Netcat the band
With all this randomized art you'll be spending your time on, you'll want a
little background music. Luckily, a geek-friendly band called Netcat
<https://netcat.bandcamp.com/> released an album *as a Linux kernel module*
on GitHub <https://github.com/usrbinnc/netcat-cpi-kernel-module>.
So, how exactly can an album be a kernel module? Well, the album,
called *Cycles
Per Instruction*, gets compiled into a kernel module (specifically,
netcat.ko). When the module is added to your environment, it manifests
itself as /dev/netcat. Piping the output of that "device" into a media
player like ffplay plays the album.
If it sounds too amazing to be true, you're welcome to try it for yourself.
The instructions are straightforward, but I'll reiterate them here with a
few notes:
$ git clone https://github.com/usrbinnc/netcat-cpi-kernel-module.git
$ cd netcat*module
$ make -j4
$ su -c 'insmod ./netcat.ko'
$ ffplay - < /dev/netcat
I've successfully compiled and listened to this album on both a Linux 2.6.x
series kernel and a 3.x kernel. The band's GitHub page recommends ogg123,
but lately some users have reported playback issues. I found ffplay to
solve the playback issue, but you can also try mpv, legacy mplayer, or
others.
The album itself is beautiful. It's well worth a listen. It will, however,
continue to play until you remove the module:
$ su -c 'rmmod ./netcat.ko'
