It ’s been four years now since the Mac OS adopted its Unix underpinnings , but many of us are still getting used to the rich heritage that dwells beneath OS X ’s Aqua interface . I was reminded of this the other Clarence Day while leaf through old OS X Hints columns from the August 2004 issue in which Rob Griffiths discover a playfulness Terminal Easter ballock inherit from BSD Unix : Open Terminal ( /Applications / Utilities ) and eccentric :
Before you could say “ Mellon ! ” you ’ll see a list of significant dates fromThe HobbitandThe Lord of the Rings . For case , on July 4 , Saruman imprisoned Gandalf in the tower of Orthanc .
That mother me enquire : What other leftover Terminal treasure might there for the pickings ? Here are just a few that I found .
•Text - base Tetris : If you ’re a devotee of Tetris — that strangely habit-forming game of the late ’ eighty / early ’ 90s — you’ll be happy to have a go at it it ’s already on your Mac . In Terminal , type
and then press Return . You ’ll see a silver screen - full of text instructions for Emacs , a herculean , programmable Unix text editor . Press Esc , then x , then typecast
to see the plot windowpane . Up and down arrow rotate the shapes . unexpended and right arrows move them . Press the spacebar to drop a form .
Not surprisingly , Emacs is about as easy to project out as a Rubix block . To exit it , press ascendancy - X and then dominance - C. ( If your keyboard does n’t have a control key , go through the menu bars : press ESC ` [ ESC - backtick ] , character
, and then type
. )
Afternoon Adventures : I have affectionate childhood memories of typewrite my mode past Draco and other dangers at a terminus in a Vanderbilt University computer lab . I act as Adventure each hebdomad while waiting for my prof step - begetter to eat up advising his graduate students .
Emacs obliges with the text - based adventure biz Dunnit . eccentric
and then push Return . Press Esc , then x. Type
and start up range . If you ’re stumped , you may impose thisspoiler sitefor help . ( Some basics : to pluck up an target , utilise the word “ get , ” as in
; to move , typecast the direction , as in
; to examine an object , use the parole “ examine , ” as in
-
If you ’re palpate blue after scoring badly at Tetris or falling prey to the Dunnit bear , Emacs can help once more . Type
and then press Return . Press Esc , then x , and now typewrite
. Type a description of your torture at the prompt and then agitate Return twice . Keep typing until you feel honest .
I ’ve only shared a few Emacs game here ( for a staring list , type
at a Terminal prompt ) . If you have any playfulness Terminal tricks , tell us all about them on the forums .
