XTerm (256-colours) "pulsing" date in the top right corner of the terminal

pulsingdate.sh

#! /bin/sh

#  Pulsing date XTerm mastery
#  Copyright (C) 2011 Matous J. Fialka, <http://mjf.cz/>
#  Released under the terms of The MIT License

#  Prerequisities: flock tput TERM=xterm-256color

lock()
{
	while ! flock -w 1 1 2>/dev/null
	do
		:
	done
}

unlock()
{
	while ! flock -w 1 -u 1 2>/dev/null
	do
		:
	done
}

trap unlock SIGHUP SIGINT SIGQUIT SIGTERM

while :
do
	for C in 17 18 19 20 21 21 20 19 18 17  # this seq. may vary
	do
		D=`date +%T`
		X=$((`tput cols`-9))
		lock
		echo -n -e "\e7\e[0;${X}H\e[37;0m\e[48;5;${C}m $D \e8\e[0m"
		unlock
		sleep 0.1
	done
done &

This is just little hack for fun and to show one of my friends how to lock standard output in order to do such silly things. Try it like this:

$ pulsingdate.sh
$ top -d 0.1

Note that the colour seq. may vary from environment to environment. Just choose values you like... Enjoy!