4 Cool Tricks to Have Some Fun With the Mac Terminal

The Mac’s Terminal is an amazing utility. In fact, we have written about it

more than once

before. It is a greatly capable tool that has enough power to alter the very core aspects of your Mac.

However, not everything has to be work when it comes to the Terminal. You can also have a lot of fun with it if you follow these neat tricks.

1. Make It Snow

The holiday season might be over, but winter is still on everywhere. So what better way to get into the spirit of the season than to make your Mac snow?

Cool Tip: You can make the Terminal window dark by choosing the Pro settings from the app’s Preferences.

To do so, just enter the following command into the Terminal window and you’ll have your Mac snowing in a second:

ruby -e 'C=`stty size`.scan(/\d+/)[1].to_i;S=["2743".to_i(16)].pack("U*");a={};puts "\033[2J";loop{a[rand(C)]=0;a.each{|x,o|;a[x]+=1;print "\033[#{o};#{x}H \033[#{a[x]};#{x}H#{S} \033[0;0H"};$stdout.flush;sleep 0.1}'

2. A Unique Take on Star Wars

This next trick is not just tremendously fun, but simply astounding if you consider the amount of effort put into it.

Have you ever watched Star Wars Episode IV? Well, perhaps you have, but believe me, not like this.

All you have to do is enter this command on Terminal…

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

..and you will be treated to the entire episode four of the saga (A New Hope) in ASCII code.

As you can see, this is really cool. Not only you get to experience the entire episode again, but you also get to see all your favorite characters rendered in this original artwork.

3. Your Own Personal Psychotherapist

There’s no denying that we all have problems of all sorts. Some of them more serious than others of course. And sometimes we all wish we could just talk to someone about them, right?

Well, it might not be the ideal ‘professional’ to talk to, but if you want, your Mac can help you deal with your issues in some quite funny and uncharacteristic ways thanks to the psychotherapist available through Terminal.

To call him/her up, just type the following command on the Terminal window:

emacs

Then press the Esc + X keys and introduce the following command when prompted:

doctor

The ‘doctor’ will pop up and prompt you to tell him/her your problem.

Just write them down, press Return two times and you will start getting some really curious/funny answers.

You might not find a solution to your problems, but you’ll definitely have a lot of fun.

4. And Don’t Forget the Games

We recently showed you how to play some classic games on your Mac such as Tetris and Pong. If you want more of those to choose from, just take a look at that article and add these names to the list of games you can find in Terminal: 5×5, blackbox, dunnet, gomoku, hanoi, landmark, mpuz and solitaire.

And there you have them. Now whenever you feel bored, you’ll know how to have a bit of fun with your Mac without even leaving your desk.