Thursday, February 25, 2010

AppleScript with iTerm

One thing I liked in Gnome (maybe just Compiz?) was the option how the terminal windows tiled as you spawned new ones. However, I no longer use Linux on any of my workstations. At home I use a MacBook, iTerm being my terminal emulator of choice. Much to my dismay, iTerm spawns at each corner of the screen by default, like so:


Some people prefer this; I don't. I wanted my terms to spawn along the center of the screen. I looked through the preferences and found no easy solution. Then the power user in me spoke up. I can solve this with AppleScript! ...kind of!



So I ended up with this. I have it in a .scpt file that I can easily call with Quicksilver and load up four terms, just like this:

Monday, February 15, 2010

AberMUD: A Perl MUD Framework

I have been working on a Perl MUD framework called AberMUD. Most of the core server logic is in a separate framework I called MUD. Though the framework is called AberMUD, I am mostly basing the framework on the Dirt code-bases, which are just a variant of the original AberMUD, but a very good one in my opinion. I think it would be great if people used MUD to build other bases like DikuMUD and TinyMUD, and brew up a framework of their own. I know I am itching to write one.

I played on MUDs a lot in my teenage years. It has always been a dream of mine to write a framework that makes it very easy for other people to crank out robust MUDs. With the rise in popularity of modern gaming, MUDs are a dying culture. I am hoping to keep it alive by making a convenient framework and hopefully a community to back it.

I am also using AberMUD to learn a lot of new cool things in the Perl universe. Listed are some modules that currently make this project really easy and fun to expand:
I may use other cool modules in the future like HTTP::Engine or something like it to build a web interface for managing components of the universe, like locations and objects.

AberMUD and MUD are both on Github for anybody to peruse and clone.


Documentation is still sketchy but I will make it a lot more verbose once the framework starts to settle. Feel free to give feedback!