ASCII Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Widget Watch: Mac ASCII Text with Figlet

by Erica Sadun (May 20th, 2007)

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 ...

Nethack: The Best Game on your Mac

by Erica Sadun (May 20th, 2007)

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 ...

Terminal Tip: ASCII-ify your Videos

by Erica Sadun (May 20th, 2007)

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 ...

Mac ASCII Invaders

by Erica Sadun (May 20th, 2007)

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 ...

Terminal Tip: Create a text banner

by Erica Sadun (May 18th, 2007)

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 ...

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