Text-based dock

Hi all,

I am looking for a simple system monitor to put in the dock. Up to
now, the most convincing application (for me) has been 'conky';
unfortunately, it is too big to fit in a small dock. I don't want
anything fancy; in fact, I would be very happy with a text-based
thing, a sort of ion menu but showing a few lines with some system
variables instead of lists of windows. Does anyone have a hint of how
to do such an apparently simple job?

Thanks a lot. Long life to ion.