Pretending once again to be an oldskool hacker

Over the last few years you may have heard me complain about not being able to make Terminal (a Mac OSX program that allows use of the command line) run fullscreen instead of as a window. Yes, I know that making my monitor show and oldskool text prompt and nothing else wouldn't grant any additional functionality, but it would feel so much better.

Well, I just learned an interesting new trick. If you have a Mac, you can play along at home!

Go to Apple Menu: System Preferences: Accounts and click on Login Options. Set "Display login window as:" to "Name and password" if it isn't already. Close the window.

Go to Apple Menu: Log Out.

At the login screen, type
>console
as your username, and press enter. No password needed. Bam! Fullscreen console command line! Type your usual username and password and you're good to go.

This is so cool. Of course I'll probably just use it for playing NetHack, but it's still awesome.

BoxCar2D

Car design from an evolutionary perspective. Try leaving it on overnight and see what's driving in the morning.

It starts by randomly generating and testing 20 "cars," most of which will suck (some might not even have wheels). Whichever ones go the furthest pass their design information on to the next "generation" of 20, which are similarly tested and culled, and so on. After a few generations the ones that don't go anywhere are gone; after a few more generations most of the cars can move reasonably well; after a hundred or so and most of them are almost completing the course. Pretty neat to watch. You can also design your own cars and let them evolve further. Note also that there are several terrains available, which lead to interesting variation in car development. Check out the "Best Cars" high score list also.