Now we all know the Mac is a really nice computer, but sometimes those not “in the know” criticize it because it doesn’t have true this-or-that or a nifty Turbo switch or a price tag as low as they can find at Kurt’s Klones (some assembly required). It is necessary to communicate with these critics in a language they understand. Enter Das Blinken Lights.
Truly great computers, some reason, aren’t the kind that sit idle on desks, but the kind that crack secret codes on the silver screen or pilot the starship Enterprise. In short, the better the computer, the more blinking lights it has.
Das Blinken Lights is a small application that puts up a window containing, yep, a bunch of blinking lights. You can change the size of the window by clicking in its lower right-hand corner (the grow region) and can move it by clicking and dragging any other part of the window.
Das Blinken Lights is very friendly as a background process and is, I think, unique in the way it uses the Mac’s processor. I have designed Das Blinken Lights so that the amount of processing power it hogs is in proportion to the number of lights in its display (default is 25 X 16). That is, the smaller you make the display, the less processing power it uses; the larger you make the display, the more processing power it uses. This pseudo-priority will most likely be altered in future versions of Das Blinken Lights, but I’d like to see a few “real” programs offer some similar kind of user-controlled priority (like Word, for instance, which can use up 79% of the processor even while it’s hidden in the background).
Das Blinken Lights was written and tested using Think C on an SE/30 running System 7• and tested on an SE running System 6.0.7 (Finder only). Please send all comments, questions, or bug reports to the email address at the top of this document or to my permanent address (not suggested since I’m seldom back home, but my mother will eventually get it to me):
Doc O’Leary
2215 S. Marion Ave.
Janesville, WI 53546
Das Blinken Lights is free for non-commercial or non-profit distribution or use. Any other distribution or use is strictly prohibited without expressed written consent from me. All distribution of Das Blinken Lights must include this document.
Here are some of my current plans for future versions of Das Blinken Lights:
• Speed it up, especially with smaller displays. This may involve alteration of the pseudo-priority feature.
• Have it remember the position and size of the window. I would have put this in the current version, but I wanted a really good reason to keep working on DBL.
• Add the ability to change the size of the lights.
• Add the ability to change the timing of the lights (the minimum and maximum amount of time each light stays on).
• Give it an optional "screen saver" mode, where it will come to the foreground and expand to cover the entire screen after a set amount of time. I may, alternatively, make a screen saver module for DarkSide or other popular screen savers.
