Conky

Funny name and an amazing must have program!
Conky is a system Desktop Monitor, and with a tiny bit of tweaking, you can get it to display anything that you want it to.

Many people have made their own scripts that you can download online. I have seen scripts that display the weather, new mail in your GoogleMail account, what song is play on your media player etc.

At the moment, I have two Conky's running on my desktop:


To change how your Conky looks, just edit the .conkyrc file within your main directory.

Scripts for the one in the top left:

Conky

# .conkyrc
# By JAM - http://www.jamsubuntu.blogspot.com

update_interval 1.0

double_buffer yes
own_window yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,skip_taskbar

use_xft yes
xftfont Bitstream Vera Sans:size=8

background yes
own_window_transparent yes
minmum_width 250
default_color white
alignment top_left
gap_x 15
gap_y 15

uppercase no

TEXT

${color #ff0000}Name PID CPU% MEM%
${color #ffffff} ${top name 1} ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}
${color #ffffff} ${top name 2} ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2} ${top mem 2}
${color #ffffff} ${top name 3} ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top mem 3}
${color #ff0000}Mem usage
${color #ffffff} ${top_mem name 1} ${top_mem pid 1} ${top_mem cpu 1} ${top_mem mem 1}
${color #ffffff} ${top_mem name 2} ${top_mem pid 2} ${top_mem cpu 2} ${top_mem mem 2}
${color #ffffff} ${top_mem name 3} ${top_mem pid 3} ${top_mem cpu 3} ${top_mem mem 3}

${color #ff0000}Local Weather:
${color #aaaaaa}${execi 1800 /home/jam/weather.sh}

Weather.sh

#!/bin/sh

#
# Grab weather data from weather.com and format it according to the given XSLT
# Script written by boojit
# Modified by Hellf[i]re
# The original script and xslt can be downloaded from http://pondol.com/weather.tar.gz

# Usage:
# ${execi 1800 /path/to/weather/weather.sh location}
# Usage Example:
# ${execi 1800 /home/user/weather/weather.sh 03833}

# your Location ID: use http://xoap.weather.com/search/search?where=[yourcity] to find it
# U.S. users can just use their zip code; doubt that works for anyone else though (YMMV)
LOCID=UKXX0272

# s=standard units, m=metric units
UNITS=m

# where this script and the XSLT lives
RUNDIR=/home/jam

# there's probably other stuff besides CURL that will work for this, but i haven't
# tried any others.
# you can get curl at http://curl.haxx.se/
CURLCMD=/usr/bin/curl

# get it at http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/
XSLTCMD=/usr/bin/xsltproc

# you probably don't need to modify anything below this point....

# CURL url. Use cc=* for current forecast or dayf=10 to get a multi-day forecast
CURLURL="http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/$LOCID?cc=*&unit=$UNITS&dayf=2"

# The XSLT to use when translating the response from weather.com
# You can modify this xslt to your liking
XSLT=$RUNDIR/weather.xslt

#filter (if you want to convert stuff to lower-case or upper case or something)
#FILTER="|gawk '{print(tolower(\$0));}'"


#####
eval "$CURLCMD \"$CURLURL\" 2>/dev/null| $XSLTCMD $XSLT - $FILTER"

Weather.xslt
<!-- <br /><br /> This XSLT is used to translate an XML response from the weather.com<br /> XML API. <br /><br /> You can format this file to your liking. Two things you may feel <br /> like doing:<br /><br /> 1) Modify the layout of the fields or static text already defined<br /> 2) Add other fields from the XML response file that aren't referenced in this<br /> XSLT. You can grab a full list by just doing a: <br /> wget "http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/$LOCID?cc=*&unit=$UNITS" <br /> (change $LOCID and $UNITS to suit your needs)<br />--><br /><br /><xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0" > <br /> <xsl:output method="text" disable-output-escaping="yes"/><br /> <xsl:template match="weather"><br /> <xsl:apply-templates select="cc"/><br /> <xsl:apply-templates select="dayf/day[@d='1']"/><br /> </xsl:template><br /> <br /> <br /> <xsl:template match="cc"><br /> <xsl:text>Location: </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="obst"/> <br /><xsl:text>:<br /></xsl:text><br /><xsl:text> Temperature: </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="tmp"/><xsl:value-of select="/weather/head/ut"/><br /><xsl:if test="tmp != flik"><br /><xsl:text><br /> Feels Like: </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="flik"/><xsl:value-of select="/weather/head/ut"/><br /></xsl:if><br /><xsl:text><br /> Conditions: </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="t"/><br /><xsl:text><br /> Wind: </xsl:text><br /><xsl:choose><br /> <xsl:when test="wind/s = 'calm'"><xsl:text>0</xsl:text></xsl:when><br /> <xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="wind/s"/></xsl:otherwise><br /></xsl:choose><br /><xsl:value-of select="/weather/head/us"/> <br /><xsl:choose><br /> <xsl:when test="wind/s = 'calm'"><xsl:text>(0mph)</xsl:text></xsl:when><br /> <xsl:otherwise><xsl:text> (</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="round(wind/s * 0.6214)"/><xsl:text>mph)</xsl:text></xsl:otherwise><br /></xsl:choose><br /><xsl:text> (</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="wind/t"/><br /><xsl:text>)</xsl:text><br /> </xsl:template><br /><br /> <xsl:template match="dayf/day[@d='1']"><br /><xsl:text><br /> Tomorrow: </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="low"/><xsl:value-of select="/weather/head/ut"/><br /><xsl:text> to </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="hi"/><xsl:value-of select="/weather/head/ut"/><br /><xsl:text>, </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="part[@p='d']/t"/><br /><xsl:text><br /> </xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="/weather/swa/a/t"/><br /><xsl:text><br /></xsl:text><br /> </xsl:template><br /></xsl:stylesheet>

Script for the one in the bottom right:

# .conkyrc
# By JAM - http://www.jamsubuntu.blogspot.com

update_interval 1.0

double_buffer yes
own_window yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,skip_taskbar

use_xft yes
xftfont Bitstream Vera Sans:size=8

background yes
own_window_transparent yes
minmum_width 250
default_color white
alignment bottom_right
gap_x 15
gap_y 0

uppercase no

TEXT
$nodename - $kernel

${color lightgrey}Uptime:$color $uptime $alignr${color lightgrey}Load:$color $loadavg
${color lightgrey}CPU: $color ${freq} Mhz $alignr${color lightgrey} Usage:$color $cpu%
$color${cpugraph}

${color lightgrey}Processor temperature: $color${acpitemp}°C

${color lightgrey}Battery: $color ${battery}

${color lightgrey}RAM usage:$color $mem/$memmax - $memperc%
${membar}

${color grey}Disk usage: $color${fs_free /} of ${fs_size /}
${fs_bar 6 /}

${color #ffcb48}Wi-Fi ${hr 1}
${color lightgrey}Wireless signal: $color${wireless_link_qual ath0}%
${color lightgrey}IP address: $color${addr ath0}
${color lightgrey}Download speed: $color${downspeedf wifi0} Kb/sec
${downspeedgraph wifi0}
${color red}Downloaded: $color${totaldown wifi0} $alignr ${color green}Uploaded: $color${totalup wifi0}

${color #ffcb48}Ethernet ${hr 1}
${color lightgrey}IP address: $alignr$color${addr eth0}