More rumored Telltale plans for the Mac

Filed under: Gaming, Software

We posted a little while back about Telltale possibly bringing its games over to the Mac, and now there’s even more rumblings to be interested in. Rumor has it that since most of their games use the same platform, one port is the same as all of them, which means we may see the whole catalog released in one fell swoop on OS X, and sold right alongside their PC brethren. Additionally, Telltale hints that we may even see iPhone and/or iPad versions of their games, including Sam and Max, the Monkey Island franchise, and all the rest (with the exceptions of the Bone series and Texas Hold ‘Em).

They are saying that we’ll hear more at Macworld next month, and since TUAW plans to be there en masse, we’ll definitely keep our eyes open for anything they’re showing off. Good to hear that one of the more interesting and quality developers out there is planning to come over to the Mac in a big way.

[via IMG]

More rumored Telltale plans for the Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

More rumored Telltale plans for the Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source:[tuaw]

See How Much We Want Flash?

The
breathless
words from 9 to 5 Mac announced, “You heard it here first,
folks.” And then in bold, italic all caps, “THE IPAD
HAS FLASH.” And
who can blame them for joining the bandwagon of wishful thinkers?

They
showed a clip from Apple’s official video that seemed to indicate the
presence of Flash, and everyone’s hopes got a little higher. Alas,
9 to 5 Mac had to update their story with the news that a media
company makes fake optimized web pages for all of Apple’s
commercials.

The
absence of a Flash announcement in the iPad presentation got the
attention of several commenting
on the event. In fact, Adobe’s Adrian Ludwig himself said,
“Without
Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range
of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the
web.” Plus Adobe’s Flash
platform Twitter account tweeted a link to a news story confirming the absence.

A
quick search on “iPad flash” shows just how many people are
discussing the issue. PC World calls
it “Apple’s iPad and the Flash Clash” and points out the
promotional images and videos on Apple’s own site hint at Flash
presence that isn’t there. Their story says that a graphic designer
from Atlanta is even filing a complaint with the Federal Trade
Commission over what he believes is misleading advertising. "In
several advertisements and images representing the Apple products in
question, Apple has purposefully elected to show these devices
correctly displaying content that necessitates the Adobe Flash
plug-in," according to his filing.

Perhaps
the real question remains… Why isn’t it there?

Source:[therawfeed]

Prediction: Google to offer ‘click to call’ for PCs

Google hauled its click to call program out of beta this week, enabling one-click calling of participating AdWords advertisers — but only by smart phone users. Here’s why I think a PC or desktop version is coming soon.

Source:[therawfeed]

Working With The Calendar Function In Terminal

Hey

Today and tomorrows post will be a two part mini-series on the date and calendar function within Terminal on your Mac. If you are ever into scripting or working with GeekTool (I have an old post about GeekTool here) it may be very useful to learn how to work with the calendar function in various scripts or what ever you decide to use it with. The calendar function is very useful for producing graphical representations (in text) of any month of any year. Tomorrows post will feature the date function which complements the calendar function nicely. The commands talked about in post can be found (along with more commands) in a variety of books such as Mac OS X Toolbox. Any basic Unix book will feature these basic commands.

To start open Terminal found in Applications > Utilities and type cal (then hit enter) into the command line. Your Terminal will produce something similar to the following.

    January 2010
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
                1  2
 3  4  5  6  7  8  9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31

A nice representation of the current month. This is very useful for graphical representations. You can also use ncal. Its a variation of cal, but produces a different output. Some of the commands either use cal, or ncal.

    January 2010
Mo     4 11 18 25
Tu     5 12 19 26
We     6 13 20 27
Th     7 14 21 28
Fr  1  8 15 22 29
Sa  2  9 16 23 30
Su  3 10 17 24 31

Notice with the ncal output its more square a regular. It does however read in a different direction which can make it slightly more difficult to look and glance at. However ncal does bring with it a couple more features which will be discussed later.

To change the month shown simply type:

cal -m apr

and the month of the current year will be displayed. The month format is the 3 letter short version; jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug, sep, oct, nov, dec. You can then combine this with a year, anything from 0AD to 9999AD. Minus month and years in the 10th millennium will not compute. For example

cal apr 2015

This will produce a calendar for April in the month 2015. Notice you don’t have to append the “-m” modifying option. This is so the function can tell when you are imputing a month and not confuse itself over a year with three letters. Note, if you enter the following:

cal 2015

or

cal -m apr -y 2010

It will list every day in that year regardless of the -m option. The same works with ncal.

