Man, I really enjoy this.

It’s a very old app (supposedly by the Apple OpenGL team) that emulates those hyper-old phosphorous displays. It takes a whopping 30-40% of CPU, has configurable settings, and well, as I said, looks very cool. This is with 1800 baud modem emulation, it can run at regular speed as well.

Anyway, I have lots of fun in the Terminal. From telnetting towel.blinkenlights.nl, playing an old game of nethack, just having good old shellscripting fun, I love my terminal. There are some things, though, that I cannot live without when I get my hands on a ‘standard’ OS X terminal. Here are my additions.

Visor.

Number one by far. It allows you to have a drop-down or fade-in terminal at a keystroke. I won’t have to explain why this is just super handy. It’s by the folks who made Quicksilver.

X11

X11 is a great addition to any Terminal lover. Terminal prompt themes like bashish and other fancy Linux-esque graphic addition to terminals often work properly with Xterm or Rxvt and only that. Or you might want to use Eterm, like I do – Enlightenment is really one of my favorite window-managers on Linux or BSD, and it works great with OS X. It’s on the Install DVD that came with your Mac, in the ‘Optional Installs’ folder. Why install it, you ask?

(click for full size)

This particular setup lets me use my favorite old Winamp skins, lets terminals slide into a simple bar that you can ‘unslide’ by scrolling over the window (sounds complicated, but it’s super smooth)

Although GNU Screen comes standard, it deserves a mention. It’s like a window manager in a terminal. It allows for split screens, virtual terminals, and detachable screens. Check it out; type ‘man screen’ in the Terminal. Memorize the shortcuts and get rolling!