“The First Column of Miscellany of 1999”
OK, OK, it’s also my first column of 1999. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers. With first semester finals bearing down on me as I write this, my brain has been sucked dry of all creative inspiration and thinking ability, so I’m going to tie up a few loose ends and throw out a few random thoughts this month, and then go finish cramming my brain full of meaningless information. Oh, and by the way, you can use a triple integral to calculate the volume of a three-dimensional object (I hope… otherwise I just failed my Calculus final exam!).
First off, congratulations to Warren Sproule, who was the first to write in last month and tell me the models of my three computers (an original LC, a LC 575, and a PowerBook 1400). As a result, Warren will be using his new copy of Retrospect Express from Dantz to back up his important data.
Next, anybody who complains that the Mac doesn’t have enough games available certainly hasn’t seen the amount of “anti-productivity” that my PowerBook has caused me this year. If there weren’t enough great commercial games coming out (such as my personal addictions of Diablo, Unreal, and Tomb Raider II), plus great shareware (such as anything from Ambrosia software, and anything else that Adam and I have reviewed in Game Guys), there are enough emulators out there that I can play pretty much any game I want–kind of. In order to download and play an emulated console game (such as a Game Boy or Super Nintendo game) legally on your Mac, you have to own the game itself, which is a rule I’ve tried to stick to as much as possible.
Anyway, I’m amazed at the amount of attention that this has gotten in my dorm. People will walk in and see me playing Unreal, and they like the game, but don’t get too riled up over it. But if someone walks in and sees me playing iNES (the excellent Nintendo emulator by John Stiles), they usually say something like, “WOW–you have ExciteBike on your computer!?” It’s amazing what a little nostalgia can do for a game’s popularity. Of course, the 8-bit classics can’t rival today’s 32 and 64-bit consoles in terms of graphics and sound (and as advanced as video game systems have become, today’s consoles can’t be emulated very well on anything but the most powerful computer hardware, if at all), but some of the old games offer a lot of fun and playability. You can check out iNES and a ton of other emulators for the Mac at http://www.emulation.net, and then you can amaze your friends, too. 🙂
Let’s see… did you know that it is possible to reduce an invertible matrix to its reduced row echelon form using a series of elementary row operations? I didn’t either, and I need to know that for my Linear Algebra final tomorrow…
I’m expecting some big things from Apple at the Macworld expo this month, as I think everyone is. However, I am actually kind of glad that Steve Jobs announced that the new consumer-level portable Mac (in other words, an iMac notebook computer) won’t be introduced until later this spring. As much as I am looking forward to seeing Apple’s latest laptop offering, at least this way I can still be content with my PowerBook for a few more months before I start craving a new one… 🙂
Regardless of how the Microsoft antitrust trial turns out (and yours truly personally thinks it’s going to be more hot air than anything else), I can say that my computing life is Microsoft- free. The cool thing about it is that it isn’t because I refuse to use Microsoft software–I’ve always used the applications that I think work best, regardless of who makes them. For a long time, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express 4.01 were my web and email tools of choice, but in my opinion Netscape has scored a winner with Communicator 4.5. The mail client is actually quite good, (a vast improvement from the last time I tried it) and Navigator has finally began to catch up to MIE’s feature set (hooray for toolbar favorites!).
Finally, for all you chess fans out there, the chess game that Adam and I reviewed a few month’s ago, MacChess, has just been updated to version 5.0. Find it wherever you usually pick up your favorite shareware…
That’ll do it for this month. If anyone can give me any pointers on Western Civilization prior to 1492, drop me a line… wait, never mind, by the time you read this, I’ll have finished my final exams and be enjoying Christmas and New Year’s vacation!!! So, to all of you out there, have a Happy New Year!!!
Mike Wallinga
mikew@mymac.com
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