0 * * * * /usr/bin/play /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
Simple...but not historically accurate. Traditionally, a bell was rung every half hour in a watch, up to 8 times. Watches started at midnight, and ran 4 hours. So if you started at midnight, and heard 5 bells, you'd know it was 2:30am and you still had 90 min to go. Simple enough
So I started pondering how I could write a script to do this...and after a few minutes of pondering counts and calls and such, I went for the not so elegant, but easy process of writing 8 seperate crontab entries, one for each bell count. So it looks as such.
30 0,4,8,12,16,20 * * * /usr/bin/mplayer -loop 1 /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
00 1,5,9,13,17,21 * * * /usr/bin/mplayer -loop 2 /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
30 1,5,9,13,17,21 * * * /usr/bin/mplayer -loop 3 /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
00 2,6,10,14,18,22 * * * /usr/bin/mplayer -loop 4 /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
30 2,6,10,14,18,22 * * * /usr/bin/mplayer -loop 5 /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
00 3,7,11,15,19,23 * * * /usr/bin/mplayer -loop 6 /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
30 3,7,11,15,19,23 * * * /usr/bin/mplayer -loop 7 /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
00 0,4,8,12,16,20 * * * /usr/bin/mplayer -loop 8 /home/vulpine/.wavs/Dagon-Bell.wav
I used mplayer over play or other apps because it was the easiest to find a command to play X repeates (the -loop). The cron times match up with when each bell set would ring, so 8 lines and about 3 min vs Cthulhu knows how long to write a single script that was called every 30 min, and kept a self count. Given my druthers, and my career of writing these kind of kludges because I had some crazy file foo dumped on my desk, and I didn't want to manually tweak the data, I prefer the 3 min kludge.
If you're bored, and want your computer to be all Age of Sail, all need is the above crontab entries (modified for your home directory path, and if mplayer is located somewhere else in your directory structure), the bell sound (there's a ton of free ones out there, the one I use can be grabbed here), and well a Unix based install with mplayer installed. Mac users, this probably will work for you, though you may need some other player program. Windows users, sorry...while it shouldn't be hard to replicate this, I have no clue off the top of my head. Good luck?
If you don't have your bells and watches memorized, here's a handy guide.
Time as marked by the bells
| Mid | Morning | Forenoon | Afternoon | Dogs | First |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0030 - 1 bell | 0430 - 1 bell | 0830 - 1 bell | 1230 - 1 bell | 1630 - 1 bell | 2030 - 1 bell |
| 0100 - 2 bells | 0500 - 2 bells | 0900 - 2 bells | 1300 - 2 bells | 1700 - 2 bells | 2100 - 2 bells |
| 0130 - 3 bells | 0530 - 3 bells | 0930 - 3 bells | 1330 - 3 bells | 1730 - 3 bells | 2130 - 3 bells |
| 0200 - 4 bells | 0600 - 4 bells | 1000 - 4 bells | 1400 - 4 bells | 1800 - 4 bells | 2200 - 4 bells |
| 0230 - 5 bells | 0630 - 5 bells | 1030 - 5 bells | 1430 - 5 bells | 1830 - 5 bells | 2230 - 5 bells |
| 0300 - 6 bells | 0700 - 6 bells | 1100 - 6 bells | 1500 - 6 bells | 1900 - 6 bells | 2300 - 6 bells |
| 0330 - 7 bells | 0730 - 7 bells | 1130 - 7 bells | 1530 - 7 bells | 1930 - 7 bells | 2330 - 7 bells |
| 0400 - 8 bells** | 0800 - 8 bells | 1200 - 8 bells | 1600 - 8 bells | 2000 - 8 bells | 2400 - 8 bells |
So that's how I've spent a bit of New Year's Day. Let me know how it works for you, or if you have questions, or you spot a glaring bug. Ciao.