There are a couple of options which can be added to the cal options (other than a specific date) to calculate which week or day in the year you are on. For example you can list each day sequentially in the year, in the calendar format. For example:

cal -j apr 2010

This produces:

        April 2010
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
                 91  92  93
 94  95  96  97  98  99 100
101 102 103 104 105 106 107
108 109 110 111 112 113 114
115 116 117 118 119 120

You can easily tell how many days have ran in April during 2010. The -j options can be appended to any date. This can be quite confusing to which actual day represents which number in the calendar. As a result I run this code to show both dates at the same time.

        April 2010
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
                 91  92  93
 94  95  96  97  98  99 100
101 102 103 104 105 106 107
108 109 110 111 112 113 114
115 116 117 118 119 120

     April 2010
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
             1  2  3
 4  5  6  7  8  9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30

Here it is clear that April the 14th is the 104th day in the year. In the next post I will show you how you can pick the day number out more easily.

The final option is to show how many weeks have passed in the year. This can only be done with ncal and is used with the -w option.

ncal -w

    January 2010
Mo     4 11 18 25
Tu     5 12 19 26
We     6 13 20 27
Th     7 14 21 28
Fr  1  8 15 22 29
Sa  2  9 16 23 30
Su  3 10 17 24 31
   53  1  2  3  4

Note the week number at the bottom of the calendar. This option can be combined with the day number option and used for any month within any year.

Overall this cal options is useful. You can produce a whole variety of calendars in a graphical format. Tomorrow I will show you the date function for showing date and times and using the option to highlight specific dates. If you want to learn more about Terminal, either look through this category on my site, search my site, or have a look at the many books on Amazon.

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I’ve launched a new site about Train Pictures, its a daily photo site featuring the best in locomotive transport. Check out DailyTrains

Working With The Calendar Function In Terminal

Related posts:

1. Working With Widgets
2. Working Out Time Zones In iCal
3. Back Date A File Using Terminal

Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone

Filed under: Gaming, Features, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Catan. If you’ve ever visited, there’s a good chance you’re passionate about it.

First unveiled as a traditional board game in 1995, the now-classic trading and settlement game has evolved over the years to include dozens of scenarios, expansions and reworkings, from limited edition game maps to browser-based Internet versions. Naturally, the Settlers of Catan is now also available for the iPhone [iTunes link], and it’s a a damn good condensed version.

First things first. This is the full, but basic, game. The original ruleset isn’t condensed at all, but none of the expansions are present in the current version. While long-time board gamers might scoff at simple “vanilla Settlers,” the basic game as presented in Exozet’s iPhone version acts just like the tabletop big brother. You can choose to play on the fixed beginner board or a random map, you can play with three or four people (or bots), you can trade, you can go for longest road, etc. All the things that make Catan such an enduring game are here, and that’s great to have in your pocket.

Read on to find out more about Catan: the First Island on the iPhone (and iPod Touch).

Continue reading Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone

Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source:[tuaw]

OS X Hidden Gems

Source:[tuaw]

Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone

Filed under: Gaming, Features, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Catan. If you’ve ever visited, there’s a good chance you’re passionate about it.

First unveiled as a traditional board game in 1995, the now-classic trading and settlement game has evolved over the years to include dozens of scenarios, expansions and reworkings, from limited edition game maps to browser-based Internet versions. Naturally, the Settlers of Catan is now also available for the iPhone [iTunes link], and it’s a a damn good condensed version.

First things first. This is the full, but basic, game. The original ruleset isn’t condensed at all, but none of the expansions are present in the current version. While long-time board gamers might scoff at simple “vanilla Settlers,” the basic game as presented in Exozet’s iPhone version acts just like the tabletop big brother. You can choose to play on the fixed beginner board or a random map, you can play with three or four people (or bots), you can trade, you can go for longest road, etc. All the things that make Catan such an enduring game are here, and that’s great to have in your pocket.

Read on to find out more about Catan: the First Island on the iPhone (and iPod Touch).

Continue reading Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone

Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source:[tuaw]

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