Continuous scripts in conky?

Question

I would like to know if there is a way to run scripts that go continuously in conky. For example, I have one that displays the volume in the command line and just remains running, displaying the new volume instantly when I change the volume with the keyboard. Can I have this sort of behavior in conky without too much CPU usage? Right now, I have to wait until conky's update_interval passes until I see any changes. Making the update_interval really small increases my CPU usage by a lot, which I do not want to do.
Here is the volume script I'm talking about:
#1/bin/bash
while true; do sleep 0.1; vol=$(amixer get Master | awk -F'[]%[]' '/%/ {if ($7 == "off") { print "MM" } else { print $2 }}' | head -n 1); echo -n -e '\r'Vol: $vol%; done

Answer 1

I tried using something like that; I even used the exact command you posted, and the problem is that the volume won't update any faster than the rest of conky will.
When I was using xmonad (now dwm), xmobar would use hardly any cpu because I set some plugins (like network status, time, etc.) to update every 30 seconds to a minute, whereas things like volume were updated every half-second. I was hoping I could get something like this with the dwm status bar, that is, all the information in my conkyrc here:
# Conky, a system monitor, based on torsmo
background no
total_run_times 0
#cpu_avg_samples 2
#net_avg_samples 2
#no_buffers yes
out_to_console yes
#out_to_stderr no
update_interval 2
#uppercase no
use_spacer none
TEXT
±${battery_time BAT1}(${battery_short BAT1}) cpu0/1: ${cpu cpu0}% ${cpu cpu1}% mem: $memperc% ($mem) ${exec /home/agi/.bin/volume.sh} ${exec /home/agi/.bin/wireless.sh} ${time %a %b %d %I:%M%P}
but with minimal cpu/memory usage (I usually have 1-3% when idle). Part of the reason I switched to dwm is that it's so light!