Back to Mac OS X. So the Ricochet does work, it's just very unstable. OmniWeb seems to work fine with it, I think before I was too impatient because it is quite slow. It's kind of cool to change the TCP/IP settings and have the changes take effect almost instantly. Come to think of it, I don't think the Network preferences allow you to set up multiple IP interfaces running at once. I think you can set up a priority list and the first one it connects to successfully is the one it uses. But I have to play with it some more to make sure.

I downloaded PandoCalendar. It's a Carbon application but it does seem to use more Mac OS X native things like redraw on the fly as you resize the window, although maybe it's doing it itself. Anyway it's not a bad calendar app. It only shows you a calendar and then you can click on each day to see the notes for the day (which pops up in a new window each time), which would make browser rather inconvenient. You can attach a color label to a day, which helps a little to glance at what the month is like. But if you use the calendar more as a work log, like I do, the label doesn't really help. The search function is simple and once again a bit cumbersome. You can search and it finds all days where your phrase occurs, but then you have to click each day to see the contents of the notes. PandoCalendar does have a recurring notes feature, which I will use. But I'll keep looking for something better, an application that has a listing user interface rather than a calendar.

I got Fire to connect to my ICQ account and I added my buddy list. Not too sure what I'm doing wrong because the buddy list doesn't update. I remember in ICQ most of my buddies had to approve me adding them to my buddy list, even when I changed my ICQ client. Another thing to figure out.

The first game I downloaded is MacBlox, a Tetris clone. It has a lot of features such as 2-player simultaneous mode, wide or high playing fields, start with a messy playing field, and customizable controls. Colorful graphics sans sound, two sets of pieces (traditional Tetris and another that's more unusual), and multiple high-score records round out the package. What I didn't like about it is that's a bit slow. Even in level 9 it's not so fast that you can't keep up if you're good, something that you can't say about normal Tetris where level 9 is virtually impossible to do for long. This also means that level 0 is really slow.

The lack of playing speed may be due to Mac OS X which is preemptive multi- tasking, which brings up another point. Preemptive multi-tasking does not mean that your applications run faster, which some people assume. PMP means easier coding for most developers, compared to shared MP. But it also means that a process can't grab all of the CPU so that it can go as fast as possible. It can get close if there are no other active processes, but it can't be as greedy (and therefore responsive) as in previous Mac OSes. It'll be interesting to see how high-end games deal with this. I haven't heard that being a problem for Linux ports of some games, but then again I haven't seen any figures comparing frame speeds.

My last criticism of MacBlox is its scoring system. Traditional Tetris you get more points for getting blocks down quicker, for playing at higher levels, and for clearing multiple lines at once. MacBlox only features the third, so it's less of an incentive to start at a higher level and play fast.

A graphically gorgeous game is iColumns. Columns is a game where vertical three-part multi-colored blocks come down. The object is to make a three-part line of one color, which dissolves those parts and shifts the other parts downwards. It's Tetris-like but it's own distinct game. iColumns looks really nice and it has few features, not necessarily a bad thing. Too many people seem to think that more features is better less features. I tend to think that more features leads to information overload. What I want is a smaller number of well-implemented features. I'm not saying that iColumns does it right, but it sure is a nice-looking game. The only problem I have with it is that it starts out at an easy pace and never seems to get any faster. I would lose eventually as the marbles pile up slowly, but it would be a long game.

The last game I'll look at today is Ultimate Mac Othello. Graohics are ok, it supports one or two players with multiple computer levels. Even at level one the computer strives for the basic "grab the corners and edges" strategy. Nothing much else to say about the game. I hate losing to the computer, especially in no-luck games. I'd rather take my chances with the random number generator.