moc, screen and figlet: A sum greater than its parts

moc users might know this and might not, but you can poll the moc server process to spit out information about the tune it’s playing. It’s something easier done than said, with just this command from a prompt:

mocp -Q %song

There are plenty of other variables you can use there; check the man page for a full list. You can also prepend that with a little explanatory text, and the output is adjusted properly. For example:

mocp -Q Now\ playing:\ %song

If you cull some error messages in the process (the Arch version will complain that it doesn’t have certain libraries installed, for example), that is easily corrected:

mocp -Q Now\ playing:\ %song 2>/dev/null

Pipe that through figlet, because small letters are boring:

mocp -Q Now\ playing:\ %song 2>/dev/null | figlet -t -c

Some crude looping, just for kicks:

while true ; do clear ; mocp -Q Now\ playing:\ %song 2>/dev/null | figlet -t -c ; sleep 15s ; done

The watch command might also be useful there. Dump that line into a file, set it to executable and cue screen to use it as the blankerprg. From screen’s prompt (CTRL+A : ) …

blankerprg script.sh
idle 90 blanker

Wait 90 seconds and bingo! a screensaver for the console that displays the tune currently playing. Isn’t Linux fun?!