Sunday, May 20, 2007

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (9 сообщений)

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  • TUAW Desktop of the Week

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    This week's Desktop of the Week may include a little Windows paraphernalia action, but don't let that distract you from some of the mod action that Flickr user dannyuncensored has going for his brand new black MacBook. First up is the wallpaper he's using - it appeared in a February rumor we ran of a possible Black iMac. The actual image was linked by TUAW reader Smitty, and is part of a wallpaper pack at - where else - deviantART. Here are the rest of the resources dannyuncensored is using in a handy list format:
    • ShapeShifter theme: TenFive from InterfaceLIFT
    • Byte Controller (free) for iTunes in the menubar
    • MacBook icon from InterfaceLIFT
    • Windows Vista icon for the Boot Camp partition created by dannyuncensored's friend (perhaps they would be willing to share it?)
    • Statistics in the middle of desktop are, again, provided by Panic's popular Stattoo
    • The clear Dock is provided by Unsanity's free ClearDock
    Dannyuncensored also included a nice touch with changing Photoshop's icon, though I have to admit that since installing the CS3 Web Premium suite (as well as After Effects CS3 which runs like butta'), the default 'periodic table of Adobe applications' branding philosophy has grown on me.

    If you'd like to see your unique, functional or otherwise interesting desktop featured in our TUAW Desktops of the Week series, check out past featured desktops as well as the original post for the rules and to get an idea of what we're looking for. Then, upload your desktop screenshot to our TUAW Desktops Flickr group. We'll feature one or more desktops each weekend, giving credit to the desktop owner, wallpaper creator and any apps featured in the screenshot (if available). Keep those desktops rolling in!
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  • Widget Watch: Mac ASCII Text with Figlet

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    Continuing on with what has turned into ASCII Sunday here at TUAW, a comment from Micah Cooper led me to FIGlet, which has been around roughly since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. It allows you to to create large ASCII-based text using various fonts and styles. After Micah reminded me about it, I Googled around and found a Dashboard widget based on the venerable Figlet (not to be confused with the venerable Bede or my personal iPod, which is also named Figlet).

    You can download Figlet Widget (say that 5 times fast) from Apple's Dashboard widget site. It allows you to enter text and choose from 18 different text-based styles. You can then cut the text art from the results field, paste it into your favorite email program and annoy all your friends. Who could ask for more?

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  • Sneak Peek: Apple Investor News

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    We occasionally report on Apple financial news. However, if you're interested in more than the occasional stock update, then Apple Investor News (AIN) is for you.

    The site officially launches on Tuesday, May 22, but we got a sneak peek this weekend. They present several feeds, neatly categorized and refreshed at 15 minute integrals. AAPL performance statistics, Apple financial news, Apple business podcasts and news from notable analysts represent just some of the tracked information. You'll also find an "Apple Intelligence" page and an "Apple Buzz" page. The layout is clean, neatly organized and readable.

    AIN should be a useful stop for tracking Apple financial information. Check back on Tuesday.
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  • Rig of the Week: Al Gore's setup

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    We're going to break from tradition this week and highlight a rig that is not a part of our flickr pool. At right we see former Vice President (and Apple Board member) Al Gore flanked by three huge Apple displays. We can only imagine where the computer powering those things is located in that cluttered office.

    By the way, does anyone know where I can get an enormous tree frog for my wall?

    "Al Gore's American Life" photographed for Time Magazine by Steve Pyke.

    If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. Each Sunday we'll comb through the most recent entries and declare a "Rig of the Week!"
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  • Pages Templates 1.0

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    Despite its baby-app shortcomings, I'm finally beginning to warm up to Pages. It's a very Apple-esque word processor (surprise surprise) with all the power I need without having to deal with the behemoth that is Microsoft Word. That said, I've been finding Pages a bit short on templates lately, and the iWorkCommunity Template Exchange is coming up just isn't doing it for me. Thankfully, I just caught Jumsoft's Pages Templates 1.0, a collection of 20 snazzy lookin' new templates for books, brochures, business cards, invitations, resumes, sales posters, portfolios, catalogs, menus, and even business reports and invoices. Even better, nearly every template offers multiple pages with alternate layouts from the screenshots you see at Jumsoft's site.

    Since these are mere templates, it appears Jumsoft doesn't offer any kind of downloadable demo for obvious reasons (I should also note that these templates only work with iWork/Pages '06, not '05). Fortunately, they do include multiple screenshots on the templates that offer more than one layout, so you can at least get a good look at everything the $39 price will get you.

