               MM MM MM MM
            .~~MM~MM~MM~MM~~.
         ~~~~MM:~MM~~~MM~:MM~~~~
        ~~~~~~==~==~~~==~==~~~~~~
         ~~~~~~==~==~==~==~~~~~~
             :~==~==~==~==~~

You can also append `?s="your message here"` to use it to say something other than one of the GitHub Zen messages.

Awesome, aliasing this as cowzen.

Have you seen that it comes with other examples?

     ls /usr/share/cowsay | xargs -n1 -I{} cowsay -f {} foo | less

Some of them are.. well..

"Cow Operation"? WTF

Best ones: vomit cow and Kosh.

Kosh works exceptionally well with tiny zen sayings.

    ______________________________________ 
   < Mind your words, they are important. >
    -------------------------------------- 
       \
        \
         \
     ___       _____     ___
    /   \     /    /|   /   \
   |     |   /    / |  |     |
   |     |  /____/  |  |     |     
   |     |  |    |  |  |     |
   |     |  | {} | /   |     |
   |     |  |____|/    |     |
   |     |    |==|     |     |
   |      \___________/      |
   |                         |
   |                         |

whoa whoa whoa there is a command-line vorlon available? what?

    $ ls /usr/share/cows/
    beavis.zen.cow  dragon-and-cow.cow     hellokitty.cow  moofasa.cow    sodomized.cow    turtle.cow
    bong.cow        dragon.cow             kiss.cow        moose.cow      stegosaurus.cow  tux.cow
    bud-frogs.cow   elephant.cow           kitty.cow       mutilated.cow  stimpy.cow       udder.cow
    bunny.cow       elephant-in-snake.cow  koala.cow       ren.cow        supermilker.cow  vader.cow
    cheese.cow      eyes.cow               kosh.cow        satanic.cow    surgery.cow      vader-koala.cow
    cower.cow       flaming-sheep.cow      luke-koala.cow  sheep.cow      telebears.cow    www.cow
    daemon.cow      ghostbusters.cow       meow.cow        skeleton.cow   three-eyes.cow
    default.cow     head-in.cow            milk.cow        small.cow      turkey.cow

On Debian, how do I get all these magnificent cows?

sudo apt-get install cowsay

Cows are installed to /usr/share/cowsay/cows

Once you have cowsay installed, you can invoke them with cowsay -f.

For instance: cowsay -f kosh "Understanding is a three-edged sword."

> Great fun with cowsay

... and ponysay: http://i.imgur.com/Df09hpV.png

What are these things called? And how do I make one and append into my code?

Great idea, gonna put it in my bashrc (:

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