    [via MacMinute]
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  • Nethack: The Best Game on your Mac

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    It has spawned numerous websites, user groups, mailing lists and Usenet topics. It has been around for decades and yet it still has uncounted adherents. It is, perhaps, the best game you can install on your Macintosh. It is Nethack.

    Nethack is a first player adventure game. You enter its dungeons searching for treasure and fighting off monsters like trolls, and dragons, and newts as you become embroiled in various quests depending on the type of character you play: elf, ranger, knight and so forth. Sure, it has crappy ASCII graphics and a learning curve that is, to say the least, steep--at least for the purists who play it in Terminal. (There is also a Carbon version available, but it somehow fails to match up to the good old ASCII style with its intricate character-based commands.) Playing Nethack can take minutes, days, or when you start getting good at it, months.

    Many Nethack players have been doing so for decades because it's that good a game with that level of intricacy, humor and detail. So if you've had it with Bejeweled and Chess and those Big Bang Board Games, consider investing a few hours or days into learning Nethack with its long term entertainment payoff.

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  • Terminal Tip: ASCII-ify your Videos

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    I'm kind of on an ASCII kick this weekend. Having already brought you ASCII banners, I thought I'd follow that up with ASCII video playback. Apple's ASCII Movie Player, which you can download here, allows you to view any QuickTime compatible media from the Terminal. Above, you see last week's episode of Heroes--that's Peter, in case you didn't recognize him from the screen shot.

    The ASCII Movie Player disk image contains a compiled Universal Binary application file. This means you don't need any developer tools to compile or run this utility. Drag a copy into your favorite folder (it doesn't have to be /Applications; /usr/local/bin might make more sense), launch Terminal, navigate to the executable and run it from the command line. e.g. % ./ASCIIMoviePlayer /Volumes/Data/Downloads/Heroes/X22-Heroes.m4v

    With ASCII Movie Player, you can play any media that works with QuickTime. So if you've got Perian installed, for example, you can ascii-fy your DivX or Xvid videos as well as your MPEG-4s and QuickTime MOVs, and so forth. And, since QuickTime also allows you to open and display still images, you can use ASCIIMoviePlayer to load and display most digital photographs.

    As a rule of thumb, display looks best with white-on-black rather than Terminal's default black-on-white. To switch this, select Terminal -> Window Settings, choose Color from the Inspector pop-up and update the Normal Text and Background Color settings.

    Update: colorized version can be found here.

    Update 2: Both Mplayer and VLC provide ASCII art output using the -libcaca module. (Caca stands for Color AsCii Art.) In VLC, use Settings > Preferences > Video > Output modules > Advanced options > Video output module > Color ASCII art video output (courtesy of JeffreyAtW over at Digg). More details here. In MPlayer, the AAlib supports black and white ASCII conversion and cacalib supports full color ASCII. Details here. mplayer -vo aa videoname or use mplayer -vo caca videoname for color ASCII (but with a performance hit due to the colors).

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  • Mac ASCII Invaders

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    If you're in the mood to shoot down some aliens, Mac ASCII Invaders plays exactly the way you expect it to: left and right arrows to move your weapon, the space bar to fire. This is Chuck Houpt's Macintosh port of Thomas Munro's ASCII version of Space Invaders.

    It's a "termlet"; you install the software into your Applications folder and double-click to run. It then launches Terminal for you and loads up all the backgrounds, font colors and the software you need to run the game. You'll see the Mac ASCII Invaders icon close from your dock and be replaced with the Terminal icon.

    Mac ASCII Invaders is SmileWare. Houpt writes: "If it makes you smile, please pass the smile along."

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  • Terminal Tip: Create a text banner

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    Want to create a "Happy Birthday" or "Congratulations" banner? Want to skip all the "how do I get a large font to print sideways?" stuff? The command line "banner" command may help. It allows you to create a sideways message that you can open in TextEdit, print out and (with a bit of help from scissors and scotch tape) hang from the rafters.

    The banner command defaults to an old style text width of 132 characters, so you'll want to tell it to keep that width down to 72 or 75 if you're going to use TextEdit's default font. (You can always play with the font sizes in TextEdit and the width in the banner command if you want.) Use the -w flag to set the width and put the text you want to bannerize in a string. The bit about "open -f" pipes the results into TextEdit.

    banner -w 72 "Happy 75th Birthday" | open -f

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